A pair of Portland entrepreneurs are back with a new venture taking aim at the real estate and construction industry.
Trevor Dryer and Miles Haladay are the founders of Carbon Title, which is building a software tool to help commercial property developers, owners and contractors to publicly measure emissions data across a portfolio and help plan a path to carbon neutrality. It can also help assess sustainable building options, track progress and if needed help purchase high-quality carbon offset credits.
Globally, the real estate sector is responsible nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, companies both in and out of the real estate sector are making commitments to reduce carbon footprints or become completely carbon neutral.
“Carbon Title’s singular mission is to make every building carbon neutral and to rally the industry to avert the worst of this looming crisis,” said Dryer.
The company, in development for eight months, employs eight workers and about 10 contractors. The duo have raised money but are not disclosing the amount. Investors include GreenPoint Partners, Alpaca, Ripple, Allegory and Packy McCormick.
Early pilots are being run with real estate companies including Hoffman Construction, Lease Crutcher Lewis, Killian Pacific and Corigin.
“At Hoffman, we are using the Carbon Title platform to take action to reach our net zero ambitions with our own buildings as well as offer a carbon neutral service to our customers,” said Dan Drinkward vice president at Hoffman Construction in a written statement. “Not only is it seamless and easy to use, but it gives us the power to map out decarbonization plans at the earliest phase of planning and development and deliver a carbon neutral building.”
The data Carbon Title collects is publicly available, so companies can be held accountable. The data also isn’t owned by Carbon Title since the ultimate goal to make the industry carbon neutral doesn’t belong to one company.
To facilitate those goals, the duo uses blockchain technology to provide the traceable and immutable database. For a company focused on emissions, using a technology that has garnered attention for its outsized energy usage seems counterintuitive. However, the duo says they use blockchain partners that use the less energy-intensive proof-of-stake mechanisms to verify the chain.
Proof-of-stake requires significantly fewer computers to validate transactions, or changes, on the chain than with proof-of-work. The mode means it is essentially pay to play regarding who gets to validate transactions, instead of a lot of computers competing by crunching cryptographic puzzles to win the ability to verify transactions.
Eventually the data input into Carbon Title by customers will be easily available on the company’s website. However at this point, it requires a blockchain reader to access it.
The startup is also vetting its partners to ensure they mitigate their own emissions through carbon credits.
Haladay has spent a career working in the construction tech industry. His father was the long-time owner and CEO of Viewpoint: Miles was an executive on the team as the company grew and eventually exited. He has seen first-hand how the construction industry has digitized and knows how to sell new technology into what is typically a risk adverse space.
Dryer started and sold software company Mirador Financial. That company’s product helps lending institutions streamline the lending process so it is more cost effective for lenders to make smaller loans to businesses.
The two began talking after their kids became friends.
“The two of us are passionate about climate change. It is the issue of our generation. It’s no longer off in the distant future. We are already seeing the effects and our kids will have to deal with in a really big way,” said Dyer.
Haladay adds, “At 60 years old I (don't) want to wake up and think I had a skill set I could have used to make a difference and didn’t. I have a construction background. We have to take our shots and do what we can to ultimately bend the arc to having a more sustainable planet and do what we have to do from an economic perspective.”
