Anas Al Kassas, INOVUES Founder
Infrastructure is one of the hardest sectors to disrupt. It’s deeply risk-averse, with mental lock-in being a very real challenge for net-zero innovators. It takes an outstanding solution that’s easy to implement and that generates significant cost-efficiencies to breakthrough – and that’s exactly what Anas Al Kassas, Founder and CEO of INOVUES created.
Kassas – an architect from Syria who moved to Boston to study a Masters in Architecture – wanted to create scaleable solutions that could help tackle the climate crisis: “the problem for me was that you invest several years in every project, but it’s a one-off prototype. You go to the next project and you face the same challenges again.
He was staring out the window of his apartment, brainstorming ideas that could have a big impact, when he had a flash of insight: “I thought, ‘what if there was a way to transform these windows into smart systems without having to remove or replace anything at all? I was thinking about ideas from my multidisciplinary experience in architecture and facade engineering.”
His idea has since evolved into a multiple-award winning startup that has already participated in several accelerators and been recognised by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Climate Action Playbook.
INOVUES
INOVUES – innovative views – is an energy-efficiency outlier: it’s the only patented solution in its class that can transform building facades with the latest energy-saving and smart glass innovations without replacing any parts.
It’s a simple but effective solution to upgrading old infrastructure that leaks energy: it works by simply adding a second window to create double pane windows. “It’s a clean and easy installation process,” explains Kassas, “we don’t use mechanical fasteners in our system; we rely on structural glazing materials. The system integrates with the existing facade and does not require drilling or altering anything.
“We use 70% fewer materials compared to existing methods and prefabricate the system off-site so installation costs are cut by up to 80%, reducing the total cost of window upgrades buy up to 10 times.”
2022 was INOVUES’ breakout year, explains Kassas, “we finished some major pilots and got $50 million of potential projects in our pipeline.”
INOVUES is ready to scale up and it’s staring into incredible market opportunity at a time of high-demand and energy-efficiency incentives; the global retrofit market is worth an estimated $9.5 trillion.
But for Kassas, the early days of building INOVUES were far from glamourous. It took against-the-odds perseverance and making it through hurdle after hurdle in make or break moments – often by the skin of his teeth.
In the first three years of the R&D phase, he says, “there was literally blood, sweat and tears at almost every step of the process.
“It was on a very, very tight budget, almost bootstrapping. There where moments where you spend a year or more of work then know that everything could fall apart because the next few tests are very important. And if I failed in the test, I didn’t have the money to repeat the tests. And that would’ve been a kill switch to the entire thing. There were a lot of these moments.
“Being a foreigner who came to the US, I didn’t have the network here. It was very hard and we started small. I went through the Cleantech Open accelerator programme and one of the advisors wrote our first check and then more people followed him. He’s on our board of directors now and has invested five times.
“I tell him ‘you’re a true angel investor in the literal meaning of the word.’ It was a $50,000 check that enabled me to fund the next few months and build the first system and pass the first test and then get the funding from other angel investors. And then we won the International Award from Cleantech Open which gave us more validation.”
INOVUES retrofitting windows for energy-efficiency
INOVUES was recognised for bringing true innovation to the built environment: windows are responsible for up to 40% of energy-efficiency in buildings, but up until now retrofitting ageing infrastructure in commercial real estate has often been too expensive to be worthwhile commercially, with it taking up to 100 years for the investment to pay off. For the first time ever, INOVUES has made window and facade upgrades an environmentally and commercially viable option with an easy-to-implement solution.
Today, INOVUES has installed upgrades for leading industry players like Saint-Gobain, 3M and the University of Minnesota. Its now looking to raise a $10 million Series A to scale up the team and operations to execute on the multimillion dollar projects in its pipeline.
As INOVUES continues to scale, it stands a make a tremendous impact that will be felt both on the environment and on the bottom line by significantly reducing the amount of energy needed for heating:
“Through our installations, we’re reducing carbon emissions by 100 tonnes annually,” says Kassas, “and the potential impact, at scale, is close to half a giga tonne to a giga tonne of reduced emissions.”
And as the war in Ukraine drags on, its hard to overstate the impact that an affordable, quick to implement, and practical solution to more energy-efficient buildings can have on consumers, businesses and governments.
The pain of energy waste in buildings has been acutely felt in a winter where the energy crisis left many lower-income households across Europe with a choice of whether to ‘heat or eat’ and governments issued billions of Euros of energy bailouts to prevent households and economies from slipping into bankruptcy.
UK electricity/gas price hikes
Reducing energy consumption is a key component of the race to net-zero and freeing the world from the often dictactor-fueled grip of fossil fuel. From the US’ Inflation Reduction Act to the European Green Deal’s energy efficiency directive – which requires a net reduction of energy consumption by 9% by 2030 – governments are offering strong incentives to accelerate the transition towards lower-carbon economies.
By reinventing the energy-efficiency capability of real estate, INOVUES is ready to play a big part in delivering a lower-carbon world and take on a global $9.5 trillion market opportunity:
“We’re pushing the boundaries of facade engineering on many aspects…transparent photovoltaic or dynamic tinting or vacuum insulated glass,” says Kassas, “all of these now can be available for existing buildings at a fraction of the usual cost. There’s no disruption and no need to replace anything.”
