Fredericton Tech Company Rebrands To Climative
FREDERICTON — A Fredericton-based clean technology company is reinventing itself to better address the new, decarbonization economy.
SimpTek Technologies Inc is rebranding to Climative. As part of the rebrand, company advisor and investor Winston Morton will take over as the newly appointed CEO. Former CEO and co-founder Asif Hasan will remain as board chair.
The company helps governments, utilities, and other businesses develop decarbonization plans by collecting and analyzing data regarding energy usage and building retrofits. Climative does this via an in-house artificial intelligence system that aims to support and even replace in-person building audits.
“To do a physical audit, that costs somewhere between $500 and $700, and it takes six months,” says Morton.
“[Currently it’s a] manual, slow, and expensive process to evaluate buildings for low-carbon projects. You can only do about 1.5 percent of the building stock a year today. We’ve only assessed …10 percent of the building stock in the last 20 years. So in Canada it’s going to take us $700,000,000 and 90 years to collect this data.”
That’s where Climative steps in.
“SimpTek had a lot of different products in a lot of different industries. We realized that the product suite today needs some more focus on this concept of a low-carbon plan, where traditionally we’ve worked with utilities on energy analytics,” Morton continues.
“For example, municipalities and provincial governments, state governments, banks, and energy efficiency organizations–we all need to access a common set of data to make the industry go much, much quicker.”
This collaborative approach to data and analysis, with the assistance of AI, will help these stakeholders analyze the information more quickly.
Morton says many municipalities have signed on to climate action plans that will require net-zero buildings by timelines ranging from 2030 to 2050.
These requirements will apply to residential buildings. For example, Our Pathway Towards Decarbonization and Climate Resilience: New Brunswick’s Climate Change Action Plan 2022 – 2027 states that the provincial government will “work with the federal government toward the phase out of heating oil use in all buildings (commercial, government and residential). This work will include identifying transition support for heating oil delivery companies. If adequate support can be found to minimize impacts to customers and suppliers, phase out heating oil by 2030.”
The document also states that the province will “develop and deliver building energy performance labelling and disclosure pilot programs for residential and commercial buildings by 2024 with an aim to develop time of sale energy performance disclosure requirements by 2030.”
With the ability to quickly provide an energy audit on a building, for example, Climative will play a role helping provinces get that data to create these energy performance disclosures. That, in turn, will lead to other products that municipalities, banks and even individuals can use.
“Down the road, you might get a mortgage rate that has a carbon score attached,” Morton says. “Your mortgage might have discounts or incentives because you’ve done such a good job on your carbon footprint.”
Morton estimates that approximately 12 percent of building stock has a mortgage renewal each year.
“It creates another opportunity to have that conversation with building owners. Say ‘hey, if you are looking to renew your mortgage, if you improve your carbon footprint, you’d save money on your mortgage payment.’”
In this new, data-driven, performance-focused world, the information that Climative will provide is important.
“There’s basically a whole new economy coming that is related back to carbon impact,” Morton says. “There’s going to be data requirements for this low carbon economy, and companies like Climative need to be able to provide an infrastructure to support this economy.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].