What led you to co-found Clir Renewables back in 2017, and what is the meaning behind the name of the company?
Having had experience in providing engineering for the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street, I wanted to take all this knowledge on optimizing assets and combine it with cloud-based computing to provide intelligence on a massive scale in the renewable energy market. Given that I am originally from Wales, I chose Clir for the name because it is our spelling for "clear", an attribute that we want to attach to the data, technology, and expertise that we use to develop products. From the very start, our goal has been to impact climate change and to get access to the capital markets to build products that do not just improve assets, but also accelerate their deployment.
How does Clir concretely push the proliferation of renewable energy?
Fundamentally, Clir is a market intelligence platform, and we have the largest operational dataset on wind and solar farms on the planet, with more than 200 GW coming into our system. Since we use this generous information to improve financial returns, we initially start by monitoring the assets, and we then focus on ways to increase the output (e.g., ensuring the turbines are pitching correctly or the solar panels are tracking the sun well). On the revenue side, we oversee offtakes to be able to assess the risks, predict production, and calculate how long these assets will survive. We also analyze the OpEx and the CapEx, but monitoring assets in near real-time is what made us popular.
In addition, we sell that same intelligence so developers can make the best design decisions and the most informed choices on their assets even before they build the platform.
All the data that we take from the market is enhanced with the help of AI and machine learning, and the resulting products are focused on monitoring assets in key areas like insurance, debt, or M&A.
How did you manage to collect all that data at first?
Getting the data has been like a flywheel, but once we secured key partnerships in insurance and on the equity side, we were able to go to other parties that were more reluctant to share that data in the first place. When looking at benchmarks to sort the data, it is important to compare similar categories, such as controllable loss in energy or asset degradation, for example. Although we are extremely careful to curate the data when it comes in, once we introduce new assets, it is never perfect, but it still is the best tool the market has to drive improvements.
What is the profile of the typical client that finds value in your products?
We have a very diverse client base, and the information that we have helps developers, operators, lenders, insurers, stakeholders, and even consultants. However, the largest customers are investment funds, pension funds, and large institutional investors who are using our data to gain valuable insights.
Investors seem to be reluctant to deploy their funds in renewable projects due to a lack of data and transparency. How do you assess this challenge?
Given that technologies are rapidly changing, and the renewable energy market is much bigger than it was five years ago, gathering data in such a way that we can keep up with this rapid pace is no easy feat. On the flip side, today the issue is not finding capital, but good projects. However, with the IRA prompting investors to make investment decisions and start construction much more quickly, the future is looking bright.
Clir has been ranked by the Financial Times as one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. How do you hope to sustain that in the future?
Our success to date has been due to our ability to continue innovating, using data to drive value across the lifecycle of renewable energy asset ownership. Access to data itself is of course powerful in its own right, but it becomes truly game-changing when our customers and partners use it in combination with financial or insurance instruments.
How do you see the interconnection between data and the success of the green transition going forward?
Data and AI can be very targeted tools, which allow us to reduce uncertainty on assets, so it is our responsibility to make these solutions available as quickly as possible. Governments have a huge role in funding these projects, and the sooner we can get these pieces of information into the energy player's hands, the faster they will be able to drive the energy transition. Besides these, data availability and AI platforms are going to help drive down the cost of renewable energy, which is the outcome we are all hoping for.
