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Today’s rapidly evolving energy landscape presents organizations like yours with challenges and opportunities. Factors such as climate change, energy market volatility, stakeholder demands, and regulatory changes are driving the need for energy strategies focused on decarbonization.

Developing a strong strategy, implementing tangible measures, and choosing suitable energy solutions to help you achieve your targets are all essential for enhancing your brand reputation and competitiveness. It’s no secret that your portfolio should be diversified and balanced, encompassing a variety of solutions that make short-term and long-term impacts on carbon reduction and wider energy efficiency measures.

But let’s zero in on a strategy that should be at the very foundation of every decarbonization roadmap: energy flexibility. The concept of energy flexibility can encompass a wide range of strategies and energy solutions. We’re going to focus on the classic example of energy flexibility that you can easily integrate into your strategy, regardless of where you are on your decarbonization roadmap: demand response.

Demand response unlocks economic and environmental benefits

Energy is no longer simply a line item on your budget. It’s an asset you can harness, control, and monetize. Strategic, more flexible energy use is a low-hanging fruit that not only makes an immediate positive impact on your organization’s energy infrastructure – it enables a cleaner, more sustainable electric grid as well. By participating in grid flexibility programs, like demand response, your organization can directly contribute to greener peak capacity on the electric grid, while also reducing your own carbon footprint. 

Here's how.

Grid operators need to ensure that energy supply and demand remain in balance. At times when supply and demand struggle to meet (e.g., during heatwaves when demand surges), the grid has traditionally relied on peaker plants to provide capacity and ensure grid stability. However, peaker plants are fossil-fuel powered and expensive to build and maintain, so grid operators are focusing on more cost-effective and less fuel-intensive ways of balancing supply and demand.

More flexible sources of capacity, like demand response programs, are proving to be more cost-effective and environmentally conscious methods of ensuring grid stability. As a result, grid operators incentivize organizations like yours to be more flexible with their energy use. The most straightforward solution for addressing peak demand is reducing it – instead of firing up peaker plants that run on fossil fuels, the grid pays you to reduce consumption to help maintain the balance.

How does it work? 

When the grid faces an imbalance, utilities and grid operators dispatch their demand response network. In response to these events, organizations with flexibility in their operations earn payments for agreeing to be on standby and reduce electricity consumption. Through demand response, you can earn substantial payments for being on call to reduce energy use when the electric grid needs support – a win-win for your bottom-line, for energy continuity in your local community, and for a cleaner grid. 

Demand response is a low-hanging fruit for decarbonization

Energy flexibility is lucrative for individual organizations, essential for the grid, and beneficial for the planet. With energy flexibility at the core of your strategy, you can achieve quick wins while driving your decarbonization roadmap forward. 

Why is demand response a low-hanging fruit to integrate into your decarbonization roadmap? You can implement it quickly and cost-effectively, and, unlike more complex and capital-intensive projects, it requires relatively little additional infrastructure at your site. 

The beauty of demand response is that it incentivizes more flexible and efficient use of existing assets – and most organizations have flexible elements of their operations that can be part of a demand response curtailment plan. Think about your own facility’s infrastructure. Strategies like turning off unnecessary lighting, raising HVAC set points, and reducing production lines are classic examples of energy flexibility that you can monetize and attribute to carbon reduction efforts.

These efforts translate into kW or even MW that can be part of an energy curtailment plan to earn revenue, and you can directly attribute them to carbon reduction efforts – you are being more efficient with energy use, and you are avoiding drawing energy from the grid at times when fossil fuels would have to be burned to power peaker plants.

Participating in demand response can serve as a backbone to your decarbonization strategy. It creates a valuable revenue stream that you can reinvest to implement other solutions as part of your roadmap. And it works seamlessly with other solutions in your portfolio to maximize value. Demand response can work together with energy efficiency upgrades and building automation systems to maximize efficiencies and automate demand response participation. It can also integrate with solar and battery storage systems to optimize renewable energy usage and ensure operational continuity during demand response dispatches.

By optimizing energy usage, promoting energy efficiency, integrating renewables, and improving grid reliability, demand response is playing a crucial role in the transition to a more sustainable energy future.

In our new eBook – ”Demand response: is this low-hanging fruit part of your decarbonization strategy?” – you’ll learn how participating in demand response is a quick win that delivers immediate economic and environmental benefits across your energy infrastructure. And you’ll discover how your participation directly contributes to a cleaner, more sustainable electric grid. Get your copy of our eBook today.