As the world races to “beat” the global climate crisis, a major hurdle stands in the way of the world’s swift transition to clean power: the vast majority of renewable energy projects fail – and location is one of the most prominent causes.
Today’s energy companies must first scout and secure a location for their solar, wind or agrivoltaic (farming and solar) projects, navigating a maze of negotiations, bureaucracy and local interests.
Only once this has been completed can they embark on the lengthy procedure of officially verifying the location’s suitability – a slightly retrogressive path, requiring a massive upfront commitment before getting a green light.
Israeli startup REplace (a portmanteau of Renewable Energy Place) flips the switch on this laborious and costly process by enabling companies to identify an optimal location before any other step is taken, making it possible to launch their projects almost immediately.
“It takes on average for a country like the United States around 40 years for a project to get all the permits,” REplace CEO Matias Sigal tells NoCamels.
“In 2023, more than $600 billion was invested in renewable energy projects, and 80% of these projects fail,” he says.
Aside from the massive amount of dollars lost annually, the current regulatory landscape is greatly slowing down the energy transition.
According to the Sustainable Review, regulatory hurdles such as complex permit processes and inconsistent policy standards can cause significant roadblocks in the adoption of renewable energy.
Some locations such as California have over three million parcels of land to vet. Even using advanced Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to interpret the data, it takes companies 20-30 minutes per parcel – meaning it would take more than a century and a half to inspect all of the plots.
Complications involving land ownership, landscape and permits or infrastructure challenges such as underground gas pipes can also create quite a bottleneck in the process.
But REplace uses its own proprietary algorithms together with public data to check parcels of land according to key parameters, identifying and obtaining the most suitable spots for their customers.
The energy companies just have to specify three things to REplace: type of project, capacity and desired region.
“We built an algorithm that analyzes the parameters of data on every single parcel of land according to the needs of the user, and finds the best location for that renewable energy project to have minimum risk,” Sigal says.
While competitors may offer a type of map with aggregated data, users must still endure the lengthy process of manually checking and validating land parcels.
“Other methods and companies help understand the data on the land, but are not smart enough to compare all the land with all the parameters to find the best location. We stand out because we find the best land out of every parcel,” he explains.
According to Sigal, REplace’s ultimate goal is to make renewable energy cost efficient.
“If it isn’t cheaper than fossil fuels, no big projects will be built,” he says.
REplace’s algorithm also saves users potentially billions of dollars by selecting sites that simultaneously have maximum revenue potential and cost reduction.
For example, a location that is a mere few kilometers nearer to an electric connection point compared to a site further away can save a company millions of dollars in electric cable costs.
Founded in 2022 and located in Haifa, REplace has raised $575,000 to date from investors, angels and VC funds.
Sigal says he has been passionate about climate change from the age of 13 – learning about impact and as an adult designing businesses in the sector.
He even moved to Israel from Argentina, he says, because he always wanted to do something big that would help combat climate change, and Israel was the right place to do it.
While he evaluated scores of different problems, solutions, ideas and technologies, it wasn’t until he himself was faced with a problem in his job in energy technology that he was inspired to create REplace.
He had been tasked with finding land for renewable energy projects, and saw some projects fail due to the incompatibility of locations chosen.
Speaking to hundreds of renewable energy developers around the world, who would have to spend up to six months checking data for locations, helped him to understand both the market and the magnitude of the problem.
“We are disrupting how the development of renewable energy is being done,” he says.
The company is currently working with a handful of partners, including EDF Renewables Israel, which is part of the EDF Group (France’s national electricity company); Doral Energy, the Israeli makers of renewable energy semiconductors; and Elawan Energy – a Spanish-based international energy firm that has operations in California and Israel.
“Our vision is to be the one-stop tool for developing renewable energy projects and be the platform that energy developers use every morning, together with their morning coffee,” says Sigal.
What could be more energizing than that?
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