Renewables and Low-Carbon Solutions

Energy

Energy development has a whole new meaning today, as companies search for the right strategies, investments, and operating models around low-carbon and renewable energy. BCG’s approach equips companies to maximize value from participation.

Renewable and low-carbon energy sources are essential for sustainability—and they create opportunities. For both established and emerging players in the energy industry, a low-carbon future opens the door to new businesses in areas like solar, wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture. But maximizing returns often means understanding—and developing—a host of new capabilities and enablers. Our low-carbon and renewable energy consultants tie it all together.

How BCG Helps with Low-Carbon Solutions and Renewable Energy

We support low carbon solution projects from strategy through implementation

Our team draws on deep commercial, technical, and regulatory expertise to create low-carbon and renewable energy leaders. This multitiered approach helps clients master all the elements that drive success. For established players, these include low-carbon solutions and portfolio strategy, operating model, and talent, as well as go-to-market planning, M&A, and digital and operational excellence. For emerging players, key issues include raising capital and scaling manufacturing.

Add to this the many complexities around renewable and low-carbon energy sources: auctions; supply chains; and markets, regulations, and incentives that take different shapes—with different implications—across regions.

Our Approach to Renewables and Low-Carbon Solutions

By looking end to end at low-carbon and renewable energy, BCG’s renewables and low-carbon consulting experts can zero in on the challenges, questions, capabilities, and tactics that matter most for each client. And we can create optimal solutions. Here are some of our major areas of focus.

Explore our areas of focus

Developing a Low-Carbon Solutions Strategy. We leverage expertise across renewable and low-carbon power and technologies—from wind and solar to biofuels and hydrogen to carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)—to assess how different portfolio choices and investments align with a client’s goals and circumstances. The idea is to tailor the strategy so that it best fits relevant market dynamics and best utilizes existing talent and infrastructure to position the company to create value.
Optimizing Go to Market. Our global reach gives us a deep understanding of how the regulations, incentive structures, and tax implications around low-carbon and renewable energy vary from one region to another. By advising clients on the regulatory backdrop most relevant to their business, they can pursue the right opportunities in the right places.
Winning in Renewables. We help clients tackle the unique processes and considerations renewable energy introduces. Among them: auctions for the rights to build offshore wind farms, risk and resilience in supply chains, and feedstock choices and pricing for biofuels. For established players, this is new ground. We develop the tactics and approaches that make them business as usual.
Sparking Operational Excellence. Our low-carbon and renewables consulting experts help develop the talent, organization design, and ways of working that spark and accelerate growth. We guide clients in creating upskilling programs, adopting agile methodologies, and understanding when—and how—to run their low-carbon solutions unit as a separate business. Our experts also help establish performance benchmarking to assess and close gaps and integrate digital tools and processes for more seamless and effective operations. And we make it all stick through robust change management.
Screening and Integrating Acquisitions. Our low-carbon and renewable energy consultants leverage BCG’s deep expertise in M&A and post-merger integration to identify the best prospects for acquisition—and bring new capabilities, talent, and infrastructure into the organization as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Helping us steer the course to a low-carbon future is an array of proprietary tools, diagnostics, models, and market intelligence. These include the CCUS Hub Search, which matches clusters of CO₂ sources with possible storage locations.