Notes from Yale Cooling Conference. Overall -- seems like a cool market I've never heard about, with a strong environmental case but still figuring out how to make the capital case. Will require mix of big industry investment (project financing and debt) and some new venture ideas (venture capital). There is a PE-backed services company in the list, too. Brief notes below
= =
The environmental case for caring about cooling is clear:
- Superpollutants
(CFCs, etc.) are responsible for 45% of global warning to date
- Cooling
will be responsible for pollutant gases than cement, airplanes, etc.
- Cooling
is mission-critical to many areas and businesses (i.e. “national security”)
and subject to geopolitical risk, supply shocks, etc.
The business case for cooling is harder:
- Policy
alone won’t scale, need to have market design and private capital to have
a meaningful impact
- Some
areas are challenging to deploy capital to
- Frances
Lodge mentioned multifamily and C&I as challenging – split incentives
b/t tenants and owners, and putting new stuff in old buildings is
difficult … they’ve tried things like Cooling-aaS, DOE loan programs for
methane, etc. … most get stuck in pilot hell
- One
other idea: can you make A/C “cool” (like Tesla did with EVs) to change
value prop for consumers?
- Industry
wants durable solutions with predictable demand
- (my
take) lifecycle coolant management is not venture-scalable, more project-financeable;
there are some alternative cooling solutions that look … cool (pun
intended)
Speakers
- Industry
panel: Willem Vriessendorp, John Hurst (Lennox), Samantha Slater (AHRI),
Wayne Rosa (Ahold Delhanze), Dale Waund (Orbia)
- Randy
Spock: industry leaders (Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Autodesk, JPM, Figma,
Workday) just announced “superpollutant action initiative”, $100M
over next few years to address cooling
- Capital
panel: Anastasia O’Rourke, Megan Phelan (AccelR8 Ventures), Frances Lodge
(Galvanize), Randy Spock (Google, carbon credits and removals)
Startups
- “LCM
innovators” (mix of start-ups of all sizes and public companies):
Trakref, Therm Solutions (leak detection and repair), Hudson Technologies,
A-Gas, Lee Winter (Winter Lab @ Yale), Tradewater, Recoolit, Effectera
- Alternative
cooling technologies (ACTs): Magnotherm (refrigerant without cooling,
piloted by Coca Cola and UofMD, etc.), Pascal (solid refrigerant tech,
focused on affordability, backed by Khosla and Engine), Mimic, Exergyn,
Artyc, Clema, SkyCool, ChillSkyn, LuxWall
- (my
take) I chatted w Magnotherm and Pascal. Pascal seems
promising because it focuses on off-the-shelf components and
ease-of-install and adoption. Magnotherm’s tech looked cool too. Both seem
venture scalable.
Key Vocab
- Lifecycle
refrigerant management
- CFCs/HFCs
- Superpollutants
- Montreal
protocol on CFCs (1987),l AIM Act Framework (2021), Kigali Amendment
