How To Electrify 1 000 000 Homes - Watt’s Up With Startups with Emin Askerov (NEAH)

Join us for the new episode of Watt’s Up With Startups with Emin Askerov - now available as a podcast on Spotify (open.spotify.com/show/4F270jZ...) and UA-cam Music ( • Watt’s Up With Startup... ! In this episode, Emin invited Lisandro Kaunitz, CEO of Energy Renovation Studio.
According to the IEA, buildings’ operations account for 30% of global final energy consumption and 26% of global energy-related emissions. According to a recent @UNEP report, the buildings and construction sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases by far.
How do you decarbonize such a significant emitter? The change should come from large players as well as individuals. What can you, as an individual, do to reduce your home's energy consumption and carbon footprint?
Learn from Lisandro Kaunitz, CEO of Energy Renovation Studio, how a startup can help solve this problem and enable homeowners to switch to heat pumps and solar energy.
Here’s a summary of this conversation:
- How to go from being a neuroscientist to a hardware Greentech founder
- You just can’t decarbonize with software. You need hardware, and you need people
- Heat pumps are ten times more difficult to install than rooftop solar. So you need to start with your employees and get the installation process right
- How to get 10000 plumbers to work
- System designers are a bottleneck to growth
- Watch out for “Tarpit” ideas
- When starting, have a plan for scaling your business
Lisandro is the CEO of Energy Renovation Studio, a company that helps homeowners and businesses reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills. He obtained a PhD in Trento and then worked in the research and development of assistive technologies in the UK, Australia, and Japan. Since 2021 he has been dedicating himself to electrification and decarbonisation in Trentino.
Learn how a startup can help solve the problem of significant energy consumption and emissions from buildings and enable homeowners to switch to heat pumps and solar energy.
00:00 Introduction
00:52 How to go from a neuroscientist to a hardware Greentech founder
03:02 Installing heat pumps and rooftop solar
03:50 Customer’s experience with the heat pump
09:18 You can’t decarbonize with software
12:35 How to start out in a different, new sphere - hardware and people
15:03 How to create a hardware startup? Heat pumps are 10 times more difficult to work with than rooftop solar
19:33 Two models of scalability, to get 10000 plumbers to work
23-02 Training and culture
29:00 Bottlenecks, and how to deal with them
34:20 What investors do you need?
35:44 Models to bring together system designers, installers, salesmen in a local area
41:10 How to scale a locally based business?
47:50 Lessons learned
50:25 Recommendations to new-comers-startups - being aware of tar pit ideas and other tips