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E&C Group aims to meet rising demand for granular Renewable Energy Certificates and data-rich decarbonization strategies amid an increasingly competitive market through the acquisition of Apala Group, which will offer an end-to-end approach to clean energy procurement, Jens Lievens, CEO at E&C Group, told Platts.
The acquisition, announced on March 2, will form a combined group that also aims to include data management and power purchase agreement structuring, as well as broader climate and Score 3 strategies.
“Our ambition has always been to be the leading energy partner for any company, anywhere on the planet. Today, we take a giant step forward in that mission,” said Jens Lievens, E&C Group's CEO, calling Apala a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” being the company's first acquisition after 21 years of organic growth.
E&C, headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, and Toronto, Canada, advises large energy consumers on power, gas, and transition markets through its ePoint data platform, while San Francisco-based Apala Group brings experience in renewable sourcing, carbon project development and supply-chain decarbonization across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the US.
US RECs competitiveness rises
Beyond the global expansion, Lievens says that US client demand for RECs is becoming increasingly competitive, especially for industrial players.
E&C already works with US-based clients participating in voluntary initiatives such as SBTi and RE100, with RECs playing a key role in their Scope 2 strategies. Lievens described the trajectory of the US REC market as effectively locked in. “It’s something unstoppable, the growth of US RECs,” he said.
E&C explores PPAs with renewable developers and US RECs to “fill the gap” in decarbonization timelines, particularly where policy, grid constraints, or credit limits make long-term contracts more complex.
Lievens said the firm is seeing a shift away from generic, volume-based buying and toward more granular approaches linked to stricter targets and reporting expectations.
By tracking renewable energy by hour and location, granular RECs would allow companies to accurately match clean power use and meet stricter reporting requirements.
That includes growing attention to how US RECs line up with emerging guidance and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. “They need to be more granular, US RECs included, and that has to align with the GHG Protocol,” Lievens said.
"Granularity is a data challenge"
E&C’s acquisition of Apala is intended in part to address what Lievens described as the next challenge: aligning more granular instruments and additional requirements with the underlying data infrastructure.
“Granular RECs are the next step to meet that challenge,” he said. “Granularity is a data challenge, but I’m optimistic that the reporting needs to be improved, and it’s going to take some time.”
Lievens also stressed the importance of additionality, the idea that renewable procurement should support new capacity rather than merely reshuffling existing certificates. “If you do renewables, you need to do additionality; this is an important concept to ensure real impact,” he said.
Data centers and heavy industry in focus
Lievens highlighted data centers and heavy industry as two segments where the intersection of PPAs, RECs and grid constraints is particularly visible.
In the data center sector, he said the commercial and sustainability cases for renewables are converging as demand grows and public scrutiny rises. “The fastest way to power data centers is renewables and storage,” Lievens said. “This makes business sense and will only accelerate. The more data centers are developed, the
greater the implications for renewables.”
For heavy industry, including automotive manufacturers, Lievens said that “access to appropriate US RECs is already influencing market outcomes.” The firm is advising such clients on how to combine PPAs, US RECs and, in some cases, more granular instruments to maintain competitiveness while meeting climate commitments.
Looking ahead
Lievens described the US policy landscape as complex but supportive of market-based decarbonization tools, including RECs and carbon markets.
“Regardless of the policy view, it is important that trade agreements are developed,” he said. “State-level initiatives are key in the US. The role of carbon markets will increase, and there is interest in investment in that market and the role of the RECs. In the short term, this can become significant, perhaps within a year. In the macro view, carbon will play a key role.”
Looking ahead, E&C and Apala plan to deepen their work with US RECs, PPAs, and granular reporting standards as corporates move from basic certificates to more sophisticated, data-driven decarbonization tools.
“We did the acquisition because we believe sustainability has become one of the key economic topics instead of just ideological,” Lievens said, adding that the firm expects the demand for US RECs, and the need to manage them with greater precision, to continue growing in the years ahead.
