Yale Cooling Conference

 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

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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