Blue Earth Summit

In the latest episode of the Blue Earth Podcast, Guy Hayler sits down with Rembrandt Koppelaar, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of EcoWise, a London-based company tackling one of the most stubborn blind spots in the built environment: data.

Their conversation moves from energy modelling and grant funding to AI, construction sites, and why the future of low-carbon buildings depends on something deceptively simple, giving every building product an identity.

Listen to the full podcast on Spotify.

 

From Energy Transition to Materials Transition

Rembrandt’s route into construction wasn’t obvious. Trained as a data-driven energy systems expert, his early career was spent in consulting, modelling future energy technologies and stress-testing bold efficiency claims for investors.

“That work taught me how much noise there is in the market,” he explains. “A lot of big claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.”

After completing a PhD and working across energy analytics, IoT and renewable infrastructure, Rembrandt made a deliberate pivot. While thousands were focused on energy, far fewer were tackling materials, circularity and the carbon locked into buildings themselves.

Construction, he realised, was the next great transition.

 

The Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

Today, most building products still come with a single, static PDF spec sheet. It’s disconnected, outdated the moment it’s issued, and impossible to integrate into modern digital workflows.

That becomes a serious problem when you consider that a single building can contain thousands of products, each with embodied carbon, maintenance needs, compliance requirements and end-of-life implications.

“If you want to calculate whole-life carbon today,” Rembrandt says, “you’re manually collecting PDFs from every supplier, extracting numbers by hand, and stitching it all together. It’s slow, expensive, and error-prone.”

And yet regulation is moving fast. In the EU, whole-life carbon assessments will soon be mandatory for large buildings, with smaller buildings following shortly after.

 

EcoWise’s Insight: Give Every Product an Identity

EcoWise’s core idea is simple but powerful: every building product should have a digital identity.

Instead of PDFs, EcoWise creates dynamic, trusted data records linked to physical products via QR codes or RFID tags. Scan the product, and you instantly access live, structured data, from carbon impact to maintenance history.

That same logic scales up to the building level through EcoWise’s Digital Building Logbook, a platform that connects design, construction, handover and in-use phases into a single data flow.

Rather than fragmented systems and manual handovers, EcoWise becomes the glue between architects, contractors, asset owners and operators.

 

Where AI Actually Delivers Value

With that data foundation in place, AI becomes practical, not hype.

EcoWise uses AI to:

• Extract carbon data automatically from existing PDFs

• Aggregate thousands of products into whole-building assessments

• Model alternative material scenarios to reduce embodied carbon

• Support faster, cheaper compliance at handover

Once carbon is transparent, optimisation becomes possible.

“You can start asking real questions,” Rembrandt explains. “What happens if I cut embodied carbon by 20%? 50%? Which materials shift the needle fastest?”

 

A Platform Built for Scale

EcoWise operates a platform-as-a-service model, designed for complex, multi-party environments like construction.

• Asset owners and contractors pay recurring fees based on portfolio size

• Designers and collaborators can access the platform at zero cost

• Advanced AI and portfolio-level analytics unlock additional value over time

The real opportunity lies in scale. Many clients manage thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of buildings. Savings compound rapidly when applied across entire portfolios.

 

Funded by Innovation, Ready for Growth

Unlike many startups, EcoWise’s early journey was funded almost entirely through non-dilutive grants. Over the past decade, the team has secured close to £4m in UK and EU innovation funding, including major awards from Innovate UK and the European Commission.

That funding enabled deep R&D, including pioneering work on password-less trust technology for construction sites, allowing workers to securely update records without usernames or passwords.

Now, the focus has shifted.

EcoWise is preparing a £1.5m seed raise to accelerate commercial growth, expanding sales, strengthening agile product delivery, and scaling across the UK and Europe as regulation tightens.

 

Why the Timing Matters

Construction is slow to change, but when it moves, it moves at scale.

Legislation is forcing transparency. Asset owners are under pressure to reduce carbon. AI roadmaps are demanding clean, structured data.

EcoWise sits at the intersection of all three.

“This isn’t a ‘nice to have’,” Guy reflects during the conversation. “It’s a question of when, not if.”

 

Inspiration from the Blue Earth Community

Asked who inspires him, Rembrandt points not to Silicon Valley, but to the Blue Earth network, specifically Highlands Rewilding and its founder Jeremy Leggett.

For Rembrandt, the lesson is longevity: building multiple ventures over a lifetime, staying curious, and continuing to push for impact rather than stepping away once success arrives.

 

What Comes Next

EcoWise is entering a pivotal phase, moving from R&D excellence to commercial scale, from pilots to portfolios.

For investors, partners and asset owners, the message is clear: the future of low-carbon buildings will be data-driven, and those who build the data infrastructure will shape the market.

As Rembrandt puts it:
“First you make everything visible. Then you make it better.”

🎧 Listen to the full episode on the Blue Earth Podcast to hear the conversation in full, and explore how EcoWise is helping construction catch up with the future.