In 2018, three engineers came together to create DABBEL – Automation Intelligence GmbH, built on a common desire to cut down the CO2 footprint of buildings – 75% of commercial buildings are still inefficient in terms of their energy consumption. Dabbel’s AI boosts the performance of buildings’ Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioner (HVAC) systems and eliminates human control dependencies.

We sat down with DABBEL’s CEO, Abel Samaniego, to drill into how their AI software works, the challenges of working with outdated mindsets in the real estate industry, and their efforts to reach more geographies across the globe.

DABBEL’s CEO

Abel Samaniego, DABBEL’s CEO

 

Can you tell us a bit about what your company does, what problems you solve for your customers and what you are focusing on at the moment?
 
Abel: DABBEL AI was founded with the mission to develop the most scalable, cost-efficient and sustainable software to drastically reduce CO2 emissions in commercial buildings worldwide.

DABBEL offers an AI software that replaces the manual control of the existing Building Management System with a software that runs the HVAC-energy systems autonomously and in real-time. The software is powered by Model Predictive Control which runs hundreds of different scenarios for the near future and bases its decisions on the most probable ones. The AI software saves up to 40% of HVAC energy consumption in commercial buildings. Since it does not require any additional hardware and the implementation is done remotely, the software can be implemented across whole building portfolios worldwide in a short period of time.

Right now we are focusing on further improving our software. Our main goal here is to significantly decrease implementation time to make the software even more scalable.

How did you come up with the idea for Dabbel? 

Abel: When I moved from Spain to Germany to work as an automation engineer, I noticed right away that the climate was very different. I was accustomed to a lot of sunny days and here in Germany, the weather varies a lot more. Some days are cold, some are rainy and on some days you can see all types of weather. This made me realize how important energy efficiency should be for buildings.

After some research, I discovered that current building automation systems weren’t advanced at all and left a lot to be desired. Later on, Javier Ferre and Pablo Stahl joined the venture and together we came up with a prototype of the software.

What do you see as the biggest challenges in reducing the CO2 footprint of buildings?

Abel: The biggest challenge in reducing the CO2 footprint of buildings is that the people in charge are hesitant to make changes. Real Estate is an industry where things have been done the same way for decades and a lot of the decision-makers still do not see the need to evolve. This makes it a hard and long process to convince them of the need for change.

As governments are now introducing policies to fight climate change such as CO2 taxes and ESG regulations, hopefully, this will soon change as decision-makers are being put under financial pressure to be more environmentally responsible.

Having successfully raised €3.6m in your latest funding round, what’s next for Dabbel?

Abel: It is a great boost to DABBEL, it takes us a step closer to achieving our mission of making commercial buildings worldwide more sustainable as quickly as possible.

We are intensively hiring the best talent to make this mission a reality and expanding to more countries in Europe, America and Asia.

What do you look for in an investor? What makes Future Energy Ventures different?

Abel: In an investor, we are looking for someone who shares our vision and is serious about combatting climate change. In this day and age, everybody wants to present themselves as “green” and “sustainable”. Since climate change is such a huge and important topic, a lot of companies use it for marketing but in reality, are not serious about it.

It became very clear to us during our talks that Future Energy Ventures really is serious about fighting climate change. Not only are they talking about it, they are also acting on it, which can be seen throughout their investment portfolio. That is why we are very happy to have gained them as not just an investor, but also a partner.

Future Energy Ventures’ view on DABBEL

At Future Energy Ventures we strive to find scalable solutions with the potential to make big inroads towards the decarbonization of cities and the energy system more broadly. DABBEL’s product is frictionless to get up and running and drives proven energy savings for commercial buildings of up to 40% with a proportionate CO2 reduction, and at the same time offers a rapid payback. With this value proposition, the company can achieve high growth and high positive environmental impact in the near term. We look forward to our continued partnership with DABBEL.

Learn more about DABBEL at https://www.dabbel.eu

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