CLEANWATTS
28.6.2022 17:02:03 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Verdane, the European specialist growth equity investor, through its impact fund Idun, has invested in Cleanwatts, an energy software company on a mission to accelerate global energy decarbonization and alleviate energy poverty. Cleanwatts, which grew year-on-year revenues by 65% in 2021 and expects 2022 revenue growth of more than 200%, offers innovative energy management solutions that help local communities unlock the benefits of optimized renewable energy consumption, generation, storage, trading, and balancing. The partnership, in which Verdane is set to invest up to EUR25m, will draw on Verdane’s deep expertise of scaling SaaS companies, international network and in-house team of operating specialists.
Cleanwatts is a Portuguese energy management software company that deploys renewable energy communities (RECs) in countries with advanced legal frameworks and policies that enable the activation of local energy markets. The company operates in Portugal (HQ), Italy, Spain, and the United States, with plans to expand further into Europe and Asia. REC members can include residents, commercial and industrial businesses, municipal buildings, schools, hospitals, and universities that collectively contribute to the clean energy transition while advancing energy efficiency, lowering electricity bills, and creating jobs within the local economy. By supporting citizen and commercial participation IoT enabled energy load management, energy communities can also help provide flexibility and local grid resiliency through demand-response and storage.
Cleanwatts is in the process of building more than 80 energy communities, several of which are already operational. Currently, the company manages and controls two terawatt hours of energy – the equivalent of over 500,0001 households’ annual consumption – and runs over 15MW in aggregated rooftop solar PV capacity through Cleanwatts™ OS, its modular operating system designed to manage energy communities. Cleanwatts REC members can lower their average energy costs by up to 60%.
In keeping with the company’s goal of removing friction and complexity from the launch of RECs, Cleanwatts complements its digital offering with zero upfront investment requirements for the adoption of distributed energy resources, including PV solar capacity, energy storage systems, EV charging infrastructure and electrification of heating and cooling.
Cleanwatts plans to allocate Verdane’s investment primarily to accelerate and expand its commercial presence in target markets, and to further develop Cleanwatts™ OS to anticipate evolving needs in local energy markets. Together with Verdane, the company will also assess M&A possibilities if and where accretive to the Cleanwatts value proposition. To meet growing market demand for its services, the company expects to grow headcount by 50% over next 6-12 months, adding 40+ resources to its current team of 70 in Europe and the US.
Verdane’s investment coupled with Cleanwatts’ unique and innovative capabilities, will enable Cleanwatts to tackle the world’s energy poverty problem, which is defined as the “lack of access to sustainable modern energy services and products,” by the WEF. Energy poverty affected between 50 and 125 million people across Europe in 20202 - a figure that has increased dramatically due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and record-high inflation.
Michael Pinto, CEO and Co-Founder of Cleanwatts , commented: “Mitigating the rising cost of energy and supply constraints, while responding to an increasing demand for electricity and meeting decarbonization targets is an enormous global challenge. Fortunately, digitally enabled RECs now represent both an effective and efficient solution to address these problems. A wide range of viable technologies and regulatory frameworks are finally in place for our society to reframe its relationship with energy and pave the way for a cleaner, fairer, and more sustainable future. We are proud to partner with Verdane to address the rapid paradigm shift towards a more efficient and resilient decentralized energy network.”
Bjarne Kveim Lie, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Verdane, said: “Our team is impressed by Cleanwatts’ potential to provide a global solution to a local problem that is causing tens of millions of households in the US and the UK to forego food and medicine to pay energy bills or to go without electricity at all for parts of the year. We look forward to deploying our extensive experience scaling SaaS businesses and harnessing our in-house team of operating experts to power Cleanwatts through this critical scaling phase of its growth journey.”
Verdane Idun is classified as “Article 9” under the European Union’s Finance Disclosure Regulation and closed in January 2022 at its hard cap of € 300 million, over its target fund size of € 225 million. Idun makes investments focused on driving impact in three clusters: energy transition; sustainable consumption; and resilient communities. Previous investments include Auntie, a digital provider of workplace wellbeing services; in Spond, a digital enabler of grassroot sports and physical health; and EVA Global, a managed services provider supporting the global shift to electric vehicles. To date, Verdane has invested in over 30 sustainable society businesses.
About Cleanwatts
Cleanwatts is a clean tech company resolutely focused on simplifying, amplifying, and accelerating the energy transition for local communities around the world. We generate value through Cleanwatts™ OS, our modular, highly interoperable, and localizable platform designed to address energy related needs in local energy market settings. We operate behind the meter and in front of the meter, seamlessly connecting the dots between energy generation, storage, consumption, trading and balancing at every level of an energy community. We also combine our digital offering with zero upfront investment solutions to remove friction from the incorporation of distributed energy resources that drive the energy transition, including PV solar capacity, energy storage systems, EV charging infrastructure and electrification of heating and cooling for the built environment. We are building a world in which clean energy is decentralized, digitalized, and democratized.
More info: www.cleanwatts.energy
Follow Cleanwatts on LinkedIn
About Verdane
Verdane is a specialist growth equity investment firm that partners with tech-enabled and sustainable European businesses to help them reach the next stage of international growth. Verdane can invest as a minority or majority investor, either in single companies or through portfolios of companies, and looks to deploy behind three core themes: the Digital Consumer, Software Everywhere and Sustainable Society. Verdane funds hold over €4 billion in total commitments and have made over 140 investments in fast-growing businesses since 2003. Verdane’s team of over 100 investment professionals and operating experts, based out of Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Oslo, and Stockholm, is dedicated to being the preferred growth partner to tech-enabled and sustainable businesses in Europe.
More info: www.verdane.com
Follow Verdane on LinkedIn
1 Assuming an average consumption of 2.5 and 5MWh per year
2 https://ec.europa.eu/energy/eu-buildings-factsheets-topics-tree/energy-poverty_en
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220628005765/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Ant Group Unveils Ling-3.0-Flash Delivering Top-Tier Performance at a Fraction of the Parameter Scale27.7.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release
Ant Group today announced the release of Ling-3.0-Flash, a next-generation native hybrid-reasoning foundational model engineered specifically for production-grade AI agent workflows. Designed to deliver rapid response capabilities, it serves as a high-speed execution node that offers a superior balance of intelligence density and cost-efficiency. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260726584441/en/ Ling-3.0-Flash delivers strong performance across multiple core benchmarks. Featuring 124B total parameters with only 5.1B active parameters per token, Ling-3.0-Flash achieves remarkable performance despite its streamlined footprint. It matches or surpasses industry-leading models with two to three times its parameter scale across core benchmarks, including foundational reasoning, instruction following, and long-context processing. Architectural Innovation for Efficiency Ling-3.0-Flash moves away from the traditional ap
SES Statement On FCC Upper C-band Auction Decision27.7.2026 07:30:00 CEST | Press release
SES, a leading space solutions company, issued the following statement following the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approval of the Upper C-band Report & Order that makes 160 megahertz of the Upper C-band available in the contiguous United States for flexible-use, next-generation terrestrial wireless services via a system of competitive bidding. The required auction of the Upper C-band will be completed no later than July 2027, with spectrum clearing deadlines in 2030 and 2031. Gross incentive payments of approximately $5.6 billion to SES are contingent on spectrum clearing within the transition deadlines. The Order also confirms reimbursement of reasonable and necessary Upper C-band transition costs as approved by the clearinghouse. SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh Commented: “We commend Chairman Carr and the FCC staff for their diligence, speed, and hard work. We remain fully committed to working cooperatively with the FCC and all stakeholders as the process progresses. We are pleased t
LTM and Cognition Partner to Reduce Cyber Risk in Financial Services with Devin27.7.2026 07:00:00 CEST | Press release
LTM, the Business Creativity partner to the world's largest enterprises, today announced a strategic partnership with Cognition, the AI lab behind the software engineering agent Devin. As a part of this partnership, LTM has onboarded Devin, Cognition’s Autonomous AI Engineer as part of BlueVerseTM RightLogic. LTM BlueVerse RightLogic, is a cybersecurity assessment and risk assurance framework designed to help enterprises identify, assess and remediate cyber exposure as they accelerate AI adoption. Together, the companies will prioritize financial services sector, where Devin is most proven and where LTM brings deep institutional expertise. As AI adoption accelerates, many financial institutions are facing a widening gap between innovation and cyber risk visibility. BlueVerse RightLogic closes this gap by autonomously identifying, prioritizing and remediating vulnerabilities across banking infrastructure, applications, AI systems, software supply chains and governance—including exploits
Mobix Labs Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Vision Aerial, Accelerating Global Drone Platform for National Security and Aerial Intelligence24.7.2026 13:00:00 CEST | Press release
Transaction accelerates Mobix Labs’ global aerial intelligence strategy and National Security Matters Initiative Mobix Labs, Inc. (Nasdaq: MOBX) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vision Aerial, Inc., a U.S.-based designer and manufacturer of American-built, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)-compliant unmanned aerial systems. The definitive agreement moves the transaction beyond the previously announced letter of intent and represents a major step toward closing an acquisition that would expand Mobix Labs into one of the world’s most important technology growth markets: secure drones, autonomous aerial systems and aerial intelligence for national security, critical infrastructure, energy, public safety, industrial inspection and government operations. Vision Aerial’s customers and end-users include the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, government agencies, energy and utility operators, research institutions and other organizations requiring performanc
Enhertu® Plus Pertuzumab Recommended for Approval in the EU by CHMP as First-Line Treatment for Patients with HER2 Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer24.7.2026 13:00:00 CEST | Press release
Recommendation based on DESTINY-Breast09 phase 3 trial results that showed Enhertu plus pertuzumab reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 44% versus THP with a median progression-free survival exceeding three years If approved, Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca’s Enhertu plus pertuzumab would become first new treatment in the EU in more than a decade for first-line HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer Enhertu® (trastuzumab deruxtecan) in combination with pertuzumab has been recommended for approval in the European Union (EU) for the first-line treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2 positive (immunohistochemistry [IHC] 3+ or in-situ hybridization [ISH]+) breast cancer. Enhertu is a specifically engineered HER2 directed DXd antibody drug conjugate (ADC) discovered by Daiichi Sankyo (TSE: 4568) and being jointly developed and commercialized by Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca (LSE/STO/NYSE: AZN). The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP)
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom