Spokane-based Ecova rebrands as Engie Insight

Ecova, a Spokane-based business that helps Fortune 500 companies manage their energy use, has a new name.

The company was rebranded Monday as Engie Insight, which more closely aligns the firm with its parent company, a French multinational energy business called Engie.

Engie Insight employs about 950 people in Spokane, and company officials say local employment is poised to grow. Engie Insight also has offices in Boston, Portland and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The company helps businesses with multiple sites across North America manage their energy and water use, waste generation and telecommunications costs. Officials use sophisticated data analytics to track trends and advise companies on ways to increase efficiency and save money, said Mike Kaplan, vice president of marketing.

Besides cutting costs, many companies want to reduce their carbon emissions and other environmental impacts, Kaplan said.

“Sustainability has become a business imperative,” he said. At large corporations, there’s a lot of investor activism around environmental goals, and millennial buyers, as a demographic, prefer products that are sustainably sourced, Kaplan said.

Ecova was founded in Spokane as a spinoff of Avista Corp.’s electric and gas utility business. Avista sold the company to Engie in 2014.