Director of Sustainability Services, Nick Franco was recently featured in CSO Magazine. In the article, Nick Franco discusses how the company is leveraging mature, green and cutting edge solutions on behalf of Kinect Energy Group's clients

1. WRITTEN BY HARRY MENEAR
KINECT
ENERGY
GROUP
Digitally transforming
the data warehouse
NICK FRANCO, KINECT’S DIRECTOR
OF SUSTAINABILITY SERVICES,
DISCUSSES HOW THE COMPANY IS
LEVERAGING MATURE, GREEN AND
CUTTING EDGE SOLUTIONS FOR
ITS CLIENTS
46
TECHN OLOGY
APRIL 2019

2. 47
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3. ounded in 2016, the Kinect
Energy Group is formed from
the collective talents of Bergen
Energi, Nordisk Energipartner, U.S.
Energy Services, UX Energy, Beach
ront Energy, and TM, nc. ith
offices in the Americas, Europe,
Australia and Japan, Kinect is a global
force for green energy solutions.
Combining data-driven solutions and
technical expertise with a personal
one-on-one approach, Kinect delivers
a consulting service that helps its
clients achieve its energy goals in both
an environmentally sustainable, and
cost-effective manner. inect is an
energy management company and our
goal is to help our clients source
electricity, natural gas, whatever fuel
they’re using, most cost-competitively,
and help them hedge it so they’re not
open to price uctuations e plains
Nick Franco, Kinect’s Director of
Sustainability Services. We sat down
F
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TECHN OLOGY
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4. with Franco to talk about the ways
Kinect is bringing diverse green energy
solutions to its client base, how the
company is leveraging mature and
cutting-edge technological solutions
for its clients, and how Kinect itself is
staying green amidst rapid global
expansion.
ranco was inect s first director of
sustainability. “The position didn’t
exist before I took it,” explains Franco,
whose role involves managing relation-
ships with “clients demanding more
sustainability solutions, running the
gamut from energy efficiency to
renewable energy to strategy develop-
ment carbon reporting - everything
under the sun in terms of sustainability”.
In and out of both public and private
sectors, Franco spent 10 years working
for the Environmental Protection
Agency, developing national enforce-
ment strategies. “There were the
companies who complied and then
“WE SIT ON THE SAME SIDE
OF THE TABLE WITH THE
CUSTOMER TO CREATE
COMPETITION AND IMPROVE
TRANSPARENCY”
—
Nick Franco ,
Director of Sustainability Services,
Kinect Energy Group
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5. there were the companies who
innovated their way out of having to
comply with environmental regulations.”
ranco remembers My goal was to go
help those companies and build up
those companies, the ones that were
being more innovative and not taking it
as a drag on business, but seeing it
an opportunity to innovate and lead in
their industries.”
He notes that, prior to the public
sector, “I had worked in industry
before had worked at eneral Motors
for a while. worked at Cray Research,
which was a supercomputer company
for five years. have e perienced both
in the government side and then the
business side of things.” He pauses,
momentarily, before another of the
many strings to his bow leaps to mind.
“And then, actually, I also worked for
the Sierra Club, which is the largest
environmental nonprofit here in the
United States, for about a year.” With
Kinect’s global client base spanning
multiple industries in the public and
private sectors, the Director of Sustain-
ability Services role fits him to a tee.
SITUATIONAL SOLUTIONS
“It’s an important strategy to meet your
customer where they are in their
sustainability journey.” Kinect focuses
on tailoring its services to client
companies with different levels of
sustainability infrastructure, from
businesses starting along the road to
reducing their carbon footprint, to
those already operating at a high
degree of sustainability. Regarding the
former, Franco says, “I’ll do a seminar
for a client on the very basic ‘what is
a sustainability strategy?’, ‘How
would you approach it?’ What are the
“AS A COMPANY,
WE CONTINUE TO
EXPAND AND GROW,
BOTH ORGANICALLY
AND THROUGH
ACQUISITION. OUR
GOAL IS TO BETTER
SERVE OUR CLIENTS
GLOBALLY”
—
Nick Franco ,
Director of Sustainability Services,
Kinect Energy Group
50
TECHN OLOGY
APRIL 2019

6. they using and what that is”, explains-
Franco. “With that step taken, you can
then develop your carbon footprint.
[Does the client] have goals around
renewable energy use, or carbon
reduction, or energy e ciency ou
can then leverage that data to do any
number of things. n the e ciency
side, if they’re willing and able to put in
their production information, then we
can show them per unit energy costs.”
On the other hand, companies with
a customer-facing business model
are more likely to already be enacting
reporting methods?’, and how best
to get them moving.”
“Part of it is where the company is
starting. If they’ve got nothing, and
they’re wanting to develop a strategy
then information gathering of the data
and the likes is kind of the key piece for
them. We have an energy and data
management system called Kinect
nline. The first step is ust to get all of
their data into that system.”
Once Kinect collects and collates
a company’s data, they can provide the
client “vision into how much energy are
CLICK TO WATCH: ‘KINECT ENERGY GROUP’
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www.csomagazine.com

7. “IT’S AN IMPORTANT STRATEGY
TO MEET YOUR CUSTOMER
WHERE THEY ARE IN THEIR
SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY”
—
Nick Franco ,
Director of Sustainability Services,
Kinect Energy Group
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TECHN OLOGY
APRIL 2019

8. a sustainability strategy. In these cases,
Kinect’srolecentresmorearound“avery
specific ask, like we have a renewable
energy goal, how do I do that most
cost-effectively in the way that s going
to create the greatest brand value for
the products?’”
“I have a client who’s got 15 plants,”
says Franco. “We’ll rank those plants
based on the e ciency of production.
Then we know which ones to attack
first in terms of doing an energy audit
and looking at upgrades.” With respect
to a client that already has a sustain-
ability strategy, or even one that is new
to green solutions, Franco stresses
that you go to the least e cient plant,
because you’re going to get more
reduction in energy use, more reduc-
tion in carbon, but it’s also going to pay
off faster. The worst thing you can do is
go to the highly e cient plant and try
and find a solution and they re like well,
it doesn’t pay back. It doesn’t make any
sense. I don’t want to do this.”
Kinect excels at identifying exactly
how green energy solutions can be
applied to entice a client towards
CLICK TO WATCH: ‘KINECT ENERGY GROUP – XISOT’
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www.csomagazine.com

9. reducing its environmental impact with
greater e ciencies and larger profits.
“We’re very mindful of helping our
clients manage the internal story. We
want them to start out where there is
the greatest opportunity,” Franco says.
“Sustainability is top of mind for lots
of folks, but the degree to which you
can integrate it with something
they’re already familiar with like
hedging, or efficiency makes it an
easier sell for them.”
Kinect also deals with clients across
different industries that work in
different ways. s e amples, ranco
picks out agriculture - where Kinect
consults for several ethanol producers
– and universities. “We work up a lot of
companies that make ethanol,” says
Franco. “We’ll have them look at how to
lower their carbon footprint, because
the lower the carbon footprint of the
ethanol production, the more premium
they can get for their product… But the
challenge with them is they’re very
price sensitive, so we help them
manage through that. Moving on to
universities, he notes that “they’re
much more forward thinking on
sustainability. Not only do they have
a sustainability plan, but many of them
have targets for when they’re going to
be carbon neutral.” Then, speaking of
the challenges inherent to the industry,
he says “a large university is some-
times bigger than a small city. We have
to help them figure out how to become
carbon neutral in a way that isn’t huge
cost for the university because they
obviously don’t have a lot of money.”
Overcoming diverse challenges
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10. done in Australia so far, maybe two. So
it’s a very emerging market. And you go
to Japan and it’s not even on their
radar there.”
“So that’s kind of a difficulty,’’ he
admits. “But that’s why our clients
bring us in. There are differences
across geographies in terms of the
solutions available. We need to help
them figure that out and what makes
the most sense.” Wherever Kinect
operates in the world, and whoever
they serve, “we sit on the same side of
the table with the customer to create
competition and improve transpar-
ency,’’ says Franco. “As a company,
we continue to expand and grow, both
organically, and through acquisition.
Our goal is to better serve our clients
globally. We’ll continue to expand in
Asia and other parts of the world
where we’re not as strongly repre-
sented right now. The ability to provide
that kind of seamless solution across
the globe for our clients – that’s how
we’re pushing now.”
posed by a diverse client base is central
to Kinect’s strategy going forward.
Franco recalls: “I recently spent some
time in our ustralian o ce and then in
apan, and think the di culty is that
the solution sets aren’t the same in
different geographies. ots of compa-
nies here in the US made the commit-
ment of 100% renewable energy…
that’s been going on here for years. I go
to Australia and one project has been
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