Pair of midstate companies teaming up to increase application of solar energy

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Two midstate companies are teaming up to increase the application of solar energy among oil and gas companies operating in Pennsylvania and elsewhere throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. 

On April 5, Hershey-based Keystone Clearwater Solutions announced a financial investment and partnership with Coral Reef Partners, a company based in Jonestown that specializes in providing solar renewable energy solutions to customers in the northeast and Mid-Atlantic. 

Formed in 2009 out of an environmental consulting and engineering firm, Keystone provides customized water and wastewater management services to natural gas production, municipal and industrial customers throughout the northeast United States. 

Many of the companies that Keystone serves are looking to reduce their carbon footprint through the use of solar and other types of renewable energy. Coral Reef Partners can help these companies meet those goals, Keystone said. 

“We are excited about the platform opportunity that Coral Reef gives us to diversify in energy services and expand our offerings in low carbon and renewable energy services,” Tom Stabley, CEO of Keystone Clearwater Solutions, said in a press release announcing the partnership between Keystone and Coral Reef.  

“Many of our current customers are looking for ways to use renewable energy sources in their daily activities to power fixed plants and facilities, helping to achieve their ESG [Environmental, Sustainability and Governance] initiatives.” 

Coral Reef Partners did not respond to a request for additional comment made by Central Penn Business Journal through an email submitted via the company website. 

Coral Reef Partners has helped develop plans and arrange financing of major solar power installations for Fortune 500 companies, municipalities, and other public/private partnerships in the Mid-Atlantic region, according to the press release. 

“We believe the combined resources of our company with the Keystone team will bring significant scalability to our business and allow us to achieve synergies and focus on strategic growth for our solar and renewable services,” Coral Reef Partners President Corey Wolff said in the press release. 

Stabley, in a phone interview with the Central Penn Business Journal, declined comment when asked whether Keystone is acquiring Coral Reef Partners. 

“We’re strategic partners as we go forward,” Stabley said. 

Privately-held Keystone has about 450 employees and has grown “pretty substantially” over the last 12 years mostly serving the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Keystone President and COO Dan Dalton told Central Penn Business Journal. 

“We had a good understanding of the regulatory and environmental background in Pennsylvania, so as Marcellus Shale was really starting up in the basin there was a need for a home-grown service company that understood those rules, and a lot of the value that we could add was providing that engineering solution to help manage our customers’ water needs,” Dalton said. 

Keystone, in its early growth years, was owned by Rex Energy, a natural gas exploration and production company based in State College. In 2018, Rex Energy was acquired by PennEnergy Resources. 

In 2015, Keystone was acquired by American Water, now the Pennsylvania-American Water Company.  

Four years later, in 2019, an ownership group similar to the one that had started Keystone back in 2009 reacquired the company from American Water. 

“Being a private company that is well-capitalized we can be very nimble in doing things. There’s not a lot of bureaucracy involved in making decisions,” Stabley said. When the opportunity presented itself to partner with Coral Reef, Keystone was able to move quickly to consummate the deal. 

The partnership with Coral Reef enables Keystone to help its many oil and gas clients in the Marcellus Shale basin and elsewhere realize their renewable energy goals. 

“We have very strong connections with all the operators in the basin,” Stabley said. “Many of these companies have an Environmental, Sustainability and Governance initiative that their shareholders are kind of expecting them to offset their carbon emissions and have a green angle on their business, and we believe this will help them accomplish that. Solar is in the energy industry and so is oil and gas, so we feel there is some correlation and cross over there.” 

The partnership also allows Keystone to diversify its existing energy services and to provide “synergies” on the labor side due to Keystone having a much larger work force than Coral Reef. 

“With the number of employees that we have, we can have people cross-trained to assist in the construction and development of these (solar array) facilities as we go forward,” Stabley said. “In today’s market getting employees and getting good ones is hard. We have basically a labor force that we can pull on to help assist and expand the capabilities of Coral Reef.” 

For a smaller company like Coral Reef, the partnership offers Coral Reef the opportunity to do what it does best, without having to worry about the bigger issues, Stabley added. 

“We can bring the firepower on the administrative side as far as accounting and finance and human resources and all those functionalities, and really allow the company’s founders and employees to focus on what they do best which is build solar arrays. We’re laser-focused on that and on really letting them do what they are good at.” 

According to the company’s web site, Coral Reef Partners also specializes in stormwater management solutions for municipalities, and in consulting and in developing public/private partnerships. 

Coral Reef Partners lists among its consulting clients the Hershey Chocolate Company, Boston Scientific, Derry Township, United Premium Foods and Country Meadows. 

The company takes its name from corals, which, according to the Coral Reef website, are creatures that “harness the sun” and are “underwater heroes, cleaning the ocean and protecting our coasts during severe storms.” 

Dan Miller is a freelance writer