Energy Procurement Advisory with Arcadia: Strategic optimization for enterprise energy needs

In today's volatile energy market, organizations face unprecedented challenges balancing costs and risks, sustainability goals, and operational resilience. To navigate these growing complexities, today’s businesses require comprehensive solutions. 

Arcadia’s Energy Procurement Advisory offering is designed to simplify and optimize the procurement process, offering businesses more efficient and resilient energy solutions. By integrating the expertise of RPD Energy — a leader in renewable energy solutions with customized, market-driven procurement strategies — Arcadia has strengthened our ability to deliver holistic, tailored procurement services for businesses across the US.

Common Challenges in Energy Procurement

Responsibility for energy procurement is often shared between procurement teams focused on cost control and sustainability departments pursuing environmental objectives, with different priorities and separate budgets. Organizations must also manage a fragmented landscape of brokers, advisors, and suppliers across their operational footprint. This disjointed approach often results in missed opportunities and inefficient processes, which can be compounded by additional challenges with today’s energy procurement landscape, such as:

1. Narrow solutions: Energy providers typically focus on individual solutions, prioritizing their own generation assets or a limited technology set. This narrow approach creates inherent conflicts of interest and prevents organizations from capturing value that a comprehensive, client-focused strategy would deliver.
2. Low-tech approach: Traditional procurement advisors perform basic market analysis and don’t offer enough transparency for organizations to make informed decisions in today's volatile environment. Without advanced analytics and forecasting, companies remain reactive rather than strategic, increasing their exposure to market risks and missing opportunities for value creation.
3. Market barriers: Complex market dynamics and high costs have limited advanced procurement strategies — like renewable PPAs and 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) — to only the largest corporations, despite their significant potential to advance sustainability goals.

Arcadia & RPD Energy: Paired Solutions for Powerful Impact

To address these challenges, businesses need a partner who can provide comprehensive, integrated energy solutions across their entire portfolio. Arcadia has long been a leader in community solar, operating the nation’s largest community solar portfolio with over 2 GW of capacity and helping over 2,500 organizations secure localized clean energy contracts. Our acquisition of RPD Energy is a natural extension of this success, enhancing our ability to deliver holistic procurement solutions.

• Comprehensive Approach: We deliver tailored strategies that balance financial objectives with sustainability goals, optimizing your bottom line and carbon footprint.
• Advanced Analytics: Leveraging Arcadia’s AI-powered data platform and RPD’s market expertise, we provide commodity risk management and rigorous analytics to coordinate a tailored mix of energy supply, risk strategy, and financial structuring. 
• Customer-centric Process: Our combined capabilities make sophisticated energy procurement accessible through streamlined processes and flexible contract terms that adapt to each client’s specific needs. From data unification and option analysis to strategy implementation and performance monitoring, we manage the entire process, ensuring transparency and alignment with your objectives.
• Expansive Partner Network: Our extensive partner network enables flexibility in contracting and implementation. Source energy through your preferred partners, without disrupting your existing relationships with brokers, REPs, IPPs, etc.

Comprehensive Energy Procurement Strategies 

Unlike traditional brokers and advisors, Arcadia — through the acquisition of RPD, in-house capabilities, and partners — can uniquely assess and execute on all energy options, both onsite and offsite, tailored to an individual meter’s load and the markets they operate in. Our procurement offering includes:

• Flexible supply agreements, from 0-100% clean, to meet sustainability goals
• Community solar 
• Direct purchase from renewable generators
• Behind-the-meter solar and storage
• Demand-side management and demand response
• Utility tariff optimization
• RECs, offsets, and other data-driven energy management solutions

This comprehensive suite of solutions enables organizations to optimize their energy procurement strategy based on their specific operational needs, sustainability targets, and market conditions, allowing them to effectively balance cost management, risk mitigation, and environmental objectives according to their unique business priorities.

Real-world Success: Iron Mountain & Intuit

RPD’s customer list includes blue-chip corporations such as Iron Mountain, Adobe, Intuit, and UPS — companies they’ve helped evaluate, structure, and source energy supply agreements that align with their corporate energy goals.

• Iron Mountain is a global leader in storage and information management services with ambitious goals to reduce emissions and source renewable energy across data center and non-data center facilities. Through RPD Energy's solution, Iron Mountain secured hourly load matching of physical renewable energy across multiple grid regions and accounts, ensuring reliable clean energy integration across operations and achieving renewable energy coverage over 96% across its operational footprint.
• Intuit, a leading innovator in financial management software, sought to expand its renewable energy portfolio beyond its existing on-site solar installation. With RPD Energy's solution, Intuit secured locally sourced clean energy while maintaining a standard retail contract structure that ensures reliable delivery and competitive pricing.

Ready to transform your energy strategy?

Arcadia’s acquisition of RPD Energy marks a new era in energy procurement. Together, we’re empowering businesses with affordable, clean, and more resilient energy solutions.