Exciting New Ecosystem for Energy Efficiency

Want to see how much money is seeping out of your home in the form of energy waste? Essess, a startup in Massachusetts, is working to make it easy.

Essess is building a huge database of building photographs using multi-spectral thermal cameras. Similar to Google Street View, you may eventually be able to see your house – or any building you are considering buying – to assess its energy efficiency in full color…in fact the brighter the color, the bigger the energy waste.

Essess has also developed applications that will provide energy reports
pinpointing areas of concern and calculating the financial and environmental cost. The ultimate vision is to build an ecosystem within real estate databases like Zillow that will connect you with professionals and contractors who can help you improve energy efficiency.

Only about 10% of US addresses will be in the database by the end of the year, so it may be a while before this service is promoted. After the launch, will Essess also come out with proprietary marketing services and tools that will be attractive to contractors, energy efficiency specialists, utilities and retail energy providers alike? Time will tell.

Consumers flocked to Zillow and Google Street View when those sites launched, and people couldn’t wait to share their experience with others. We would expect just as much buzz around the launch of this service. By helping to build a collective culture of energy conservationism, while also growing demand for energy-related services, Essess has hit upon a brilliant and potentially lucrative concept. Congratulations, and good luck to them!