Breaking Energy featured the Top 10 New York Energy Entrepreneurs back in June as part of an extremely popular top 10 series that ran during New York Energy Week. The entrepreneurs were chosen by their energy industry peers via an open nomination process that returned a robust list of candidates. Whittling the impressive list of innovators down to only 10 was an arduous process that felt as if many deserving candidates were left out. So this series features the remaining people nominated for the New York Energy Week list and describes their companies.
Honest Buildings
The sums of money that can be saved by improving energy efficiency in buildings is nothing short of astonishing. And lighting improvements have been called the low-hanging fruit because they are among the cheaper efficiency improvements and are immediately visible to building owners and their tenants. For example, interior lighting consumes over one third of the electricity used in New York City’s commercial buildings, so it’s easy to see why lighting is a natural place to focus energy efficiency efforts. Buildings are also responsible for emitting nearly 80% of all New York City’s greenhouse gases, though much of this is generated from heating systems that burn heavy fuel oil.
Executing energy efficiency upgrades can be a complicated process requiring considerable up-front capital investment. As such, selecting the right combination of engineers, architects and project managers is a mission critical challenge this next company will help you navigate.
In their own words from the company’s website:
Honest Buildings is the world’s leading Connection Engine for Real Estate Projects.
From architects to engineers, contractors to technology experts, HB helps you find and meet the perfect people for your projects, fast. We enable the real estate community to make the smartest decisions, one project at a time. With more than $230 million in deal flow to date, HB is changing the way real estate connections are forged.
Honest Buildings is a commercial real estate marketplace that matches top building professionals with building owners, decision makers and project managers. Architects, engineers, contractors and technology providers can quickly create a custom profile and showcase relevant case studies to a network of tens of thousands of real estate professionals, including owners and other decision-makers who are looking to bid out building projects. The HB Network originated over $255 million of transactions in 2013/14.
Riggs Kubiak, CEO
As Senior Director and Global Director of Sustainability at Tishman Speyer, a global real estate developer, owner and operator, I collaborated with teams to drive comprehensive sustainable strategy to more than 70 million square feet of real estate in over 20 markets.
Matching the economic and environmental benefits of sustainability enabled a great advancement in integrating sustainability into multiple aspects of Tishman Speyer’s operations, including property management, new construction, asset management, marketing, finance, leasing, fundraising, tax and accounting.
Prior to leading the sustainability function, I worked in transactional positions in Acquisitions and Asset Management. The acquisitions experience included underwriting and working with small teams to execute large scale portfolio transactions including a $22 billion LBO of a multifamily REIT.
Asset management included overseeing the financial aspects of a 15 million square foot portfolio of trophy office buildings in New York.
United Wind
Renewable energy is no longer a niche power generation sector populated by idealistic hippies (if it ever was), but a rapidly expanding portion of the global power generation portfolio. And while most of the headline-grabbing wind power projects are massive turbine farms with complex financing arrangements that generate utility-scale volumes of electricity, there are plenty of applications for smaller-scale installations. Farms looking to defray overall electricity costs or power irrigation pumps in remote fields could be one example where this next company’s expertise would be welcome.
In their own words from the company’s website:
United Wind was formed in 2013 as a combination of assets and talent from the two industry-leading small wind companies: Talco Electronics and Wind Analytics. Talco, founded in 2000, sold more than 150 turbines and was the leading distributor of small wind turbines in the United States. Wind Analytics, founded in 2007, was the only company to offer a third-party verified remote wind speed analysis tool, empowering potential small wind turbine owners with a low-cost site assessment. With the best of Talco and Wind Analytics together, United Wind is the only company that has the knowledge and capability to offer the first ever little-to-no money down leasing option to small wind customers in the United States.
Russel Tencer, CEO
As CEO, Russell leads United Wind with the vision of a future where small wind is as ubiquitous as power lines in communities all around the country. Russell is focused on providing the resources and leadership for the company to execute on this vision, with utmost concern for delivering quality products and generating the highest customer satisfaction. Additionally, Russell is responsible for obtaining all corporate and project level capital required to continue delivering WindLeases and small wind turbines to customers.
