Connecticut-based Budderfly partners with commercial property owners and managers to make energy upgrades, install usage monitors and survey energy consumption. Its focus is helping businesses cut ambient energy waste, which is a major contributor to real estate’s hefty greenhouse gas emissions.
“With any existing facility in the country – office buildings, restaurants, fitness centers, retail shops – there’s generally a 30% waste factor,” founder Al Subbloie told ImpactAlpha.
Nuveen provided the company with $100 million in debt financing comes from its Energy Infrastructure Credit facility. The ideal follows a $400 million debt round from Nuveen and Vantage Infrastructure last year.
Energy waste
Building owners and users often don’t understand what systems are the most energy intensive, or lack the capital to make necessary upgrades.
“It’s really hard to track return on investment when the only source document you have to measure is the utility bill,” said Subbloie.
Budderfly maps building’s energy use and covers upgrade costs, like new HVAC systems or solar panel installations, to spur businesses to reduce their carbon footprints. Then its software monitors all of a building’s energy systems on one dashboard.
“It’s the difference between fragments and outcomes,” said Subbloie.
Budderfly’s core customers include restaurant chains, retail franchises and assisted living facilities. The company says it has helped customers avoid more than 220,000 million tons of CO2 emissions.
Funding milestone
Budderfly’s debt raises add to $500 million in equity, bringing its total funding to date to more than $1 billion. Given the challenging fundraising environment, Subbloie said, “it’s clear validation of the importance of energy efficiency in the built environment.”
