BCBusiness

12 To p : K e v i n A r n o l d f o r J e t s o n ; illu s t r a t i o n : i S t o c k / S a k o r n S u k k a s e m s a k o r n B C B U S I N E S S . C A A P R I L / M AY 2 0 2 5 categories of CO2 emissions out there," says Lake. "That hasn't seen as much attention, and there's not as much awareness around how big of an impact it actually has." Problem is, heat pumps are pricey—often $20,000 or more before rebates—and the pro- cess of buying and installing them is rarely straightforward. Unlike the electric car market, where several top players dominate the field, the heat pump market is fragmented and confusing, and comes with complicated installation requirements and permits. Once he started delving into the industry, Lake found that there wasn't one particular roadblock; rather, there were inefficiencies at every stage, from manufacturing to distri- bution and from sales to instal- lation, with many businesses taking a cut along the way. The answer was to create Jetson, a vertically integrated, direct-to-consumer company that works with an original equipment manufacturer—the same one that produces for top brands—to make heat pumps, then takes care of the sales, permitting and instal- lation using a streamlined, tech-driven process that spares buyers many of the common headaches. It also saves them thousands of dollars: with rebates, some are paying as little as $2,000. Based in North Vancouver, Jetson has started installing in two markets—Vancouver and Denver, where they bought an existing heat pump business— with plans to quickly expand to other locations throughout North America. Consumers have become accustomed to making pur- chases with a few simple clicks and having products show up days later, according to Lake. "So we said, 'How do we make it much more like that to get a heat pump?'" says Lake, a self-professed "architecture nerd." The company produced software to automate process- es including permit and rebate applications; they also added remote controls to their heat pumps, as well as whole-home energy and air quality monitor- ing through a Jetson app. At just over a year old, Jetson has installed hundreds of heat pumps; it has also attracted the attention of investors, among them UBC's Creative Destruction Lab, an accelerator in the clean energy and climate arena. "We knew how successful Stephen had been with his pri- or company, North. If you take a successful person like that, a repeat founder, and they come into the climate tech space, which is where we do all of our investing, that's super interest- ing to us," says Tom Boddez, partner with Vancouver-based Active Impact Investments. It's a huge win for climate if everybody moves away from fossil fuels and into heat pumps, he says, and many consumers are keen—but ultimately it comes down to dollars and cents, and a seamless process. "The idea that someone could basically show up at your door and say, 'Hey, would you put a heat pump in your house if we could do it for free or close to free?' I think you'd get a lot of yeses," says Boddez. "It's been a short period of time and already they've done a lot of installa- tions, and they're one of the faster-growing companies in our portfolio." It isn't all smooth sailing, however. Lake says that be- cause their prices are so much lower than traditional contrac- tors, some homeowners are skeptical. Jetson is also having to correct consumers' out- dated perceptions about heat pumps—especially that they're noisy and don't operate well in cold climates. (Their units are rated down to -30 degrees Celsius.) What's more—there's a learning curve for installers who aren't familiar with a more tech-driven process. Despite the hurdles, Jetson began installing heat pumps last June and business has been brisk, with hundreds of installs between Vancouver and Den- ver and a healthy waiting list. Lake hopes that, by the middle of 2025, the company will start expanding across Canada. His number one goal is to get more homes electrified— especially given that 70 per- cent of homes today have a gas furnace, and just 10 percent have a heat pump. "To meet our climate goals, we have to get to 100 percent of homes being heated electrically. The technology is already there, and it's been there for a long time. It's a matter of making the adoption easy enough for homeowners, and making it make sense financially, which is what we're trying to move the needle on," says Lake, who also wants to inspire industry-wide change in the same way Tesla did with electric cars. "Every single day we've got teams upgrading homes to heat pumps and knocking another gas furnace off the face of the earth," he says. "So we're pretty happy about that." GETTING WARMER Jetson's business model can reduce the consumer cost of heat pumps by 90 percent

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