Data-Driven Decarbonization – Trevor Dryer, Carbon Title

This is Techstrong tv. Hello everyone. I'm Bonnie Schneider.

Your go-to source for all things tech and sustainability on techstrong tv. Today we're stepping into the future of real estate. Envision a time when carbon footprints are no longer hidden or invisible, but instead integral aspects of every building's profile.

It's a reality being shaped by tech pioneers like our guest today, Trevor Dryer. As co co-founder of Carbon Title, Trevor has championed a transformative tool, the Carbon title Explorer, creating a new discourse around sustainability in real estate. Trevor, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.

Thank you for having me, Bonnie. It's nice to be here. Great.

Well, can you walk us through your tech journey that eventually led to the formation of carbon title? Yeah, absolutely. Um, sustainability is something that is really important to me.

So I'll start off with a little bit of a personal motivation for this. I think that we're standing on the precipice of a climate disaster, and if we don't really work hard to reduce our CO2 admissions, it's going to be really difficult for the generations that come after us. And all the problems that we currently are struggling with, um, are just going to be that much harder to solve if we're dealing with extreme weather, um, displacement, all kinds of disruptions that come from climate.

So that was my motivation. I wanted to do something to help bring this, uh, forward. And something I didn't realize until I got further into this is that 40% of our building admissions, or 40% of our CO2 admissions come from buildings.

We talk about, you know, airline travel that's only 2%, but this kind of hidden group of emissions from the places where we live and work is a big problem. And that I wasn't seeing really any, uh, anyone who's trying to reduce it in a meaningful way. That's, that's like a really good point.

Just in my background in meteorology, we talk a lot about how buildings, uh, hold onto heat and they block, uh, the natural release of heat in cities during, uh, areas where we get those urban heat islands. So that actually logically just makes sense and I do think it's something that's overlooked. Absolutely.

And within the buildings, there's a big chunk of it that comes from electricity use, natural gas use, but then there's this kind of hidden 11 12% of greenhouse gas emissions that comes from the actual building materials and constructing the buildings. Um, a fun fact I like to say is if concrete were its own country, it would be the third largest emitter of CO2 behind the US and China. Wow.

That, that is, uh, standout statistics. I never, uh, thought of it that way. Um, can you explain more about Carbon Title Explorer, what it is and how it will impact the real estate industry?

Absolutely. So the idea from Carbon Title Explorer came from the realization that if you are looking at a building whether to rent an office space or to buy a home, most people have no idea what the CO2 impact is on the different properties they're looking at. Um, it's hard to figure out.

It's, you have to hire a consultant. Not many people do it. And so our first, um, product carbon Title Explorer makes all of that public.

So you can go to Carbon Title Explorer, we have over a hundred million buildings in the us uh, from single family homes to apartment buildings to offices, hospitals, and you can type in an address and you can see the estimated, uh, CO2 admissions over the lifetime of the building, both from the construction to operating the building, lighting, heating, cooling, uh, renovations, et cetera. And then if you are the building owner, you can claim that profile, provide us additional data, and also, uh, start taking action to reduce the CO2 footprint. That is fascinating.

You know, our audience, uh, is filled with people that work in tech and, and in it. So I was wondering if you could talk about the data and the process that you go through that facilitates the decarbonization of buildings and what role your platform plays in this process. Yeah, and your right to start with data, that's kind of the first big problem.

Um, and there's a lot of data out there on buildings, but it's in a variety of different sources. Cities publish data. Uh, there's some private data sources we can buy.

So the first thing we do is go out to, gosh, probably over a dozen and counting different data sources and pull in information that we have on the building. How big is it? Where is it located, uh, what kind of energy usage does it have?

And we take all of that and run it through a model that, uh, is based on, um, kind of big data averages. You'd say that, um, we kind of recognize that a building in Minneapolis has a very different energy usage profile than one in LA That's a much milder climate and construction practices in Miami vary from Arizona and the types of materials are typically used. So based on what we know about the local area and how green the grid is, we're able to take all this data, run it through our model and estimate the carbon emissions for the building.

And then the next thing we do, which I think is, um, pretty unique, is we believe it's important for this data to be public and accessible to everybody. So we then record it on, uh, one of two of our partner blockchain sell and Ripple. We think that's important because it's easily traceable, trackable, auditable, and it's now really a public good that, um, if you're contributing data, you're contributing to a public cause, not just giving us data that we're gonna hold behind, um, a paywall.

You know, it it's that, that sounds great, and I'm sure that the, that everyone that's using this is, is very glad to see this availability of this data, but not everybody is going to have the capability of interpreting actionable insights from it. So how does your company do that for, for clients? Yeah, great question.

So there are a couple different things that you can do. We're, um, just close to releasing, uh, the next set of features which are gonna help people take action on reducing their footprint. And so that comes in kind of two flavors.

The first is, what can you do to reduce your admissions? So we'll have things in there of helping you understand, does it make sense to add a solar array or install l e d lighting or use low carbon concrete for example. And you can see in real time if you did use that, if you're thinking about a renovation or installing, so what the impact would be to the CO2 footprint of the building.

And then the second piece of it is, the only way for a building to really get to carbon neutral right now is through the use of carbon credits. And so you can, uh, purchase a curated group of carbon credits on our platform and apply them to your building where they get locked permanently to that building, um, and help kind of offset the emissions that you weren't able to reduce. How does carbon title address data security and privacy, especially when owners claim their building profiles?

Great question. Um, and I think this might be a little bit of an unconventional answer in that we believe that the data on the building and admissions should be public. Um, we don't think that's something that people should be able to kind of hold and, and keep quiet because global warming affects us all and we all need to know, um, what the impacts of our buildings are.

And so that is out public on the blockchain, um, what the CO2 admissions are, and as that building evolves and renovations happen and energy is used, that number gets updated over time. Uh, when it comes to, uh, specific information that, for example, a developer might not want to know, like future buildings, they're considering building that is all private and as, uh, you have to have a, a username and password obviously and, um, authentication to be able to see that data. So that's really the approach we think about data that gets to somebody's business model that makes sense to keep it private.

Um, but data that affects us all, like the CO2 balance on a building we put out there publicly. And what about, uh, the role for IT and software professionals? That's, um, a lot of people in our audience work in those fields and they may be interested in the, um, role that they play or would play in something like this when it comes to development and also maintenance for the carbon title explorer.

Yeah. And I guess are you getting at, uh, what they could do to, Well, I'm just wondering if, um, or or you can just talk a little bit about the process that your IT and, and um, your teams have been working on. Because I, I would imagine as you've been using it, you're getting feedback, you're getting more information and, and you're making tweaks and changes.

And maybe you can just tell us a little bit about that process. Sure. Absolutely.

Uh, so we are getting data as we come, uh, as we kind of move forward on this. And, uh, there are a couple different things we do with it. First we take the quantitative data and then try to iterate on future designs and put those in front of customers, um, who are interested.

And so there are folks who are using the platform who kind of raise their hand to be a Guinea pig and we like to then put designs that we're looking at in front of them, get feedback and incorporate that in, um, and then goes into our agile software development process and then gets pushed out to the various web two and web three systems that we have, depending on what the change is. Um, and the other thing I think that the IT industry can be doing as well is encouraging their companies to offset the huge amount of emissions that come from data centers. Um, we all use the cloud or have our own data centers and it consumes a lot of electricity and, uh, it's contributes significantly to global warming.

And so I think starting to get companies to think about how do they mitigate um, or offset those emissions is important as well. That's a good point. And uh, as a leading innovator in this field, what emerging trends are you noticing in this sphere of data-driven sustainability?

I think data is really everything when it comes to sustainability that you can't optimize what you can't measure. And that was the premise for us with carbon title explorer first, we've gotta measure it and we've got to let people understand what the impact of the choices they make are. Um, I think the data in such a massive data set as every building in the US, uh, is going to get better over time.

I've seen a trend of cities and municipalities now starting to require more robust tracking and reporting of the data, which I think is gonna be helpful. And we're also seeing on the carbon credit side a lot more scrutiny around the types of credits where they originated from. How do you make sure they're not double counting and that the credit producers are actually doing what they claim, um, they're doing.

And so all of that again, comes down to data and verifiability. Do you have any advice for our tech savvy audience watching us now? Um, they are definitely interested in integrating sustainability into their own projects, so any general tips?

Well, I think the general tips when it comes to, to buildings and frankly even just the energy usage of technology, is first start to understand what is your footprint. And there are, you know, different tools that company-wide can be used out there. Um, and once you understand that, I think it's important to start thinking about what are the low hanging fruit, the easy changes that can be made.

For example, like, you know, adjusting the HVAC in a building, putting in l e d lighting, that's pretty easy. And then you get to the harder stuff, which I think has requires conversations with, um, the companies to think about how do they mitigate and offset, uh, the CO2 impact from technology. Trevor Dryer, co-founder of Carbon Title, thank you so much, Trevor.

It's been a great chatting with you today on Techstrong tv. We look forward to hearing more about, uh, what you're working on in the future. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. Great. Well stay with us.

We have a lot more coming up on text, on tv.