In 2018 Spain announced legislation that would push the country towards ending its dependence on fossil fuels by drawing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
Positively, this target appears to be on track. In 2021, the country saw a peak of 47% of all energy generated by renewables, reflecting rapid investment in the sector, fast-changing consumer sentiment, and the fascinating speed of the learning curves associated with renewables.
Alongside this rapid change, we’re observing profound changes in the functioning of the energy sector in Spain.
In 2019 we saw legislation allowing shared self-consumption (autoconsumo compartido), allowing individual energy producers to share power locally (now up to 2km from the point of generation). More recently, we’ve seen developments in virtual battery technology, grid digitalisation, novel demand/response technology to balance an increasingly complex grid, and a host of new startups working across hardware and software in the B2C, B2B and B2B2C spaces within energy.
With disruption comes opportunity, and at K we’ve spent recent months investigating the sector to better understand the changes happening in Spain as well as across Europe and the US (as part of a broader climate tech series).
Herein you will find our thoughts on the sector, where we see opportunities, as well as best in class examples from abroad where these are instructive or demonstrate potential future developments.
It is important to note up front what makes the grid interesting and unique. The energy grid is, unlike water, a system where you can only store very small quantities of the product you are transporting (electricity) in the grid itself. Each watt that enters the system must exit the system, almost immediately, somewhere else.
This makes everything really complicated - as, to keep the lights on, load has to be balanced at any given time. Given that local storage has traditionally been prohibitively expensive, the electricity generally has to be transported, often over long distances to an available end user (and if not, has to be stored requiring expensive capex closer to the end user).
This is made even more so by the shift to renewable energy generation from fossil fuels and nuclear, which has changed the nature of production - from one that is highly predictable and regular - to one that is dependent on the sun shining and the wind blowing. While Spain is considerably more reliable here than the UK or Germany, for example (where “in January and February the country can see whole two-week periods with almost no wind and limited solar power”), this remains a major factor for the grid and utilities alike.
And lastly, we are in the process of a switch from an analogue, concentrated grid where all producers and consumers predict what they are going to produce and consume daily, to a digital, fragmented grid where everyone is producing and consuming on an ongoing basis, in a bi-directional manner.
This increase in complexity drives cost and risk, but also relevant opportunities as large incumbents struggle to innovate at speed.
Energy sharing regulation in Spain has opened up an opportunity for local energy communities, where individuals can buy and sell electricity amongst themselves, disintermediating the utilities in the process.
We have heard from experts that a healthy Spanish grid will run 60:40 utility scale to decentralised energy generation, meaning up to 40% of energy production could occur close to its consumption. With energy sharing, this means a relevant percentage of energy production could be undertaken by individuals, at-home, in the mid-term.
Given that producing solar energy at-home incurs more or less zero marginal cost, and in sunny months can even produce a surplus, an opportunity has emerged for startups to remove the utilities from the process.
We have been fascinated by the work of Lumio (Madrid), Barter (Madrid), Zenit (Barcelona), Vergy (Granada), and Aldea Energy (Valencia), all of whom are trying to capitalise on this opportunity, believing we are on the verge of a cambrian explosion in decentralised energy generation and consumption.
Lumio, Vergy and Zenit have developed products focused on local marketplaces, allowing individuals to sell overproduction within 2km for a fixed margin per sale, at a rate higher than that offered to them by selling directly back to the grid.
Galp Solar (Madrid - subsidiary of Galp, a major corporate from Portugal), somewhere between a startup and a small utility, is pioneering a similarly interesting approach, tokenizing this overproduction, allowing individuals to redeem such tokens against their bills or future purchases.
On the development side, the likes of Barter and Aldea are looking more at the building and utilisation of decentralised assets, connecting individuals or “energy communities” (that are popping up across Spain) that are looking to invest in new developments or leverage local solar farms for their own use.
The potential here is fascinating - by disintermediating the utilities, there is an opportunity for individuals to become micro power plants, selling excess consumption to neighbours at a competitive rate.
Once bundled in with virtual batteries - a digital process to balance energy tariffs using technology - individuals can move away from a reliance on prices set by utility providers, and price fluctuations from macro shocks, towards autonomous, peer-to-peer energy producing and consuming communities.
However, a fundamental question remains unanswered here - namely, can these players capture sufficient market share to compete with incumbent giants long term?
While it is not currently in the interest of the utilities to buy-back individual overproduction for a competitive rate, the two-headed hydra of European energy independence and climate change will no doubt drive regulators towards pushing the incumbents to offer these products more widely and at a price more enticing to the individual producer.
Once this occurs there is a realistic chance that the utilities, through either building or buying their way into the space (via micro PPA’s and grid-balancing technology), will rapidly come for the business of these new entrants, arriving with massive existing customer bases and marketing budgets.
In fact, we are already seeing the first steps towards this digital future, as incumbents are being forced to move towards greater flexibility, transparency and a wider array of services - shifting from a low-margin, high volume energy sale business, to more of an “energy as a service” type product, where their profit is decoupled from the primary good they provide, and becomes more about cross-selling ancillary services that generate a higher margin.
Currently the utilities operate as low margin rentier landlords - competing on price. According to one expert, the leading DSOs - Endesa, Iberdrola, Fenosa, Hidrocantábrico, and the long tail of others - operate on no more than a 5-10% margin per customer - which is falling as the grid shifts away from fossil fuels and towards cheaper renewables.
So, alongside a forced move into allowing greater flexibility around individual overproduction and sale, the utilities are gradually becoming service providers - moving towards a greater focus on price flexibility as demand and supply move throughout the day, maintenance of individuals’ infrastructure (e.g. at home photovoltaic panels, HVAC systems such as heat pumps, batteries etc.), alongside selling other services (such as insurance) alongside energy-access.
As one expert we spoke to commented, energy could well become like mobile phone contracts - where the more or less standardised monthly tariff becomes the beachhead for providers to build an ecosystem of services, and grab margin at scale where they can.
While the incumbents have size on their side, we observe the potential for customer-focused smart utilities and energy retailers to capture market share in this space. It is no secret that existing players are unpopular, having offered generally poor customer service for decades due to the oligopolistic nature of the market.
New entrants (such as Tibber in the Nordics) that focus on building strong customer relationships with quality service, price competition, and horizontal ecosystem proposals could well capture market share from slow-moving incumbents.
As Octopus, the British energy challenger who recently launched in Spain quote on their website, “The future will be green, smart, flexible and decentralised – rewarding consumers for making the most of energy when the wind’s blowing, and creating innovative ways to store that green power to use when it’s not.”
Hand in hand with this changing role for utilities is the digitalisation of the grid - moving from a largely analogue set-up to one where flow can be tracked and managed, accurately, from plant to home. This in turn requires a host of new software tools and hardware expenditure, presenting opportunities for new players that can sell these offerings directly to incumbents.
Given the paramount importance of avoiding power cuts, the utilities and Red Electrica are becoming responsible for demand and supply management (tackling more intermittent loads driven by inconsistent renewable production) in a considerably more complicated system.
These players are working across a host of areas - incorporating B2B2C propositions (such as at home energy use management for end-customers), as well as utility scale grid tools for load management and flexibility, as well as products focused on efficient purchase and sale of electricity at scale.
On the B2B2C side, Electryone AI (London/Barcelona) is combining the new “energy-as-a-service” role of the utilities with increased flexibility for the grid. Their platform offers utilities the ability to integrate with customers’ smart energy devices (batteries, PV, EVs, heat pumps) and optimise their use for customer savings, alongside ML-driven demand/response technology that trades the aggregated flexibility of these smart devices into energy markets to help balance an ever-more volatile grid.
This goes alongside the work done by Clevergy (Madrid), focusing more on the end-user by building a whitelabel energy management tool for utilities, that allows end customers to understand their consumption and optimise it with tailored recommendations.
On the pure-B2B side, Bamboo Energy (Barcelona), Stemy Energy (Madrid) and Turning Tables spinout Adaion (Madrid) also leverage machine learning to provide cloud platforms that enhance manage flexibility, incorporating energy data and generating digital twins to drive more efficiency management.
Similarly, Plexigrid (Gijon) has built a SaaS tool for DSOs, electricity retailers and aggregators to manage their networks, and provide energy services to end consumers, while Ormazabal (Bilbao) offers at-scale smart-grid solutions.
The ecosystem is impressive, and growing rapidly here in Spain, yet there are still lessons to be learned from larger players abroad. International competitors of note include Uplight (Colorado), working with utilities to focus on enabling a smart grid, offering services across behavioural energy efficiencies (e.g. flow management based on user behaviour), EV charge management and decarbonisation. Autogrid (California) does similar work with clients such as Sunrun and the National Grid, while Leap (San Francisco) has developed a smart-grid tool enabling flexibility and IFTTT-style demand-response.
In Europe, there are a variety of players combining B2B and B2B2C, with hardware and software approaches. Kaluza (London, part of OVO energy) alongside Origami Energy (Cambridge, UK), provide SaaS tools for smart grid management with clients worldwide.
Similar to the work of Electryone, gridX (Munich) and Tibber (Førde) incorporate IOT devices to improve at-home energy efficiency while also looking up-stream towards grid management, while Hiven (Helsinki) comes with a software-first approach.
One space we think is fascinating is the work of Enode (Oslo) and Telematica (San Francisco), building APIs for utilities to integrate with smart energy devices, streamlining the digitalisation of these legacy players.
And lastly, on the procurement side, Inrange (London) provides smart procurement solutions for energy players, allowing algorithm-driven hedging, while Piclo (London) have built a marketplace for flexibility for grid management including settlement (of differences between purchases and customer demand).
At Kfund we are interested in businesses working across the B2B smart grid space - leveraging enabling technologies with built-in defensibility to push this behemoth into the 21st century. While these new entrants are facing tough sales cycles when selling to utility players, we are confident that once embedded they have the potential to scale rapidly and to considerable size.
Beyond pure grid-management, there are a host of ancillary areas of interest that are worth mentioning.
The requirements for decentralised storage capabilities in an electrified economy will be considerable. In spite of work done to move towards using EVs and at-home batteries as virtual power plants, distributing storage to end-users’ homes will not be sufficient. Gates-foundation backed Breakthrough Energy are building a portfolio that includes numerous players looking at decentralised battery farms, “pumped-hydro” plants, and green hydrogen (a breakthrough area with major potential), to help handle the infrastructure side of this more complex grid. While nascent, these (largely cap-ex intensive) plays will be vital to a flexible and distributed grid in years to come.
Related to this, the EU has acknowledged the importance of regulating energy consumption and production across the continent. The union targeted 15% cross-border energy sharing by 2030, but currently France and Spain’s interconnected capacity is just 2.8%. This holds promise for businesses able to sell technology that works cross-border, or cross-sell across international energy players that work in adjacent jurisdictions.
And lastly, of note in all of this is the electrification of the home. We have already written about the opportunities in B2B and B2C solar, and are now observing more movement across the electrified home with Germany’s EnPal soon to launch a dedicated heat pump (aerotermia) business, or players such as Lun (Denmark) or Woltea (Spain) driving heat pump education and adoption.
The energy sector is changing, fast. As is often the case in Europe, this is in large part being driven by regulation - to combat climate change, and to build an energetically independent continent post the shocks of oil prices and the war in Ukraine.
While the first of these steps saw mandating smart meters, subsidies for at home solar, heat pumps and increased flexibility of local energy sharing, we are now seeing more complex work around load management, and expect the next steps of this regulation to mandate greater grid flexibility, electrification, and pushing the utilities towards opening up the market to decentralised production and a better, more adaptive service for the end customer.
The landmark Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the ensuing European Green Deal are further driving these changes on both sides of the Atlantic with tax breaks and subsidies, and while recent evidence suggests global temperatures are rising faster than expected, we remain optimistic that technology can provide the solutions to these existential challenges.
In fact, for us at Kfund, we are firm believers in the prime importance of entrepreneurs in building the world we want to see. This is especially true with energy, as Spain has the potential to become Europe’s dominant clean energy producer in the years to come - combining strong utilities with exceptional founders, great weather and favourable regulation.
We believe these B2B areas - grid flexibility, load management, novel applications on top of a digitalised electricity network, and broader applications around electrification - are where the most exciting opportunities lie, along with B2B2C applications that can capture large market share rapidly through a utility-scale go-to-market.
As such, we are interested in speaking to any entrepreneurs working in the sector, and look forward to debating this topic in the months to come. Thoughts? Comments? Please do get in touch - max@kfund.vc.
—
With the biggest thanks to everyone who contributed to this piece and answered my (numerous) questions on a highly complex topic - Pablo Ventura (Kfund), Jaume Ayats Soler (All Iron), Matias Gallego (Optimize Energy), Christian zu Jeddeloh & Fabian Erici (Norrsken VC), Miguel de Ros (Madblue), Yiannis Zambas (Electryone), Borja Moreno de los Rios (Silence VC), Robert Stoecker (AENU), Alberto Toril (Breakthrough Energy), Rafael Bahamonde Nieto (Vergy), Mario Fernandez (Hobeen), Carlos López Llopis (Aldea Energy), German Peralta & Matt Heusch (Woltea), Roger Pasola Dolader (Galp Solar), Emilio Bravo Bayarri & Josep Planells (Lucera), Sebastiao Clara (Barter) and Alexis Las Heras (Lumio Solar).
In 2018 Spain announced legislation that would push the country towards ending its dependence on fossil fuels by drawing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
Positively, this target appears to be on track. In 2021, the country saw a peak of 47% of all energy generated by renewables, reflecting rapid investment in the sector, fast-changing consumer sentiment, and the fascinating speed of the learning curves associated with renewables.
Alongside this rapid change, we’re observing profound changes in the functioning of the energy sector in Spain.
In 2019 we saw legislation allowing shared self-consumption (autoconsumo compartido), allowing individual energy producers to share power locally (now up to 2km from the point of generation). More recently, we’ve seen developments in virtual battery technology, grid digitalisation, novel demand/response technology to balance an increasingly complex grid, and a host of new startups working across hardware and software in the B2C, B2B and B2B2C spaces within energy.
With disruption comes opportunity, and at K we’ve spent recent months investigating the sector to better understand the changes happening in Spain as well as across Europe and the US (as part of a broader climate tech series).
Herein you will find our thoughts on the sector, where we see opportunities, as well as best in class examples from abroad where these are instructive or demonstrate potential future developments.
It is important to note up front what makes the grid interesting and unique. The energy grid is, unlike water, a system where you can only store very small quantities of the product you are transporting (electricity) in the grid itself. Each watt that enters the system must exit the system, almost immediately, somewhere else.
This makes everything really complicated - as, to keep the lights on, load has to be balanced at any given time. Given that local storage has traditionally been prohibitively expensive, the electricity generally has to be transported, often over long distances to an available end user (and if not, has to be stored requiring expensive capex closer to the end user).
This is made even more so by the shift to renewable energy generation from fossil fuels and nuclear, which has changed the nature of production - from one that is highly predictable and regular - to one that is dependent on the sun shining and the wind blowing. While Spain is considerably more reliable here than the UK or Germany, for example (where “in January and February the country can see whole two-week periods with almost no wind and limited solar power”), this remains a major factor for the grid and utilities alike.
And lastly, we are in the process of a switch from an analogue, concentrated grid where all producers and consumers predict what they are going to produce and consume daily, to a digital, fragmented grid where everyone is producing and consuming on an ongoing basis, in a bi-directional manner.
This increase in complexity drives cost and risk, but also relevant opportunities as large incumbents struggle to innovate at speed.
Energy sharing regulation in Spain has opened up an opportunity for local energy communities, where individuals can buy and sell electricity amongst themselves, disintermediating the utilities in the process.
We have heard from experts that a healthy Spanish grid will run 60:40 utility scale to decentralised energy generation, meaning up to 40% of energy production could occur close to its consumption. With energy sharing, this means a relevant percentage of energy production could be undertaken by individuals, at-home, in the mid-term.
Given that producing solar energy at-home incurs more or less zero marginal cost, and in sunny months can even produce a surplus, an opportunity has emerged for startups to remove the utilities from the process.
We have been fascinated by the work of Lumio (Madrid), Barter (Madrid), Zenit (Barcelona), Vergy (Granada), and Aldea Energy (Valencia), all of whom are trying to capitalise on this opportunity, believing we are on the verge of a cambrian explosion in decentralised energy generation and consumption.
Lumio, Vergy and Zenit have developed products focused on local marketplaces, allowing individuals to sell overproduction within 2km for a fixed margin per sale, at a rate higher than that offered to them by selling directly back to the grid.
Galp Solar (Madrid - subsidiary of Galp, a major corporate from Portugal), somewhere between a startup and a small utility, is pioneering a similarly interesting approach, tokenizing this overproduction, allowing individuals to redeem such tokens against their bills or future purchases.
On the development side, the likes of Barter and Aldea are looking more at the building and utilisation of decentralised assets, connecting individuals or “energy communities” (that are popping up across Spain) that are looking to invest in new developments or leverage local solar farms for their own use.
The potential here is fascinating - by disintermediating the utilities, there is an opportunity for individuals to become micro power plants, selling excess consumption to neighbours at a competitive rate.
Once bundled in with virtual batteries - a digital process to balance energy tariffs using technology - individuals can move away from a reliance on prices set by utility providers, and price fluctuations from macro shocks, towards autonomous, peer-to-peer energy producing and consuming communities.
However, a fundamental question remains unanswered here - namely, can these players capture sufficient market share to compete with incumbent giants long term?
While it is not currently in the interest of the utilities to buy-back individual overproduction for a competitive rate, the two-headed hydra of European energy independence and climate change will no doubt drive regulators towards pushing the incumbents to offer these products more widely and at a price more enticing to the individual producer.
Once this occurs there is a realistic chance that the utilities, through either building or buying their way into the space (via micro PPA’s and grid-balancing technology), will rapidly come for the business of these new entrants, arriving with massive existing customer bases and marketing budgets.
In fact, we are already seeing the first steps towards this digital future, as incumbents are being forced to move towards greater flexibility, transparency and a wider array of services - shifting from a low-margin, high volume energy sale business, to more of an “energy as a service” type product, where their profit is decoupled from the primary good they provide, and becomes more about cross-selling ancillary services that generate a higher margin.
Currently the utilities operate as low margin rentier landlords - competing on price. According to one expert, the leading DSOs - Endesa, Iberdrola, Fenosa, Hidrocantábrico, and the long tail of others - operate on no more than a 5-10% margin per customer - which is falling as the grid shifts away from fossil fuels and towards cheaper renewables.
So, alongside a forced move into allowing greater flexibility around individual overproduction and sale, the utilities are gradually becoming service providers - moving towards a greater focus on price flexibility as demand and supply move throughout the day, maintenance of individuals’ infrastructure (e.g. at home photovoltaic panels, HVAC systems such as heat pumps, batteries etc.), alongside selling other services (such as insurance) alongside energy-access.
As one expert we spoke to commented, energy could well become like mobile phone contracts - where the more or less standardised monthly tariff becomes the beachhead for providers to build an ecosystem of services, and grab margin at scale where they can.
While the incumbents have size on their side, we observe the potential for customer-focused smart utilities and energy retailers to capture market share in this space. It is no secret that existing players are unpopular, having offered generally poor customer service for decades due to the oligopolistic nature of the market.
New entrants (such as Tibber in the Nordics) that focus on building strong customer relationships with quality service, price competition, and horizontal ecosystem proposals could well capture market share from slow-moving incumbents.
As Octopus, the British energy challenger who recently launched in Spain quote on their website, “The future will be green, smart, flexible and decentralised – rewarding consumers for making the most of energy when the wind’s blowing, and creating innovative ways to store that green power to use when it’s not.”
Hand in hand with this changing role for utilities is the digitalisation of the grid - moving from a largely analogue set-up to one where flow can be tracked and managed, accurately, from plant to home. This in turn requires a host of new software tools and hardware expenditure, presenting opportunities for new players that can sell these offerings directly to incumbents.
Given the paramount importance of avoiding power cuts, the utilities and Red Electrica are becoming responsible for demand and supply management (tackling more intermittent loads driven by inconsistent renewable production) in a considerably more complicated system.
These players are working across a host of areas - incorporating B2B2C propositions (such as at home energy use management for end-customers), as well as utility scale grid tools for load management and flexibility, as well as products focused on efficient purchase and sale of electricity at scale.
On the B2B2C side, Electryone AI (London/Barcelona) is combining the new “energy-as-a-service” role of the utilities with increased flexibility for the grid. Their platform offers utilities the ability to integrate with customers’ smart energy devices (batteries, PV, EVs, heat pumps) and optimise their use for customer savings, alongside ML-driven demand/response technology that trades the aggregated flexibility of these smart devices into energy markets to help balance an ever-more volatile grid.
This goes alongside the work done by Clevergy (Madrid), focusing more on the end-user by building a whitelabel energy management tool for utilities, that allows end customers to understand their consumption and optimise it with tailored recommendations.
On the pure-B2B side, Bamboo Energy (Barcelona), Stemy Energy (Madrid) and Turning Tables spinout Adaion (Madrid) also leverage machine learning to provide cloud platforms that enhance manage flexibility, incorporating energy data and generating digital twins to drive more efficiency management.
Similarly, Plexigrid (Gijon) has built a SaaS tool for DSOs, electricity retailers and aggregators to manage their networks, and provide energy services to end consumers, while Ormazabal (Bilbao) offers at-scale smart-grid solutions.
The ecosystem is impressive, and growing rapidly here in Spain, yet there are still lessons to be learned from larger players abroad. International competitors of note include Uplight (Colorado), working with utilities to focus on enabling a smart grid, offering services across behavioural energy efficiencies (e.g. flow management based on user behaviour), EV charge management and decarbonisation. Autogrid (California) does similar work with clients such as Sunrun and the National Grid, while Leap (San Francisco) has developed a smart-grid tool enabling flexibility and IFTTT-style demand-response.
In Europe, there are a variety of players combining B2B and B2B2C, with hardware and software approaches. Kaluza (London, part of OVO energy) alongside Origami Energy (Cambridge, UK), provide SaaS tools for smart grid management with clients worldwide.
Similar to the work of Electryone, gridX (Munich) and Tibber (Førde) incorporate IOT devices to improve at-home energy efficiency while also looking up-stream towards grid management, while Hiven (Helsinki) comes with a software-first approach.
One space we think is fascinating is the work of Enode (Oslo) and Telematica (San Francisco), building APIs for utilities to integrate with smart energy devices, streamlining the digitalisation of these legacy players.
And lastly, on the procurement side, Inrange (London) provides smart procurement solutions for energy players, allowing algorithm-driven hedging, while Piclo (London) have built a marketplace for flexibility for grid management including settlement (of differences between purchases and customer demand).
At Kfund we are interested in businesses working across the B2B smart grid space - leveraging enabling technologies with built-in defensibility to push this behemoth into the 21st century. While these new entrants are facing tough sales cycles when selling to utility players, we are confident that once embedded they have the potential to scale rapidly and to considerable size.
Beyond pure grid-management, there are a host of ancillary areas of interest that are worth mentioning.
The requirements for decentralised storage capabilities in an electrified economy will be considerable. In spite of work done to move towards using EVs and at-home batteries as virtual power plants, distributing storage to end-users’ homes will not be sufficient. Gates-foundation backed Breakthrough Energy are building a portfolio that includes numerous players looking at decentralised battery farms, “pumped-hydro” plants, and green hydrogen (a breakthrough area with major potential), to help handle the infrastructure side of this more complex grid. While nascent, these (largely cap-ex intensive) plays will be vital to a flexible and distributed grid in years to come.
Related to this, the EU has acknowledged the importance of regulating energy consumption and production across the continent. The union targeted 15% cross-border energy sharing by 2030, but currently France and Spain’s interconnected capacity is just 2.8%. This holds promise for businesses able to sell technology that works cross-border, or cross-sell across international energy players that work in adjacent jurisdictions.
And lastly, of note in all of this is the electrification of the home. We have already written about the opportunities in B2B and B2C solar, and are now observing more movement across the electrified home with Germany’s EnPal soon to launch a dedicated heat pump (aerotermia) business, or players such as Lun (Denmark) or Woltea (Spain) driving heat pump education and adoption.
The energy sector is changing, fast. As is often the case in Europe, this is in large part being driven by regulation - to combat climate change, and to build an energetically independent continent post the shocks of oil prices and the war in Ukraine.
While the first of these steps saw mandating smart meters, subsidies for at home solar, heat pumps and increased flexibility of local energy sharing, we are now seeing more complex work around load management, and expect the next steps of this regulation to mandate greater grid flexibility, electrification, and pushing the utilities towards opening up the market to decentralised production and a better, more adaptive service for the end customer.
The landmark Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the ensuing European Green Deal are further driving these changes on both sides of the Atlantic with tax breaks and subsidies, and while recent evidence suggests global temperatures are rising faster than expected, we remain optimistic that technology can provide the solutions to these existential challenges.
In fact, for us at Kfund, we are firm believers in the prime importance of entrepreneurs in building the world we want to see. This is especially true with energy, as Spain has the potential to become Europe’s dominant clean energy producer in the years to come - combining strong utilities with exceptional founders, great weather and favourable regulation.
We believe these B2B areas - grid flexibility, load management, novel applications on top of a digitalised electricity network, and broader applications around electrification - are where the most exciting opportunities lie, along with B2B2C applications that can capture large market share rapidly through a utility-scale go-to-market.
As such, we are interested in speaking to any entrepreneurs working in the sector, and look forward to debating this topic in the months to come. Thoughts? Comments? Please do get in touch - max@kfund.vc.
—
With the biggest thanks to everyone who contributed to this piece and answered my (numerous) questions on a highly complex topic - Pablo Ventura (Kfund), Jaume Ayats Soler (All Iron), Matias Gallego (Optimize Energy), Christian zu Jeddeloh & Fabian Erici (Norrsken VC), Miguel de Ros (Madblue), Yiannis Zambas (Electryone), Borja Moreno de los Rios (Silence VC), Robert Stoecker (AENU), Alberto Toril (Breakthrough Energy), Rafael Bahamonde Nieto (Vergy), Mario Fernandez (Hobeen), Carlos López Llopis (Aldea Energy), German Peralta & Matt Heusch (Woltea), Roger Pasola Dolader (Galp Solar), Emilio Bravo Bayarri & Josep Planells (Lucera), Sebastiao Clara (Barter) and Alexis Las Heras (Lumio Solar).
