Our Story

 

Our vision is to end fuel poverty by bringing comfort to everyone in need.

 

Our mission is to combat fuel poverty and climate change through pioneering, affordable smart home solutions to create warm & healthy homes.

We are a climate tech company with a mission to tackle fuel poverty and climate change through novel, cost-effective smart home solutions. We have designed and manufactured the world’s first smart air brick that helps householders and landlords reduce their energy demand while managing air quality in homes.

Heating buildings is responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions across Europe, poorly insulated, leaky, energy inefficient buildings require more energy to heat, resulting in higher carbon emissions. Recent research demonstrated that air bricks (air ventilation holes that provide natural airflow) are responsible for up to 15% of the home’s heat loss - equivalent to 34,000 GWh/year of energy waste in the UK alone! Our solutions can mitigate this unnecessary waste through intelligently controlling airflow.

We are disrupting the building retrofit market by providing a connected homes solution with technology that’s simple to install and simple to use.

Our core values

  • Sustainability

    We pursue environmental sustainability: the desire to fight climate change is at the heart of everything we do! Airex has the potential to save 370 million tonnes of carbon emissions once installed throughout Europe.

  • Compassion

    We are compassionate and socially aware: climate change disproportionately impacts those who are most in need and we are truly passionate about making a positive social impact on people’s lives.

  • Simplicity

    We value simplicity: we are reimagining a simple, plain object (an airbrick) using modern technology - but it doesn’t have to be complicated! We treat ease of installation and simplicity of use as a critical design principle.

  • Reliability

    We are evidence-based: we believe in science and we truly enjoy working with the UK’s top researchers to build a better understanding of this overlooked area of construction. We only make claims that are strongly backed up by science.

HIstory

Airex was originally co-founded by Agnes Czako and a sustainability-focused VC/incubator, Sustainable Ventures in 2016 when they discovered an enormous gap in the building retrofit market.

Agnes had previously worked as an energy consultant and led the delivery of tens of thousands of fuel poverty assessments in vulnerable communities in London. It was shocking to learn that fuel poverty still exists in the XXI. century in one of the world’s most developed cities. This frustration triggered the desire to do something to address the problem. A joint research project conducted with a well-regarded academic researcher, Dr Sofie Pelsmakers, who identified just how much heat loss is attributed to an overlooked area within buildings, created this opportunity.

Airex was able to secure a small amount of R&D grant funding through Innovate UK’s “Energy Game Changer” programme in 2016. This allowed Airex to onboard a fantastic team of engineers and product designers who built the first prototypes to test the hypothesis. These first trials made clear how significant an impact the technology could have and the need to commercialise the product to reach the scale required to have a meaningful impact. The team has never looked back since.