Once the quiet workhorses of the energy transition, today’s scaled climate software and services companies are facing a new chapter of demand-driven opportunity. To meet it, they’re looking to new capital structures, new expansion strategies, and new operational playbooks.

The climate, energy, and industrial markets are undergoing one of the most significant transformations in modern history. Surging energy demand, the acceleration of electrification, and the reshoring of manufacturing are driving a massive buildout of infrastructure and technology across the globe. Data center capacity alone is expected to rise from 55 GW in 2023 to 219 GW by 2030, while global investment in the energy transition surpassed $2 trillion in 2024 and continues to rise. These forces are reshaping entire sectors, from utilities and industrials to construction and logistics, and a generation of digitally enabled companies are stepping up to power a new wave of modernization.

For years, digitally enabled climate businesses have been essential to the energy transition, catalyzing grid resilience, industrial optimization, distributed energy management, energy trading, and infrastructure deployment. These companies have grown and matured - reaching profitability, deep customer relationships, and product-market fit - and now they are now looking for their next chapter. For companies serving the energy and industrial sectors, scale requires more than general SaaS guidelines and rinse-and-repeat playbooks. Facing long sales cycles, specialized use cases, and complex customer structures, companies at this stage need to have a tailored strategy that balances growth with deep customer trust, operational rigor, and durable revenue.

That’s exactly what we’ll be exploring in our latest series, Scaling for Endurance. We will dive into how companies can execute the next chapter of enduring growth in climate, implementing pivotal strategies to drive growth within energy and industrial sectors while protecting the foundations that made them invaluable to their customers.

Learn more about Endurance, Energize’s private equity strategy serving the asset-light climate middle market.

The Nuances of Scaling in Energy and Industrial Markets

While every firm follows its unique trajectory, climate and industrial companies must navigate unique market challenges:

• Complex, regulated customer ecosystem: Buyers can span utilities, OEMs, EPCs, asset managers, manufacturers, and more. Each of these customer bases requires different procurement and compliance processes, which can complicate both organic and inorganic growth efforts.
• Integration with physical infrastructure: When digital products interface with IoT sensors, control systems, and intricate data layers, operational execution is the highest priority. Customer sites may be remote and off-the grid, and deployment environments can be complicated. Growth strategies must balance dynamic innovation with high-quality, trustworthy service.
• Long sales cycles and multi-stakeholder decisions: Complicated sales cycles can slow down new product rollouts, M&A integration, or market expansion. When pilots can extend up to two years before a contract is signed, commercialization and resource planning must be intentional and closely sequenced.
• Specialized talent needs: Scaling in this space requires advanced technical and domain expertise, which can be hard to come by. Companies must continue to attract and retain the right personnel to meet customer needs and bolster their market position.
• Economic cyclicality and policy dependence: Demand in energy-related industries can depend on commodity prices, incentive programs, and regulatory shifts. Companies must design flexible business models that can withstand or capitalize on changing market and policy environments.
• Hybrid product-service models: In highly complex industries like energy and industrials, customers frequently expect a blend of software and services to support technology implementation. Scaling effectively requires balancing the high margins of software with the high-touch trust of services.

Writing the Next Chapter

In the midst of these challenges, achieving durable scale in energy and industrial sectors requires more than formulas and capital. The rest of the Scaling for Endurance series will walk through the growth levers that teams can use to drive scale while avoiding the pitfalls that threaten a climate company’s trajectory.

• Mergers and Acquisitions: In Part I, we outline how successful companies design M&A strategies that complement organic growth - selecting the right markets, planning integration, and partnering with specialists to identify high-value targets.
• Commercial Expansion: In Part II, we share how companies can deepen or expand market share organically, driving growth within existing markets or exploring adjacent industries.
• Geographic Expansion: Proven software platforms can be transplanted to regions where climate and industrial markets are underserved. This edition will demonstrate how to execute geographic expansion when handling the compliance expectations, labor availabilities, and policy structures that vary across regions.
• Operational Maturity: As companies prepare to scale, they must first strengthen their operational foundation. In this piece, we’ll show how successful businesses enhance organic growth and future-proof themselves for success as they scale – by optimizing revenue and go-to-market models, modernizing internal systems, and embracing technology & professionalization to drive operational efficiency.

These levers mark pivotal opportunities for mature climate companies, where industry expertise and the right strategic partners become essential. By successfully executing these strategies, companies can scale deliberately, strengthen their core, and capture new growth opportunities without diluting what makes them durable.

Scaling for Endurance

As the energy transition enters its next phase, mature climate companies continue to be the backbone of a rapidly expanding market, bringing invaluable tools to some of the most critical sectors of the economy. Their success will depend on balancing growth and discipline, pursuing new opportunities while preserving the operational strength, human capital, and customer relationships that define them. Our Endurance strategy is built to support these companies, providing the specialist capital and industry expertise that unlock a company’s next phase without losing its core. Stay tuned to hear how our Endurance team is coaching companies to execute their next growth initiatives - from strategic expansion and M&A to operational excellence - and what we think it takes to build a truly enduring business.