Marshall Cox

Marshall Cox has a mission to decarbonize legacy buildings’ heating and cooling systems — and that allows him to put the environment first.

Kelvin, the Brooklyn-based proptech company formerly known as Radiator Labs, is focused on reducing wasted energy, saving money, and enabling temperature control for older buildings. That means reducing gas use, decreasing carbon emissions, and creating a pathway toward potential electrification across the board, Cox said.

Over the past year, Kelvin has secured a $100 million debt facility with ClearGen — a capital provider for energy solutions managed by Blackstone’s sustainable resources group — for improvements to older multifamily buildings. 

Cox said Kelvin’s next step is “hybrid electrification,” a combination of modular hardware and software that is deployed to efficiently decarbonize buildings by ensuring lower energy costs, comfort control and less carbon emissions, according to the firm’s website. As for what sets Kelvin apart from other firms, Cox pointed out his company’s value of “resource efficiency.”

“If you have something, let’s not throw it away,” Cox said. “We try to use what we have for as long as we can. It’s a systems-based approach toward efficiency and decarbonization that makes best use of what we have.”

Next year, Cox plans to grow Kelvin’s sales team and put more resources into hybrid electrification. Kelvin has even already secured a contract with Con Edison for 10 megawatts of demand response load, Cox said.

“So next year is just us taking what we’ve already done, supercharging it, and then helping buildings take that next step toward electrification,” Cox added.

As of last year, Kelvin had deployed more than 15,000 energy-efficient systems to decarbonize older buildings throughout the U.S., including Department of Energy properties and New York City Department of Education facilities. The firm has also eliminated thousands of tons of emissions annually at several buildings across Brooklyn and Manhattan.