Canopy co-founder and partnerships lead Lauren Fraser describes leaving the tech industry for climate work after wildfire smoke and parenthood, and how Canopy's software walks households through electrification upgrades such as heat pumps, induction, solar, and batteries. She works with employers and cities to cut the friction of decarbonizing a home.
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Lauren Fraser: I was in the tech industry, tech and media industry for for a long time. But sort of a couple key things really got me into climate. One was having kids. I have two girls now that are five and seven, and the other was just the there's a huge prevalence of wildfires starting around that time and especially we were living in San Francisco.
00:00:27:25 - 00:00:49:18
Lauren Fraser: I know New Yorkers right now just experienced like a day that the sky turned orange. We had that in San Francisco, you know, in a number of, you know, just like big, big health impacts from from climate change and from the wildfires that were happening. But it really pushed me to to take more initiative around what was happening around climate and what my potential impact could be.
00:00:49:21 - 00:01:17:15
Lauren Fraser: So from that, started learning a lot more about different solutions and what I might be interested in. And I really keyed into electrification and this idea that 35% of our emissions in this country are coming from residential homes and transportation, and we have the solutions we need to really start to impact those. And moving to things like heat pumps and heat pump, water heaters and solar and batteries and electric vehicles.
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Lauren Fraser: But it's just this big. There's a lot of friction in that process of helping upgrade to to that equipment and help people live in healthier homes and, you know, ideally save money from that. So got really interested in that as a solution. Ended up going to Rewiring America, which is a nonprofit focused on electrification, did a lot of policy work on what is now the Inflation Reduction Act.
00:01:40:06 - 00:01:56:00
Lauren Fraser: And then from there really started to focus on this challenge of reducing friction for individuals, which is what canopy is all about. It's a software solution and a product to help individuals decarbonize their lives.
00:01:56:02 - 00:02:25:01
Lauren Fraser: I'm one of the co-founders and I lead partnerships at canopy, and so what I really do in that role is sort of have two main channels and types of partners that we're working with. One is companies and really working with them to reach their employees and help their employees to decarbonize and provide the canopy platform to them, much like you would sort of any other sort of education platform or benefit to your employee base to start decarbonizing.
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Lauren Fraser: And the other is cities and community based organizations. So again, city is one of their their two biggest sources of missions, their homes and cars. So really helping align with them and help reach residents to move down that path towards decarbonization.
00:02:42:23 - 00:03:11:06
Lauren Fraser: I think one of the biggest obstacles, and this is sort of more generally when we talk about climate change, is it can feel very far away and not approachable for a lot of people. And so really grounding climate and things that are more immediately impactful for people. So whether that's saving money or impacting their health or comfort. And so sort of a lot of that is sort of marketing and behavior, how we address behavior change.
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Lauren Fraser: But thinking about the best ways to reach people around these, around these issues, which ultimately, you know, are impacting, impacting climate.
00:03:21:21 - 00:03:40:20
Lauren Fraser: I think as a as a group, we're most proud of impacting people's lives. When someone has kind of gone, gone through the platform and then been able to upgrade to something and say, hey, I was able to get my gas water heater out of my house, or I replace my gas stove with induction and really and then see the impacts of that weather.
00:03:40:20 - 00:04:00:05
Lauren Fraser: Again, that's related to their saving money. They're just feeling really good because they were able to remove fossil fuels and just have a weather ized and have like a much healthier and comfortable home like that. Just being able to have that direct impact on people's lives is, is really, really great.
00:04:00:08 - 00:04:32:12
Lauren Fraser: So my big recommendation for readers is first, go check out Canopy Climate, get a home assessment, really understand what you have in your home, what you're interested in, and where you can start to make those upgrades. We then guide you step by step for how to then do that. Find local contractors, get review with your with quotes you might have gotten, get incentives and find those incentives you can take advantage of, and sort of take all the steps to take an action.
00:04:32:14 - 00:04:52:04
Lauren Fraser: Sort of. First thing is do that baseline assessment. And again, you can do that in canopy, which would be great. Another thing like when we first moved into the house that we're currently in, is we went and got an energy audit. And I think getting that assessment can be really helpful just to baseline where you are and what types of things you can then do and prioritize over time.
00:04:52:04 - 00:05:14:04
Lauren Fraser: A lot of these are bigger changes that most people need a few years and sort of plan out for how to do them. Again, there are tons of incentives right now, which is really helpful to be able to move faster and sort of take advantage of some of that money to make upgrades, but start to make a plan, prioritize what you want to do, and then, yeah, and then get started.