Ampion CEO reviews deal with Wendy's to enroll 130 locations in community solar projects
Ampion Renewable Energy has partnered with The Wendy’s Company and its franchises to enroll more than 130 locations and counting with Ampion+; a Green-e Energy certified product that layers Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) with community solar subscriptions.
The partnership will bring more than 27 million kWh of renewable energy to local grids in New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Ampion will track and assign ownership of all RECs to each restaurant location.
“It’s been a behind-the-scenes thing,” said CEO and Founder of Ampion, Nate Owen, in an interview with NPM. “We had to do a lot of heavy lifting on our billing system. It is not the most exciting thing to talk about but the reality is, if you are going to be succeeding in this industry you really have to have some pretty sophisticated systems to be able to pull off what we are doing for Wendy’s.”
The partnership is helping Wendy’s meet their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals of reducing Scope 1, 2, and 3, greenhouse gas emissions by 47% per restaurant by 2030. Scope 1 emissions are direct greenhouse emissions that occur from sources owned or controlled by an organization. Scope 2 and 3 are indirect emissions as a consequence of the activities of a company but occur from sources not owned or controlled by it, such as electricity, heating, or cooling, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Wendy’s plans to increase the number of restaurants enrolled with Ampion+ as more community solar projects come online.
“It has taken several years for the scale to exist where a company like Wendy’s can actually participate in a transaction, see the benefit, and get a big enough bite in order for them to justify spending time on the subscriptions,” Owen said.
Contractual requirements and operational demands were some of the biggest challenges in bringing the partnership to fruition.
“We provide scale by aggregating capacity, but we’ve also standardized a lot of the contract terms so that a multitude of financiers, developers, and asset owners can meet the needs of some of these organizations who are so large that that’s just what’s required for them to participate in the market,” Owen said.
“Just dealing with the scale piece has been a big issue, but we’re seeing a lot of growth in these markets right now with a lot of portfolios being developed and coming to market,” Owen said. “Practically every single day we are matching up supply with corporate demand all under 10, 15, or 20-year contracts.”
While community solar allows larger organizations to participate as anchor tenants, there are limitations for those organizations who want a larger share.
Owen said they did explore the idea of hosting community solar projects at Wendy’s locations, but the challenge was that there was not enough real estate to cover their load and because of the nature of franchises, they do not have full control of decisions across all their locations.
The enterprise side of Ampion’s business has been steadily growing as community solar continues to be a vital component of sustainability for many corporations: “It’s been a learning experience,” Owen said.
In September 2023, Ampion announced they were targeting 50 Fortune 100 companies within 18-24 months with the launch of Ampion+. Other large organizations serviced by Ampion include InterContinental Hotels Group, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. They are working in all 50 states.
“We are at a point right now where there is a pretty high recognition from corporate America that this is a very appealing product and there are many corporations that are now looking at it as a sustainability solution,” Owen said.
*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.
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