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The founder of an Irish energy efficiency company said that surging demand for sustainability measures is fuelling its exponential growth.
Norman Crowley, founder of Cool Planet, said that despite talk of environmental measures falling out of favour with businesses, the overall trend is positive.
“Pick a number,” he said. “The deployment of solar. The deployment of batteries. The deployment of electric vehicles, and the amount of money being spent on decarbonisation”.
Cool Planet is based in Powerscourt, Wicklow, but headquartered in Paris, and has worked with global firms including General Electric, BT, Tirlán and others to reduce their costs and carbon emissions since its founding in 2010.
The company is expanding rapidly, having announced a plan in February to double its workforce to 300. Its latest accounts show that revenue surged to €13.7 million in 2022, from €5.9 million the year before.
Cool Planet has received founding investments from Crowley, who now owns a 30 per cent share of the company, and prominent clean-tech investor George Polk, who has 6 per cent.
European asset manager Tikehau Capital’s €30 million investment several years ago also netted them a 30 per cent share in the company.
“Revenues are doubling every year, and this year we turn profitable as well,” said Crowley. “Normally you can’t be profitable and grow at 100 per cent a year, so that gives us massive independence”.
His optimism about the future is buoyed by predictions from the International Energy Agency, which show that global efforts to decarbonise currently amount to $1.7 trillion (€1.6 trillion) annually, and this will more than double by 2030.
The company has worked with global firms including General Electric, BT, Tirlán and others to reduce their costs and carbon emissions.
Crowley said that despite an increasing number of firms, particularly in the US, turn their back on sustainability measures, there is still a strong appetite for renewable energy in industry.
“Batteries are expanding like crazy. Renewables in every country in the world are expanding like crazy. And we see that because our clients, in a lot of cases, are the ones making that change”.
Another area of enormous growth is that of data centres, and despite his climate credentials, Crowley said the attitude of the government to limit the number of data centres as “anti-progressive”.
“We would really want to cop on about that to be honest,” he said. “We have a really outsized income from the tech companies and we’re playing a dangerous game”.
He said the state’s attitude towards big tech companies that contribute substantially to our economy was: “Thanks for all the money lads, but no you can’t expand”.
He said that that more renewables would help to alleviate the pressures on the system from data centres.
“More solar, more wind. And then if we have a whole lot of electricity, we will have cheaper electricity for our consumers. That’s the progressive way to do this,” he said.
Cool Planet develops decarbonisation software that allows firms to track and intelligently manage their energy usage, alongside the introduction of more efficient technologies like LED lighting and updated heating systems.
