Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman (Part 2)

SM: What did you do after you closed down that business?

NR: I took some time to recalibrate what I wanted to do next. As a sailor and hiker, I have always been interested in the environment. I saw oil prices going through the roof. Scarcity and requirements for energy were both on the rise as newly industrialized countries had a need for energy and power.

I began investigating opportunities in this field when I came across this technology developed by Tom Hartman, who was living in Texas. I called him up one day and asked him about it. He advised me to visit with him so I came down and spent a day with him. I looked at a couple of plans he had done. On my next visit I signed an agreement in which he licensed all of his patents to me.

SM: How did you find him, and what is it about his technology that caught your attention?

NR: With my background in process manufacturing, I knew that every penny was critical when dealing with commodity manufacturing in competitive world markets. Energy costs and raw material costs are always being evaluated, as are labor [costs]. As a result, I became interested in energy reduction processes during my manufacturing days. After I shut down the company that built plants, I was looking at manufacturing processes trying to see where in the process energy could be reduced. Energy is a major cost in manufacturing steel.

I came across this technology as I was researching energy reduction techniques in manufacturing. Tom Hartman is well published in the HVAC industry. Energy was becoming more expensive, and environments all over the world were getting screwed up. That made me realize that energy was a good area to focus on. I realized that controlling energy costs was going to become critical. The Kyoto Treaty, which required countries to reduce pollutants, was coming into play. I had already seen that in the steel industry when governments came in to reduce particulates in the air emitted by furnaces. They came in and put scrubbers in these stacks to reduce the [amount of] particulate entering the environment, which was causing acid rain.

SM: Were you looking at HVAC in particular?

NR: HVAC represents 40% to 60% of the operating cost of a building. I assumed that this was a big percentage of a building’s operating costs, and I realized that there were millions of buildings in the United States. I felt that it was a good opportunity and started to explore it.

Tom was promoting the technology as an engineered service. He would go into the building and calculate what could be done. Over time they would implement the technology. Buildings are controlled, for the most part, by building automation systems. Those are nothing more than PCs that control the on or off of heating systems, cooling systems, and ducts that allow air to go into certain areas. Those are called automation systems. There are 20 manufacturers of such systems.

My neighbor at the time, Jim Hanna, was an IT guy. He is the co-founder with me. I told him that I had found this interesting technology. Jim was acutely aware of and concerned about the environment. I told him if we could package this the right way, there would be an opportunity. He was an IT architect who had worked for Fortune 500 companies as well as state governments to design and structure their IT systems. He thought that we could easily package it and make it scalable software to deploy on top of all the business automation systems.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman
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