
WattTime
Model & Strategy
Clean, renewable energy has become a significant source of electricity in the US and worldwide. But due to weather patterns, renewables supply does not always line up with the demand for electricity. This causes massive amounts of renewable energy to go to waste each day — at times, California wastes enough renewable energy to power Arizona. With no way (yet) to store energy at scale, across the world we fire up polluting coal and gas plants to compensate when demand exceeds renewables supply, contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.
At the same time, about 70% of energy consumed worldwide could be shifted to a different time without impacting efficacy (e.g., charging batteries, refrigeration, or heating a house). WattTime provides groundbreaking Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) software, which works by detecting specific moments when using electricity won’t activate highly-emitting power plants, and automatically syncing electricity-consuming devices to use energy at those specific moments. It’s compatible with anything that uses electricity and has an Internet connection: from smartphones to thermostats, electric vehicles to industrial HVAC. WattTime immediately reduces greenhouse gas emissions by shifting demand from dirty to clean energy; in the longer term, deploying WattTime en masse across multiple device segments can shift the entire demand curve for renewable energy, driving better economics for renewables overall and, in turn, a faster shift to clean energy.
What if you could press a button and just say no to energy that didn’t fit your values? What would you choose? WattTime envisions a world where everyone, everywhere, could soon be empowered to decide that for themselves.



Usually when you plug in anything that uses electricity, you have no way of knowing where the energy powering it is coming from. One minute, it can be a wind turbine. Five minutes later, a coal plant.
UC Berkeley PhD student Gavin McCormick realized that this constant change is actually environmentally helpful. If we could somehow know what type of energy we were getting, when, we could actually use this information to deliberately time devices to run at cleaner moments, reducing pollution.
Which begged the question, why exactly was it a secret when the power grid was clean, and when it wasn’t? So, after trying and failing to get power grid operators and utilities to release the information, Gavin tried a different tactic: he attended a hackathon.
There, Gavin met software engineers and grid experts with day jobs at places like Google, MIT, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Using emerging new statistical techniques, together the team developed software algorithms capable of detecting in real time how clean your energy will be if you use it at a certain moment. With that, WattTime was born.
Impact
WattTime’s core priority is deploying AER on a target of 26B devices, which could save 330M tons/year of CO2.
To date, over 1M AERs were deployed in 2020.
Adjacent projects have delivered major impact much faster than expected, including assisting California in cutting energy storage emissions by 100% sector-wide, launching the first global power plant emissions satellite monitoring system, and developing a related technology (Location-based Emissions Reduction) with 4.3B tons/year of CO2 emissions savings potential.
WattTime News
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WattTime Awarded Climate Action Grant from the Patrick J. McGovern FoundationThe Patrick J. McGovern Foundation has named 10 climate action organizations around the world to the 2022 Accelerator Grant Program to advance their use of…Dec 2021
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This Al Gore-Supported Project Uses AI to Track the World’s Emissions in Near Real TimePortfolio organization WattTime announced its partnership with former United States Vice President Al Gore and a coalition of environmental groups (including OceanMind) to develop a…Jul 2020
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We're proud to support @nrgenergy's environmental work w/ WattTime data. According to the new #NRGsustainability re… https://t.co/nThikJpgHo
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RT @ClimateTRACE: If you missed the Climate TRACE panel earlier this month during @economistimpact #SustainabilityWeek US, you can now view…
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With intense heatwaves becoming more common, there's a better way to avoid strain on the grid. Many devices, from H… https://t.co/aEiIpSpK5S
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If you're not sure how the concept of #emissionality applies to the larger #renewableenergy procurement conversatio… https://t.co/iIggOB4gVX
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RT @TransitionZero: How does @ClimateTRACE help drive climate transparency with the power of data science & satellite data? 🔍 Watch our co…
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Attention #CollisionConf attendees! Gavin McCormick of WattTime/@ClimateTRACE will present Wednesday at 2pm EDT on… https://t.co/v2EDQw3Xgy
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We had a blast in NYC this week filming an upcoming episode of "Tech for Good" — airing on @cnni on June 30. The ep… https://t.co/k3UQn8nAEf
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Understanding the real #emissions impact of your company's activities is important. What's even more critical is th… https://t.co/yx0gmcVUsE
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We believe #GHGemissions transparency will reshape the climate fight. Gavin McCormick will join #CollisionConf to d… https://t.co/S2EE3hi4B6
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Interesting new findings on the necessary path forward in the #EVtransition from @BloombergNEF here.… https://t.co/yKmnODPVxO
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Don't forget to register and tune in on Wednesday for the @ClimateTRACE panel: "How #satellites are bringing radica… https://t.co/9yZs1YXcCA
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Have you met WattTime senior ML engineer Hannes Koenig? Here's what he had to say about joining the team: “When int… https://t.co/v9cQwu61y8
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"Not all #renewableenergy projects are created equal when it comes to displacing fossil-fuel generation." Our par… https://t.co/Yxsjk7t3Wk
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With calls to #electrifyeverything growing stronger, it's possible to realize even deeper CO2 reductions. Internet-… https://t.co/87czvWBP5h
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We love this example of #demandflexibility being leveraged to reduce moments of peak energy demand. In this scenari… https://t.co/nrYXxwILPE
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"The feedback we got is 'we don't know if it's gonna work. But we do know that if it works it will matter.'" -Gavin… https://t.co/GryHUpOzRL
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RT @ClimateTRACE: Mark your calendar for 24 hours from now! @lekha_sridhar, senior policy analyst at @wattTime, represents Climate TRACE a…
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WattTime's founder and exec director Gavin McCormick will be joining this virtual fireside chat on June 8 to discus… https://t.co/s4aLgVCsxz
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This is a great example of how flexible demand can be leveraged to reduce emissions and balance the grid. A new pro… https://t.co/O0HmbFDp7v
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Hats off to @clearloopUS for prioritizing #avoidedemissions impact in their #renewablenergy strategy! “We’re arri… https://t.co/7DyRxv5znD