Think of Dynamhex as the TurboTax for reducing carbon footprints: The startup’s technology takes a complex subject and breaks it down into bite-size, understandable pieces for non-experts.
“We think that it shouldn’t be cost prohibitive for most people to do the right thing,” founder and CEO Sunny Sanwar said. “They shouldn’t have to be energy experts or spend 20 hours to do research on what would help their home in terms of what projects they should consider, where the rebates are located, who implements it on their behalf, the permitting process. All of these things currently take way too long, and as a result, it really limits certain people from doing this.”
The ability to reduce one’s carbon footprint shouldn’t be reserved solely for those who can afford Teslas or a solar purchase power agreement, he said.
The Lee’s Summit-based startup’s app uses artificial intelligence to analyze a variety of data sets to determine a user’s current carbon footprint and to make personalized recommendations for reducing it. The target customer base includes municipalities and companies that have set climate goals, as well as electric utility companies, which make the offering available to their customers. Dynamhex previously worked with the city of Kansas City and currently works with Prairie Village and Roeland Park. Another customer is the Natural Resources Defense Council.
For companies and municipalities, Dynamhex can conduct a building-by-building analysis. A bank might have 4,000 locations, and Dynamhex can quickly recommend which ones would benefit most from solar or from energy-efficiency upgrades to meet a company’s carbon footprint goals.
“Everyone knows the goal, but no one agrees on how to get there,” Sanwar said. “We want to use the data to show all the various ways you can get there and then help people actually take that next step.”
Dynamhex also is building out an online marketplace that would connect users to rebates and service providers, such as solar and geothermal heating/cooling companies, to lessen friction in the journey of whittling carbon footprints.
The startup has garnered multiple points of validation, from its acceptance into the 90-day Joules Accelerator in Charlotte, North Carolina, to receiving a $200,000 investment from Exelon Corp., a top-ranked electric and gas utility on the Fortune 500. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlining the urgency in changing habits also is expected to drive interest in Dynamhex.
Companies, however, already have started setting climate goals, driven by a desire to be more sustainable and to stay ahead of future regulations. The debt sold to create climate-positive projects now eclipses $200 billion a year, Sanwar said.
“The market’s huge,” he said. “Almost every major corporation that trades on the New York Stock Exchange has a climate target. … Our vision is to be the software layer for everybody to take ownership of their carbon footprint.”
