California Company Guides Customers Through the Green Building Process
PALO ALTO, Calif. — In the ever-expanding world of green technology, organizations looking to build new facilities or upgrade existing structures can often be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options. As the green building boom continues, it seems inevitable that a related industry will rise up to help guide owners through the process of choosing what green strategies to employ.
THiNKnrg, a company from Palo Alto, Calif., is beginning to establish itself as a one-stop shop for organizations seeking to garner savings from green building technology. The company provides a program that uses various resources to determine the potential return on investment (ROI) for a variety of green strategies. Essentially, the program gathers data from third-party software and combines it with information about the building project in question to determine what options are available. The program also attempts to match various funding options, like government grant programs, with the project to see if any of them apply. The company will then help the customer apply for rebates and attain financing, in addition to installing the selected technologies.
The THiNKnrg computer program investigates a wide array of potential solutions and also compares individual products that could be used for each. It takes a look at everything from energy and water efficiency, to solar power and heating technologies that turn waste products into energy.
The company grabbed its first client in 2010 when Boyer’s Food Market, located in Pennsylvania, signed on, eventually leading to 10 of the franchise’s locations using the service. The project on the initial market included green solutions for lighting, heating and cooling, resulting in a savings of $492,967 or a 43 percent internal rate of return. By the end of the year, THiNKnrg was a profitable enterprise.
Since then, the company has taken off, generating nearly $500,000 in revenue for 2011, with estimates of around $2.28 million of revenue projected for 2012. The project list has climbed to 20, and there are at least 30 other projects pending at the moment.
Although the spread of green technology is clearly one of the largest byproducts of his work, THiNKnrg CEO Zachary Rubin’s strategy and philosophy focus directly on savings.
“It has to be taken very seriously. They’re doing it to save money, so you have to approach it from that perspective,” Rubin told Forbes.
His company has yet to work on a project with an ROI of less than 15 percent or a payback period longer than five years. Rubin explained, if the project fits into those requirements, THiNKnrg is willing to front the cost, as long as the customer doesn’t seem likely to go bankrupt.