The Climate Gap

If your demand response program looks good on paper but fails under scrutiny, you don’t have a performance problem. You have a measurement problem.Ana-Paula Issa, CEO of Encycle, explains why.Utilities are offering more incentives than ever. AI, analytics, and advanced controls are being deployed across portfolios.And yet many operators still miss demand response targets, struggle to defend savings to finance, or confuse demand response with demand management.In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Ana-Paula Issa, CEO of Encycle, to cut through the fog around “utility grade,” multi-site AI, and why scale breaks so many energy programs.Ana-Paula has been working directly with utilities and large retail portfolios since 2008. She explains what actually holds up when incentives, baselines, bids, and finance reviews are involved and why many programs fail quietly until the end of the year.We dig into:What “utility grade” really means and why it leaves no place to hideWhy baselines are the most common failure point in M&VHow multi-site scale breaks single-building AI assumptionsThe real difference between demand response, demand management, and consumption managementWhy demand response targets are missed more often because of misalignment than technologyHow portfolio thresholds can wipe out DR revenue even when most sites performWhy incentives often fail to get credited to the right buildings or teamsAbout Ana-Paula IssaAna-Paula Issa is the CEO of Encycle. She has spent nearly two decades working at the intersection of building controls, demand management, and utility programs, partnering directly with utilities and large multi-site operators. At Encycle, she focuses on turning demand flexibility and efficiency programs into measurable, defensible outcomes at scale.Watch if you are:An owner or operator managing large, multi-site portfoliosAn energy or sustainability leader accountable to financeA vendor selling AI, controls, or DR programs into portfoliosTrying to turn utility incentives into outcomes that survive scrutinyUtility programs do not fail because teams lack technology. They fail because measurement, alignment, and incentives are misunderstood.

In this episode of the DLWJ, we’re joined by Maureen Ehrenberg, one of the most respected leaders in the global built environment.Maureen currently serves as Executive Managing Director of Strategic Growth and Solutions Development at Sireas Global Real Estate Advisors and is President Elect of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for 2026. Her career spans decades of executive leadership at organisations like WeWork, JLL, CBRE and Grubb & Ellis, and she’s a recognised authority on strategic real estate operations, digital transformation, and facilities management at scale. In our conversation, Maureen cuts through the noise around technology in CRE and FM to focus on what actually drives value inside real portfolios. We explore:Why data infrastructure still outpaces dashboardsHow investors and operators talk past each otherWhat happens when you lean on AI without solving data readinessThe skills and organisational changes that actually move the needleA grounded discussion about what it really takes to move the built environment forward.

If your EMS creates more alerts than actions, you don’t have a data problem. You have a decision problem.Ryan Adelman, CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies, explains why.Energy management systems promise visibility and control. In reality, many operators are overwhelmed by alarms, managing massive multi-site portfolios with small teams and data they do not always trust.In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Ryan Adelman, CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies, to unpack why data overload persists in commercial real estate and what it actually takes to build a culture where data leads to decisions, not paralysis.Ryan draws on years of experience working inside retail, grocery, and national portfolios to explain why alarm triage, system fragmentation, and optimization drift are so hard to escape, and what separates organizations that break through from those that stay reactive.We dig into:Why small teams struggle to act even on timely, actionable dataHow fragmented EMS platforms erode trust in data qualityWhat “optimization entropy” looks like in real buildingsThe hidden costs of staying reactive, from comfort to credibilityWhy decision culture starts with writing things down and assigning costsWhere AI genuinely helps, and where human judgement still matters mostAbout Ryan AdelmanRyan Adelman is the CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies. He has spent nearly two decades working across the built environment and distributed energy, from large enterprises to early-stage technology companies. At Phoenix, Ryan leads the company’s next phase of growth, helping large multi-site portfolios move from alarm-driven operations to decision-driven performance.Watch if you are:An owner or operator managing large, distributed building portfoliosAn FM or energy leader buried in alerts and dashboardsA technology leader trying to translate data into actionExploring how AI fits into real-world building operationsSmarter buildings are not built on more data. They are built on better decisions.

In this market update episode, Lewis Martin is joined by analyst Joe Aamidor to break down what’s really happening across smart buildings, energy management, and OEM digital strategy.They dive into Siemens’ recent moves around Brightly, Setmetrics and XOI, and why this signals a deeper structural shift rather than a one-off acquisition. Joe explains how CMMS platforms are becoming a critical control layer, why asset intelligence and energy analytics are converging, and how OEMs are quietly scaling their digital services behind the scenes.The conversation also covers the rise of CMMS plus energy platforms, what the ECOTRAK and ENTOUCH Controls deal tells us about small commercial buildings, why residential HVAC softness matters to the wider market, and what Deloitte’s latest real estate AI survey reveals about stalled expectations and implementation challenges.They close with quickfire views on open versus closed systems, where real value is emerging in building tech, and whether multi-site retail or commercial real estate will see faster technology adoption over the next five years.A grounded, data-driven discussion for anyone building, buying, or investing in smart building and energy technology.

AI in buildings is having its breakout moment.But most of what we see today is still surface-level. Chatbots on top of legacy systems. Optimisers tweaking setpoints. Dashboards that look new, but run on the same foundations we’ve had for decades.In this episode, Lewis and Joe sit down with Troy Harvey, Co-Founder & CEO of PassiveLogic, to unpack a very different view of the future: fully autonomous buildings powered by actionable AI, generative control models, and real-time digital twins that understand and operate the built environment end-to-end.Troy breaks down why fragmentation is the industry’s core blocker, why language models aren’t the future, and why incumbents have struggled to innovate for nearly 20 years. We explore how autonomy changes the economics of buildings, the role of blue-collar workers in driving adoption, and why the next 100 years of building technology won’t look anything like the last.If you care about smart buildings, controls, AI, or the future of building operations, this is one of the most important conversations you’ll hear this year.

Net zero sounds simple in press releases, but within real organisations, it becomes far more complex.Reporting cycles absorb time, voluntary targets lose momentum, and teams often end up counting carbon instead of cutting it.In this episode of Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Joel Cesare, who has lived net zero from almost every angle. He helped deliver Santa Monica’s net zero ordinance, led sustainability at Skanska, and ran Google’s Absolute Zero program before joining the executive team at Cambio.Joel shares a candid, grounded view on why net zero often breaks down in the messy middle between ambition and delivery, and why real progress depends on focusing on the operational decisions you can control. Most conversations about net zero focus on targets, frameworks, and reporting. Joel focuses on what actually gets built.In this episode, we cover:Why voluntary net-zero targets struggle once they meet organisational realityHow the reporting season has overtaken action and slowed decarbonisationWhy teams should prioritise the emissions they directly influenceThe cost of chasing offsets instead of investing in local outcomesWhat cities can do that genuinely improves resilience, affordability, and public healthWhy language matters and why “climate” may not be the most effective frame for progressHow AI is uncovering energy reductions hiding in plain sight across commercial real estateAbout Joel CesareJoel is a sustainability leader with two decades of experience across city government, construction, and big tech real estate. He helped push forward Santa Monica’s net-zero building ordinance, led sustainability at Skanska, and ran Google’s portfolio-wide Absolute Zero program. He now sits on the executive team at Cambio, helping organisations identify energy efficiency projects using AI. Joel also hosts the podcast Less Talk More Action.Watch this if you are:A sustainability or ESG leader navigating net-zero deliveryA real estate or facilities executive trying to translate targets into actionA policymaker interested in the gap between regulation and implementationA climate tech or energy professional working on practical decarbonisation solutionsAnyone who feels net zero has become more complicated than it needs to be

AI won’t transform facility management with moonshots, it’ll transform it with thousands of tiny wins.McKesson’s Drew DePriest joins The Down Low with Joe to break down what AI actually looks like inside a Fortune 10 real estate organisation, far from the hype, and deeply rooted in the realities of FM, data, and operations.Most AI conversations in smart buildings revolve around flashy pilots, giant platforms, or “intelligent buildings” that never escape the pitch deck.Drew shares a very different viewpoint: the future is being shaped by incremental, practical AI adoption, small efficiency gains that compound across portfolios.In this live episode from NexusCon 2025, we dig into:How McKesson uses AI for everyday “roof shots,” not moonshotsWhy unstructured data (emails, decks, tribal knowledge) is the real bottleneckThe challenge of building an AI agent that understands both structured and unstructured dataWhy FM teams need consistency before they need “intelligence”How AI is already solving problems we never thought to automateThe fragmentation problem: why innovation in smart buildings moves slower than it shouldThe shift toward open-source tools, ontologies, and end-user configurabilityWhat the next 5 years of AI + smart buildings could realistically look likeAbout Drew DePriestDrew is the Director of Real Estate Operations Technology at McKesson, one of the world’s largest healthcare logistics organisations. With a background spanning startups, controls, workplace tech, and enterprise operations, he brings a rare, grounded perspective on how AI and smart building solutions succeed and fail in real-world environments.Watch if you are:A facility management or real estate leader navigating AI adoptionA smart building vendor trying to understand what enterprise buyers actually needA technologist interested in agentic AI, ontologies, and FM automationAnyone curious about how AI is changing the day-to-day reality of buildings

In this In The Weeds episode of The Climate GAP, Lewis sits down with Tyler Smith, Vice President of Global Lifecycle Solutions at Johnson Controls. Tyler is one of the most experienced voices driving the healthy buildings movement, and his 20-year career tells the story of an industry in transformation.From engineering grad to executive, his journey tracks directly with the evolution of building tech. Smart systems. Indoor air quality. Fault detection. Decarbonisation. And now, AI.In this conversation, they unpack:What healthy buildings actually mean in 2025How Johnson Controls built OpenBlue into its digital backboneWhat it takes to lead at scale and still move with speedCareer advice for emerging talent in the spaceWhere the future is headed with AI, automation, and connected assetsWhether you’re building a product, managing assets, or growing a career in this space, this episode brings perspective that matters.🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube📌 Hosted by Lewis Martin, Co-Founder of Element Six📣 Follow for more episodes at the intersection of growth, adoption, product & climate