Build Edison Expands its Built Environment Expertise
Since the beginning of 2020, the Build Edison team continued to grow and expand its expertise. On February 3, we brought onboard Zach Sussman to lead the Built Environment division of Build Edison’s cleantech advisory practice. To help you get to know Zach, our Communications Manager Natalia Sharova asked him several questions about his background, his experience in the clean energy space, and his new role at Build Edison. Check it out below and make sure to connect with him on LinkedIn!
Hi Zach, it’s so exciting to have you as part of our growing team! Could you tell us a little bit about your previous role at Con Edison and your portfolio?
- At Con Edison, I managed pilot programs within the Energy Efficiency and Demand Management department. This means that I evaluated promising new technologies and programs for energy efficiency and demand management, including testing them out at scale. The ultimate goal of such pilots is to identify new technologies and programs that effectively work and, when launched, help customers to save energy and money. These programs are a win-win for customers and the environment because they generate savings for the customers and help the city and state meet their emissions reduction goals.
A slightly broader question. Why do you work in cleantech? What’s your motivation?
- Clean energy innovation is an interesting and constantly changing field that never slows down. But the most motivating aspect is that there’s a lot we can do to help individuals and businesses to reduce their carbon emissions footprint. We need to constantly look for new technologies and concepts, especially as it comes to building efficiency, as that is so important to New York City. We already took advantage of the low hanging fruit such as improving lighting efficiency, for example, and now we increasingly have to be more creative to continue to slash emissions. This field is particularly interesting in a city setting, especially in New York City where 70% of the total carbon emissions comes from the built environment. To address this, New York City passed the Climate Mobilization Act, to reduce their carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, and by 80% by 2050.
No small task! Built environment is definitely the biggest area for improvement in New York City. Tell us why did you decide to join Build Edison given that you had such an interesting role at Con Edison?
With Build Edison, I was really attracted by the opportunity to work directly with innovators whose technologies could be game changers for decarbonizing the built environment, and not just in New York City but globally. Working directly with such startups and helping them to scale up and reach commercialization as efficiently as possible is extremely rewarding, and I simply couldn’t pass up on this opportunity.
- I’ve known Build Edison’s Founder and CEO Kristin Barbato a number of years back when she was at Con Edison — and I knew that she’s been applying her deep industry experience to helping innovators cross the so-called “valley of death”. This “valley of death” is a huge obstacle for startups on the path to commercialization, so I was excited about an opportunity to join her team and contribute to this important mission.
Why is it so important?
- There’s a clear void in the market when it comes to new energy technologies — it’s extremely hard to scale up and commercialize a new energy technology, regardless of how promising it is for emissions reduction. These technologies tend to be much more Capex heavy compared to, say, new software or a new app that doesn’t require the manufacturing and installation of any physical infrastructure. I saw this issue while at Con Edison and knew that there’s more that can be done to help these innovative companies that have cutting-edge ideas to get them to scale. Build Edison is filling this void and there are not many others that are doing this important work.
Okay, now let’s look ahead for a minute. What are some clean energy technologies or concepts that you see play the most critical role over the next 10 years?
- I’d say the more critical areas are smart buildings, and specifically the idea of grid-interactive efficient buildings. Growing the number of smart buildings that are each individually efficient and relying on clean energy for power generation is not enough. The next essential step is to make sure that the smart buildings “talk” to each other and to the power grid, so they can work as one reliable system that can self-manage the overall load and only take what it needs from the grid.
Currently the amount of generation needed is informed by forecasts based on historical trends. Where we want to move to a grid where generation capacity is informing the load. In such a system, we’ll know how much power is available from baseload plants, with renewables and storage, no energy is wasted because we know exactly how much we need. If buildings can respond and adjust their usage across the grid, that allows us to reduce the need of peaker plants, thereby reducing GHG emissions.
- Bringing all elements into one reliable, clean and smart system is the ultimate goal.
And what challenges do you see on the way for this vision?
- First, having all systems in place that are required for smart grid to happen, and this requires a lot of investment from utilities and private industry.
- Second, figuring out a which data is needed to create this smart/transactive grid. It’s tricky to determine what data is relevant and what isn’t, without being able to easily access enough data. Customers and utilities are right to protect their own data, especially since data is the new oil, but without the right data we cannot have smart grid.
- And lastly, how do we get everyone to work together — utilities, regulators, businesses. New York State made the necessary first step and set the targets, but now the question is who will spearhead the change?
- There are a lot of questions yet to be answered, and this is why I am excited to work at Build Edison on scaling up innovative solutions because, ultimately, if we don’t have the technology we won’t meet our goals. So our job at Build Edison is to make sure that there are more effective and proven technologies that produce real results on the market.
Zach, thank you so much for your insights. On a less serious note, can you share one fun fact about yourself?
I was born and raised in New York City, but I’ve never been to the top of the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty!
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