Centerbridge Partners – Astha Ummat – 2017

Goals

Centerbridge, a private investment management firm, engaged EDF Climate Corps fellow Astha Ummat to identify energy cost saving opportunities for its portfolio company, Great Wolf, the largest owner and operator of family-oriented waterpark resorts in North America. This initiative aligns with Centerbridge’s effort to encourage consideration of factors related to sustainability across its portfolio of companies. With support from the Centerbridge and Great Wolf teams, Ummat identified energy efficiency goals and opportunities, quantified and documented potential operational savings and environmental benefits, and developed a financial model to project return on investment.

Solutions

After analyzing energy use patterns across Great Wolf’s lodges, Ummat developed a set of parameters to prioritize an initial set of high impact locations and initiatives. Gathering necessary information for each site, she worked with senior leaders at Great Wolf, as well as an external technical partner, to identify a menu of cost saving opportunities with a particular focus on energy efficiency, solar energy and battery storage. As the lodges span different climatic zones and states, she analyzed energy use trends across sites and explored how to most effectively leverage federal and state utility rebates. Ummat then ranked these opportunities based on the financial returns of different projects and developed an implementation plan for the interventions, which included a scale and replication plan for the remaining lodges.

Potential Impact

Ummat’s recommendations, spanning energy efficiency and renewable energy, are projected to provide an average payback period of 2.6-4.1 years for Great Wolf. The projects could save up to $1.5 million in energy costs and offset approximately 12.7 million kWh of electricity. This would result in a reduction of approximately 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the annual emissions of 1900 cars according to the EPA’s greenhouse gas conversion calculator. Moving forward, Centerbridge and Great Wolf have a deeper understanding of the benefits, both in terms of cost savings and environmental impact, that energy efficiency and renewable energy opportunities can have. Centerbridge intends to apply the learnings from this project to other portfolio companies, where applicable.