Greener Options for Heating and Cooling

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Today’s episode is sponsored by Castos. Castos is a podcast hosting platform trusted by thousands of brands. With Castos, you can create as many podcasts and episodes as you want, no matter which plan you choose. Full disclosure, the podcast you’re listening to right now is actually hosted on Castos and I can say with 100% confidence that Castos is the best option. Castos has their seriously simple podcasting plugin for WordPress, making it easy to run your show through your own website. This is a must have, especially if you’re trying to grow your business and audience through SEO driven content. I’ve been using Castos for over three years and the team has always been super friendly, quick to respond, and has supported my podcasting journey since day one. You can find out more by visiting calanbreckon.com/Castos or just clicking the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to the business Gay podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon and on today’s episode I have CEO of Endless Energy, Matt Kidd. Endless Energy is Massachusetts based company specializing in sustainable heating and cooling solutions. Matt joined the company in 2021 shortly after serving as executive director of Reaching Out MBA, the global association for LGBTQ+ business students. Throughout his career, Matt has focused on expanding sales and launching complementary offerings across a range of industries including education, entertainment, SAS and professional associations. He holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree from Boston University’s College of Communication. Today I’m chatting with Matt about sustainability and greener options for our growing climate crisis. So let’s jump in.

Hey Matt, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

[00:01:56] Matt Kidd: Great, thanks for having me, Calan.

[00:01:57] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I’m very excited to jump in. We are diving down kind of like the eco friendly route and all the things to do with climate change and stuff like that. So it’s a very hot topic right.

[00:02:08] Matt Kidd: Now for an important reason. It is, it is.

[00:02:12] Calan Breckon: Yeah, it’s, I confidently believe in climate change and that we need to be active in doing things so that we don’t just keep, you know, pumping out the bad stuff into the world. But you know, other people don’t agree. But I would say that you’re probably on the agree side because the work that you do. Yeah. So, so with that, let’s just jump right in. So Endless Energy operates in kind of the HVAC cooling, heating installation, etc. Which are, you know, sectors critical to energy efficiency. So how do you see climate change reshaping and the demand for greener HVAC and insulation solutions in both residential and commercial markets? How do you see that kind of evolving as we continue?

[00:02:57] Matt Kidd: Yeah, that’s a, it’s a great question. So really, if you step back and think about it, 51% of our carbon footprint is coming essentially from heating and cooling systems globally here. And so making an impact there makes a large impact on the overall carbon issue or decarbonization issue, depending how you want to kind of phrase that. And so it’s a no brainer that this is where you’re going to see a lot of efforts being put in the US in certain states.

And this is more of a kind of state by state basis right now in the US Especially with some changes that we’ve had with our federal government. But in the US you’re seeing a lot of states start to shift what they’re incentivizing. So formerly it would be states incentivizing things like more efficient natural gas systems, which are a heck of a lot better than an oil system, but still ultimately really not overall as efficient as you could be. And really in the last probably five years, you’ve seen states like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode island in the Northeast, and now some on the west coast as well, really starting to push the adoption of heat pumps or really air source heat pumps. And the reason they’re pushing these systems is because depending what you currently have in your house, you’re looking at a system that’s anywhere from 38 to, I think, 63% more efficient than what you currently have in your house. And so that has a pretty big impact.

And so, you know, for us, I came into the company about four years ago now and the reason that I was attracted to this company is because it was already prevalent in that heat pump space. Like this company has been putting in what we call cold climate heat pumps in Massachusetts for a little over 12 years. And so the people that were here already believed, didn’t, already knew it, and it wasn’t a tough sell for that. And so for me, as somebody who’s always had some sort of kind of mission driven career or giving back in some form, this was kind of something that was really attractive to come and be part of, and especially at such an important time, because when I came into the company, the state was just starting to launch some of the incentives around heat pumps. Then about a year later, they Exploded. And it’s been kind of a wild ride since. The state has since worked to kind of put more and more guardrails around it, which is a good thing because you don’t want people installing these incorrectly. And then they’re actually leaking refrigerant, which is actually worse. And so there’s a lot that can go wrong there. But that is kind of how I think about it and how I look at it. It’s our way of doing that. And the unique thing about us too is we’re an HVAC company, but we also participate with the state through a program that’s called Mass Save, which focuses on weatherization, which is really insulation.

And part of making our HVAC system work is being able to really look at the whole home and saying, okay, how are we heating or cooling? And then how are we containing that in the house so it’s not just like, you know, leaking out of your roof, that’s the last thing that you want to do. And so we’re looking holistically with the customer about how do we help you really electrify your house and how do we make your house as efficient as possible?

[00:06:15] Calan Breckon: So you’ve touched on a number of things that I’m going to get to a little bit later on, but I want to dive into the difference. There’s kind of a difference between housing, which is regular, but then also major buildings, is kind of a big challenge out there in the world because switching a building compared to a home over is a much more difficult and complex thing. So what innovation or technologies or strategies do you have that you’re implementing to reduce that carbon footprint in heating, cooling and installation in terms of like these bigger buildings?

[00:06:49] Matt Kidd: So we work both on the residential side, but also the commercial side. And commercial for us is pretty wide ranging. Some of them are, you know, smaller spaces, like a dental office or something like that.

And there again, you know, heat pumps are a good solution. And it’s relatively small, but then you get to something much larger. Like we just worked with this, this Asian grocery store that is in a town called Quincy, right outside of Boston.

And it needed 160 tons of heating, which is a lot. Just to give you a reference point, this store is the size of about a Walmart or a Target. So a pretty large footprint.

And in this particular case, it was really economical or almost became a no brainer for the owner because it was paired with solar as well. So if you think about a use case like that, they were taking out what was a natural gas system before, and they’re putting in heat pumps paired with solar. And so that solar is essentially generating a good chunk, if not all, depending on the season, of what it’s taking to operate the heating and cooling systems within that store. They’re also looking at it as well to make their refrigeration units. So what they store food in, for example, more efficient as well, because there are other technologies. That’s not our work, but that’s what this store is kind of looking at. And the way, at least here we can make that case, really is, as a business case, when you’re talking to a business owner, yes, a lot of them will care about the decarbonization, but what a lot of them are also thinking about is, okay, well, what is this going to cost me? Like, what is the investment right now? Which luck. Luckily, the state of Massachusetts has very generous incentive programs, actually more generous in some ways on the commercial side than the residential side.

So what’s the upfront investment? And then what is that going to look like to operate over the next 10 years or so?

And that’s the case that you really have to make to a lot of business owners. And these are larger investments. I’ll just say that the rebate on this particular system was over half a million US Dollars. So that gives you a sense of, like, how big of a system this. This really was.

And.

And you make that business case and it allows them to kind of go back and say, yes, this is investment. That makes sense for us. It’s a long conversation. We have commercial partners that we have moved forward with projects, but it takes them months or sometimes even over a year kind of to get to that jumping point and then they’re ready to move forward. But you have to keep in mind, you know, this is an investment that they’re making. And yes, there’s probably a environmental reason, but there’s also kind of a business reason that. And that’s critical as you’re making that pitch.

[00:09:36] Calan Breckon: Definitely. And I like that you brought up the solar and how that worked in conjunction with. And that if you’re going to do all of this on a big building and make this investment, look at all the pieces of the puzzle. Don’t just look at one aspect of it, and the solar feeds the heating and all of the other aspects that go into it to kind of bring that building into the future, into the next kind of generation.

You were talking about cost. So, you know, many homeowners kind of worry about upfront costs. We’re switching back to homeowners kind of worry about that upfront cost for more energy efficient upgrades. So how do you demonstrate this? Because talking to a business and it comes down to money, but people also comes down to money. So how do you kind of demonstrate the sustainability of your HVAC or installations and improvements and how does that usually calculate out to the long term savings for them? But then how do you get them to actually pull the, you know, go for it at that point?

[00:10:36] Matt Kidd: Homeowners are always a little tricky when you’re trying to demonstrate what the savings from a fiscal perspective is going to be for them. And part of the reason behind that is that businesses are fairly consistent with how they operate. In particular, HVAC systems. It’s, you know, we operate in this narrow window this time of the year, and this time of the year, homeowners, you might even, even have different people who are living in the house. So one spouse who, you know, wants it set at a certain temperature and another spouse who wants it a different one, and you’ve got kind of fighting over the system and all of that. All of those things actually make HVAC systems in general, like wildly inefficient. So like, if you’re cranking your system like up and down, that’s actually the worst thing that you can possibly do. And so it’s really challenging for us to necessarily say like, okay, this is what this is going to cost you to operate. What we can do is we can look at, okay, here’s the upfront investment with incentives that are in place. Here’s what the upfront investment on something that doesn’t have incentive looks like. Here’s how long each of these systems should last. And here’s the band within which a normal person can operate these systems. And what’s always amazing to me because we do have some customers who come to us on the residential side and say, you know what, I’m really not sure I want heat pumps. I’m really thinking about central ac. Can’t you just give me a quote on central ac? And we do some central ac, much to my chagrin. But what I found is of those customers, when we took a sample of, of customers who came in saying, I want central ac, I don’t want a heat pump.

When our team gave them multiple options because we’re big on giving people options and say, okay, I’m giving you five options. Here are the pros and cons on all of them. And, and one of the things that I tell the team is just always give them a heat pump. Option, no matter what, give them a heat pump option. Of those eight, 80% of the time, eight out of 10 will go for the heat pump option. Even though they started at the point saying, I don’t want to do this. And the reason is when you lay that out with incentives, with what the warranties on some of this equipment are and with what that band of operation is, it kind of makes a case to the homeowner without us having to really push too hard on that. The homer’s like, oh, well, this kind of feels like a no brainer, I should do this.

And the biggest barrier actually to overcome on the residential side is a psychological barrier where people say, I’ve had my gas furnace for 10 years, am I ready to give that up? And that’s where we can get kind of creative because you can replace the whole system or in some cases we can actually pair it up so that the heat pump actually works until it’s something like 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. And then it switches over and so it’s basically operating down to the peak of efficiency. Then it’s switching over to that natural gas system in that case. And that kind of is the best of worlds because it lets that homeowner have that security blanket, so to speak. But in Massachusetts, even though, you know, we’re cold, we don’t see that many days that are really under 20 degrees Fahrenheit. And so, you know, it works actually quite well doing that setup. And so those are the, that’s more of the nuance and the color that we have to kind of talk somebody through.

[00:13:53] Calan Breckon: Okay, so we’re talking a lot about heat pumps because that’s like the big new trend in the kind of the direction that most people are going.

How have you seen this technology kind of transforming just the world that you live in? And you know, what should the consumers know if they are going to make that choice to do the heat pump? What are things that are very different about that compared to the systems that they’re used to? Because I like you were just saying, it sometimes is like a mental jump and a mental switch that they have to just get over. How do you navigate that?

[00:14:27] Matt Kidd: Yeah, that’s a great question.

In Massachusetts and New England in general, we see a lot of boiler systems. And so that that’s water based heat, where you have a baseboard that that goes throughout that heat is very different from what you see from a heat pump. A heat pump is coming through a vent generally. Either it’s coming from a unit that’s on your wall or if it’s a ducted unit, it’s coming through a vent. And this is essentially forced hot air versus kind of that radiating heat that’s coming out of those baseboards. It’s a very different feel. They’re both forms of heat and they’re both heating at the same level. But that’s something that people just psychologically have to adjust to sometimes.

The other kind of unique thing about heat pumps is they generally don’t have the, I’ll call it to kind of dumb down the language a little bit like the blow factor. You’re not feeling that quite as much. Heat pumps are kind of designed for that set it and forget it mentality that I said, where, you know, you don’t want to be cranking it up and down and so you have a stable temperature, but you’re not necessarily feeling that air blowing at you all the time. And you have some people who are used to furnaces or traditional AC where, you know, they have this kind of. Well, I don’t feel it blowing up my face quite as much. And it’s still operating. You can go and you can test it and yeah, it’s operating and the rooms, you know, 68 degrees or whatever, Fahrenheit, and it’s functioning perfectly fine. But those are like the little adjustments that people have to get used to. And the other thing too that people have to adjust to, particularly in the winter, is a heat pump system. When you put it outside, it generally looks like a stacked unit with a fan on it, which most people associate with an ac. And they think, oh my goodness, how is this thing going to function with snow and ice and all these other things? And so there’s this like, like it’s just going to break. It’s not going to work. The reality is these things have built in heaters. They melt ice off of them and all of that goes on. And they’re the ones that we install and most people in Massachusetts install because there are efficiency thresholds we have to meet are cold climate heat pumps, which really a lot of these operate into temperatures like negative 15 -22 Fahrenheit. And these are temperatures you just, just don’t normally see at all in this part of the United States. And so people just have this like psychologic fear of like, I look at this and it’s just not going to work. But it does.

[00:16:56] Calan Breckon: There’s a, there was a thought going through my head is because I have. Where I live, it’s the typical AC heating unit. And so in the cold places. I think you probably deal with this as well. I get a lot of like electrical shocks because of the dry air of it it. And this might be anecdotal, but like you probably wouldn’t get as much of that with the heat pump system because it’s not creating that electrically charged air that’s being pumped through.

[00:17:22] Matt Kidd: You still get some because it is drier air. And so like heat pumps are a solution. They’re not the world’s best solution, but they’re a solution in the summer to dehumidify a building because they are taking that out. And so that gives you that dryness that you’re kind of talking about. So you will experience a little bit of that, but not to the extent that you’re kind of talking about.

[00:17:45] Calan Breckon: Okay, so to wrap up kind of the consumer side of people installing it, what are kind of the time frames that an average, like a three bedroom, two bathroom, an average home. What’s the time frames they’re looking at for install and kind of the costs in US Dollars.

[00:18:03] Matt Kidd: Yeah, so if we’re talking about a ductless system, so that’s where you’ve got the wall units on there. Typically most contractors can install about, about two what we call indoor units or heads in a day. So if you’re talking about a four head system, it’s probably a two day install and US dollars, a system like that is probably going for somewhere in the range of. And tariffs are about to play a very big role in this. So this pricing will change very soon here somewhere in the range of about 14 on the low end to probably about $18,000 on kind of the high end. That’s before incentives and stuff like that. So those kind of would bring it down.

Ducted system that’s kind of comparable size wise is probably around the same price range. Again, incentives would come after and so depending on, you know, if that was doing your whole home in the state of Massachusetts, that system would look more like, let’s say it was an $18,000 system would look more like $8,000. So you can see kind of the impact that incentives have on the pricing. There’s.

[00:19:13] Calan Breckon: Yeah, it’s, it’s, you can definitely see for a regular home, that’s an investment for any home, just, you know, couples, people especially in, in the world right now. But then the savings on the flip side of it, on the other side, let’s do a little comparison there to say, okay, but then this is your life before and then this is your life after.

[00:19:35] Matt Kidd: Yeah, I mean in New England, we still see a lot of people who have oil systems before and those customers are seeing like a pretty significant drop, I would say somewhere in the range of about 20% drop in their overall heating costs.

And that’s heating specific natural gas customers are a little bit trickier because in Massachusetts in particular we have one of the higher electrical rates in the United States and electrical and gas are relatively close to each other. However, where the heat pump actually is a great savings is if you look at it year round. Because what a lot of people don’t think of because it says heat pump in the title is these are obviously used for cooling and heating, they can do both. And the efficiencies that you get out of a heat pump in the summer really blow away central AC or if you have that, or especially like if somebody’s doing window units, the savings there can be tremendous. So from a year round perspective, even for natural gas customers, it’s a pretty significant savings.

[00:20:36] Calan Breckon: Okay. And budget that out over a couple of years. Somebody who’s doing this is probably going to want to live in their home for the next five years, 10 years, kind of a thing. Like you’re not planning to move out like next year if you’re doing this kind of investment unless it’s an upgrade to the whole system as a whole in order to rent out or what have you. But on average, how many years would you say?

[00:20:58] Matt Kidd: Yeah, yeah, when I’ve done the math before the break even usually is somewhere around the six year mark between like incentives and the investment and kind of what your savings would be. There, there.

[00:21:10] Calan Breckon: Gotcha. And then also in the back of your head, like there is not that this is probably the main selling point for a lot of people, but there is the back of the head of like, you know, the sustainability of it and like creating a more sustainable ecosystem and their carbon footprint in that.

[00:21:25] Matt Kidd: And we see all sorts of people, honestly probably when I first started here four or five years ago, we saw more of the people who were doing it very specifically for sustainable reasons. But you still, we still see that where it’s like, okay, my system is, is going bad, it’s going to be done really soon. I, I want to do something. I know I have to do this if I’m going to do it. I want something that is going to save me money. We see that help with my carbon footprint, we see that make me comfortable. I mean those are, those are the three reasons that that really most both residential and, and business owners would move forward with something.

[00:22:03] Calan Breckon: Yeah, for sure. So I want to kind of wrap everything up with. You talked about incentives. So let’s first start about government incentives. You know, accelerating these green retrofits. How is Endless Energy helping customers navigate these on the kind of commercial side of things? Like, do you have internal teams that help do that for a big company? If they’re like, hey, we want to have this done, but we don’t know where to start.

[00:22:29] Matt Kidd: We do. And, and we actually have like an entire in house team that’s dedicated to helping people navigate all of the incentives, both residentially and commercially. We’re also a company that sometimes this is as much to my chagrin because it results in some significant carrying costs. But we tend to front rebates for customers, and so that means that we’re taking it directly so that the customer, either residentially or commercially, has a lower out of pocket cost and that makes it a more achievable thing for them to do. The rebates generally are by the state, are processed relatively quickly, usually within about 30 to 45 days, but for some people, that just wouldn’t be possible. And so that’s something that we realized pretty early on and made the attempt to help homeowners and businesses with that.

[00:23:19] Calan Breckon: Okay, so your business is taking on that risk possibly just in order to kind of get people through and. But it makes sense if you create that lower barrier, it makes it easier for folks, especially on the residential side, to kind of take that jump. Maybe not necessarily on the, the big company side, but definitely for residential evidence that makes a huge difference. Are you nervous about how this could all look and change in terms of the tariffs? Because it takes months to really truly see that because shipping tankers take weeks and months to get across and all that kind of stuff. Are you nervous in how this is going to affect everything and also policy changes in terms of how.

[00:24:02] Matt Kidd: Yeah, that’s a great question. So this summer, summer, summer of 2025 is a little bit like the perfect storm at the moment. And every day we have a meeting that feels like, okay, we’re going to shift strategies now this way. And part of that is tariff whiplash.

So there is a change beyond tariffs that’s happening this summer that a lot of people aren’t aware of. In the United States, most of the HVAC, in particular AC and heat pump equipment that we’ve been using has a refrigerant known as 410A that we’ve been using. It was decided many years ago that we were going to phase that out and move towards what are called A2L refrigerants, which are 454B and R32, which are used. R32 is used very heavily throughout Europe and Asia. It’s been around for 10 years. 454 is more of a newer blend, but similar thing. The good news is both of those are good for the environment. They have a lower carbon footprint, so that’s great.

However, we’re going through a perfect storm where as of December 31, it was not legal to manufacture or import 410A equipment into the United States.

And so everything that has to come in is this R32 or 454. So all this equipment is coming in now. Some of that is coming with significant tariffs, depending when it arrived.

And One of the refrigerants, 454, has a component from it which largely has to come from China. And so that’s about to make that refrigerant are very, very expensive.

And so I’ve been saying this to pretty much anyone we meet with and telling our representatives to say it. And it probably comes off as a sales tactic, but it’s really not in this specific case, like right now is probably in the United States. The cheapest it’s going to be for some time to come to have an HVAC system installed. And that’s just because there are so many unknowns in the air.

You know, while not all systems are manufactured in China, some are, but others are made in Korea and Japan. And while there are some that are quote, unquote, made in the U.S. significant portions of those systems are coming from Asia in particular.

And so pretty much everything, like, across the board is going to see a spike there. In the meantime, we have a federal government that is looking at some of the federal incentives, which I would be willing to bet you will go away by the end of the year would be my guess if I were a betting person.

And so now it’s kind of a time to take advantage of all this. But it’s going to be a summer of a lot of chaos and a lot of change. And so even friends of mine were like, I might need a new AC system this year. I was like, then put it in.

[00:26:46] Calan Breckon: Like, now, yeah, you got three to six months go.

[00:26:51] Matt Kidd: So it’s going to create a bit of chaos.

But people like us are thinking about that and how do we stay ahead of that? What are moves that we can make? What’s going to make it so we don’t get in a bind where we end up with an upset homeowner or upset business owner because that’s the last thing that we want.

[00:27:11] Calan Breckon: But at the end of the day, climate change is happening, so everybody has to do their part to kind of be a part of that. And the infrastructure in the US and in Canada, a lot of the older build fields just have very inefficient, kind of very dirty electrical and, and systems like this that need to get upgraded. So regardless, it’s going to happen. So it’s better to be more proactive right now, especially, especially right now than it is to be reactive.

That’s for sure.

Matt, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. This is really enlightening in terms of people who, you know, ever. Millions and millions and millions of people use these systems every day. And, and it’s coming time for a lot of them to get updated. So it’s good information to have. Where can folks contact you or get more information?

[00:27:58] Matt Kidd: Sure. If you want to learn more about us, go to our website at www.goendlessenergy.com.

[00:28:05] Calan Breckon: Cool. Awesome. I will have that in the show notes for everybody.

Awesome. We’ll have a great day and thank you so much for giving us some education around global warming and how to kind of cut down your carbon footprint and the most efficient ways to do that.

[00:28:20] Matt Kidd: Awesome. Thank you Calan.

[00:28:21] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.