HomeWatch the full interview with Jake Monroe, CEO of Camion Energy (now part of Deepki), on why electrification represents a $7 trillion investment opportunity for real estate owners, demonstrating how AI turns raw energy data into actionable capital returns.
What Electrification Actually Means
Electrification is the transition from burning fossil fuels on-site to running equipment, heating, and vehicles on electricity, whether drawn from the grid or generated and stored directly at the property.
For commercial real estate, it comes down to four interconnected upgrades:
- Heat: Replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps.
- Charging: Installing EV charging infrastructure in car parks and delivery yards.
- Generation: Adding rooftop solar panels to produce clean, cheap power on-site.
- Storage: Deploying battery systems to store power when cheap and supply energy when grid rates peak.
These four elements work together. Electrifying heating systems and vehicle fleets increases a building’s electricity demand. That higher demand creates the necessary power load to make rooftop solar and battery storage highly cost-effective investments. Beyond lower costs, generating “sovereign electrons” on-site protects occupiers from volatile, foreign fossil fuel prices.
Why Real Estate Owners Should Care
Occupiers used to fuel their operations off-site at filling stations or via gas pipelines. Electrification moves that fuelling inside your lease line. When fleet vehicles plug into your car park, fuelling becomes a landlord-controlled service.
This shift creates two structural advantages for asset managers:
- Tenant Attraction and Retention: On-site power availability is becoming a critical building specification alongside floor loading or ceiling height. Assets that cannot support tenant power needs will face longer letting periods.
- NOI Expansion: On-site solar and battery storage are not costs landlords absorb on the tenant’s behalf. They are yield-generating services that reduce overall energy bills, driving up to a +40% increase in site Net Operating Income (NOI) when optimised.
Matching Strategy to Fund Mandates
Electrification is not a one-size-fits-all capital expenditure. It adapts directly to your investment hold horizon:
- Value-Add and Divestment (3–5 Year Hold): Focus on immediate, high-ROI solar, battery, and EV projects that boost site NOI right before disposition, maximizing exit valuation and IRR.
- Long-Hold Core Funds: Focus on continuous yield expansion, green lease premiums, and protecting long-term asset value against regulatory stranding risks.
What Real Estate Owners Should Do Next
Electrification does not happen across an entire portfolio at once. It happens asset by asset around plant replacement cycles, lease events, and local grid headroom. A common misconception is that grid infrastructure cannot support the shift, but electricity is abundant; the real challenge is identifying local capacity and interval data.
Because utility tariffs, incentives, and tenant fleet contracts change constantly, static consultant reports go out of date almost immediately. Prioritising capital spend requires continuous data analysis.
By pairing Deepki’s data platform of over 500,000 monitored assets with agentic AI models, owners can underwrite clean energy investments 90% faster and dynamically rank assets by upside.
Get Started
Ready to identify which assets in your portfolio are prime for high-return electrification? Contact Deepki to screen your portfolio today.
