New Firm Favors Fast-track Approach to Efficiency

The brains behind Green Analytics have what might appear to be a curious way of thinking.

“Our goal is to work ourselves out of a job in 10 or 15 years,” CEO Brandon Fletcher said.

Look closer, though, and Fletcher makes perfect sense. Fletcher co-founded Green Analytics with Travis Clark earlier this year, and their goal is to improve the energy efficiency of as many homes and businesses as possible – as quickly as possible.

“We hope to play a part in resolving the conflict between environmental concern and profitability by offering high-return solutions with no up-front cash investment,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher and Clark, the COO, are off to a good start. They’ve worked with companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., International Paper, FedEx and ConAgra Foods, and are easing into the residential market.

The concept works like this: Green Analytics performs an analysis based on a three-year history of a company’s bills – heating, cooling, lighting, etc. – then finances the cost of implementing an energy management system.

Specially designed fans and air movers, ceramic window tints, and capacitors often are used. Other products, like reflective roof paint, also might be used.

All of the solutions are designed to pay for themselves in three years. Green Analytics gets paid by sharing the savings.

“If your electric bill is $10,000, we’re going to make it $6,000 and you’re going to pay us $2,000,” Fletcher said, adding that once the fees are paid, the company enjoys the full savings.

“You should think of it as an IT investment that pays back … and our return will be much greater than whatever you’re paying for faster computers.”

Clark said there’s a reason Green Analytics uses a 36-month window.

“Nothing is profitable if you have to go beyond a 36-month horizon,” he said, “because there’s too many technologies, too many people working on new technologies out there. If you lock into a five-year rate on something, by the time you pay that off you’re going to be two years outdated.”

Green Analytics can make such a big difference, and so quickly, Clark said, because it employs the most innovative systems available. That includes products made by Coenco Inc., which was founded by Clark’s father-in-law, the late Frank Siccardi.

Using a Coenco air mover, for example, allowed Green Analytics to change a near-freezing temperature to a workable one in a metal-roof facility in about seven minutes. The same process, without the air mover, took about 90 minutes, making an obvious impact on utility cost.

Such relatively simple solutions, Fletcher said, rarely attract the same buzz as larger, flashier solar and wind projects.

“We don’t do a big, sexy $40 million panel in the desert,” he said. “We solve the problem of your home, or that 40,000-SF metal building out in the middle of nowhere. Those are the problems we solve.

“They’re not the sexiest problems to solve, but they’re the most important from an energy perspective and an environmental perspective.”