The Decarbonization Dividend: Getting Paid to Power Down

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – December 03, 2025 – For years, corporate sustainability pledges have filled annual reports, promising a greener future through carbon offsets and renewable energy credits. While commendable, these efforts can often feel abstract, disconnected from the daily, hour-by-hour reality of the electricity grid. A new initiative is making that connection tangible, turning corporate climate goals into direct, measurable action by paying businesses to do one simple thing: power down at the dirtiest moments.

Voltus, Inc., a leading operator of virtual power plants (VPPs), has unveiled the results of its pioneering Carbon Response program. Since its pilot launch in 2023, the program has successfully prevented 8,920 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. It achieves this not by building new power plants, but by creating an innovative marketplace that pays commercial and industrial customers to reduce their electricity consumption precisely when the grid is at its most carbon-intensive. This isn't just another demand response program; it's a new financial instrument for decarbonization.

A New Marketplace for Climate Action

At its core, Carbon Response is a sophisticated three-sided marketplace that aligns the interests of previously disconnected parties. On one side are voluntary corporate buyers—large companies like Meta with ambitious decarbonization targets. These corporations fund the program, seeking tangible, verifiable ways to mitigate their carbon footprint beyond traditional offsets. They are, in effect, paying for avoided emissions in real time.

On the other side are commercial and industrial energy users with flexible electrical loads. This includes facilities like the Onondaga County Water Authority in Central New York, a participant in the pilot. For these businesses, the program represents a new revenue stream layered on top of existing energy management strategies. By agreeing to curtail their energy use during specific high-carbon windows, they receive direct payments funded by the corporate buyers.

Orchestrating this exchange is Voltus. The company's software platform acts as the market maker, connecting the corporate funding with the network of distributed energy resources (DERs) and flexible loads. This model transforms a company’s ability to power down its HVAC systems, water pumps, or manufacturing lines from a simple operational decision into a monetizable, carbon-reducing asset.

"Carbon Response adds another load reduction program and revenue stream to our portfolio without adding operational complexity," said Anson Bettinger, Water Distribution Manager at Onondaga County Water Authority. "We're already participating in capacity markets and utility programs through Voltus's platform—now we have the opportunity to additionally participate in Carbon Response and get paid for carbon reductions, too. The platform handles the optimization automatically... It's one integration, multiple revenue streams."

The Brains Behind the Brawn: Data-Driven Decarbonization

The true innovation behind Carbon Response lies in its intelligence. The program moves beyond traditional demand response, which typically dispatches assets to alleviate grid stress or respond to high wholesale prices. Instead, Voltus's program is triggered by carbon intensity.

By integrating with real-time and forecasted data from WattTime, a nonprofit subsidiary of RMI, the Voltus platform can pinpoint the exact moments when the electrical grid in a specific region is relying on its dirtiest power sources—so-called “peaker plants,” which are often older, less efficient fossil fuel generators. WattTime's Marginal Operating Emissions Rate (MOER) data provides a minute-by-minute view of the carbon impact of using one more megawatt-hour of electricity.

Armed with this data, the Voltus platform automatically identifies the optimal windows for dispatch and sends signals to participating customers to reduce their load. The result is a surgical strike against carbon emissions. Instead of a broad, inefficient reduction, the program ensures that every kilowatt-hour of avoided consumption delivers the maximum possible environmental benefit. This data-driven precision is what makes the program a "first-of-its-kind" market mechanism, as described by Voltus's Director of Energy Markets, Luke Metcalf.

For participating companies, the benefits extend to their own environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. The platform provides real-time, site-level reporting on avoided carbon emissions, allowing sustainability officers to demonstrate concrete progress toward Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reduction goals.

Monetizing Flexibility: Beyond Cost Savings to Profit Centers

For decades, facility managers have viewed energy consumption as a necessary cost to be managed and minimized. The Carbon Response program helps flip that script, reframing a building's flexible load as a potential profit center. While traditional demand response programs have long offered revenue, the potential earnings across the United States can be substantial, ranging from $75,000 to over $400,000 per megawatt-year depending on the market. Carbon Response adds another valuable layer to this revenue stack.

This shift is empowering business leaders to look at their energy assets in a new light. "Participating in demand response with Voltus is an easiest way to earn revenue while reducing our carbon footprint and supporting our community," noted a campus energy manager at a major university and Voltus customer, highlighting the desire to quickly quantify this impact.

By providing a direct financial reward for grid-supportive behavior, this model incentivizes investment in smart controls, energy storage, and other technologies that increase operational flexibility. It creates a powerful business case for sustainability that resonates in the C-suite, moving climate action from a cost center to a revenue-generating activity.

Scalability and the Road Ahead

With operations already spanning every wholesale electricity market in the U.S. and Canada, Voltus has the footprint to rapidly scale this new carbon-aware model. The program is currently available across most of the United States, and its software-based approach allows for relatively seamless expansion wherever flexible loads exist.

The broader market is certainly primed for growth. The global virtual power plant market is projected to expand from roughly $5.6 billion in 2025 to nearly $40 billion by 2035. This explosive growth is driven by the urgent need to integrate intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which make grid balancing more complex. According to a report from the Department of Energy, VPPs could meet a significant portion of peak demand and save billions in annual grid costs using existing technologies.

The primary hurdles are not technological but regulatory. While federal bodies like FERC and state-level Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) are beginning to modernize rules to accommodate DERs, policy often lags behind innovation. Experts argue that for programs like Carbon Response to reach their full potential, regulations must evolve to better recognize and compensate the value of targeted, data-driven grid services—including their environmental benefits.

Ultimately, Voltus's Carbon Response program offers a compelling glimpse into the future of the energy industry: a dynamic, decentralized, and intelligent grid where economic incentives are directly and powerfully aligned with climate outcomes. It demonstrates that the path to a cleaner grid isn't just about building more solar panels, but also about smartly managing the demand side of the equation, paying users to become active partners in the energy transition.