We’re excited to announce our investment in EnPowered, an on-bill payment platform designed to make it easier for businesses to invest in energy-efficiency projects. We co-led their $12M seed raise, along with our friends at Golden Ventures and Inovia.   

Great technologies exist to help businesses reduce their electricity usage, emissions, and energy bills. The problem? These projects require an upfront investment and it can be difficult to secure financing for energy projects, even when the risk is low and the ROI is strong. That’s where EnPowered comes in. Their new payment platform allows companies to pay for these capital-intensive cleantech projects as operating expenses.

EnPowered Payments links business customers (such as large electricity users like manufacturing facilities, hospitals, hotels, and greenhouses) to a market of lenders. The customers pay for their energy project on their existing utility bills using savings from the project. In many cases, the monthly savings is greater than the monthly cost. 

By turning capital investments into operating expenses, the platform will unlock all sorts of creative financing solutions and increase the adoption of energy projects. It’s similar to how Stripe removed friction from taking payments for many verticals. We all know that the rate of cleantech adoption needs to shift into a higher gear, so reducing friction from the process is a huge step forward. 

EnPowered is led by Tomas van Stee and Mike Kirkup. The team initially rolled out EnPowered Programs to help businesses increase energy savings through projects like light installations and building improvements. But they quickly realized that increased savings on their own weren’t enough to spark adoption and thus, developed the payment platform. EnPowered closed their initial seed round in February 2020 and have been developing their platform in stealth mode over the past year.

EnPowered joins our growing portfolio of energy and climate startups. To learn more, visit www.getenpowered.com or @GetEnPowered