Our Story and Our WHYs

We chose the name Cadence OneFive in reference to the rhythm of climate action required to equitably get on the 1.5° climate path.

Why Buildings?

Buildings are for people. Buildings exist to protect people from weather and hazards. Whether it’s a yurt or a luxury high-rise condo, the basic purpose of a building is to make the environmental conditions inside the building different from those outside the building. We can’t forget this basic fact: how we make buildings is not the constant. The need to protect people is the constant.

The operation of buildings impacts the environment. Ideally, buildings should meet a bunch of our essential physiological, safety and security needs without adversely impacting the environment. Today, essentially all buildings have a carbon footprint associated with their operations. In the US, the building sector as a whole is responsible for approximately 1/3 of our emissions nationally and up to 75% of the emissions in dense urban areas like NYC. A very large fraction of buildings also have significant room for improvement when it comes to meeting basic needs of today and/or the not terribly difficult to predict needs of the future (resiliency to more extreme heat waves, flooding, etc).

While buildings and other infrastructure will need to be adapted to meet whatever climate change brings in the future, per Amory Lovins, “the good news is that mitigation is cheaper than adaptation.” Moreover, a package of building upgrades to mitigate the environmental impact of building operations can also meaningfully improve occupant comfort, health & quality of life.

Why Housing?

Housing is a key social determinant of health, and improving access to housing and improving housing quality are health interventions. We have a robust multidisciplinary research base that supports this thesis, and over the past decade have made important cross-sector capital linkages, such as using Medicaid dollars for housing upgrades.

Secondly, in the housing sector, we consider the cost of housing to be the rent (or cost of ownership) plus utilities. We are entering an incredibly volatile mid-transition for energy where the established costs for the latter are going to go right out the window as we transition technologies and fuels. It’s exciting in that it gives us opportunities to fight for things like low-income utility rates that have been unapproachable discussions in the past, but there’s also a lot at risk, considering the staggering energy cost inequities we see today in low-income communities. And many years of research have shown that many families will trade health and food budgets to pay for energy. So these are intertwined, especially as we enter into spikier climate conditions where the home will play (or fail to play) an even bigger protective role.

Finally, the impacts of climate change will affect every sector of the economy, but it is already hitting low-income and racialized communities first. Because we’ve already locked in some climate impacts, we must now do all we can to improve the protective fuction of homes for people who are disproportionately vulnerable and disproportionately exposed. Outside the most high-cost cities, multifamily buildings disproportionately house low- and moderate-income households. At the same time, multifamily buildings account for the largest share of the fossil-fuel-driven GHG emissions from buildings. Whether for health, wealth, or impact, multifmaily buildings are a critical target market.

Climate, health, and wealth are intricately tied together. Housing has historically played and will continue to play a central a role, whether as an amplifier of inequity or as a lever to close both the health and wealth gaps. Climate changes exacerbates every force that keeps those gaps wide – from the political to the physical, but like any good crisis, it’s also delivered important opportunities (like the largest direct subsidy to housing in two generations in the form of catalytic capital for decarbonization). Which way we go now depends on so many seemingly small, seemingly boring decisions that get made at every level, from the renter or housing owner, to the housing developer, to the zoning board, public utility commission, local and state housing agencies. Technology has a role to play in helping to make wiser decisions faster in all of those areas, The opportunity to directly speed up the adoption and execution of climate-responsive construction is especially important, because capital decisions are very long-lived – 30, 50, or even 100 years.

The History We Want to Write

In the future enabled by Cadence OneFive, every capital improvement and rehab decision will consider climate mitigation and adaptation, and benefits of taking action will help everyone regardless of zip code.

Today, fewer than 1% of homes and 2% of workplaces and schools get energy-related upgrades each year. Given we have only 10 years to avoid the worst effects of climate change, this pace of construction is not nearly good enough.

Furthermore, a third of all occupied housing in the US today have housing quality issues, including mold and mildew (poor air, moisture, and water control) and structural faults. We cannot build for climate mitigation and call it a day. We must upgrade buildings to address these existing quality shortfalls and guard against those climate impacts (high-intensity rain, high heat, and coastal flooding, among them) that are already inevitable.

We will know we are succeeding when:

  • When funders can easily identify and fund impactful projects

  • When building owners can easily prioritize and execute on decarbonization and adaptation strategies

  • When there is a sufficient and diverse contractor supply chain to meet the demand for decarbonization and adaptation

  • When every construction transaction makes the next one smarter, cheaper, and more reliable

How We Got Started

Cadence OneFive is the product of 20-years of climate action in New York City. Marc and Bomee have been working in NYC climate action since 2001 and 2002 respectively. Throughout that time, we have been searching for levers that create change at the speed and scale that matters for the climate emergency, while serving the folks most vulnerable to its effects.

The origin of Cadence OneFive lies in NYSERDA’s “Novel Business Models and Offerings” program, launched in Q3 2018, which awarded $500,000 to Steven Winter Associates (SWA – where Marc was CEO) for the development of NewCo. With this grant as a base, SWA tried out several initial directions for NewCo over about two years before arriving at the core product concepts underlying Cadence OneFive, which was put together from August - November 2021.

Cadence OneFive was established as an independent company on November 22, 2021, and received an initial investment from SWA on February 10, 2022. SWA’s post-separation relationship to Cadence OneFive is that of a pre-seed investor.