This March is B Corp Month, an annual campaign raising awareness of the impact of businesses on society and the environment. Kaluza proudly became B Corp-certified in 2023, affirming our commitment to operating for the benefit of our clients, our employees and the planet. To celebrate this year’s B Corp Month theme, ‘This Way Forward’, Kaluza’s senior leaders share their perspectives on how our mission shapes our products, our culture, and the way we work with our partners.
How did Kaluza’s origins shape our mission?
Melissa Gander, COO: “When OVO entered the UK energy market, we were looking for a platform that would be able to manage all the additional data we knew would be coming from smart meters and other devices, like EV chargers and solar inverters. Another key principle was that we needed to be able to rapidly launch and deliver new types of tariffs and propositions to decarbonise customers’ homes. And with the transition to renewable energy, we realised there would be a greater need to orchestrate and optimise energy flows across the whole system, from generation to consumption.
We couldn’t find a solution that we felt could manage that complexity – that’s when Kaluza was born. Whereas other billing solutions were built to turn kilowatt hours into a cost figure on a bill, Kaluza’s technology came from a need for solutions to accelerate a sustainable, affordable and resilient energy transition, and our mission stemmed naturally from that.”
Why should businesses be purpose-driven?
Scott Neuman, CEO: “When I started working in purpose-driven energy tech startups, I realised how motivating it was for me personally to be part of a triple bottom line business – one that focuses as much on people and planet as it does on profit. What gets me out of bed in the morning – after coffee! – is knowing that I’m working on something that truly matters, not only to me, but to future generations. It’s about leaving behind a positive legacy.
The reality is that the climate crisis gets exponentially worse the longer we take to develop solutions, so the more positive impact we can have now, the more that compounds in a beneficial way. That’s one of the reasons I believe in having audacious goals, like Kaluza’s target to be net zero by 2030 and avoid 10 million tonnes of carbon emissions.”
Matt Johnson, VP of Finance: “If you start with treating your people and customers and other stakeholders right, it should follow that you’re more efficient and can generate more value as a business, which in turn can unlock the funding for more sustainable business initiatives and investment in your people and customers. I think of profit and purpose as mutually reinforcing, rather than competing objectives.”
Why was it important to Kaluza to become B Corp certified?
Matt Johnson, VP of Finance: “Part of the reason for going for B Corp certification was that it creates an external mechanism for holding ourselves to account and ensuring we operate in a way that is in line with our Mission Transition strategy. That means having the right internal mechanisms, like including a commitment in our governance principles to consider all our stakeholders in business decisions.”
Scott Neuman, CEO: “It’s also the message it sends about the kind of business we are. Being B Corp-certified certainly helps us attract like-minded folks. In a world with so much green washing and purpose washing, it’s useful to have an independent body conducting rigorous assessments to provide that verification for prospective clients and employees.”
How does our mission shape what products we build?
Neel Gulhar, CPO: “With any product we build we have to justify to ourselves that it’s going to have a real and measurable carbon avoidance impact. Either a direct impact, like through optimising charging of electric vehicles, or an indirect impact, like billing solutions that unlock the ability to offer customers a tariff bundled with solar panels or a smart thermostat, for example. But the product also has to deliver commercial value to our clients. To have a bigger impact overall, you have to be thinking beyond carbon alone.
Bringing together comprehensive, real-time energy system data is also key for our products. The more data energy companies have in one place tracing the cost and carbon of energy from the point of generation to the point of use, the more effectively they can target their spending and deploy solutions that deliver an affordable transition for customers.”
How do we ensure we build our products in a sustainable way?
David Espley, CTO: “As a software company, we’re not manufacturing any physical products. We’re using cloud providers, which are already incredibly efficient. However, it can be easy to use more computing power than you actually need, so we still have to maintain a constant drive for efficiency, otherwise we’re wasting energy and emitting carbon unnecessarily. We’re continuously engaging with our cloud providers to accurately track the impact of our service use and ensure that our architecture performs well against various metrics, including sustainability.”
What’s behind our high B Impact Assessment score for employee wellbeing?
Tash McArthur, VP of People: “The health and happiness of our people are key to Kaluza’s success, because without our people there is no product. We want everyone at Kaluza to feel they are being looked after so they can focus on the job at hand and being the best they can be each day. That’s why we have our flexible ways of working, a wealth of benefits, and initiatives like our DE&I communities, leadership development programme and our Code First Girls collaboration.
In addition, our values really are intrinsic to everything we do. It’s not just what we do, but how we do it. We expect people to communicate with purpose, to get things done, to be inclusive, to work collaboratively. And we celebrate that. We know we can achieve more together as a team – and together with our partners – than we can on our own, especially when it comes to something as complicated as reducing the temperature of the planet!”
How do our sustainability goals influence our relationships with our partners?
Scott Neuman, CEO: “We believe that partnering with some of the world’s biggest energy companies to achieve their decarbonisation goals is how we can have the most impact as a business. But that means working with organisations that have, historically, been very carbon intensive – if we only worked with the greenest energy companies, we wouldn’t really be solving the problem.”
Neel Gulhar, CPO: “Energy companies realise their social licence to operate depends on having a robust decarbonisation strategy. The number one thing we can do right now to help is provide the tools that enable them to achieve their sustainability objectives. And we do that with a flexible and constructive approach, because we recognise that every company is at a different stage in their journey, facing unique challenges in a fast-evolving landscape.”
