In 2008, on a late evening walk home from work, I noticed as I had many times before, that every floor of the office buildings in the downtown core still had their office lights on. It wasn’t odd, it was the norm.
I began to wonder about the impact buildings had on the environment and specifically what percentage of emissions were caused by this unnecessary energy usage. It turned out that 40% of carbon emissions were due to inefficient buildings. There wasn’t necessarily a lack of building management systems, it was more that the systems were ineffective, and were not addressing the significant loss of energy, the carbon footprint or the costs associated with these.
Having worked in various areas of the energy industry, I knew this concept was not being addressed at the level that was necessary in order to make an impact that would be required. At this time, Canada was just beginning to explore the concept of utilizing different lighting to combat carbon emissions. As I continued to research and explore this idea, I began to see the enormity of the problem it was causing and the lack of effort to create solutions.
The idea started like many others I had before, as a seed. By 2009 this idea had grown to the need to provide energy management services, and to connect automation devices to close the gaps that seemed to be widening in this field. And by 2010 this seed sprouted into a business plan pushing me to leave a comfortable, safe and secure position as Head of Sales for an Energy Management company in Canada.
