Late last year, Victoria clean-tech startup Audette raised a $1 million seed round led by Active Impact Investments with participation from Powerhouse Ventures, Panache Ventures, and Turnham Green Capital.
Audette’s end-to-end platform captures data to identify and assess opportunities for low-carbon building improvements and helps building owners source financing and incentives that reduce the cost of retrofit projects by up to 90%.
Commercial real estate makes up 20% of global carbon emissions “and is far behind on the road to decarbonization,” the Canadian company explains.
Building on the BC startup’s seed round is another $12.8 million from a range of firms including repeat investors like Powerhouse and Turnham-Green, according to a report from BetaKit.
“With the impacts of climate change growing more apparent, the need for low-carbon planning has never been greater,” Christopher Naismith, founder of Audette, stated last year.
“Retrofitting the built environment represents an enormous opportunity for rapid decarbonization,” the CEO added, “and Audette is helping asset managers realize these ambitions.”
Over the last year, Audette has tripled its headcount to two dozen. Naismith told BK he’d like to see the team hit 40 strong within the next year.
“Every building in the world has access to the data, technology and capital to become carbon-free,” Audette believes, “but managers lack the insight on how to start.
Leave a Reply