Green machines

“WE LOOKED for big industries that exist on inertia,” recalls Kathy Hannun. She used to work at Google X, the tech giant’s moon-shot division. Heating with fossil fuels was an example of an industry ripe for disruption. The distribution system is convoluted, argues Ms Hannun. Natural gas or fuel oil is taken from the ground, shipped across the world and piped into houses. But a huge amount of latent energy exists around us. In 2017 she founded Dandelion Energy, an attempt to harness that power by selling heat pumps, refrigerator-sized boxes that take heat from the air or the ground to warm a building. Orders grew fourfold in 2018 and 2019. Further expansion is likely. Last year 20m households purchased heat pumps. To stop the planet from overheating, the IEA reckons that number has to triple by 2030.