EnerNOC CEO Healy: ‘Wouldn’t Surprise Me if We Are Sitting on a Fortune One Day’ (Part 2 of 2)
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
Timothy Healy, chairman and CEO of EnerNOC Inc., a company whose information technology helps electric utilities and their major corporate customers manage their respective power requirements, is focused on a future where carbon has a price. Translation: a future where there is a global market for trading carbon credits generated by developers of projects that result in a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.
While such a future isn’t yet guaranteed, rapidly rising public concern over greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is spurring more and more companies and countries to start thinking about how they will operate in a “carbon constrained” world where the amount of CO2 they release must be reduced year over year. Companies responsible for reducing their “carbon footprint” by more than the specified annual amount would be able to sell the “credits” their projects generate – probably at a rate of $30 or more per ton of carbon effectively taken out of the air – to companies that exceed their specified limits.
As EnergyTechStocks.com recently reported, the market for carbon emissions trading, while still in its infancy, is expected to approach $100 billion in 2008. (See: Still in its Infancy, Carbon Trading Market Will Approach $100 Billion in 2008 – New Report) As EnergyTechStocks.com also recently reported, carbon trading expert Peter Fusaro expects carbon trading to balloon into a $500 billion global market within a few years. (See: Carbon Trading Guru Peter Fusaro on Making $$ in The $500 Billion Carbon Emissions Market - Part 1 of 4)
For a company such as EnerNOC, whose entire business is directed at helping companies save energy and, thus, reduce their CO2 emissions, if and when carbon has a price, the payoff could be great. Key will be whether projects already undertaken are grandfathered into the system, which experts including Fusaro expect will happen. If and when that happens, EnerNOC will suddenly have a portfolio of carbon credits ready for sale.
Referring to the revenue potential of selling carbon credits coupled with the revenue potential of providing IT-directed energy efficiency services, Healy told EnergyTechStocks.com, “It wouldn’t surprise me if we are sitting on a fortune one day.”
Asked specifically who gets credit for what under EnerNOC’s contracts with companies signing up for its energy efficiency services, Healy indicated that EnerNOC would be in line to get the bulk of the credits generated.
Asked to envision a world where EnerNOC’s IT products might be used to help manage the power requirements of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of plug-in electric hybrid vehicles, Healy said that in such a world, EnerNOC could be “sitting in the catbird seat,” adding that energy management services for the electrified transportation market was part of the company’s long term vision.
