GridPoint, a provider of building energy management and optimization technology that decarbonizes commercial buildings and drives grid modernization, announced new metrics that demonstrate the overall impact of the company’s technology on sustainable practices in customer locations throughout 2021. Serving more than 15,000 commercial sites, GridPoint’s platform was adopted at more locations than ever before last year, generated cumulative energy savings of more than $100 million for customers, and eliminated 1.4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions. The impact of last year’s CO2e reductions is equal to 202,000 tons of waste recycled or 71 million gallons of gasoline not used, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
GridPoint also experienced substantial growth in participation by its customers in automated demand response programs, achieving a nearly 200% increase in grid capacity under management in 2021 vs. 2020. Drivers of growth include today’s landscape of increased energy costs, issues with grid reliability, more frequent power disruptions, and intensified extreme weather events. The dramatic increase in demand response participation substantiates the collective benefit of grid-interactivity for both commercial businesses and the grid.
Walgreens, for example, has leveraged GridPoint’s platform to manage energy and optimize its buildings since 2009. Together with GridPoint, Walgreens has reduced emissions by more than 80 million kWh annually. Walgreens also participates in demand response programs nationwide managed by GridPoint to curtail load and provide reliable on-demand capacity back to the grid, while keeping essential zones, like the pharmacy, functioning normally.
In 2021 GridPoint partnered with the Meritage Hospitality Group and is deploying its technology platform across 345 restaurant locations for one of the largest Wendy’s franchise entities.
Additionally, GridPoint added three new utility energy efficiency and five new demand response programs in 2021, bringing the total utility program portfolio to more than twenty, and plans to announce more in the coming months. The programs are designed to help utilities better engage with their commercial business customers and provide greater value to them through energy efficiency, demand response, and decarbonization. Many utilities have approved GridPoint as an efficiency measure and offer significant incentives and rebates to commercial customers to deploy the GridPoint technology platform, including Hawai’i Energy. With energy prices at unprecedented highs in Hawaii, Hawai’i Energy is providing qualified businesses with a 50% rebate to deploy GridPoint’s smart devices and building controls to help their customers save money on energy and better control their electric demand.
