Lightsource bp US: A Case Study of Renewables and Big Oil Working Together

The transcription of the video is below. 

Emilie Wangerman’s background: Before and after she joined Lightsource bp and the solar industry

Kerim: Hi everyone. This is Kerim Baran with SolarAcademy. Today, I have with me Emilie Wangerman, of Lightsource bp US, and I also have Nico Johnson, my partner in crime at SolarAcademy, and the Founder of SunCast, the number one podcast in the solar industry or in the renewables industry as I see it. 

And today, we’re going to talk to Emilie about Lightsource bp’s story, recent evolution, products, and a few other things. And thank you, Emilie, for being here with us.

Emilie: Of course. Thank you for having me.

Kerim: So Emilie, maybe before we jump into Lightsource bp, you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you found yourself at Lightsource bp US. 

Emilie: Sure. Yes. I wouldn’t say it’s unique, but it is a little different than some of my other fellow solar employees and colleagues. So I started as a chemical engineer, as well as psychology, from an undergrad. And as a chemical engineer, I actually started as a chemical engineer, and then decided that I was going down the path of a little bit too technical.

And so I decided to also add psychology into the mix, and I say that because that really defines who I am. I really like the technical side. I can talk to you about a product or the market design, or how to build a SiP semiconductor, but I also really like talking to you about how you are developing your employees. How are you managing your employees and maximizing the benefits of them, as well as giving them a place where they feel included and welcomed?

That’s really me. And then when I went into – my first job after undergrad was at Intel Corporation. And so I started in the technology development side, and I was in Intel for about eight years. But then I decided that I was done with the really technical side. 

And so I went back to business school, and I studied my MBA as well as I studied energy markets. And so I did a Master’s in Environmental Management, focused on energy markets. And so again, it was really that balance of getting that technical side, but also getting the balance of business and people.  

And so that’s exactly how I got into renewable energy. I chose to go back to school. I chose to go back to school to specifically learn about renewable energy, and the reason I did that is I was living abroad, and I was seeing how conventional resources were really causing catastrophic impact to the environment. And I wanted to be a part of solving that problem. And so I went back to school, studied the actual technologies on the renewable side, and then went into business. 

I joined Lightsource bp US after I had worked for PG&E for several years. PG&E is a large utility in California, and there I focused on a variety of scopes from transmission and distribution to energy procurement to product design on the customer side. And I say all that because I really wanted to get a breadth of experience before I jumped into the commercial and  sales side of the business. 

And so when I joined Lightsource bp US, I actually joined, it was before it was Lightsource bp. It was actually Lightsource, and we were a really small company. I had spoken to one of my former friends, well, one of my friends at business school, and she said, “Hey, we’re starting this company. What do you think? Do you want to join us?” And coming from a big company like PG&E, it was almost shocking. I showed up with a business suit, and I showed up with, you know, my padfolio, and they were both like, “Wait. First of all, why do you have a padfolio? Why are you wearing a business suit?” And so it was a bit of a shock from a culture perspective. But it was an amazing, freeing shot. So it was a really great experience to join a company when there were about seven employees.

We didn’t know yet where we wanted to be in the US. We didn’t have a portfolio, and we just had to jump in and create something. So it was a really great time to start. That was back in 2017. It’s now 2024, which is crazy. So I’ve almost been at the company for, I’ve been at the company about six years and you know, now we have 300 employees. And we have 30 GW, and we’ve done over 4.6 billion in financing. So it’s been an incredible growth. I now lead the company for the US. And so it’s been an exciting time.

Reflecting on important early career moments for Emilie

Nico: Emilie, the journey from your prior corporate experience to choosing work at the utility, PG&E, learn the power industry, and then go into a startup helped you form some core elements to not only skills development, but leadership.  

As you look back from the purchase Head of USA, what were some of the more important moments for your time in Lightsource, specifically, from a personal career development perspective, that you would want others to be able to reflect on, as either internally of the company, or out in the industry?

Emilie: Yeah, I think the first one that comes to mind is one of my first days. My former boss at the time, said, “Okay, well, go figure out what you want to do. Go figure out your strategy. Where are we going to grow? What’s the strategy for Lightsource?”

And coming from a bigger company, that’s very freeing for me. But I think sometimes people can feel quite overwhelmed by ambiguity or lack of direction. And so for me, I was like, “Yes, I’m in. I can do this.” 

I pulled up my business school thinking. I pulled up all the experience that I had at school, as well as at PG&E, and I said, “Okay, yeah. I do understand the energy markets. I do understand the markets, where we can grow as fast as possible. We can hit the highest returns without having to wait 10 years to develop our pipeline.”

So it was freeing for me, and it was an exciting time. But I can tell you that I’ve seen other people react when we have that lack of clear direction, almost like a panicked moment, especially people that come from bigger companies. And so it’s okay to feel that bit of stress when you have that ambiguity. It’s okay to actually voice that, and say, “I’m a little uncomfortable. Can you give me a bit more direction?” 

And for me, I wasn’t going to get more direction, but it was okay. And then I checked back in and made sure I was on track, and that’s what’s really critical, that you’re checking back in with your supervisor to say, “You know, am I on the right track?” I’m not just going for weeks without checking in. So that’s really critical. And it’s also okay to voice it and say, “You know what? I need a little bit more. Can you give me a little bit more?” And if that supervisor says, “You know what? We don’t have any more direction. Come back to me with some ideas”, that’s okay, too. 

And then as people are thinking about joining the company, or as you’re recruiting for other people to join, it’s important to mention that we are still fundamentally a startup but we’re soon to get acquired by bp, which is a massive company. But we will be 100% owned by bp, which means we’ll still be a 100% functioning smaller company that has a lot of that entrepreneurial spirit, that lacks tons of different structures and systems. And so people have to get comfortable and have tolerance for ambiguity.

How did Emilie grow into her interim COO role at Lightsource bp US, from leading project development?

Nico: When you stepped into the work at Lightsource, how did you – you mentioned that your boss and mentor said, “Go figure out what you want to work on.”

And it’s a small team. Everyone would wear a lot of hats. How did you begin to settle into the area that you knew was going to be your core strength? You’ve been for 6-7 years now, effectively leading the development arm. But how did you know that was the right area for you to lean in? And I guess what I’m looking for there is, what sort of professional signals or decisions led you to take the first steps and to continue through that evolution of your career of ultimately leading the project development and sort of market side of the business?

Emilie: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’d say that I was really flexible. Meaning, that I came in. I had this background in a variety of skills. Right? I worked on strategy. I worked on entry procurement. I worked in operations and program management, and I pulled the skills from every single one of those projects in my very first role, which was in a Director of Origination. And in that scope of the director of origination, I needed to have that skill of really good project management, effective communication, and understanding of the energy markets. And so I really did need to pull from a variety of the knowledge that I had from PG&E, as well as from business school and from my energy management program. So it was a really good mix. 

But what I really enjoyed, and how I continued to grow in my career was tapping that mix of the business and the people side. So as I continued to grow, as I took on Senior Director, and then VP, and SVP, in that role, I took on more scope, which is a combination of more people, as well as more scope within the organization. 

For instance, I took on the strategy for the organization, so that pulled from my past experience. It was something that I really enjoyed, which is, how do we continue to grow as an organization, knowing that there’s competition, that there are changes in products, changes in price, changes in inflation?

So it’s for me that thinking outside the box and creating that value for the company was really important to me, and that’s the combination of the commercial side which I already had, plus this longer term strategic thinking. 

So we formalized that. We also formalized adding the M&A under me. And that was because as the project started to get slowed down, you looked externally. You say, “Okay, permitting is becoming harder. Interconnection is getting delayed. And community engagement is getting tougher. Okay, that’s slowing down a business. As well as, costs are increasing from an EPC side, and costs are increasing from an Ops and the financing side.” 

So things are all working against you. Well, how do you keep the growth going at, in fact, an accelerated rate while managing through that change?

And so one of the ways that we did that was to add acquisitions, to supplement our pipeline, and rather than having that as a like a finance team doing it separately, we did it a little differently, and we kept it under my team, which was the commercial team because it was paired with, okay, now we’re quickly pairing that project with off-take. And so it was a lot faster turnover. So we weren’t wasting time on acquiring projects that couldn’t convert for years to come. 

It was like “Nope, they’re delivering within that same year or the next year.” And so having that all within scope was really an evolution of my role, which is really just expanding the influence, and how I did it. But fundamentally, it was still driving the growth of the business just with incremental scope underneath me. 

Kerim: That’s such an interesting and sophisticated answer. I’m really impressed. It reminds me of an interview that I was watching with the Founder of Airbnb, a recent interview, where they essentially made design a key function. And it sounds like your solution, design-oriented that out-of-the-box, thinking, pairing different functions together and breaking the walls between traditional departments, played a really important role in defining the culture that you helped create in seven years.

Emilie: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I would say I hit a lot of roadblocks along the way. A lot of people they’re like, “That’s not how we normally do it in solar.” And there’d be people that are coming in from big companies that are used to doing it the exact same way. And I said, “Yes, but we can’t. We are a new company in a very established market. We have to do things differently. Because if we do them the same way, we will never catch up to the next eras, the AESs, the 8minute, all these other big players. We’re never going to catch up with them if we do it exactly how they’ve done it. Because it takes a decade just to get your pipeline ready.”

So I did break down a lot of barriers, probably maybe rubbed a few people the wrong way with some changes, but in the end, people were really – they embraced it. It’s freeing when you get into the organization because you can still do something differently. And as long as you’re doing it for a reason. You’re not just doing it because you want to grow your ego, be able to pat yourself on the back, things like that. This is much more about, “Okay, I’m doing this to drive growth for the business.” And that’s how it’s really helpful, if you keep thinking about why you’re doing this and you’re setting it. You’re focused on that North Star. Then you’re not going to get focused on internal politics, or power grabs and things like that.

So I do think that the reason why we’ve had good success is fundamentally, our culture is very collaborative and very enabling to try something different.

Kerim: Yeah. I’m sure that has a little bit to do with your psychology background, as well. Like you have the technical chops and the engineering degree to think very logically and very methodically. But sometimes, you’ve got to break those walls to think more holistically about solutions. And it sounds like you guys have done an awesome job on that. 

Lightsource bp’s US Operations, Culture & Values, and Responsible Solar approach

So with that, can I jump into a little bit of a summary of where Lightsource bp operationally is right now in the US, and globally? And then maybe talk a little bit more deeply about how you guys are different on the surface than the other competitors of yours or other developers, and also culturally.

Emilie: Sure. So for those people that don’t know, Lightsource bp was started in the UK in 2010. It was focused on a feed-in tariff program out of the UK doing smaller projects. They were very successful. And so as a result, they started to look to expand into other markets, and one of the first markets that they looked at was the US. And so by the time I started in late 2017, there was a small team that was established out of San Francisco, and we really started to create a pipeline. 

At this point, our team has about 300 employees across the US. But we also were supporting Brazil. As we moved with the integration with bp, we’re thinking about restructuring things and managing through that change, which again is critical, managing through change and an ambiguity in the company. 

So we’ll see what happens. But right now, the US team themselves is 300 people. We’ve done 4.6 billion in financing of projects. I think that’s like a little over 3 GW of projects that have been developed. And so it’s just an incredible growth.

What do we do differently? Look, I don’t think anyone’s going to have this massive, perfect solution. And I think everybody says they’re the coolest company out there. But I think what we do really well is that we care about our people. And we really drive an inclusive culture. We have focused, when we first started, I would say we weren’t doing that well.

Actually, one of the reasons I started chatting with Nico was, I wanted to drive change. And I really wanted to be that advocate and that voice for change. And so I started chatting with Nico on what can I do? I started chatting with other leaders in the industry about how can I drive diversity, equity, inclusion in my organization, without necessarily being the top leader, being one of the senior leaders, but not being one of the top?

As well as proving that you don’t need metrics or targets. It’s about proving out that as you create a more inclusive culture that is more diverse, it creates a better culture. 

One of the things I think we do really well is our hiring and retention packages. At Lightsource bp, we care about our people and our environment and fundamentally develop clean energy. So what we call it is Responsible Solar. I’m really passionate, as you said, about our people which includes our communities, as well as our employees. With our employees, we really care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We drive inclusion at a whole other level.

We look at, are we bringing in people from the oil and gas industry? Are we bringing in people that have had no experience in solar? And then are we bringing in people with decades of experience? So it’s really gone beyond just the gender conversation. It’s really moving to while we have 40% women in the general population, we also have 35% in women leadership. But we go beyond that because fundamentally, the reason for diversity is to drive a better company and a more inclusive company.

Nico: Right. 

Emilie: And so that’s something we really care about from our employees. And then externally, we focus on community engagements. Solar is getting harder. Solar and storage are getting harder to develop. And so we need to be a part of the community from the very beginning, all the way through the life of that asset.

And so we are engaging with the community. With their being a part of the life cycle of the asset, they’re helping us define, for instance, what type of agrivoltaics are we going to have on site?

We have an amazing project, called Bellflower, which is highly inclusive of the community. We have sheep grazing, we have honey bees, and we actually have beekeepers that are local beekeepers. The sheep grazing is actually a local dad and son team that has a farm right down the road. And so we’re really inclusive in how we manage our assets.

Actually, on that site itself we also have an engagement with the University of Chicago and Argonne and others, which is actually testing the value of providing pollinator-friendly seed. 

And so the more you can engage with your community, the more they’re going to understand the value of renewable energy. And that’s the same way we treat our employees, right? We care about them. We want them to be included in all parts of the organization, and so fundamentally, that people are critical to us. And I do think that’s a differentiator for us. 

There was recently – I listen to a lot of podcasts. And there was recently a podcast from the New York Times Daily, and they were talking about hybrid work environments. We’re struggling with that, too. But we feel like we focus first on how the employees want it versus sometimes the management’s like, “No, you’re going to get back to the office.” 

Half of our workforce is fully remote, so we can’t do that. We literally cannot have everyone in the office. Because half our employees are nowhere near an office. And so we think first about the employees so that they’re in the community, which means they can’t be in office. So we have to flex as it’s related. So that’s the people’s side.

How Lightsource bp is working to help transition a Big Oil into an integrated energy company

Kerim: Emilie, Lightsource is a renewable energy company that’s been around for a good while, but is merging with one of the big oil companies that’s been around for a century plus.

And energy is something we all need and appreciate. But there’s been a lot of negative sentiments about large, especially big oil companies over the past couple of decades, as well.

And when we talk about people, energy, and environment, can you tell us a little bit about how you guys think of energy and environment, that is maybe clarifying for everyone, what this merger of a renewable energy with a traditional big oil company looks like? And how maybe you guys might be that beacon of light in terms of bringing change to the energy industry.

Emilie: I like how you said beacon of light since it’s Lightsource.

Kerim: Yeah. Exactly.

Emilie: Yeah. I think you’re describing the elephant in the room. bp is a very large elephant. They’re traditionally an oil and gas company. That’s where they’ve made their money. 

But what I do appreciate is their strategy, which was with their former CEO and now the new CEO, has stayed, which is, they want to become an integrated energy company, and they are including renewable energy investment in that strategy. 

And we are a massive component of that. While bp took an investment and minority investment in us, back in 2017, we were a really small company, with mainly our operations out of the UK and some pipeline, and some parts, including the US. We were just starting to grow. 

But with that funding or that source of funding from bp, we grew to be one of the largest global energy companies and solar energy companies in the world. And so, fundamentally, you need the big energy companies to invest in renewables, to get to the scale of driving change on the climate side. 

I am fundamentally an environmentalist. I went to school to change the industry, to address climate change. And here I am also about to be 100% owned by bp, and I’m not worried because fundamentally, that’s a lot of money that can grow the company and scale the company on the renewable side that we wouldn’t have been able to do on our own.

Many developers get hung up on their limited ability to finance projects, and so they only are able to do one to two projects per year. And they’re really strapped. They can’t grow their business. 

We were able to expand our business to 300 employees, to 30 GW of pipeline in five years. And that’s massive growth that wouldn’t have been able to be done without our partner with bp. And they’re talking about us supporting their continued plans. Right? BP doesn’t talk in megawatts. They talk in gigawatts. They talk in terawatts. They talk in big numbers. 

And so for me, it’s exciting that once we open up that balance sheet, support their projects, it’ll really drive a lot of change.

Powerhouse ERG: Lightsource bp’s HR Program for Employee Empowerment

Nico: Emilie, one of the things that is incredibly difficult, you mentioned integration a moment ago is the ability to communicate at scale across your team. You have an easier job with 300 at Lightsource than bp does with the thousands of employees. But employee empowerment to really live out the culture that you’ve created is a perennial problem for any sort of HR or leadership team.

How have you all approached it at Lightsource bp? And maybe give us an example or two of specific frameworks that help you embed the culture and empower your employees to show up as their best self at Lightsource bp. 

Emilie: That’s a really good question, Nico. I’d say the two main big work products that we did was one, we actually created a solid HR program and hiring practices. We were having a lot of employees and the department heads just doing the hiring on their own, and they’re then hiring for the urgent need, not the long-term value of the company. 

And so when you bring in a program that’s focused on making sure you have diverse hires, making sure you’re blending the skills of the company to be inclusive, you’re going to get a better result, but you have to do it purposefully. 

And so one of the things we did was we hired a head of HR. And then we hired some really solid consultants to help us through recruiting, focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

And then the second major initiative that I can give as a perfect example, now, this isn’t the only initiative we did, but it’s one that’s really personal to me is, we were having some issues with retaining senior level women. We lost quite a few senior level women. I was one of the last there for the US. 

And I said, “You know what? We’ve got to change. We’ve got to change this now because we can’t keep losing this high-performing talent that is hard to get, to begin with, and that it takes a long time to replace them and bring them back up to speed.”

So one of the things that we started was called Powerhouse. It was an informal group, women-led from the organization. There were very few of us at the time, so it was really just a chance to get together and say, “What’s going on? Here’s a safe space, an inclusive place where you can talk about tough conversations that you may have had.” 

Sometimes people can feel like there’s gas lighting. “Oh, maybe I didn’t feel that situation. I’ve been told it’s probably not there. They keep telling me it’s not there.” It’s there. It’s okay to admit it, especially in this group. It was a safe space to say, “No, it’s there. It happened to me, too.” And you can talk about those examples.

Now, it’s actually a formal group. It’s called an employee resource group because we’re a bigger company globally. I think we’re close to 1,300 globally. So it is actually going to become a global organization. So it was a grassroots organization that’s now been formalized into what’s called an employee resource group.

It’s having diversity, equity, and inclusion, and focusing on women is really critical still. Sometimes people say, “Well, how come you’re only focusing on women?” Well, because the workforce, especially in clean energy, is still 25% women, 75% men. That means we still need to work on the equity component. And this group helps create a safe space and a place for people to learn and find mentors and find a place where they can feel connected.

Key Problems Lightsource bp is solving through its Renewable Energy Development Activities

Kerim: I want to talk a little bit about how you think about the problems you’re solving, especially in the context of a development company. Maybe tell us a little bit about how you focus on the various stages of development, where the company’s focus is. But maybe tell us a little bit about the key problems you’re solving in that process, as well.

Emilie: Okay. Yeah. I think the solar coaster is called the solar coaster for a reason. There are lots of problems throughout the entire ride, from the very beginning, when you’re green fielding projects, when you’re going out there and talking to landowners. You have to consider things like, does that landowner meet our compliance obligations? Do they represent the same values that we have as a company? It’s hard to find land. And yet we want to make sure that those landowners represent the same values that we have with our employees and with our customers. 

It’s also harder to do development these days. From a community engagement perspective, you have a lot of interested parties to understand how we’re using the land. We are competing for land with things like urbanization and industrialization. There’s a lot of – in America, America loses 2,000 acres of farmland to low-density, inefficient urban sprawl. And that’s each day. 

Now imagine what people are saying about solar. They’re saying things like, “Oh, you’re taking away prime farmlands.” But actually, what Lightsource bp does specifically is we actually work with our landowners to benefit from the thousands of acres that are sitting there for 40 years. We’re actually improving the quality of that land. We’re putting in friendly pollinator seed. We’re also creating safe havens for wildlife.

So there’s actually a lot of opportunities to give back to the community as it relates to the environment. And then from the community, from a jobs perspective, as you move into construction of the projects, you’re creating tons of jobs. You’re creating jobs that are, oftentimes, the same employees are locally sourced. There are construction workers. There are solid jobs with good pay, and they’re able to work on that project and then move to another project. We have several projects in Indiana, for instance, and some of our construction workers move from one project to the next.

And so it’s important that we’re considering, okay, you have the community acceptance during a development period, during the construction period, and then during the operating period. These projects are around for 40 years. But that’s a long time. 

You want to address multi-generational farming, for instance. As I was mentioning earlier, Bellflower is a solar project where we have a father and son partnership, in which they’re actually multi-generational family farming. And one of the things that I think is really cool about it is that the grazer that’s doing the sheep farming, he didn’t actually ever have grazing before. But, he said, “You know what? I’m really interested.” He actually had a shearing business, and he said, “You know what? I’m really interested in the grazing business.” And so he has a farm right down the road. He said, “Great! You can manage our sheep for us.” And that’s an example of how his multi-generational family farm has longevity to it, and a consistent revenue stream that he may not have had before. 

And then from the honey production side, I was mentioning, we have this father-son family relationship, where they have a store a few miles down the road from the Bellflower site. And yet they’re using all this great pollinator in thousands of acres of land, where they can then help their bees. And now we have honey coming out. We’ve always had honey since early on with Lightsource. But it’s really fun now that we have US-based honey coming out.

And I don’t know. It’s just a really interesting way to involve the community in not just the early stages of development, but all the way through to the operations.

Nico: Is that honey? I’ve seen, just out of curiosity. I’ve seen some of the solar plants that will brand, co-brand, or in some way label that honey as coming off of a solar farm. 

How do you think about utilizing the agrivotaics’ focus that you’ve just enunciated as a way to create visibility for Lightsource bp and the good that you’re doing in the community right there in the community and beyond?

Emilie: Yeah. So we’ve actually had Lightsource-branded honey for many years, especially out of the UK. One of the first things I loved when I joined the company, they gave me a little jar of honey that had the Lightsource brand on it. 

Nico: Oh, my, I’ve got to get some. 

Emilie: And so, yeah, yeah, it’s awesome. And now we have it coming out of Bellflower, which is a great example. I named that project. It’s really fun for me to be like, okay, it was one of the first projects I worked on for Lightsource. I had named it after the state flower of Indiana. I worked with the off-taker, which we haven’t even talked about the products and working with our customers. But at the end of the day, it’s fun to see that the flowers on that site and the other pollinator-friendly seeds are actually creating honey for communities and for our customers. Yeah, it’s definitely available. Happy to send you some.

The types of power products Lightsource bp creates through its offerings

Nico: You had mentioned that you hadn’t gotten into the products. How does a – a lot of folks don’t – you were the first to really eliminate for me that a project development company can think in terms of productization. Right? You’re commercializing electrons.

So how do you think about packaging those electrons in a way that your consumers really care about? You talked a bit about how you’ve evolved that thought process. 

Emilie: Definitely. Yeah, I’d say, in the early stages of renewable energy development, a lot of it was driven by policy and RPS, so renewable portfolio standards and targets.

We’re still a policy-based company. I would tell you that most industries have policy as helping them continue. Even the oil and gas industry, for instance, still has quite a few subsidies. So it’s not unusual to continue to have the importance of subsidies and policy. But from our perspective, things have really grown. And that’s one of the things that one of my areas of expertise is on the power marketing side.

When we first started solar, I would say it was like, “Okay, build it. They will come because they need to get it because they need to hit their targets.” Right? And it was really state-driven, and the utilities did most of the procurement. 

Nowadays, it’s a lot of corporates doing the procurement. And so, as a result, you have to understand what the customers are looking for. They’re a customer now, right? They’re not just, they will call them a utility. They’re fundamentally a customer that has certain priorities. 

If you’re looking at a corporate, for instance, if it’s a really big corporate, they might have really clear sustainability targets. They might even have really clear targets of regional energy needs. They may have 24/7 energy needs. Right? So they’re trying to pair renewable energy with when they actually need that energy. So it really depends on that customer. And part of my job is understanding those customers and offering them a product that best meets their needs. 

Sometimes a customer, at the end of the day, really just wants a little bit of movement. They want to understand the market. They want to get involved with renewable energy, but really, they don’t have the budget to manage it. So they may be a better fit for REC procurement, Renewable Energy Credits. And in that case, they have a way to procure RECs only. Or they could do what’s called a virtual PPA. And in that case, they’re procuring the RECs, but they’re also creating additionality. And a new project is being developed on their behalf.

And so that is the type of product where people are starting to get in the market. Then you go all the way to a company like Google or Microsoft. They are really advanced in their procurement because they’ve been procuring for many years, and they’re looking for pairing their clean energy with their energy use. So really, looking to say, “sometimes at a 5-15 minute level, are we truly using clean energy to match our energy needs?” In those cases, we can create more complex products which can be a combination of solar and wind and battery. It can also be some unbundled RECs. 

They can be paired together. For instance, now that we’re joining with bp, it’s a really good opportunity because we can tap the bp trading and shipping organization to provide a more block product to our customers. Right? So it’s a clean block product where renewable energy is considered intermittent. So in some cases, if you can provide that block product, you can really reduce the overall emissions of that portfolio.

So it really depends on that customer. That really advanced customer might have higher expectations of your product. You just have to know what they’re expecting and be able to offer it to them. 

And then the new entry customer, or somebody that maybe does not have the balance sheet to support it, or the technology to support it, they might want the simplest solution. They say, “Set it and forget it.” Okay, that virtual PPA could be a really good fit for them, where they can just focus on meeting their sustainability targets with minimal change to their business.

Why work with Lightsource bp?

Nico: Emilie, you’ve outlined what appears to be a tremendous supportive, exciting culture. And there are thousands of folks eager to lean in both with as partners and for, as employees, companies like Lightsource bp. As the Head of US, I’d love to hear from your perspective, what you feel those stakeholders get excited about when they are considering, and ultimately choose Lightsource bp as a partner.

Emilie: That’s a great question. I think my son’s best friend really summarized it well. And she said to me yesterday, I was telling her about this conversation, and she said, “Just say what your heart tells you to say.” And that is exactly how we behave. That is our culture. We believe in addressing climate change, we believe in our people. We believe in the importance of renewable energy, and it comes through. It comes through in our conversations with our employees, and it comes through in our conversations with our customers.

We’re not selling something just for the sake of selling it. We’re selling it because we care. And so that’s all I have to say. I think that’s the best way to describe why we are unique and why I’m still at Lightsource bp, after all these years.