First US marketplace for locally produced clean energy launched by LO3 Energy and Green Mountain Power

For Immediate Release

November 20, 2019

One of America’s most recognized and progressive energy providers, Green Mountain Power, has teamed up with LO3 Energy to roll out the country’s first commercial local energy marketplace for customers.

The app for GMP customers, called Vermont Green, will connect local businesses such as ski resorts, craft breweries and dairy farms with home solar owners looking to earn income from their excess energy production.

It will allow businesses aiming to become 100% renewable to ‘top up’ their green power supplies by buying energy attributes through a bidding auction on LO3’s local energy market platform, known as Pando.

“This is a landmark moment for energy in the US” – Lawrence Orsini

LO3 Energy founder and CEO Lawrence Orsini said: “This is a landmark moment for energy in the US as it is the first time a community scale local energy market has been developed, regulated and commercially operated.

“Vermonters are among the most environmentally conscious in the country. There’s a huge appetite for local businesses to be 100 percent renewable and at the same time there’s an increasing amount of home solar production.

“This platform pairs the local supply with demand at the grid edge and we are delighted to be working with Green Mountain Power to bring this market to commercial reality.”

Discover more about Pando HERE

Green Mountain Power aims to become a 100 percent renewable provider by 2030 and setting up local energy markets that can utilize local distributed energy resources will be key to achieving that target.

The company’s energy supply is already 90 percent carbon free and 60 percent renewable and this new marketplace will make it possible for participants to top that up towards a target of 100 percent renewable.

It will initially focus on helping business customers to increase their green credentials by buying local energy attributes from residential solar.

Participating businesses will be able to set desired bids in renewable energy auctions, making the transaction of local renewable energy attributes transparent and allowing flexibility in pricing.

The platform utilizes innovative technology to automatically match bids with offers and log the transactions. GMP is launching this as a limited pilot program, but could later be made available to residential consumers as well as commercial entities.

“It’s great to now be commercially active in the US” – Lawrence Orsini

Orsini added: “This is the culmination of many years of work developing the technology to deliver local energy markets. We have many working projects around the world and so it’s great to now be commercially active in the US.

“As distributed renewables grow and the world becomes more and more digitized, the ability to manage local energy resources in this way will become increasingly crucial to our everyday lives.

“We now have the technology to do this and by starting now, progressive companies like Green Mountain Power and others we are working with around the world will be the leaders in the new energy transition.”

About LO3 Energy

LO3 Energy, a Brooklyn, NY based company, is building a blockchain-based platform to enable decentralized business models and innovative technologies related to energy, cleantech and utility systems. The LO3 team has deep expertise in design, architecture, development, prototyping, and testing of cutting-edge distributed energy, computing and peer-to-peer distributed consensus networks. The company builds blockchain-based tools and projects to support and accelerate the proliferation of distributed energy, utilities and computation sharing economy of the future. For more information about blockchain for energy, visit www.lo3energy.com

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About Braemar Energy Ventures

Founded in 2003, Braemar Energy Ventures is a leading venture capital firm focused on investing in transformative energy-tech and related companies contributing to global sustainability and combating climate change. Using sector expertise and experience, Braemar aims to be an engaged partner with its portfolio companies to best help them navigate the path to creating significant global impact. For more information, visit braemarenergy.com.