Decarbonizing commercial buildings requires streamlining insights on where to start and actions to take — Buoyant’s Investment in Audette

Drivers behind decarbonizing real estate

Looking around at our built environment, we have achieved architectural and engineering feats that you can only be amazed by. Unfortunately, these buildings carry an energy legacy, consuming nearly 55% of global electricity and building operations accounting for 27% of global emissions. This makes building emissions a must-solve for climatetech. Thankfully it is an achievable one. For decades, leading businesses have been seeing strong operating and bottom-line ROIs from investments in a wide range of market-tested measures, such as better insulation and HVAC upgrades.

While it is imperative we make all new buildings more efficient and reduce embodied emissions inherent in construction, we must recognize 75% of sector emissions between now and 2050 will come from buildings already constructed. This is not a new market; in fact, it is estimated that the energy retrofit market size will be over $200B in 2028 and energy efficiency as a service (EEaaS) over $220B in 2026. Additionally, building retrofits are being prioritized by local governments because this investment has the highest job creation rate per capita.

There is escalating demand for, and regulations now requiring, lower emissions from buildings. We see almost 4,000 companies taking action with science-based targets or net zero commitments along with asset managers representing hundreds of trillions of dollars of market capitalization and AUM.

Looking at the opportunity and money flowing into retrofits, one could think that the problems have been solved. However, questions still remain for many building portfolio owners and operators — where do they start, and what actions should they take? And it introduces a new question, how do we unlock this intelligence quickly at a global scale?

Our Investment in Audette

Introducing Buoyant’s investment in Audette.

The answer for quickly decarbonizing real estate at scale

Using a data and modeling first approach, Audette aggregates big data sets & aerial imagery to build models that quickly answer the question of where to start and actions to take, across entire economies and then engages building owners to fill in any unknowns. While a service industry exists to answer this question, Audette avoids “boots on the ground”, the need for sensors or IoT devices, and upfront customer “opt-in”. This outside-in approach allows Audette to provide insights at 100x the speed and 3x more value per dollar invested making them truly differentiated in the space.

These insights are materially valuable for real estate portfolio owners looking for energy cost savings and decarbonization strategies, retrofit service providers targeting new customers, utilities developing community strategies to achieve energy efficiency and emission reduction goals, and lenders looking to prequalify projects. Knowing where to start, refining with additional data and inputs, and only paying for human intervention and truck rolls for projects likely to have high-value outcomes, supercharges building decarbonization with both speed and scale.

Leader and team builder, Audette’s CEO Christopher Naismith

We were introduced to Audette’s CEO Christopher Naismith by Powerhouse and could not have been more impressed with his deep domain expertise and leadership skills. He has spent more than a decade in boiler rooms and boardrooms for large corporate real estate before becoming frustrated with existing inefficiencies in making large-scale carbon transitions. His vision is for Audette to be the engine that delivers carbon reduction plans for every building on the planet.

Being a sole founder is never easy, but Christopher has built a team with intentionality, hiring individuals that round out what is required and amplify strengths, all while keeping DEI in mind.

Ecosystems thinking go-to-market

One of the biggest pain points for this space has been moving from motivation (board-level priorities) to implementation (retrofits at scale), which has limited progress on climate in the commercial real estate sector. By treating the entire global building stock as one portfolio and exposing where the value lies, Audette reduces administrative and transaction costs, enabling each partner to play their optimal role.

Audette has developed strong partnerships with key players, including geospatial data providers and energy service companies, enabling Audette to fast-track development and refine outputs.

Welcome to the Buoyant Boat!

Buoyant invests in digital solutions for climate risk, including mitigation across the built environment, making Audette the perfect fit for our thesis. Buoyant is excited about the scalable and climate impactful work the Audette team is having across North America alongside a strong set of investors: Energy Impact Partners, Active Impact Investments, Johnson Controls, Osgoode Properties, Powerhouse Ventures, Turnham-Green Capital, and Undivided Ventures.

We are thrilled to welcome Christopher and his team into the Buoyant boat and look forward to helping the team achieve its vision of decarbonizing every building on the planet.