Ameresco, Inc. (Ameresco) provides energy solutions. The company’s comprehensive portfolio includes implementing smart energy efficiency solutions, upgrading aging infrastructure, and developing, constructing, and operating distributed energy resources.
The company’s core offerings include the development, design, arrangement of financing, construction, and installation of solutions that deliver measurable cost and energy savings while enhancing the operations, energy security, infrastructure,...
Ameresco, Inc. (Ameresco) provides energy solutions. The company’s comprehensive portfolio includes implementing smart energy efficiency solutions, upgrading aging infrastructure, and developing, constructing, and operating distributed energy resources.
The company’s core offerings include the development, design, arrangement of financing, construction, and installation of solutions that deliver measurable cost and energy savings while enhancing the operations, energy security, infrastructure, and resiliency of a facility. These solutions range from upgrades to a facility’s energy infrastructure to the development, construction, and operation of renewable energy plants.
The company’s product independence, coupled with its deep technical bench, allows it to integrate best-in-class advanced technology solutions for the unique needs of each customer. Ameresco reduces energy use and delivers diversified generation solutions to federal, state, and local governments, utilities, educational and healthcare institutions, housing authorities, and commercial and industrial customers across North America and Europe. The company’s growth is driven by staying ahead of the curve and at the leading edge of innovation taking place in the energy sector, offering new products and services to new and existing customers.
In addition to organic growth, strategic acquisitions of complementary businesses and assets, and entering into joint venture arrangements, have been, and continue to be, important components of its growth strategy. These strategies enable it to broaden its service offerings and expand its geographical reach. The company has also taken steps to ensure its business is strategically aligned with its core offerings, and as part of these efforts, in 2024, it divested an energy technology and advisory services company, which allows it to focus on its primary business areas while actively pursuing new growth opportunities within its target markets.
To best serve the company’s expansive customer base, as of December 31, 2024, it had approximately 60 offices located throughout North America and Europe, and more than 1,500 dedicated energy and business professionals with years of proven experience and a strong commitment to customer satisfaction. The company offers its customers the resources needed to successfully plan, finance, execute, and operate energy programs to create sustained economic and operating benefits to fulfill their unique requirements.
Services
The company’s portfolio of service and product offerings aims to create value and provide energy-efficient and renewable solutions to the organizations it serves in the pursuit of a sustainable future.
Energy Efficiency Measures & Upgrades: Water management, efficiency and reclamation; renewable energy, storage, & microgrids; heating, ventilation, cooling, building envelope; smart metering and controls; and chillers and boilers.
Renewable Energy, Storage & Microgrids: Solar photovoltaic (‘PV’); combined heat and power (‘CHP’) and co-generation plants; geothermal; renewable natural gas (‘RNG’); wind power; microgrid; battery storage; EV charging infrastructure; and hydrogen.
Energy Infrastructure: Smart building modernization and retrofits; design-build new construction; utilizing a full range of technologies related to building systems, facility infrastructure, energy- and water-consuming systems; and integrated project design and implementation.
Energy Analytics & Supply: Enterprise energy management services; proprietary asset management software; and energy procurement services.
Operations & Maintenance (‘O&M’): End-to-end technical guidance; and skilled technicians to operate and maintain renewable energy systems.
The company’s core services are the development, design, engineering, and installation of projects designed to reduce the energy and O&M costs of its customers’ facilities. These projects generally include a variety of measures that incorporate innovative technology and techniques, customized for the facility, and designed to improve the efficiency of major building systems, such as heating, ventilation, cooling, and lighting systems, while enhancing the comfort and usability of the buildings.
The company also offers the ability to incorporate analytical tools designed to provide improved building energy management capabilities and enable customers to identify opportunities for energy cost savings. It typically commits to customers that the company’s energy efficiency projects will satisfy agreed-upon performance standards upon installation or achieve specified increases in energy efficiency. Generally, the forecasted lifetime energy and operating cost savings of the energy efficiency measures it installs are designed to defray all or almost all of the cost of such measures. In many cases, the company assists customers in obtaining private third-party financing, grants, or rebates for the cost of constructing the facility improvements, resulting in little or no upfront capital expenditure by the customer. After a project is complete, the company may operate, maintain, and repair the customer’s energy systems under a multi-year O&M contract, designed to provide it with recurring revenue and visibility into the customer’s evolving needs.
In addition, the company serves certain customers by developing and building small-scale renewable energy plants located at or close to a customer’s site. Depending on the customer’s preference, it will either retain ownership of the completed plant or build it for the customer. Most of the company’s small-scale renewable energy plants to date consist of solar PV installations and plants constructed adjacent to landfills, which use landfill gas (‘LFG’) to generate energy. The company also designs and builds, and owns, operates, and maintains plants that utilize biogas from wastewater treatment processes. The company’s largest renewable energy project that it operates for a customer uses biomass as the primary source of energy.
Lines of Business
Smart Energy Solutions Projects
The company’s Smart Energy Solutions Projects are primarily energy efficiency projects, which entail the design, engineering, and installation of an ever-increasing array of innovative technologies and techniques designed to improve energy efficiency and control the operation of a building’s energy- and water-consuming systems. In certain projects, it designs and constructs a central plant or cogeneration system providing power, heat, and/or cooling to a building, or a small-scale plant that produces electricity, gas, heat, or cooling from renewable sources of energy for a customer, as well as battery energy storage. The company’s projects generally range in size and scope from a one-month project to design and retrofit a lighting system to a more complex 36-month project to design and install a central plant or cogeneration system or other small-scale plant. Projects it has constructed or is currently working on include designing, engineering, and installing energy conservation and resiliency measures across school buildings, large, complex energy conservation, and energy security projects for the federal government, and municipal-scale street lighting projects incorporating smart city controls.
O&M
After an energy efficiency or renewable energy project is completed, the company often provides ongoing O&M services under multi-year contracts. These services offer end-to-end technical guidance and include operating, maintaining, and repairing facility energy systems, such as boilers, chillers, and building controls, as well as central power and small-scale plants. For larger projects, it frequently maintains staff on-site to perform these services. In addition to providing O&M services for the company’s own projects, it also provides similar services on projects it did not construct for various customers.
Ameresco-owned Energy Assets
Ameresco-owned energy assets are small-scale power plants that the company develops, designs, constructs, finances, and owns/operates and are included in its consolidated balance sheets. These assets may sell electricity, heat, cooling, processed biogas, or renewable biomethane fuel under short- or long-term contracts. The company also offers Energy as a Service (‘EaaS’), where it designs, constructs, finances, and owns/operates various energy conservation measures on a customer’s site and sells them the output or availability of these items under a short- or long-term contract.
The company has constructed and is developing, designing, and constructing a wide range of renewable energy plants using biogas (generated from landfills, wastewater treatment plants, and the agricultural sector); advanced biofuels; biomass and other bio-derived fuels; solar PV; wind and hydro sources of energy; and battery storage.
Most of the company’s renewable energy assets to date have involved the generation and sale of electricity from solar PV or battery storage, and electricity, thermal, renewable fuel, or biomethane using biogas as a feedstock.
In the case of the company’s biogas-fueled projects, it purchases biogas that otherwise would be combusted or vented, processes it, and either uses it as a renewable fuel source in its energy plants to produce and sell electricity and/or thermal, or sells it as a renewable fuel source to a third party. The company also designs, builds, and operates and maintains facilities that process biogas into biomethane (or renewable natural gas) that can be transported, primarily through the nation’s natural gas pipeline grid or, in some cases, through tanker trucks, and sold to third parties. The rights to use the site for the plant and the purchase of raw feedstock fuel for the plant are also obtained by the company under long-term agreements with terms at least as long as the associated output supply agreement.
As of December 31, 2024, the company owned and operated 209 small-scale renewable energy plants, including solar PV installations which generate electricity or deliver renewable gas fuel with a combined capacity of approximately 731 megawatt equivalents (‘MWe’) and has energy assets in development and construction with a combined capacity of approximately 637 MWe.
Other
The company’s other lines of business include photovoltaic solar energy products and systems (‘integrated-PV’), consulting, and enterprise energy management services.
Business Segments
For the year ended December 31, 2024, the company’s business segments were as follows: North America Regions; Renewable Fuels; the U.S. Federal; Europe; and All Other.
On January 1, 2024, the company changed the structure of its internal organization, and its U.S. Regions and Canada are now included in North America Regions. Additionally, the company’s Asset Sustainability Group was formerly included in Canada, but is now included in ‘All Other’.
The company’s North America Regions, the U.S. Federal, and Europe segments offer energy efficiency products and services, which include the design, engineering, and installation of equipment and other measures to improve the efficiency and control the operation of a facility’s energy infrastructure, renewable energy solutions, and services, as well as the development and construction of small-scale plants that it owns or develops for customers that produce electricity, gas, heat, or cooling from renewable sources of energy and O&M services.
The company’s Renewable Fuels segment sells electricity and processed RNG derived from biomethane from small-scale plants that it owns and operates and provides O&M services for customer-owned small-scale RNG plants.
The ‘All Other’ category offers software and consulting services, as well as the sale of solar PV energy products and systems which it refers to as integrated-PV.
Sales and Marketing
The company’s sales and marketing approach is to offer customers customized and comprehensive energy efficiency solutions tailored to meet their economic, operational, and technical needs. It identifies project opportunities through referrals, requests for proposals (‘RFPs’), conferences and events, its website, digital campaigns, telemarketing, and repeat business from existing customers. The company’s direct sales force develops and follows up on customer leads. As of December 31, 2024, it had 166 employees in direct sales.
In preparation for a proposal, the company’s team typically conducts a preliminary audit of the customer’s needs and requirements and identifies areas to enhance efficiencies and reduce costs. It collects and analyzes the customer’s utility bill and other data related to energy use. If the bills are complex or numerous, the company often utilizes its proprietary enterprise energy management software tools to scan, compile, and analyze the information. The company’s experienced engineers visit and assess the customer’s current energy systems and infrastructure. Through its knowledge of the federal, state, and local governmental and utility environments, it assesses the availability of energy, utility, or environmental-based payments for usage reductions or renewable power generation, which helps it optimize the economic benefits of a proposed project for a customer. Once awarded a project, the company performs a more detailed audit of the customer’s facilities, which serves as the basis for the final specifications of the project and final contract terms.
For LFG projects, the company starts with gaining control of an LFG resource located close to the prospective customer. For solar and wind projects, it looks for sites where utilities are interested in purchasing renewable energy power at rates that are sufficient to make a project feasible. Where governmental agencies control the site and resource, such as a landfill owned by a municipality, the customer may be required to issue an RFP to use the site or resource.
Customers
In 2024, the company served customers throughout North America and Europe. Approximately 67.3% of the company’s revenues were derived from federal, state, provincial, or local government entities, including public housing authorities, public universities, and municipal utilities. The company’s federal customers include various divisions of the U.S. federal government. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the company’s largest 20 customers accounted for approximately 56.8% of its total revenues.
Competition
The company’s principal competitors include:
Smart Energy Solutions: McKinstry, CM3 Building Solutions, CMTA, Inc. (a Legence company), SitelogIQ, ABM Industries, Inc., Southland Industries, Energy Systems Group, LLC, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, NORESCO (a unit of Carrier Global Corporation), Schneider Electric, Siemens Building Technologies, and Trane Technologies (an Ingersoll-Rand company).
Energy Assets: In the LFG and RNG market, the company’s principal competitors primarily include large, national project developers and owners of landfills who self-develop projects using LFG from their own landfills, and other national renewable natural gas developers/owners, such as Archaea Energy, Montauk Renewables, Vanguard Renewables, Opal Fuels, and divisions of large multi-national oil and gas conglomerates. In the Solar PV and Battery Storage market, its principal competitors include NextEra Energy, Inc., Engie SA, Invenergy, EDF Renewables, and Clearway Energy Group LLC. In EaaS, its competitors include Engie SA, Enel X, Schneider Electric SE, and Redaptive, Inc.
O&M Services: EMCOR Energy Services, Comfort Systems USA, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, and Veolia.
Regulatory
Some of the company’s renewable energy projects, which are operating as exempt wholesale generators or operating under a special exemption from the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 2005 (‘PUHCA’), are currently subject to rate regulation for wholesale power sales by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (‘FERC’) under the Federal Power Act (‘FPA’) and must comply with certain FERC reporting requirements.
Seasonality
The company is subject to seasonal fluctuations and construction cycles, particularly in climates that experience colder weather during the winter months, such as the northern United States and Canada, and climates that experience extreme weather events, such as wildfires, storms or flooding, hurricanes, or at educational institutions, where large projects are typically carried out during summer months when their facilities are unoccupied. The company’s revenues and operating income in the third and fourth quarters (year ended December 31, 2024) are typically higher, and its revenues and operating income in the first quarter are typically lower than in other quarters of the year.
History
Ameresco, Inc. was founded in 2000. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 2000.
The Analyst Price Target shows the analysts’ low, high, and average target at a glance.
