HIBT Lab! BlocPower: Donnel Baird

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Donnel Baird was a child, his parents would regularly use the oven to heat their Brooklyn apartment ⁠— a dangerous and energy-inefficient practice that’s unfortunately not unique to New York City. As an adult traveling the country with the Obama for America campaign, Donnel saw countless homes and apartments wasting power and jeopardizing resident safety because of dated infrastructure. He founded BlocPower in 2014 to address this precise problem, focusing on low-income communities so often overlooked by innovative startups.

This week on How I Built This Lab, Donnel talks with Guy about BlocPower’s work to modernize buildings nationwide and transition them to clean energy sources. BlocPower has raised more than $100 million from Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, and has partnered with cities across the country to create greener, safer spaces for their residents.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:11.0	Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.
0:13.6	I'm Guy Roz.
0:15.4	Almost a third of all the carbon emissions released by Americans each year come from buildings,
0:22.0	homes, apartments, offices to keep them lit and heated or cooled.
0:28.4	And this is a big problem.
0:30.8	But there is a solution which isn't as complicated as you might think.
0:35.0	And the solution is to electrify our buildings and making sure that that electricity comes
0:40.8	from renewable sources like wind or solar or hydro power or even nuclear power.
0:47.3	Most of our energy still comes from burning coal and gas.
0:50.8	But advances in technology and recent years has made it possible within our grasp to decarbonize
0:57.2	all of our buildings and to do it quickly.
1:00.6	About eight years ago, Denel Barrett and entrepreneur from Brooklyn saw an opportunity to focus on
1:06.0	decarbonizing buildings in low-income neighborhoods, neighborhoods like the one he grew up in.
1:12.5	He founded a company called BlockPower that converts any building into a carbon-free building
1:18.7	by electrifying it.
1:20.5	So far, BlockPower has converted more than 1200 buildings.
1:24.7	Recently, signed a deal with the city of Ithaca, New York to electrify and decarbonize every
1:29.6	single building in the city.
1:31.6	Denel Barrett, welcome to the show.
1:33.6	Guy Ross, I just couldn't be more delighted to talk with you.
	...

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