Market and regulatory forces at work today are changing the landscape for large electricity users. Businesses and institutions are increasingly recognizing that environmental stewardship goes hand in hand with economic stewardship. Sustainable strategies help make it happen. This is particularly evident on the demand-side. For example, many commercial building developers strive to get their new and refurbished Class-A office buildings LEED®-certified, an internationally recognized green building certification. They incur 1-2% extra up-front costs to make buildings more energy efficient. Why do this when the tenant is often responsible for the electricity bill? Because the investment reduces ongoing operating costs and translates into higher rental rates and property values for the building owners. Federal and State regulators recognize the benefits of these changing market forces and are embracing policies and incentives that encourage energy efficiency.

Large end-users have seen less progress and innovation on the supply-side. To be sure, they have a broader set of supply options than they did 15 years ago, when U.S. industry deregulation was just getting started. However, the nature of electricity supply offerings has not changed much. Today, the supply choice is typically between signing a 2-3 year contract with the local utility or a power marketer. Environmentally-conscious end-users may also decide to purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) as a way to offset their own carbon footprint and/or support green energy development. The risk and uncertainty around future power and REC prices is borne by the end-user each time the supply contract resets. On-site development of solar, geothermal heat pumps or other renewable supply may be an option but may only supply a small fraction of the end-user’s supply needs.

CFR’s focus is on fundamentally changing supply dynamics, mitigating energy risks and putting more control in the hands of the customer. We do this by developing, owning and operating renewable generation (primarily wind) on behalf of our customers and flowing through the economic and renewable benefits directly to them. We create two types of value for our customers: (1) economic value and (2) renewable value. Our customer’s economics are substantially improved over traditional utility/marketer arrangements, by using economically-attractive renewable supply options to reduce electricity costs, provide much greater certainty in long-term electricity and REC prices, and reduce risk from future carbon regulation. Unlevered customer returns on investment (ROI) are in the 10-20% range over the 20 year life of the CFR asset. Participation can be scaled in proportion to customer needs across single or multiple sites. For many, CFR also expands the public relations/marketing benefit of truly having “green” renewable supply (vs. just buying RECs from someone else). This renewable value, which we can also help quantify, can be a significant addition and differentiator beyond the project economics when our customers and constituents place value on it.