Introduction to Reshape Energy

Reshape Energy is betting on a more integrated approach to accelerate the decarbonization of the built environment. Founded in Munich, Germany back in May 2024, the startup is led by a team with expertise scaling energy businesses, including the German division of Octopus energy and energy price comparison platform Verivox.

It’s focusing on selling energy system upgrades to commercial real estate, targeting property owners with portfolios of buildings. Carbon emissions from heating buildings significantly contribute to climate change. Therefore, accelerating the transition to lower-carbon forms of heat management, such as heat pumps and solar panels, is a key piece of meeting climate goals.

Regulatory Pressure and Challenges

Hence why, in Europe, there’s considerable regulatory pressure being applied to building owners to carry out energy upgrades. At the same time, accessing the specialist skills required to pull off these energy upgrade projects — or even just understand what needs to be done to optimize a particular building — can slow momentum for installing low-carbon solutions.

Reshape Energy is hoping a one-stop-shop model will help to vent some of the friction out of the system — starting in the German market but with its eye on expanding elsewhere in Europe as it scales the approach.

Acquisition Model and Funding

The startup is taking on this energy upgrade inertia via an acquisition model that sees it buying existing companies in the sector to bring key capabilities and customer relations in house — powering up an energy-optimization-as-a-service offering.

Reshape has already made some acquisitions to build out its offering. More are on the cards — and the company will be using some of a new €5 million funding round for this purpose, its first external capital raise.

Market Context and Competition

Germany has seen a boom in energy upgrade startups in recent years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the resulting spike in gas prices. But the first wave of energy upgrade activity — much of which focused on single family homes — that followed that shock has “definitely calmed down,” says CEO and co-founder Benjamin Stanzl.

Players in the space have more incentive to get out of their lanes and take a more joined up approach to delivering the next wave of upgrades, he says. In turn, it enables tackling more complex challenges like commercial real estate upgrades.