Energy for life
Like lots of Irish stories, this one starts in a pub. In 2015, the three founders of Urbanvolt were each at a crossroads, all looking for the next thing to do with their lives. All three had worked in large companies and all three had also started businesses. Here is their story
Urbanvolt CEO, Kevin Maughan, had enjoyed a stellar career even before Urbanvolt became a reality. In 2010, he founded Novaerus, which became the fastest growing biotech company in Ireland. Before that, Kevin was the CEO of Caterpillar Ireland and Director of Merrill Lynch’s Financial Advisory Centres in EMEA, with 26 offices and €8 billion in assets under management.
Urbanvolt COO Graham Deane was a cofounder of Novaerus along with Kevin, where he managed product development and the supply chain for a rapidly growing global business. Before that, Graham was Group Operations Director for Caterpillar Ireland and held a number of management positions with Fortune 500 companies such as Xilinx and Flextronics.
Before co-founding Urbanvolt, the company’s CCO Declan Barrett founded Complete Property Management in 2008, which he sold in 2014. Before that Declan held key management positions in the FMCG industry with Johnson Bros and United Biscuits where he was responsible for growth in Ireland. This time was different though, as all three were looking to do something that would leave a lasting legacy. As Graham said at the time, he at least wanted to look his kids in the eye and say that he was trying to do something about climate change.
Even so, when the founders of Urbanvolt sat down together to discuss their next move over a quiet drink one rainy evening in Dublin, they didn’t realise the revolution that they were starting would grow so rapidly and effect so much positive change around the world.
Let there be light
It all started with light. The consumer LED lighting revolution had proven that there were 80% energy reductions available when the switch was made, but businesses had yet to embrace LED lights.
A single warehouse or factory could have the same impact as making hundreds of homes more energy efficient. If Urbanvolt could get industry to make the change, it could really make a difference in the fight against climate
change. And as the three founders thought about how to make it easier for larger corporate energy users to reduce their carbon footprint, an idea was born.
Instead of looking at the problem the same way as everyone else in the lighting industry, Urbanvolt took a deep breath and took a step back. Kevin, Graham and Declan combined their skills from the worlds of corporate nance, facility management and logistics and set about building a service o ering what would deliver LED lighting to industrial clients without any need for upfront investment.
e founders had three simple, overarching principles that they knew would accelerate the business world’s adoption of LED lighting – (a) it had to remove the need for any upfront investment
(b) it had to remove all the operational hassle and
(c) it had to be fully o -balance sheet for the world’s largest energy users.
Sounds pretty simple, right?
It took over a year – fuelled by many late nights and gallons of co ee – to build the company’s award-winning Light as a Service platform.
ey even spent a few extra quid trademarking the acronym ‘Laas’.
Being Ireland’s first B Corp
Fast forward just a few short years and they achieved what they originally set out to do – to dramatically reduce energy consumption, and help their clients save millions of tons of CO2 and millions of euro in energy costs every single year.
Along the way, they outgrew their o ces three times, won countless awards for their innovative business model and even found time to become Ireland’s rst Certi ed B Corporation; joining famous brands such as Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s in becoming ‘mission-driven’ companies.
As a Certi ed B Corp, Urbanvolt meets the highest standards of veri ed social and environmental performance, public
transparency and legal accountability. Becoming a B Corp hard-coded Urbanvolt’s original mission into the DNA of the company and they are living proof that business holds the key to changing the world.
A er helping hundreds of companies to dramatically reduce their energy consumption, they then took the next leap forward and created the Urbanvolt app.
e app allows multi-site companies to immediately quantify the scale of the opportunity when it comes to energy reduction and CO2 savings. anks to this, companies no longer have to spend months (or years) carrying out site surveys and data analysis on sites across di erent territories. With just a few pieces of readily available information, companies can now assess their global portfolio at the click of a button.
The power of solar
Having conquered the Light as a Service model, the trio could have rested on their laurels but the next challenge beckoned. Buoyed by investment from Ireland’s sovereign wealth fund (Ireland Strategic Investment Fund) and the company’s new Chairman, Stephen Vernon, Urbanvolt announced its foray into a new type of clean energy that would complement its existing business: solar.
It became quickly apparent that solar could provide immediate cost savings while helping the environment – a winning formula as they already knew.
As Declan said at the time: “It grates on me that it’s the Irish consumer that has to make the choice to ‘go green’ or pay extra for renewable energy; it’s about time it was made easy for consumers to do the right thing.”
Take the example of electricity. Last year, the annual Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy charged to Irish customers, which supports the generation of electricity from sustainable, renewable and indigenous sources, was just under €40 per year. However, this will increase to just under €90 this year. is is a shocking increase of 130%.
As if this weren’t enough, customers of ESB – our biggest electricity supplier – will face an increase of 3.4% in the unit price of their electricity this year.
Kevin, Graham and Declan know an opportunity when they see one. Just like its lighting business, Urbanvolt does not charge any upfront cost of solar power to customers, and owns and maintains the equipment that is used to generate the power. eir clients just pay Urbanvolt for the clean solar energy as it is produced. It’s this kind of forward thinking that has led to such success, both at home and abroad.
Urbanvolt is a company that is making a real di erence. When its three founders got together for that drink in 2015, they wanted to leave a lasting legacy… and they’re not nished yet.