Focused Futures: Cooling Tech Takes Center Stage in a Warming World

Welcome to Focused Futures, a digital Q&A series where we sit down with industry leaders from diverse sectors to explore what they see coming into focus in their fields over the next 2-5 years.

Focused Futures is more than just speculative, hype-driven interviews; it's a window into the future of business, technology, culture, and beyond. We dive deep into the insights of those at the forefront of change, offering you a unique perspective on the trends and innovations that will shape our world in the near future.

Our conversations are designed to be both informative and accessible. Whether you're a business leader, an innovator, or simply curious about what comes next, Focused Futures is your guide to the ideas and developments that will define tomorrow.

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This week's feature: Why Staying Cool is the New Tech Focus

In this episode of Focused Futures, we're excited to welcome Matthew Kruse, a mechanical engineer by trade, Matthew’s experience has taken him from Siemens, Trane to now Blue Frontier as Area General Manager. It’s here where they are introducing a groundbreaking technology focused on revolutionizing the HVAC industry, an industry severely lacking clean investments for the future. We sat down to talk about this incredibly important topic and how new thinking has big potential to evolve an industry that is facing headwinds on a global scale.

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Q: I think many people take for granted the concept of cooling in our everyday lives and across our cities. You’ve been in the commercial HVAC industry your whole career, what are some of the biggest hurdles and challenges facing the industry?

It’s funny you mentioned that.  2023 was the hottest year on record and some climatologists are suggesting it was the hottest year in over 100,000 years, and YET most people didn’t even realize it because they were living in their air-conditioned homes, driving in their air conditioned cars and working in their air conditioned offices.

And in the 18 years I’ve been in this industry (along with the 100 years prior to that) we’ve been conditioning our spaces with the same basic technology, the vapor compression cycle. This technology has two major hurdles:  It’s inefficient!  HVAC is by far the largest energy consumer of a typical commercial building.  PLUS the hotter it get’s outside the less efficient it becomes and anyone who’s paid a July/Augusts electrical bill can attest to that.  Second it uses refrigerants. And some of those refrigerants can have upwards of 2,000x the global warming potential of CO2.  So it then becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.  The planet warms, we need more A/C we emit more refrigerants into the atmosphere making the hotter requiring even more A/C and so on.

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Q: Talk a little about what the current global landscape looks like when it comes to cooling populations, it’s strain on utilities and how it’s still a privilege or even rare in many parts of the world?

Sure!  So, you can almost look at it through two lenses, the developed world and the developing world.  Many parts of Europe, the Northeast and Northwest of the United states do not have air conditioning.  This is changing fast!  As a matter of fact, the US experienced more heat related deaths last year than any other weather fatality.  So these parts of the world are scrambling to outfit their existing building infrastructure with Air-conditioning.  This creates a massive strain on the utilities and their ability to service all of their customers during the hottest parts of the day, being Air Conditioning is the largest consumer of electricity in a building.  

When you move out to the developing world: China, India, Brazil, many of these countries are going to need to start conditioning their spaces just to allow for their populations to be productive and safe.  And again, with A/C being such a large consumer of electricity these countries don’t have the capabilities of powering all these new A/C units at their current efficiencies.  To give you an idea of the magnitude the International Energy Agency projects that the global AC electrical consumption will equal the ENTIRE electrical consumption of present day China and India combined! 

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Q: Is it fair to say these challenges will continue to grow with the increase of heat waves across our planet?

Absolutely! 2024 is breaking every record 2023 set.  As we continue to get hotter, the challenges are only going to get bigger.

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Q: When we first spoke, you mentioned Blue Frontier is “re-thinking air” and revolutionizing the industry through innovative problem solving, can you expound on this in laymen’s terms?

Blue Frontier’s technology is an entirely new way to cool and dehumidify buildings.  The process is not only 300% more efficient than legacy equipment, but also has a thermal storage component that allows you, at the time of your choosing, to run the unit with the same amount of energy it takes to run a toaster oven. It can also independently control temperature and humidity, which is pretty cool because humidity control was never really possible with the basic vapor compression cycle, it was always a bi-product of cooling the air.  Now we can truly dial in what is needed in the space to keep people comfortable.  

The way Blue Frontier does this is with a a salt solution called Liquid desiccant.  It has an incredibly low vapor pressure, and we use it to draw the moisture out of the air.  We can then take a portion of that very dry air and have it interact with a very low flow of water.  This is called “indirect evaporative cooling” which essentially cools down the airstream to a desired temperature.  So the performance break through is that we are now capable of dialing in the temperature of the air by adjusting the flow of water and the dryness of the air with the amount desiccant, meeting the exact needs of the space and keeping people comfortable.

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Q: The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the importance of air conditioning and the gap in investment that this sector receives in comparison to other clean technologies, creating an enormous opportunity – do you see the competitive landscape growing and what hurdles in your opinion exist in the growth?

Absolutely! The largest manufacturers of HVAC equipment, and this is really dominated by four players (Trane, JCI/York, Carrier, Daikin/McQuay) have all stated (some loudly, some quietly) the vapor compression cycle can not meet the future HVAC needs of the planet and are investing in Liquid Desiccants and “next generation” HVAC technologies.  The biggest hurdle is time.  We need to prove to the market that we can perform to the levels we say we can and do it reliably.  The only way to do that is through pilot programs and we are aggressively getting these deployed of the next 6-12 months.  

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Q: How severe is the surge in electricity demand in your opinion and how big of a role does air conditioning impact it globally?

The surge in electrical demand is going to be severe, as we have three factors converging on our energy grids.  1) HVAC is the largest consumer of electricity in a commercial building.  The more we continue to heat up and demand more air conditioning the more we are going to tax our grids. 2) There is a large push for “electrification” and a move away from all fossil fuels in buildings and cars.  This is a hug burden on the grids.  3) The amount of computing capacity to power these large AI language models is generating a spike in data center construction.  These consume a massive amount of electricity and can be built in a year where added electrical capacity can often take 3 years.

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Q: Education seems core to converting new customers, what are the convincing factors you’re seeing as more and more interest and transformation is happening?

The excitement is off the charts.  The efficiency numbers are big enough that people sit up in their chairs when you show it to them.  Part of it, is the engineering community is hungry for a transformative technology that will allow them to meet the needs of their clients.  The key is just giving them the space to ask questions and get comfortable with the technology.  If they don’t understand it, they won’t specify it on their plans.

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Q: Every big transformation starts with a clear vision, talk a little about that vision, I found it to be both inspiring and unique within your industry?

We want to help change the world for the better and as a HVAC sales engineer there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity within my industry to do that.  We now have a technology that can not only reduce carbon emissions in a substantial way, but also provide better results at a lower price.  Yes, the efficiency gain is substantial enough to allow utilities to  manage their capacity more effectively but it also allows the consumer to pay less for air conditioning.  And when you start looking at a lot of developing nations at or around the equator, this is going to be a major deal just for their quality of life!

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Q: Is it realistic to envision a future where cooling in some shape or form will be on a mass scale and sustainable?

Absolutely!  The technology is scalable all the way down to a residential size unit and all the way up to a large commercial unit. As we grow, cost will come down and we will become the first cost leader, even against the legacy equipment that cost more to run, and doesn’t condition the space nearly as well.  When that happens the 120 year reign of the vapor compression cycle will be over.