A company that specializes in making the facilities of some of the country’s largest corporations more energy efficient has moved its headquarters to Denver.
Redaptive, which calls itself an energy-as-a-service provider, was formerly based in San Francisco. The company opened an office in the Denver area in 2019 and made the Mile High City its official headquarters in March.
“Denver was, I would say, our HQ2 with San Francisco as our primary location,” Redaptive CEO Arvin Vohra said.
Making Denver the official headquarters was “a no-brainer decision for us internally,” Vohra said. The office is in the Tabor Center on 17th Street in downtown Denver.
In the past few years, companies from across the country and around to the world have relocated their headquarters to Denver. For example, Bay Area company Virta Health moved to Denver last year and as did United Kingdom company Macs Adventure.
The city’s commitment to sustainability was a big draw for Redaptive. Vohra noted Denver has a climate action plan as well as goals for making the transition to renewable energy.
Vohra said other factors in making the move were Denver’s central location, quality of life, the talent pool and area universities. Redaptive is hiring new people every week. Vohra expects the current staff in Denver to grow to roughly 100 over the next several months.
The company also has sales positions across the country.
Vohra said Redaptive has grown dramatically since it first opened an office in Denver. In 2019, the company said it managed about 1,300 sites, covering more than 100 million square feet of commercial and industrial facilities in 44 states.
Redaptive currently manages 3,000 sites over approximately 200 million square feet of commercial and industrial facilities in 47 states, according to the company. Of those sites, 46 projects are in Colorado.
“The investment we’re looking to make in Denver is very significant,” Vohra said.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced in late December that it had invested approximately $200 million in Redaptive.
“The ambition of our investors and the purpose of raising that type of money is to grow the business dramatically,” Vohra said.
It’s more important than ever to make buildings more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable, he added.
Buildings are the source of about 40% of the worldwide heat-trapping emissions. Cutting those emissions is considered essential to dealing with climate change. Denver and other Colorado communities and the state are updating their building codes to promote energy efficiency and encourage powering buildings with electricity rather than fossil fuels.
Redaptive works with companies nationwide that want to save money by cutting energy use and meet their own goals for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The company designs the project to achieve those goals, pays for the equipment and construction upfront, maintains the equipment and measures and verifies the outcomes.
The companies that Redaptive has worked with include AT&T, Whirlpool, Goodyear, Cintas and Bank of America.
“Often these clients have hundreds of facilities, if not thousands,” Vohra said.
To reach their carbon-reduction goals, “they just need more people doing more stuff faster,” he said.
