What was happening before Pilot

Several patterns showed up across the portfolio that, taken individually, looked normal — but added up to substantial unrecovered value:

• Fragmented procurement. Many supplier relationships across many markets, each negotiated independently. No aggregated buying power; inconsistent contract terms; capacity tag exposure managed market-by-market rather than as a portfolio.
• Reactive renewables strategy. One-off PPAs negotiated when sustainability targets demanded them. RECs procured site-by-site without coordinated vintage or geographic strategy. On-site solar evaluated case-by-case without a structural economic framework.
• Market-by-market regulatory navigation. Federal refrigerant rules (AIM Act, kigali amendments) being addressed at the facility level. State RPS variations managed independently. Energy efficiency codes and tax credits surfaced reactively rather than systematically.
• Site-level emerging tech adoption. Refrigeration upgrades, LED retrofits, BMS controls, and on-site generation evaluated and procured at the property level — losing the standardization and economics that portfolio-level approach unlocks.

None of this was the result of poor execution. It was the result of how the function had grown — organically, with each workstream led by capable people running their own piece. The opportunity was in coordination, not in replacement.

What Pilot did

Pilot engaged as a co-managed advisory extension of the internal team — augmenting bandwidth and multi-market depth without replacing in-house decision authority. The work ran across four coordinated workstreams.

1. Consolidated procurement architecture

The single largest workstream. Pilot rebuilt the procurement function around portfolio-level visibility:

• Aggregated load across all sites into coordinated procurement strategies by market (PJM, ERCOT, MISO, NYISO, ISO-NE, CAISO, plus key regulated states)
• Layered hedging programs in each market with documented trigger prices, scheduled execution, and quarterly review — replacing the prior pattern of timing-dependent buying decisions
• Capacity tag management at scale — particularly significant in PJM where retail food load profiles have predictable summer afternoon peaks that drive 5CP exposure. Coordinated demand response enrollment and operational load shifting reduced tags meaningfully across the portfolio.
• Multi-supplier portfolio structuring — national suppliers for breadth, regional suppliers where local pricing was stronger. Contract terms standardized across markets where possible to simplify portfolio management.

2. Renewables advisory

Coordinated renewables strategy supporting the client's public sustainability commitments:

• PPA structuring at scale — sized for material portfolio coverage rather than site-by-site offsets. Long-term offtake agreements negotiated with both operating and new-build counterparties.
• REC procurement coordination aligned vintages and geographic attribution with the client's specific reporting framework requirements (GHG Protocol Scope 2, RE100, etc.)
• On-site solar evaluation framework — a portfolio-level analysis identifying which property types and geographies made structural economic sense, enabling deployment to be programmatic rather than opportunistic
• Battery storage analysis for properties in high-capacity-cost zones (especially PJM) where storage economics worked for capacity tag management

3. Federal and state regulatory management

Proactive regulatory navigation across overlapping jurisdictions:

• Refrigerant transition planning — AIM Act compliance across thousands of refrigeration systems, sequenced to capture replacement economics
• RPS compliance across states with varying requirements — coordinated REC and supply strategies that satisfied each state's specific rules
• Energy efficiency code navigation — coordinating with construction and renovation cycles to capture available incentives and rebates
• Tax credit utilization (45L, 179D, ITC for storage and solar) — applied systematically across the portfolio rather than missed at individual properties

4. Emerging tech review

Portfolio-level evaluation and adoption framework for high-value technologies:

• CO2 refrigeration systems — evaluated against the AIM Act compliance roadmap and refrigeration replacement cycles
• Advanced lighting and BMS upgrades — standardized specifications and procurement across the portfolio
• EV charging infrastructure planning for fleets and customer-facing charging — both as load addition and as potential demand response asset
• Behind-the-meter generation and storage at scale where the economics worked, including portfolio-level financing structures

What changed

• ~$50M in annual energy savings — approximately 13% reduction on the baseline spend
• Aggregated procurement leverage across markets and suppliers, replacing fragmented site-by-site contracting
• Coordinated renewables strategy supporting public sustainability commitments with documented attribute claims aligned to reporting frameworks
• Proactive regulatory positioning — capturing tax credits, incentives, and compliance economics that had previously been missed
• Portfolio-level emerging tech roadmap — investment decisions made systematically with standardized specifications
• Internal team strengthened, not replaced — the in-house energy function retained strategic ownership while gaining the multi-market depth that's structurally difficult to maintain internally

Why this case worked

The scale and structural fit of this engagement made the math work in ways that don't apply to smaller portfolios. Four factors mattered most:

• Scale created leverage. A 1,500-site portfolio aggregates enough load that suppliers compete more aggressively, PPA counterparties offer better terms, regulatory programs become economic to participate in, and emerging tech investments cross the threshold where standardized adoption pays back.
• Internal team partnership. The co-managed model fit a client that had substantial in-house energy expertise but couldn't realistically maintain deep multi-market coverage internally. Pilot extended bandwidth and depth without disrupting existing organizational structure.
• Multi-workstream coordination. Savings compound when procurement, renewables, regulatory, and tech work together rather than separately. Capacity tag management combined with battery storage combined with demand response combined with on-site solar yields more than any of those alone.
• The right tools at the right scale. PowerUp platform analytics applied to a $400M portfolio surface patterns that smaller portfolios don't make visible. The investment in analytics is justified by the scale; the scale is where the analytics pay back.

This case study describes a real Pilot client engagement. Identifying details have been anonymized; financial figures are approximate.