Tackling carbon at its source with Brendan Hermalyn, CEO of Thalo Labs
In the fight against climate change, the built environment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Brendan Hermalyn, CEO and founder of Thalo Labs, is on a mission to transform how we measure and manage emissions in buildings.
During a recent event for the Xooglers in Climate hosted by Veronique Lafargue, Brendan shared key insights into the challenges, opportunities, and cutting-edge solutions for buildings decarbonization his company is developing.
The frustration of passive monitoring
Before founding Thalo Labs, Brendan spent years working with NASA, measuring greenhouse gases from space. Despite the technical brilliance of these efforts, he found the process deeply frustrating. "Measuring greenhouse gases from space is kind of one of the most depressing things you can do in sustainability because you can't touch it. Like the best thing you could do is send an email. It’s still leaking, right?" His dissatisfaction with merely observing the problem without being able to address it head-on drove him to create Thalo Labs.
A new vision for climate tech
Brendan has long rejected the idea that climate work is a niche or specialized field. “I've been actively trying to say I don't work in climate because I don't know what that even means. It's like saying, I work on the Internet. Every single job is going to have a component of working in sustainability as time progresses.”
The core of Thalo Labs' offering is to make it easier and cheaper to measure emissions in real time. "I thought we could have a really interesting opportunity to bring down the cost and bring up the pervasiveness of measurement of greenhouse gases, and in so doing, that would allow us to do a much better job of managing them."
Source: NYT
The built environment: A key source of emissions
In cities like NYC, the sheer scale of emissions comes from buildings. “Over 70% of the emissions in New York City last year came from heating and cooling our buildings, not from cars on the road, not from agriculture, not from manufacturing. Heating and cooling the buildings.”
“Over 70% of the emissions in New York City last year came from heating and cooling our buildings, not from cars on the road, not from agriculture, not from manufacturing. Heating and cooling the buildings.”
Despite this massive source of emissions, there is very little regulation, and we often have no real sense of what’s being emitted. “Those systems on power plants can cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, and require people to look at them. But if you can make it cheaper to measure all these emissions coming out of the built environment, this really unlocks a new capability... not just knowing what's coming out, but also how you can save people money in doing it.”
This, Brendan explains, is the genesis of Thalo Labs.
From kitchen prototypes to large-scale deployments
“Starting a new company is terrifying and hard, right? Especially in the middle of a pandemic. The first [prototypes] I made in my kitchen... they were all made in Tupperware. Just get it going and see if it actually works.”
What began as kitchen experiments has now grown into a full-fledged operation. Thalo Labs has already helped remediate over 80,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from buildings, a figure larger than many climate investment portfolios. "And we're on pace to at least 10x that in the next year, which is really exciting for us."
Go-to-Market strategy: navigating real estate
Breaking into the real estate sector is no easy feat. Brendan is candid about the difficulties of selling into this industry, where many stakeholders have competing priorities. “Everybody will probably tell you that selling into real estate is really hard, and they're 100% correct because there’s a lot of different stakeholders, and they don’t all look the same. Even two buildings can have totally different management structures.”
The company’s go-to-market strategy has been to approach early customers with a highly targeted approach, starting with real estate investment trusts (REITs), which manage their own buildings and have ESG goals. Thalo Labs’ strategy has followed a “stair-step pattern,” learning from each early deployment to improve their product and refine their approach.
“Your first customers are probably not your second customers, because they may not be scalable, but you learn a lot.”
As they’ve moved further into the market, Thalo Labs has begun targeting larger clients with complex needs. Their first major contract was with a Fortune 50 bank, which pushed the team to grow quickly and professionally.
One of their most notable deployments is the Empire State Building,
As they continue to expand, Brendan emphasizes that their approach not only reduces carbon emissions but also saves building owners money by improving operational efficiency.
We found that by doing a better job of managing emissions, you also save a lot of money, which makes it an attractive proposition for building operators.
“Once you’ve reduced emissions and accelerated the transition to net-zero, the goal is to scale carbon capture in the built environment, turning our cities into net carbon sinks within the next decade. ”
Three steps to decarbonization: Brendan’s manifesto
Brendan outlines a three-step approach for transforming the built environment:
Find the worst emitters and fix them: The first step is to identify the biggest sources of emissions and address them. “It’s like the 80/20 problem. If you can find the worst emitters in the built environment and fix them, that has a really unholy lever arm in terms of reducing emissions. We've been attacking that through going after cogen facilities, large boilers, and refrigerant-based systems.”
Deploy affordable sensing systems: Once the major emitters are tackled, the next step is to sense everything else. “How do you go and sense everything, right? The only way you do that is by making really cheap systems that you can deploy everywhere. That way, it can save people money and reduce pain.”
Leverage the data to drive change: With these systems in place, Thalo Labs aims to create the most comprehensive data set on how buildings operate and emit carbon. “Now, you suddenly have the best data set on planet Earth. You know exactly how all these systems are operating. You know what to do.”
A new era of building management
The long-term vision for Thalo Labs is to transform the built environment into a driver of sustainability. Brendan envisions a future where buildings don’t just reduce emissions but actively capture and store carbon, turning them into carbon sinks.
“And once you’ve done that, once you’ve gotten to net zero and accelerated that transition, our goal is to scale the ability to do carbon capture in the built environment to turn our cities, our buildings into net carbon sinks within the next decade.”
As the world grapples with the complexities of climate change, Brendan’s journey shows how taking the leap into climate tech can lead to real, measurable impact.
Thalo Labs is currently hiring, especially in hardware and business development roles. If you're ready to contribute to meaningful change, check out their careers page for opportunities to get involved.