In Today’s Edition…

Welcome to 241 new readers joining us on LinkedIn learning about great things that are happening in social impact.

Each two weeks, we cover a UN SDG: recent news, an exciting startup in the space, and an influential thinker worth knowing.

This week, our focus is UN SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure:

• Current Events: 

  • $7 million grants for stormwater assistance in New Jersey

  • NYSERDA’s Green Bank marks 10th year of successful operations

  • Infrastructure Bank commits to Rhode Island clean water efforts

  • Clean transportation embraced through an EV ride-share system in VA

  • Massive investment in water reaches Ohio counties

• UVWC: QuantAQ

• Insights from: Julia Hustwit

Without further ado, let’s take a SIP!

Current Events

• $7 million grants for stormwater assistance in New Jersey: The Murphy Administration of New Jersey has allocated stormwater assistance grants totaling $7 million to support initiatives that will help prevent flooding and ameliorate water quality. These grants are intended to support cutting-edge stormwater management techniques, ultimately promoting environmental sustainability. Read more here.

• NYSERDA’s Green Bank marks 10th year of successful operations: NY Green Bank, recently marked its 10-year anniversary and surpassed $2 billion in financial commitments. This achievement evinces the bank's success in developing clean energy and sustainable infrastructure projects, accelerating New York's transition to a greener and more resilient energy future. Read more here.

• Infrastructure Bank commits to Rhode Island clean water efforts: The Infrastructure Bank has successfully closed a $77 million Green Bond that will be used to finance clean and safe drinking water projects across Rhode Island. This will bolster the state's efforts to develop sustainable infrastructure, increase the accessibility of clean water, and promote environmental conservation. Read more here.

• Clean transportation embraced through an EV ride-share system in VA: A community in the small town of Staunton, VA has adopted the use of a shared Tesla to overcome the absence of Uber or Lyft. For locals and visitors, the electric car offers quick and environmentally responsible transportation options that can be controlled via a smartphone app. Read more here.

• Massive investment in water reaches Ohio counties: A $114M investment in Ohio’s water infrastructure is part of the Ohio BUILDS plan, supporting the water infrastructure of Ohio counties. It represents a strong understanding on the necessities of improving water access and water quality. Read more here.

UVWC: QuantAQ

Below is Unlocking Venture Without Capital (UVWC), a series where I explore social impact startups highlighting their products, industry dynamics, and competition. You can read more about the inspiration here.

Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely mine, and I have not been sponsored or affiliated with the company in question nor do they represent the views of any employer with whom the author may be affiliated. By highlighting the market opportunity, product overview, and competitive landscape of each company, I hope to highlight exciting products, companies, and industries worth learning about.

📜 Overview

QuantAQ is an integrated data systems that monitors air quality, designed to help gather information about the pollution levels. The provide an E2E solution for air quality monitoring providing the hardware, software, IoT, and analytics.

💻 Product Offering

QuantAQ provides a one-stop shop solution for air quality monitoring, offering four different components to their full product offering:

1. Hardware: MODULAIR-PM (real-time analysis of particulate matter) and MODULAIR (MODULAIR + gas phase monitoring of CO, NO, NO2, and O3)

2. Software: Management platform with features include report generation, data management, and automated QA — they also offer API access that can be used to access their platform/data externally

3. IoT: All hardware and software are connecting through WiDi or cellular networks

4. Analytics: Up-to-date algorithms that help analyze and create actionable insights from data collection

These four components help QuantAQ built an effective monitoring system with a focus on high quality readings and developing insights from that data.

📈 Market Opportunity

TAM - ✅

QuantAQ has an early subscription model that they charge per unit. Their two plans are their Pro and Enterprise plans. Using the Pro plan — which they recommend for 10+ units — we come to an annual cost of $12.5k/year assuming all base (MODULAIR-PM) hardware. If we take commercial buildings which are both larger in size and also more likely to be in denser areas/areas with higher pollution, we have 5.9M buildings.

5.9M buildings x $12.5k/year = $73.8B 

This yields a bottoms-up TAM of greater than $1B.

Industry CAGR - ❌

According to Grand View Research, the estimated CAGR of the US air quality analyzers industry for the next 5 years is 6.3%, which falls below NYU’s estimated total market CAGR over the next 5 years of ~14%.

Market structure - ✅

According to Grand View Research, the carbon credits market industry is undergoing consolidation through acquisitions. This is to enhance and reach and speed of new customer acquisition and product growth.

🏁 Competitive Landscape

Shortlist of direct competitors

• Kunak — an air monitoring solution implemented through monitoring stations collecting air quality information and providing analyses

• JustAir — community air monitoring system that increases consumer visibility to air quality fluctuations in their area through alerts and their in-app reporting mechanism

• NuWave Sensors — manufacturer of built environment monitoring solutions for air quality and controlled environments servicing both residential and commercial use cases

Competitive advantage

QuantAQ focuses on taking a data-oriented approach and want to build out the complete E2E experience. They focus especially on the insights and applicability of ML algorithms to generate recommendations and find insights from the data. This forward-thinking mentality about the data they are collecting could help catalyze future product offerings that act on this data lake.

👋🏽 My Personal Take

• The market size is large and the need is pressing — intense wildfires across the US in the past couple of years have brought the issue right in front of consumers’ eyes.

• Although ML algorithms could find key insights from the data, it remains to be seen whether these finds are worth the investment in the digital infrastructure, or whether its suggestions are not much better than what experts could easily find.

• Legislation regarding indoor air quality standards would likely drastically affect the behaviors and growth of this market, as many hardware solutions currently focus on a number of particles to monitor. If those laws change the monitoring standards, that will be a huge forcing function to solutions that bet on the right indicators.

Insights from: Julia Hustwit

⚠️ Key Takeaways

Julia is a multifaceted thought leader with a diverse background in architecture, policy, economics, and technology. Julia's passion lies in systemic change and finding effective solutions for complex societal issues in the built and natural environments.

With a deep understanding of design and systems thinking, Julia applies her expertise to identify existing barriers and inefficiencies, envision future possibilities, and develop strategic interventions. She’s had an impactful 20+ year career, with over a decade in public service in the Depart of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Energy (DOE). She’s not only an expert policy advisor but also has a technical background from her education and career as an architect that helps her understand the technical intricacies of the plans she proposes . Julia's areas of interest include building decarbonization, urban planning, climate justice, community development, and affordable housing.

Through her directorial roles, advisory positions, and social innovation endeavors, Julia remains dedicated to championing positive change in the built and natural environments.

🛠️ Julia’s role: Advisor to many nonprofits, politicians, and transition teams with a passion for sustainable real estate development and local community development on the side

💡 Julia’s best advice:

• Seek out opportunities to learn about the built environment

• Get comfortable with saying the same message again and again

• Hold tight to what you believe while working strategically

🔎 Looking ahead:

• Building Electrification: Climate and Health Impacts

• Indoor Air Quality Policies and Tracking Impact

• Skepticism towards 3D Printed Houses

📜 Background

Julia Hustwit embarked on her career in a traditional architecture firm. She received her BHA from Carnegie Mellon University in Architecture and Environmental Policy, determined to literally “build a more sustainable world.” There, despite working on one to three projects at a time, she realized she wasn’t having the impact that she wanted. Determined to find that, Julia went to the University of Pittsburgh at night to complete her MID in International Development, focused on global climate negotiations, post-disaster reconstruction, and sustainable global development.She left architecture and worked as a researcher and advisor on affordable housing, community redevelopment, and green building domestically. During the 2008 recession, she transitioned into a role as a Climate Policy Advisor at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Julia's now started her path in public service in the federal government. In her 9 years at the agency, she achieved remarkable milestones, such as:

• Launching a program in President Obama's 2013 Climate Action Plan to bring renewable energy into the affordable housing space

• Implementing utility benchmarking policies across the national affordable housing stock, which simultaneously facilitated building decarbonization and cost savings that improved the financial sustainability of affordable housing projects across the country

• Consensus-building within her 8,000-person agency and contributing to strategic planning for climate resilience in the national housing stock

• Directing the largest sector of the Better Building Challenge (Multifamily Housing)

Through her relentless dedication and innovative approach, Julia Hustwit has left an indelible mark, demonstrating the transformative power of public service and her commitment to making a tangible difference in the world.

🎙️ Highlights

🛠️ Julia’s role:

At the beginning of her career, Julia faced certain constraints and limitations, such as being influenced by student loans and geographical factors that determined her career choices.

As she progressed, she has now gained more “autonomy in decision-making.”

Julia is currently engaging in various types of work, ranging from:

• Being a small-scale real estate developer, leveraging her expertise in her own property development efforts

• Advising politicians and nonprofits on matters related to sustainable and equitable development

• Advising in transition teams during presidential and mayoral elections

• Being a mother

💡 Julia’s best advice:

Seek out opportunities to learn about the built environment

Julia sees how college educations do not always highlight learnings about climate and especially the built environment domain.

“Most people are not getting an education about the built environment in college…but basic knowledge is key to entering these fields,” Julia says.

She’s an advocate of finding practical ways to learn. For the built environment, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification process is useful both to gain credentials and a basic understanding of how the design of the built environment impacts public and environmental health.

Get comfortable with saying the same message again and again

Julia's journey through public service required lots of awareness building. When she joined HUD, there was a lack of awareness of green building and climate change. She recalls that it wasn’t enough for people to know that these existed as concepts, but they had to be made top-of-mind if there were any hopes of making progress. It wasn’t an easy process to build that awareness and buy-in, but she did so with perseverance and tenacity.

“Repetition and patience. People need to hear the same message 10 times before they really hear it and start to accept it – and, ideally, they need to hear it from at least 3 different sources.”

The scene has changed, according to Julia.

Whereas before there was a lack of awareness and buy-in on these matters, now it has transitioned to a “lack of understanding.” Although they might sound similar, in Julia’s experience it is not enough to know about and care about the issue. In the case of the built environment, it was Julia’s combination of technical, creative, and social science understanding and skills that allowed her to create innovative and workable policy solutions.

Because of her own experiences, she realizes that decision makers “need to understand what change really looks and feels like in the big picture, as well as how it works technically and logistically, in order to create effective solutions”.

The next step therefore is to build on the foundation of awareness and help decision makers gain vision and understanding. While this ideally happens through changes in hiring and training, it also can be facilitated with clear messaging that gets repeated again, and again, and again.

Hold tight to what you believe while working strategically

Navigating a mission-driven approach can be complex; people can be quick to either discredit or support your efforts based on their personal values and worldview. That is why Julia encourages exercising empathy to understand your target audience’s motivations.

“Understanding the motivations of your audience is crucial to persuading them to make changes in their behavior, decisions, and policies.”

However, she has seen in her own experiences how being mission-driven has sometimes caused people to take her less seriously.

“Passion is an emotion, and social-interest is still viewed as being in conflict with the pervasive, capitalist ideal of ‘rational self-interest.’ It’s extremely common – especially for women – to be viewed as emotional, irrational, naive, lacking business sense, lacking executive gravitas, etc. if they don’t walk the tight-rope perfectly. It’s better now than in the latter part of the 20th century, but we have a very long way to go still on this.”

In her many years of successful consensus-building in the federal government, Julia has learned firsthand how hard it is to weave environmental missions into institutions that have never contemplated how environmental issues are a critical part of their long-standing social missions – and how hard it is to convince profit-minded people to rethink their calculations. While she believes that relating to others’ values is critical, it's important to maintain authenticity and avoid being disingenuous about what you advise as a professional, a person, and a citizen.

🔎 Looking Ahead

Looking ahead, Julia is interested in:

1. Electrification of the built environment, sometimes referred to as “building decarbonization”, and its impact on both climate and public health

Read more here and here.

2. The movement towards establishing indoor air quality policies and the impact that tracking and monitoring would have on future legislation

Read more here and here.

3. Wary of 3D printed houses and their viability

Read more here and here.

‼️ Learn More

If you are interested in the built environment, or public service, or would like to learn more about Julia Hustwit, please reach out to Julia on LinkedIn.