E627 | EUCVC Summit 2025: Crispin Leick, EnBW New Ventures; Georg Reifferscheid, REWE Group & Jeppe Høier: Fueling the AI Age: Europe's Energy Imperative

0:00The energy transition isn't coming, it's here and Europe's corporates are on the front lines. In this session, Crispin Leich from NBW Ventures and Georg Reiferscheid of Reva Group unpack how industrial and consumer giants are investing in clean energy, adapting supply chains, and navigating policy headwinds. Where is capital moving fastest? What barriers still block progress? And how do we turn ambition into action before the window closes?

0:39Crispin, ENBW Ventures is an evergreen structure, one of the fantastic solutions within CVC. What does that give you and what kind of edge do you have when you deploy within the electricity space or the energy space, I should say? I don't think that it has something specific with the energy space. The first CVC that I was running was actually closed-end fund structure. And now with EMBW New Ventures, we decided explicitly from day one, which was nine years ago, to go to an evergreen structure. And actually, when I look back down the nine years, that was the best decision ever. Why? So just that you don't get me wrong.

1:15So evergreen means that we can really reinvest all the proceeds, all the exit proceeds into new startups. That means we have a closed end business model, basically. We are sort of entrepreneurs on our own. What does that mean for the C-level? it has been quite an easy decision because I told them, okay, you do a one-time capital commitment, that's it. You'll never see me again. We either grow out of our own profits, cash on cash, or we fail. Then it's better for the founders because the founders understand very well that if our business model is that we need to grow through the exit proceeds, that actually the ultimate success of the startups is what drives us every day and not sort of the decisions of the corporate.

1:52And it's also very good for the team because at the end of the day, it's the sort of accountability is 100%. You need to perform. So if you don't perform, you're out. So there has been only advantages. And what I also saw with the closed-end fund structures, if the other players in the field, in the community, know that you either have to sell or that you need to go to an exit, so it adds a lot of more flexibility. The biggest learning actually is that we're not less exit-driven, but more. Why? Closed-end fund structure means you have some optionality in and you leave it in, while for the evergreen, our opportunity cost is very high.

2:27If we have deployed capital in a startup that is not performing so well, we could put it in another startup, because if we exit it, even if we get only part of the money back. So we would be much more exit driven than any traditional VC fund. Georg, you're working for Rewe Group, one of Europe's largest retailers, and leveraging the operational scale that comes with it. With supply chain often accounting for more than 90 % of the emissions, how do you operate with that? How do you target that in your approach? Our approach is pretty much based on bringing relevant innovation in our operations.

3:07Strategic approach based on our business units and each of our venture teams is based in the operations. So my team, for example, works out of the sustainability department, and everything we do is based on our mandate from our SBTI goal. So we have very ambitious SBTI goals, decarbonizing supply chain, but not just the supply chain, is the biggest leverage. And currently in my team, we look mostly actually at the scope one and two emissions, so meaning emissions we can directly target and have the specific leverage to find solutions. So in our venture activities, we can also, as he mentioned, do direct investments.

3:52We actually work with venture clienting approaches. At the end of the day, it's not about how interesting is the startup or the startup topic per se, but how relevant is the topic that the startup solves or works in and how big is the operational need. And again, based on our SBTI goals, and you mentioned it, scope 3 is by far the biggest challenge. And the problem is currently we don't have the data. We work with secondary data. We need to rely on our suppliers. We don't have the direct access, obviously, to implement those solutions that startups offer. So scope 3 is a pretty big topic here.

4:35So, Crispin, scope 3 is big over at Rewegro, right? what are you targeting at the moment? What is exciting within your investment field? So first of all, the general thesis is unchanged since nine years now. And that is basically that ENVW is a large German utility in the critical infrastructure space. So they're deploying in the next five, six years, 50 billion of capital into hard assets. So our core thesis is that we invest into anything that is making these huge infrastructure deployments more capital efficient, more intelligent, sort of smarter in a way, can add to the product offerings and so on.

5:12So that's the core thesis. As you all know, I mean, the hot topics right now is AI, defense tech and the things. So what we definitely don't do is we do not invest into any AI, sort of LLMs, infrastructure or anything like that. What we do since many years, because sort of the big trends that we're investing in lead to much more data and much more complex data that utilities are not used to, So our startups use AI in a much more specific use case. So for example, we're invested in a battery analytics company. So they are collecting all this and have sort of AI algorithms that try to figure out is this battery healthy or not.

5:52Then we are invested also in an algo trading startup that is trading batteries in the intraday power markets. They use AI for signal detection and so on. So very specific use cases. And yeah, so that's how we do that right now. And Georg right now, where are you? Where is the focus line? As I mentioned, currently I mainly focus on scope one and two emissions, meaning from our side, mainly energy, mobility and construction, build construction, build environment. We operate more than 15 ,000 stores in Europe. And this means, for example, why cooling is a very large topic. gas regulatory and very challenging to find obviously natural refrigerant solutions so currently mostly looking at cooling topics HVAC and also alternative materials we have a lot of effort over the last year into green building retail stores mainly obviously in wood but also regarding green concrete.

6:59So this is the solutions that I look at. So mostly hardware. Crispin, there's no doubt if people listening to the podcast we did with you, you are per definition a financial investor. We don't really, you know, there is a strategic flavor, there always is. But, you know, is there a barrier that can dilute the financial laser focus all the time? Would you compromise? Well, I think the very simple starting point and I think it was mentioned this morning, although I would have had many questions this morning to some of the friends and like saying something today. How do I have any strategic impact if the startup is not successful?

7:42So this is why our starting point is and will always be the financial return, also because of our business model, you know. And how can I convince a very, very conservative organization that actually doesn't want to be the next startup and they doesn't want to sort of act like a startup How can I have impact? Well, with really great, great startups. So the financial imperative, I think, always comes first. What was mentioned very early in the first discussion today or the first presentation was that it is about the incentive schemes. So I think the first question that you should ask a CVC that is saying they are financially oriented, if they have carry.

8:24If they don't, they're not, because this is just a fundamental thing, is incentives. And with that, I'm going to cut you off. Financial incentive for the employees in the CBC is key. Thank you both for sharing. Thank you. Thank you.