In our latest Spotlight Interview, we spoke to Aneysha Minocha, CEO & Founder at Quantenergy.  Aneysha talks about their platform Quantaco, how they help organisations with energy saving costs and current challenges faced by companies working towards Net Zero. “What we would advise customers is to take the long-term horizon view and to take a portfolio level approach to decarbonisation rather than one building and one project at a time. Additionally, this is an opportunity to align your lifecycle replacement strategies with decarbonisation projects to maximise the investment value.”

Q1- Quantenergy specialises in providing data led insights for investment decisions. Can you give us an overview of how you use data analytics to help investors make better informed strategic choices?

Quantenergy has developed Quantaco, a digital platform, that helps decarbonise the built environment by providing Net Zero pathway modelling through retrofit assessments rapidly. This allows strategic Net Zero planning and the ring-fencing of finance to deliver carbon reduction at scale and at pace.

We take building data and combine this with multiple data sets to create rapid assessments of opportunities and costs across large portfolios, empowering c-suite stakeholders to make quick effective decisions facilitating decarbonisation of their portfolios.

Q2- Achieving Net Zero goes beyond technology, it requires a change in behaviour and processes. How does Quantenergy approach the challenges around influencing organisational behaviour to maximise energy savings?

Traditionally Net Zero investments are made one building or project at a time, and usually go through multiple departments sequentially for approvals, creating a massive lag between proposals and delivery. Quantaco addresses these behaviours and processes in the following ways:

• Quantaco is designed to target senior stakeholders in finance, property, engineering, climate and ESG. Getting all these stakeholders together and giving the required technical, financial, and regulatory information to make rapid, credible, and reliable decisions about green investment in their building portfolios.
• Quantaco drives portfolio level thinking, built on granular data, and long-term-horizon thinking. Quantaco modelling is designed to go beyond a simple business case to provide the regulatory, financial, and technical pathway to 2030/40/50, at a portfolio level, delivering economies of scale.

Q3- With ROI being a top priority for organisations in the current market, how does Quantenergy help clients understand the financial implications of energy saving measures while prioritising the best return on investments?

Quantaco gives those responsible for large portfolios of property the ability to review opportunities and costs across entire estates in a matter of hours and days rather than weeks and months. We provide detailed assessments considering technical, regulatory, and financial factors, this allows for the optimisation of strategic decisions to maximise return on investment across whole estates. Customers not only get maximum carbon reduction for their investments, but also avoid buildings becoming stranded.

The platform balances energy saving, carbon reduction, financial implications, and regulatory impacts. For every building modelled, Quantaco delivers all of the above for each low carbon technology permutation. This enables customers to assess each option transparently against their business and property strategy.

Q4- What challenges are you seeing currently with property companies working towards achieving Net Zero and what steps would you advise organisations take?

Organisations are facing many challenges in the decarbonisation of their portfolios.

Estates tend to be complex, and there is no one size fits all when it comes to assessments, and trying to optimise across multiple technologies increases complexity significantly. Evaluations are time consuming and expensive. With quick cheap solutions lacking credibility for making investment decisions, and in-depth studies being expensive and slow. Existing evaluation tools are also unsuitable for portfolios. Stakeholders in organisations also requires different information – technical, financial, regulatory, and this is hard to evaluate.

What we would advise customers is to take the long-term horizon view and to take a portfolio level approach to decarbonisation rather than one building and one project at a time. Additionally, this is an opportunity to align your lifecycle replacement strategies with decarbonisation projects to maximise the investment value.

Q5- Looking ahead, what trends are you expecting to see in the industry and how is Quantenergy positioning itself to take advantage of these?

Firstly, landlords are thinking strategically about how to avoid stranding risks and are looking to make their portfolios more sustainable both of which maintain property value. Post COVID they are keen to minimise voids as hybrid working continues as business operating pattern, and customers are consolidating their portfolios.

Secondly, investors and institutions have TCFD reporting requirements, so they are looking for hard numbers to back up these regulatory requirements. These factors are now also being considered and embedded into real estate financing decisions by lenders, so we are really starting to see this become important.

Finally, customers that are owner occupiers and tenants carry the utility cost burden. They want to see sustainable assets being installed, partly for operational cost reasons but also as it impacts their carbon footprint. We are seeing requirements for Net Zero investment plans starting to dovetail with asset lifecycle replacement plans.