Cortex Sustainability Intelligence is decarbonizing the commercial real estate sector, leveraging building management systems (BMS) data and AI to help its customers make better energy management decisions in order to lower carbon emissions and save money. Through the Leap platform, Cortex connects building customers in its New York portfolio to demand response opportunities. We spoke with Christina Clark, Senior Customer Success Manager at Cortex, about her experience helping customers overcome their building decarbonization challenges and partnering with Leap for easy energy market access. 

Q: How would you describe Cortex’s role in the energy transition? What kinds of innovations does Cortex bring to building decarbonization? 

A: Cortex is on a mission to preserve the planet by using AI to accelerate the decarbonization of the built environment. We started Cortex with the goal of reducing the carbon impact of commercial buildings by creating the fastest and lowest-cost path to decarbonize buildings. This decade is vital for successfully decarbonizing commercial real estate; any investments in reducing emissions made today will have a lasting impact and will contribute to achieving net-zero goals by 2050. 

When we work with real estate portfolios, we think about what we can do in the short term to enable their decarbonization initiatives as well as what we can do to help set the path to achieve longer-term targets in 2030 and 2050. We partner with commercial real estate portfolios such as Empire State Realty Trust, Savanna and Silverstein Properties to develop actionable strategies, future-proof their buildings and decarbonize at scale.

Cortex is using AI to help commercial real estate cost-effectively turn their sustainability commitments into action. Our decarbonization platform is purpose-built for office buildings – Cortex helps teams optimize operations, make intelligent capital investment decisions and reduce risk.

Q: Why is Cortex partnering with Leap?

A: The Leap platform allows us to scale our demand response offerings as our customer base scales. 

We’re not experts in the backend management of DR, and we don’t want to be! With Leap working behind the scenes to handle DR program operations, energy market complexities and utility coordination, we can focus on what we do best - building a frontend experience that uses BMS data and AI to drive the greatest energy, emissions and cost reductions possible for our customers. 

Leap provides a simple enrollment process and clear communication on what to expect throughout the DR season, making it easy to unlock additional revenue streams for our customers through energy markets. 

Q: What are the biggest challenges you have encountered in your work helping clients meet their carbon reduction goals?

A: Some of the key challenges that we see our customers face in tackling their building decarbonization goals are knowing how to prioritize different energy conservation management strategies, balancing capital expenditure and operating expenditure initiatives over different timeframes and measuring and verifying results. 

There are a lot of solutions in the market that report out data - the key is knowing what steps to take next. Cortex provides building teams with data-backed recommendations - based on what’s happening in your building today - so teams can make informed decisions.

Q: What are your goals for your demand response offerings? 

A: We’re always looking to add new value for our customers from Cortex’s offerings. Traditionally, we’ve used building BMS data and AI to help customers decarbonize their buildings through operational changes. We can use those same data streams to help buildings achieve greater returns on their demand response (DR) programs. 

We’re excited to expand our DR offerings so we can enable our customers to stack value by participating in multiple programs - this helps our buildings maximize support for the grid while also earning as much revenue as possible.