Sponsored Projects

Yingli is one of the leading vertically integrated photovoltaic (PV) product manufacturers in China that aims to provide affordable green energy for all. The company designs, manufactures, and sells PV modules and designs, and assembles, sells, and installs PV systems that are connected to electricity transmission grids or those that operate on a stand-alone basis. Yingli has more than 30 offices in countries around the world, has the capacity to manufacture 2.45 GW of solar panels, and has shipped over 40 million solar panels (+10 GW) to more than 50 countries, including Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, South Korea, China, Japan, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and the United States. The company’s products and services substantially cover the entire PV industry value chain from the manufacture of multicrystalline polysilicon ingots and wafers, PV cells, PV modules and PV systems to PV system installation. Its end-products include PV modules and PV systems in different sizes and power outputs.

Project: With the increased adoption of solar and other renewable generation sources, microgrids were being touted as a possible game-changer in the management and distribution of electricity worldwide. In the developing world, microgrids presented an opportunity to electrify remote, far flung areas that had yet to be integrated into the traditional grid. To help Yingli understand how microgrids and off-grid solutions could shape the future of energy management and distribution in Latin America, the SGE Immersion team evaluated the microgrid/off-grid market in Latin America, including an assessment of local conditions, public policy and incentive programs, key stakeholders, financing options, and next generation products that would be critical to the success of microgrid/off-grid solutions in the region.

SunEdison was the world’s largest renewable energy company. Based in Belmont, California, the company had operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. SunEdision had a history of financial innovations that had enabled the rapid adoption of renewable energy: SunEdison developed the solar power purchase agreement that enabled solar to be deployed at no upfront cost to the customer — a model that was widely adopted and has become the backbone of solar growth. SunEdison launched Terriform Power, a publicly traded yieldco, which had democratized solar investment and further reduced the cost of capital. The company’s deployment of renewable energy had a wide and positive impact on climate, rural electrification, and energy independence.

Project: To stay at the cutting edge, SunEdison wanted to continue its financial innovation to support the next generation of renewable energy technology — energy storage. The company was interested in crafting financial structures that fit the technology and revenue applications of energy storage. The SGE Immersion team evaluated the energy storage investment market in the US to make recommendations regarding how SunEdison could be strategically positioned and develop financial solutions for the future energy storage market. The team outlined revenue streams (current and future) of a storage system in various applications and locations in the US, the technology needed to achieve those revenue streams, and the potential sources of investment.

Method is a fast-growing, privately held company that manufactures and markets stylish, eco-friendly products made with non-toxic ingredients that “clean like heck and smell like heaven.”

Project: Method’s limited Asia Pacific business was being sourced out of the Europe and North American facilities because the market was small and in order to ensure product quality and consistency; however, freight and delivery times were long, there was inventory risk, and the supply chain was not seen as a sustainable long-term solution in the face of the company’s growing business in the region. The SGE Immersion team evaluated and prioritized geographies that could serve as the company’s Asian manufacturing and distribution hub.

Holcim is one of the world’s leading building materials companies and supplies customers with cement, aggregates, ready-mix concrete, concrete products, asphalt, and associated services and solutions.

Project: Access to sanitation has been among India’s most pressing development problems. Holcim Group’s Indian companies, ACC and Ambuja, aimed at addressing the problem with their Sanitation for Life (S4L) initiative by developing and marketing an innovative, modular solution for a sanitary unit that is easy to construct, culturally acceptable, and financially accessible. The sanitation initiative was part of a wider initiative to target the improvement of the rural shelter situation by developing model villages (housing, sanitation, and micro-enterprise development) to be multiplied on a national level. The SGE Immersion team evaluated the program and recommended a business model to be rolled out on a national scale, focusing on the sanitation initiative but embedding the issue in the wider context of rural shelter.20

Emerson is a leading global industrial firm comprised of five business segments: Process Management, Industrial Automation, Network Power, Climate Technologies, and Commercial & Residential Solutions.

Project: Modern society has been built on the back of petroleum, with the carbon rich resource providing everything from energy for transportation, to flavorings and fragrances, to plastics. However, with sources of petroleum coming under ever increasing global demand, renewable alternatives are being derived from organic materials including agriculture and food waste. While the chemical processes to accomplish this existed at the lab scale, commercial scale-up of the technology was in its infancy. As the science was being refined, it was the competitive market that would likely provide the greatest challenge. The SGE Immersion team analyzed end markets for bio-derived carbon-based products and developed recommendations for how Emerson should approach downstream business development. The analysis focused on chemical industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, specialty chemicals, polymers, and bulk chemicals) and also included energy markets (e.g. biodiesel, biogas). The team assessed the demand of different inputs to these industries and expected price ranges in order to develop insights about the cost and quality at which biochemicals and biofuels would need to be produced to compete with traditional petroleum sources. The team also explored and sized niche areas of the markets which would put special value on renewable sources (e.g. regulations, political pressures, marketing purposes, etc.). Finally, the team examined any current bio-based businesses in the markets and reported on their technology/product offering(s), marketing strategy, and commercial success to date.

Emerson is a leading global industrial firm comprised of five business segments: Process Management, Industrial Automation, Network Power, Climate Technologies, and Commercial & Residential Solutions.

Project: Each year, the world produces hundreds of millions of tons of food waste. This waste is generated in all parts of the food production chain, from farm and food processors to food retailers and servers, and uneaten scraps from meals. Some food waste is suitable for human consumption and may be donated, and some is recycled as animal feed, but much is simply landfilled or incinerated. Of all types of waste in the US, food is the resource with the lowest amount of recycling — meaning it represents the largest fraction of municipal solid waste sent to a landfills. Emerson’s Grind2Energy™ project was taking steps to help divert food waste from landfills by leveraging InSinkErator’s food disposer technology to instead turn it into renewable energy. As the project gained momentum, Emerson looked to better understand the sources of food waste from industrial, commercial, and institutional sectors. The SGE Immersion team analyzed the supply chain market for the disposal or recycling of biological (food focused) waste sources and developed recommendations for how Emerson should approach upstream business development. The team identified the different categories of food waste, quantified how much of each source was produced, identified how these categories were currently disposed of or recycled, explored the values/costs of these different sources and what factors contribute to those valuations, analyzed the industry, and explored the effect of political policies on the current and future state of the biological waste industries.

The El Nido Foundation seeks to improve the quality of life of the people of El Nido, Palawan, Philippines while at the same time preserving the area’s natural resource base.

Project: Local demand for fuel in El Nido had been leading to increased illegal harvesting of the mangrove forests, essential breeding habitats for fisheries upon which the local population depend for subsistence and livelihoods. There were questions as to whether legal charcoal production could improve operations and profitability and whether or not charcoal feedstocks could be shifted away from mangrove forests to more ecologically sustainable sources. At the same time, local agriculture was rudimentary and fairly unproductive, providing limited income to small holder farmers. The SGE Immersion team analyzed the opportunity for establishing a profitable business in which farmers would be able to utilize agricultural waste as a charcoal feedstock that could be sold, collected, and manufactured into smokeless briquettes. Similar models in Africa and the Philippines suggested the existence of technologies which could also allow farmers to benefit from the production and use of bio-char in the charcoal-making process which could be used to improve soil structure, agricultural productivity, and improve farming incomes.

Con Edison (ConEd) is comprised of: Consolidated Edison Company of New York, a regulated electric, gas, and steam utility; Orange & Rockland Utilities’ (O&R), a regulated electric and gas utility; and three competitive energy businesses.

Project: The SGE Immersion team explored new utility business model and revenue opportunities in light of New York State’s “Reforming the Energy Vision” (REV) plan which was intended to remake how New York’s electric utilities operate, make money, and are regulated. Specifically, the team explored potential new business models and market opportunities to increase Con Edison’s revenue, customer engagement, brand value, and customer energy technology adoption/integration. Opportunities were considered in the context of the six guiding policy principles of REV: 1) enhanced customer knowledge and tools, 2) market animation and leverage of ratepayer contributions, 3) system wide efficiency, 4) system reliability and resiliency, 5) fuel and resource diversity, and 6) reduction of carbon. The team evaluated new business and revenue opportunities that could help drive increased organic market growth of customer-sided energy management strategies and technologies while accounting for the reduction and/or elimination of existing subsidies for energy efficiency, demand management, renewables, and smart grid. The team was focused on innovative ways to increase current company revenues and/or create new revenue streams while recognizing the current downward pressures on utility revenues and upward pressures on rates and costs, as well as recognizing current market opportunities and challenges, potential customer revenue streams, revenue opportunities from other energy market activities (e.g. data access, market operation and dispatch), financial impacts of increasing brand value, and providing in-depth market and financial analysis of the most promising business, brand, and revenue opportunities.

Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) is a Zambian organization that produces IT’S WILD!, a special brand of organic, value-added processed products that come from farmers who live with wildlife and support wildlife conservation efforts.

Project: COMACO was facing severe competition in the market place and sales of its products were being negatively impacted. The problem was most defined in peanut butter sales where they had lost 50% of their market share in the prior three months to cheaper competitors with lower quality products, but the issue was seen across their other two leading products as well. Their rice product suffered under competition from cheaper imported Asian rice, and the organization was still trying to develop a market for corn soya blend. COMACO wanted to develop a costing model, more efficient production processes, and an effective marketing strategy for all three products to become more competitive. The organization’s costing system was extremely rudimentary and did not allow for easy manipulation of data and sensitivity analysis. The SGE Immersion team examined the competitive pressures on COMACO products and created more sophisticated costing models that would allow the organization to easily determine profits at a given sales price and volume of sales. The team conducted market research to determine what pricing model would be most appropriate without compromising customer perceptions of COMACO’s products.

The Closed Loop Fund was established by leading consumer goods companies and retailers — including Walmart and the Walmart Foundation, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Keurig Green Mountain and Goldman Sachs — to create economic value by increasing recycling rates.

Project: The municipal recycling landscape is complicated with different types of systems, models, and funding mechanisms — some of which are more successful than others. Each recycling environment requires a different mix of investment types. Closed Loop Fund wanted to refine and substantiate its understanding of this landscape to clarify the investment opportunities present across different recycling environments. The SGE Immersion team analyzed the municipal recycling landscape and made recommendations regarding how to effectively segment the landscape and identify which investment opportunities would be optimal for each segment.