All,
I recently met Sahil Tadwalkar who is a Stanford MS Candidate in Civil Engineering. He and his group are interviewing design and construction industry professionals to understand issues and challenges around specifying and using low carbon solutions on projects. Interesting stuff! I encourage you to contribute by setting up an interview with Sahil if you are interested:
We are a team of five Stanford graduate students researching the decarbonization of new commercial and large residential buildings. Our team was accepted into a Stanford Lean Launchpad course, led by Professor Steve Blank, where we will be interviewing >100 stakeholders in our problem space over 10 weeks.
Our hypothesis is that part of the reason no/low-carbon building solutions are not incorporated in new building construction is due to misaligned incentives. Our goal is to identify the friction points hindering mass adoption of no/low carbon building materials and energy efficiency solutions. We aim to design a solution that will realign incentives in the building process from permitting and design to financing to construction.
One solution that we are testing to align incentives is third-party financing of low-carbon building materials and high-efficiency equipment in new construction, thus reducing the upfront cost to developers. The third party could then enter a service agreement with the building owner or occupant to split the operating cost savings and environmental benefits generated by these solutions over the operating life of the building. We will be testing this solution and others with our stakeholders over the next few months, and we would be grateful for any time you can spare to share your expertise with us.
If you have 20 minutes or so to discuss your insights into the decarbonization of buildings, please reach out to stadwalk@stanford.edu.
