On Thursday, renewable energy technology company Nuuve Corporation, a global first-mover in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, and Newborn Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC, or “blank check company”), headquartered in Shanghai, China, with approximately $57.5 million of cash in trust, announced a merger agreement that will take Nuvve public.
Upon closing of the business combination, the combined company will be named Nuvve Holding Corp., and is expected to remain listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NVVE.” The deal includes purchase agreements with institutional investors for the investment of approximately $18 million in the combined company through a PIPE and bridge financing.
“Reliable, dispatchable, and monetizable”
Nuvve has become the dominant early-mover in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, a market that independent industry analysts expect to surpass $17 billion in value by 2027. V2G enables multiple electric vehicle (EV) batteries to link through EV charging stations into a virtual power plant (VPP). This creates bi-directional service (i.e., the cars and the grid charge each other) in a qualified and secure manner.
The VPP can then generate revenue by selling any excess power to utility companies, or using saved power to reduce building energy peak consumption. Nuuve says that bi-directional charging helps stabilize the electrical grid and and enables increased penetration of renewable energy, while encouraging EV adoption by consumersthrough lower costs, optimizing and protecting the vehicle battery, and transforming electric cars into “reliable, dispatchable and monetizable assets.”
It’s got patents
“Since our founding in 2010, Nuvve has successfully delivered its patented and proprietary vehicle-to-grid technology and services to fleet customers, grid operators, electric utilities and other stakeholders around the world. We have likewise partnered and integrated with multiple automotive manufacturers and electric utilities worldwide to enable adoption of V2G technology,” said Nuuve CEO and Chairman Gregory Poilasne, upon announcing the merger.
“To date, Nuvve is the only company in the world qualified with several system operators to commercially provide V2G grid flexibility services to electric utilities and system operators from batteries of electric vehicles.”
Nuvve holds a global portfolio of key V2G technology patents covering bi-directional capabilities and grid services with aggregated electric vehicles and has continued to build on its intellectual property portfolio by advancing V2G technology with commercial EV fleet deployments with both light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles.
Refined in Denmark
Lead investors in the firm’s early funding rounds included San Diego’s EDF Renewable Energy, an independent producer of wind and solar power projects, and Japan’s Toyota Tsusho, the trading company subsidiary of the multinational automaker.
Nuvve’s most established commercial operation is in Denmark, where it has provided V2G services for more than 4 years, with daily bidding on energy markets and ongoing frequency regulation service for the Danish national grid operator, Energinet.
Nuuve’s first vehicle fleet was deployed in September 2016 at Frederiksberg Forsyning, a Danish municipal water and gas utility. Eastern Denmark was an ideal test market for V2G technology, being part of the wider Nord Pool market (a 16-country regional market that also includes Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states), whose dynamic frequency regulation market is suited to aggregators of small-scale resources like EV batteries.
Following more recent announcements with leading OEMs in the North American electric school bus segment, Nuvve’s next commercial step will be to introduce custom V2G solutions with finance packages to customers, including equipment financing, V2G services, infrastructure and maintenance operations.
Per Gregory Poilasne, “The rapid adoption of EV is driving the need for vehicle-grid integration, which are your more common one-way electric charging stations. While Nuvve is able to manage this one-way vehicle-grid integration, we believe that the integration of bi-directional vehicle-to-grid capabilities will help to stabilize the grid and reduce the overall cost of EV ownership, which will be critical to long-term EV adoption. The Nuvve system has successfully lowered the cost of electric vehicle ownership, while supporting the integration of renewable energy for a scalable and sustainable green society. We look forward to leveraging this business combination to accelerate the commercialization of Nuvve’s technology.”
Details…
Newborn will acquire Nuvve at a transaction value of approximately $102 million, subject to closing adjustments. As consideration for the business combination, 10.17 million shares will be issued or reserved for issuance to existing Nuvve stockholders and option holders, based on a value of $10.00 per share.
Existing Nuvve stockholders have agreed to a one-year lock-up from merger close, subject to a partial release if after the 6 month anniversary of the merger close the VWAP of the Nuvve Holding shares is at or above $12.50 for 20 out of any 30 consecutive trading days.
The proposed transaction marks the latest in a giddily active year for SPAC dealmaking, with well over 100 such deals logged for the year to date. According to data from Nasdaq, where Nuuve public shares will be listed, more than 75 percent of SPAC deals recorded since 2010 have been listed through that exchange.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.
