BP China buildings tech deal

BP has invested $3.6 million in energy management specialist R&B Technology, a Shanghai-based company that has developed an artificial intelligence platform to predict, control and improve energy usage in buildings.

The investment, made through the UK supermajor’s BP Ventures arm, is the company’s first foray into artificial intelligence (AI) technology funding in China and supports its low-carbon, storage and digital energy initiatives, BP said.

Buildings account for about a third of the world’s total energy consumption.

R&B’s software, targeted to the commercial and industrial building sector, applies AI techniques to energy-use diagnostics and optimisation to generate insights and recommendations for improving energy efficiency and to enhance predictive maintenance in buildings.

“This enables building managers to make informed decisions to optimise energy performance and, as a result, reduce carbon emissions,” BP said.

China has set out goals to reduce its industrial energy intensity by between 60% and 65% from 2005 levels by 2030 and is experiencing a building boom as its population is increasingly concentrated in urban areas.

“Improving the energy efficiency of buildings will be crucial for the transition to a lower-carbon world,” said Graham Howes, managing director of BP Ventures, Asia.

“The (commercial and industrial) buildings sector in China is large and still expanding, so the potential to affect change is significant."

The financial injection follows other recent BP Ventures investments in China, including funding last year for PowerShare, a provider of electric vehicle sharing software, and a $10 million investment in NIO Capital to explore opportunities in advanced mobility, made in 2018.

Advanced mobility is one of five strategic areas for investment the fund has targeted in China, along with power and storage, carbon management, “bio” and low-carbon products and digital transformation, BP said.

R&B Technology co-founder, chief operating officer and chief technology officer Glenn Wu described the company’s core product, BeOP, as “an AI platform that navigates principles and relationships between data and data, things and things, and data and things.”

The $3.6 million investment is part of R&B’s latest funding round, which was led by BP Ventures and supported by CLP Innovation Ventures Limited, a subsidiary of CLP Holdings Limited, and JAFCO Asia.

Dev Sanyal, chief executive of BP’s Alternative Energy business, said the investment aligns with the company’s strategy “to help meet society’s demands for more energy, delivered in new and cleaner ways”.