LevelTen Energy Raises $65 Million In Series D Funding To Fuel Growth In New Regions

LevelTen Energy Raises $65 Million In Series D Funding To Fuel Growth In New Regions

LevelTen Energy announced on July 16^th that it had successfully raised $65 million in a Series D funding round led by B Capital, with participation from Constellation New Energy, Google and Microsoft, among other investors. The Seattle-based renewable transaction platform plans to use the funds to expand into new markets, as well as to build out capabilities around granular certificates for power matching and decarbonizing heavy industry.

Founded in 2016, the LevelTen platform is a hub for carbon-free energy transactions and insights, connecting over 1,000 project developers in 29 countries to a network of corporations, advisors, traders and other organizations seeking to fulfil carbon-free energy transactions. It incorporates marketplaces for power purchase agreements (PPAs), clean energy projects and tax credit transfers – to date, the firm has facilitated over eight gigawatts of clean energy procurement. Other PPA marketplaces within the space include Edison Energy, Reel Energy and Zeigo Power, all dedicated to facilitating PPA deals.

In the last seven years, the PPA market has grown at a 38% CAGR, fuelled by large enterprise firms such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft as they attempt to reduce operational emissions and reach net zero targets (see Verdantix Market Overview: Demystifying Corporate Power Purchase Agreements). This has helped the market gain a strong foothold, from which it is now innovating. Stakeholders are looking to do this in two keys ways. Firstly, vendors are attempting to expand market accessibility for smaller firms by improving transparency, streamlining deal processes and aggregating firms to buy as one party. Secondly, vendors are innovating to support the next wave of sustainability targets, such as 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) goals and emissions-first objectives.

In fact, LevelTen’s funding will be utilized to enhance its capabilities around 24/7 CFE. In December 2023, LevelTen announced the Granular Certificate Trading Alliance, which aims to create a trading and management platform for granular certificates. These are energy attribute certificates that verify time and location of CFE generation. Issues with current PPAs – such as a lack of time-synchronicity and geographical correlation – mean that the energy consumed customer-side is not entirely emissions-free. LevelTen’s new platform aims to verify the time and location of carbon-free energy generation with better resolution.

The latest round of funding comes at an interesting time for key investors Google and Microsoft, which have both recently reported significant increased year-on-year emissions. Google, in particular, attributed its emissions increase to the growing energy appetite of AI and the scarcity of renewable energy, with its Scope 2 emissions increasing by 37% from 2022 to 2023 as a result. For the likes of Google and Microsoft, renewable energy transaction platforms such as LevelTen will play an increasingly important role in facilitating energy procurement as this becomes more difficult due to an increasing number of firms attempting to find renewable energy projects to reduce their emissions.

For further reading regarding PPAs and how 24/7 CFE can be realized, please see Verdantix Market Overview: Demystifying Corporate Power Purchase Agreements.