- Improves access to more sustainable power solutions for communities and companies through ‘subscription’ energy service
- Helps accelerate the take-up of renewable energy by removing the need for customers to find up-front finance or operate their power supply
- Provides electricity and heat for remote communities, industrial companies and large energy consumers
- Solutions bring together established and new technologies from combined heat and power, wind and solar, to battery storage and fuel cells
Rolls-Royce has agreed to a cooperation with the global investment firm Sustainable Development Capital LLP (SDCL) to jointly offer ‘Energy-as-a-Service’ solutions that can help accelerate the take-up of more sustainable power. The agreement, signed at the World Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow on 11 November, allows Rolls-Royce to provide customers with electricity and/or heat, generated by a sustainable and efficient energy system, as a subscription service, removing the need for customers to secure up-front infrastructure finance or operate the system themselves.
One of the themes of COP26 has been how to improve access to finance for solutions to assist in the energy transition and combat climate change. The provision of ‘Energy-as-a-Service’ where a customer pays for heat and power through a subscription model, represents a very attractive way to improve access to sustainable power. Rolls-Royce will work with SDCL and other partners to design, finance, build, commission and operate new projects. SDCL has more than a decade of experience of developing and financing clean and decentralised energy infrastructure projects in the UK, continental Europe, North America and Asia. Rolls-Royce, through its Power Systems business unit, has a portfolio of microgrid systems that bring together renewable energy sources such as solar and windpower with mtu-branded battery storage and gensets (an engine and electrical generator) to ensure reliable power generation. It is currently developing fuel cell systems and making its existing mtu engines compatible with sustainable fuels, paving the way for net zero microgrid solutions within the next two years.