ThermoShade

Extreme heat is dangerous. It exacerbates underlying health conditions, such as heart disease, asthma, and diabetes and is estimated to cause 489,000 deaths worldwide each year. And heat not only threatens our health, it also diminishes our ability to learn, work, and be happy. Heat exposure increases psychological stress and fatigue, reduces worker productivity, and is even linked to an increase in violent crime. A recent UCLA study showed that without cooling, a 1°F hotter school year reduces that year's learning by 1 percent. By mid-century, L.A. County is projected to experience three times as many extreme heat days (>94°F) as we currently endure—21 days per year—while Riverside County will experience a whopping 55 days per year. These heat impacts significantly affect the most vulnerable—children, the elderly, and those with preexisting conditions.

Existing solutions to deal with heat include energy-intensive air conditioning, water-intensive/slow-growing trees, and shade awnings, which have limited effectiveness. ThermoShade aims to make outdoor spaces cooler, safer, and more comfortable for people—and to make our cities more resilient to climate change.

ThermoShade is developing a passive cooling panel that can be retrofitted to outdoor spaces, creating a shady environment that feels up to 20°F cooler than a basic awning. ThermoShade will work 24/7 with zero electricity, zero water, and zero upkeep, helping our customers keep cool, while reducing their electricity and water bills. Our input materials are proven to work in other applications. Our innovation is the integration of multiple cooling materials into a modular, highly scalable design, and the novel application of these materials towards pedestrian thermal comfort.

We are targeting two initial beachhead customers: affordable housing developers and private and charter schools in Los Angeles.

Affordable housing developers must allocate larger budgets for outdoor amenities than their market rate counterparts to qualify for government subsidies. These housing developments are often in lower-income, hotter neighborhoods, and many residents lack or cannot afford air conditioning. In fact, 30% of renters in the Los Angeles-Long Beach region don’t have air conditioning. We aim to provide these customers with a cool, comfortable outdoor space that doesn’t require any electricity. 

With schools, a recent UCLA study showed that on hot days without proper cooling, each 1°F temperature increase reduces a student’s ability to learn by 1%. Oftentimes at schools, the playground can be hotter than the buildings. The L.A. Times recently referred to our city’s asphalt-covered schoolyards as “an environmental injustice.” ThermoShade aims to reduce the need for air conditioning in schools, while protecting our young people, who are especially vulnerable to extreme heat. Nearly every school across the country must retrofit their outdoor spaces to adapt to our hotter climate and protect their kids. To start, we’ll concentrate on private and charter schools because they generally have a less bureaucratic purchase process.

Our beachhead markets will be schools and multi-family housing, but given our warming planet, there’s a need for ThermoShade almost everywhere. We’re committed to reaching disadvantaged communities who are disproportionately affected by urban heat. These communities are more likely to have an abundance of heat-trapping pavement and cement, and a dearth of mature tree canopy and parks. Additionally, disadvantaged communities are more likely to have buildings with poor (or no) insulation and limited (or no) access to air conditioning. ThermoShade will provide a clean, emission-free cooling alternative and help those most at risk for extreme heat exposure. 

Co-founders Dan and Emily both graduated with MBAs from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. We developed ThermoShade as part of the school’s Business Creation Program. Through this program, we spent a full year interviewing more than 100 subject matter experts across engineering, environmental science, architecture, public health and public policy, as well as potential customers across the education, real estate, and public sectors. This extensive research guided the development of ThermoShade. 

ThermoShade is involved in several programs with the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, part of the Larta Institute’s Venture Fellows Program, and recently joined USGBC-LA’s Net Zero Accelerator. Each of these organizations will continue to inform and guide our efforts to understand and reach the populations that need ThermoShade the most.

We constructed our first panel at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator’s Advanced Prototyping Center. We have begun small-scale testing with different configurations of materials and cooling technologies to determine which combination is most effective at cooling the area directly underneath the panel. Once we have determined the optimal combination, our goal is to launch our first full-scale pilot at a customer site this summer.

0

Our biggest needs are funding for materials and construction, legal support for incorporation, patenting, and potential permitting needs, and introductions to key stakeholders in the Los Angeles ecosystem —especially in our beachhead markets of education and housing, and to potential pilot funders and investors—that can help scale ThermoShade further and ensure our product reaches those most at risk for extreme heat exposure.

With our pilots, we are looking to collect both quantitative and qualitative cooling data from temperature monitors as well as consumer feedback surveys about how this unit makes a user feel cooler. One of our biggest challenges currently, and an area where we could use support, is in quantifying our impact and ROI for customers.

The beauty of our proposal is in its simplicity and its potential for scale. 

Our proposal is addressing a clear market need—humanity must develop new technologies to help our cities become more resilient to climate change and extreme heat. Existing solutions to deal with heat include energy-intensive air conditioning, water-intensive/slow-growing trees, and ineffective shade awnings.

Our proposal also has low technical risk—these input materials are proven to work in other applications. Our innovation is in the novel integration of multiple cooling materials together, and the novel application of these materials towards outdoor thermal comfort. 

And finally, our proposal has the potential for massive scale—We aim to create a standard panel design that can then be snapped, screwed, or slotted together into a configuration that fits the end customer’s site. This means we will be able to simplify our operations and focus on mass producing panels as efficiently as possible.

With ThermoShade, our customers will have access to a cooling solution that does not use any external energy or water and does not produce harmful emissions. Common solutions to extreme heat include air conditioning, fans, misters, and trees. Air conditioners are electricity-intensive and emit greenhouse gasses and sometimes coolant toxins. ThermoShade will allow our customers to escape the afternoon/evening heat outdoors, reducing the dependence on air conditioning and shifting peak power usage to off-peak hours. ThermoShade will also help keep building exteriors cool, thereby reducing cooling costs.

ThermoShade panels also replace water dependent solutions like misters and trees. According to the LA-based non-profit, TreePeople, a new tree needs about fifteen to twenty gallons of water once or twice a week during their first month in the ground and often all the way through their first summer. This comes out to 160 gallons in that first month, or nearly 500 gallons over the first summer. By this point, the tree has still not reached maturity and is not delivering meaningful cooling benefits.

When compared to alternatives, ThermoShade will drive a measurable improvement in energy savings and water conservation. A key goal within the next year is to launch our full-scale pilot and quantify these savings.

Finally, ThermoShade’s passive cooling panels will meaningfully improve people’s wellbeing. ThermoShade panels can provide relief to anyone subjected to extended heat exposure, such as frontline workers, commuters waiting for buses, students playing on asphalt playgrounds, restaurant and warehouse workers, and sports participants and attendees. Over the next five years we hope to achieve meaningful scale while reaching the communities that need ThermoShade the most. Widespread adoption of ThermoShade will lower customers’ electricity bills, reduce our overdependence on air conditioning, and support grid resiliency during heat waves.

In our pilots, we will collect both quantitative and qualitative cooling data from temperature monitors as well as consumer feedback surveys about how this unit makes a user feel cooler. We’ll measure the ambient and “feels like” temperature impact of ThermoShade, the qualitative benefits on users’ mood and productivity, and the impact on keeping a building’s exterior cool.

We are committed to tracking and measuring our impact and are excited to start collecting data from a full-scale pilot.

ThermoShade is tackling the problem of extreme heat and aims to replace current problematic solutions. Existing solutions to deal with heat include energy-intensive air conditioning, water-intensive/slow-growing trees, and shade awnings, which have limited effectiveness.

The continued use of air conditioning is untenable. Air conditioning contributes 3.9% of global greenhouse emissions annually. Over the past century, electricity has gotten very cheap. This has led society to design buildings and cities with an overreliance on air conditioning. However, this path is unsustainable. As the planet gets hotter, we cannot rely on more and more air conditioning, which will account for as much as a 0.5-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of this century.

Trees are a great solution to keep our cities cool, but they cannot be the only solution. That’s because trees often take a decade to grow to maturity and require huge amounts of water. In the Sunbelt region, where water is scarce and droughts are common, we need to implement additional solutions to tackle urban heat in addition to trees.

ThermoShade will provide customers with a cool outdoor space without using electricty or water. ThermoShade will allow our customers to escape the afternoon/evening heat (when buildings are typically at their hottest temperatures) and shift peak power usage to off-peak hours. And it will also help provide relief to the 30% of renters in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area who don't have air conditioning. And for schools, oftentimes the playground can be hotter than the buildings. The L.A. Times recently referred to our city’s asphalt-covered schoolyards as “an environmental injustice.” ThermoShade aims to reduce the need for air conditioning in schools, while protecting our young people, who are especially vulnerable to extreme heat. 

We are developing a “passive cooling” panel, which will create an outdoor shady space that feels up to 20°F cooler than the outside air without using any electricity or water. 

To achieve this cooling, we will use a combination of proven materials and cooling technologies. Our input materials are proven to work in other applications and we are currently conducting tests to determine the optimal combination for our full-scale pilot. Our innovation is in the novel integration of multiple cooling materials together into a modular, highly scalable design, and the novel application of these materials towards outdoor thermal comfort.

ThermoShade is prioritizing diversity within our team and supply chain. Initially, we expect to work with local contractors to manufacture our panels and support frames. We intend to work with businesses that are owned and operated by underrepresented communities whenever possible. We’ve spoken to LACI portfolio company Homeboy Industries, which we’re particularly interested in partnering with. Trainees from Homeboy Industries’ workforce development program have had success transitioning to the types of construction, green infrastructure, and maintenance jobs that we need to fill. As we grow our organization, we will continue to build on the diversity of our founding team.

We are also committed to reaching disadvantaged communities who are disproportionately affected by urban heat. We are currently exploring pilot partnerships in disadvantaged communities.

With ThermoShade, our customers will have access to zero-power cooling. When compared to alternatives, ThermoShade will drive a measurable improvement in energy savings, water conservation, and thermal comfort for users. We will provide a panel that can be snapped, screwed, or slotted together into a configuration that fits the end customer’s site.

Our two beachhead customers are schools and affordable housing developers. ThermoShade will deliver energy savings for these customers and improve the lives of tenants, students, and workers. Schools must protect their students from heat to improve learning outcomes. ThermoShade will help affordable housing developers meet LEED requirements, qualify for government subsidies, reduce energy costs, and improve the lives of tenants. 

We are using our current funding to develop and test our proof of concept panel. Our involvement with the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and Larta Institute Venture Fellows program will provide initial funding and support for our first full-scale pilot. We’re actively applying for grants and fellowships to secure additional funding to support our early adopter customers. After our initial pilot and customer intent, we will start to pitch Angel investors and friends & family.

We are pursuing an asset-light, on demand model that will help our cash management. This model also provides potential for margin expansion and will allow us to reach breakeven and scale quickly.

In 2022, we won $10,000 in the UCLA Cross Campus Innovation Challenge. This cash prize came with no strings attached—UCLA does not have any claims to our business or concepts. We are a Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator portfolio company and this provides funding for our initial pilot. Our involvement in the Larta Institute Venture Fellows program and USGBC-LA Net Zero Accelerator will also provide resources and access to funding.