In November 2022, the SET Alliance hosted its first webinar, bringing together expert perspectives on ‘as a service’ solutions, to highlight the role of servitisation in driving energy efficiency, circularity, and accelerating decarbonisation. As a platform of experts from multiple sectors, the SET Alliance brings together a diverse knowledge base essential to promoting and mainstreaming the pay-per-use or pay-per-outcome model.
The panel of speakers were selected to represent experts in different areas of servitisation, and included Elin Bergman, COO of Cradlenet and the circular economy ‘queen’ of Sweden, Dave Mackerness, Director at Kaer, a leading cooling as-a-service provider in Asia (Kaer is a member of the SET Alliance Steering Committee), Dawie Kriel, General Manager at Energy Partners Refrigeration (EPR), a leading cooling-as-a-service provider in South Africa (EPR is a member of the SET Alliance Steering Committee) and Letizia Coradeschi, VP at SUSI partners, an investment firm accelerating investments to support the global energy transition.
The webinar explored the benefits of the servitisation model from the perspective of technology providers Kaer and Energy Partners Refrigeration, who provided examples of successful cooling as-a-service projects across commercial and industrial applications.
Kaer and Energy Partners Refrigeration represent a wealth of experience in successfully implementing the Cooling-as-a-Service model. In the context of shopping malls, data centres or industrial facilities, servitisation can alleviate many of the challenges associated with adopting energy-efficient solutions and can make the shift really straightforward and exceed expectations: in some cases projects have been able to increase energy efficiency by more than a third.
“I can’t state how simple that was, they signed a contract, downloaded an app, and they are running on 100% renewables” – Dave Mackerness, from Kaer, highlighting the ease of uptake of cleaner solutions under CaaS for a business park in India.
Applying the pay-per-use or outcome approach to critical but energy-intensive systems like heating and cooling can have a significant impact on energy efficiency gains, and the decarbonisation of sectors such as buildings. The webinar also looked at how the product-as-a-service model aligns with circular economy principles and their significance. In addition, the webinar provided insight into the financing side of servitisation, exploring how a Swiss-based infrastructure investment firm, Susi Partners, is making an impact in the realm of energy efficiency and the energy transition.
Susi Partners created a scalable tripartite model involving the financier, energy service companies and end clients, all bearing different risks, to make energy-as-a-service and energy efficiency projects feasible and financially interesting. Thanks to this model, the firm has already committed to investing almost half a billion EUR into energy-efficiency projects.
Key takeaways from the presentations included the importance of digital systems and data management for as-a-service offerings and given net-zero targets and increasing pressure to decarbonise, providers of as-a-service solutions are best placed to secure energy efficiency over time for businesses. In addition, there is a necessity for research such as the report by Stena Circular Consulting and Cradlenet to understand and overcome barriers to implementing product-as-a-service. And last but not least, there is a need for financing of energy efficiency projects which generate attractive returns whilst contributing to decarbonisation.
The full webinar is available to watch here:
Are you a business interested in considering how servitisation might work for you? Would you benefit from being part of a community dedicated to improving as-a-service solutions? Get in touch with us at info@set-alliance.org
This webinar was the first in a series demonstrating the impact of as-a-service solutions in driving decarbonisation. Keep an eye out for future SET Alliance events and activities!
