The Consolidation Continues: EnerNoc Buys Carbon, Energy Efficiency Software Startup

With its purchase of eQuilibrium Solutions, EnerNoc moves one step closer to expanding into broader energy services – but big players like SAP and Microsoft are making moves of their own.

Jeff St. John June 17, 2009

Jeff St. John

Senior Editor
Greentech Media

Reporter covering the green technology space, with a particular focus on smart grid, demand response, energy storage, renewable energy and technology to integrate distributed, intermittent green energy into the grid.

Demand response company EnerNoc (NSDQ: ENOC) has been talking for some time about expanding into a broader range of energy services, including energy efficiency and carbon accounting.

With its Wednesday purchase of eQuilibrium Solutions, a maker of enterprise software that does just that, its putting its money where its mouth is – though it wouldn't disclose financial terms of the deal.

EnerNoc is seeking to add value to the basic demand response proposition it offers its clients, who now add up to about 2,700 megawatts of power use – agree to curtail power use during peak power demand times, and get paid for it by utilities.

Adding energy efficiency and carbon management services that use the same data from the same systems it deploys to control power-using devices at customer sites is a way to bring in additional revenues, and EnerNoc has been developing its own systems for doing so for some time (see EnerNoc Expanding Into Carbon Management, Energy Services).

Now it will be incorporating eQuilbrium's system into those existing offerings, as well as offering them as stand-alone services, the company said. It will also keep up relationships with some of eQuilbrium's existing customers, including Sears Canada and News Corp., it said.

Given the state of consolidation in the industry it's in, EnerNoc will likely want to move fast to incorporate eQuilbrium's software into what it does. Energy efficiency and carbon accounting are becoming target markets for some of the biggest IT companies in the world.

Last month, enterprise software giant SAP got into the carbon accounting business with its acquisition of startup Clear Standards (see Carbon Consolidation Begins With SAP's Latest Buy).

Microsoft and CA are also moving into the space, which is now dominated mainly by companies in the business of providing pollution monitoring and verification systems to companies, according to a recent report by Groom Energy Solutions and Greentech Media (see Carbon Accounting: It's All About Appearances).