Dandelion is an American company which offers geothermal heating installation in upstate New York. Prior to 2017, it was part of Google X, before being spun out into an independent company. Dandelion targets providing geothermal heating and cooling on a competitive basis against, to start, existing oil furnaces. While geothermal HVAC has many advantages, penetration has been constrained over the years due to high-upfront capital costs. Dandelion targets eliminating that investment challenge both by lowering system costs and by leveraging leasing finance models that helped rooftop solar deal with the same challenge. There are three core components to Dandelion's approach:
As to lowering costs, the GoogleX team developed a new drilling approach that no longer required significant industrial equipment to install the piping.
Dandelion has secured the financing so that it can offer potential buyers a "zero dollars upfront" option and a flatcost structure into the future at lower cost than their existing heating bills.
Dandelion is targeting a specific market of very high-cost heating with straightforward retrofit: oil furnaces with forced air systems.
The combination of these three enable homeowners to secure geothermal's benefits without having to deal with a large upfront capital cost. The system consists of a heat pump which pipes energy either to or from a house. Dandelion made headlines in February 2019 when it raised 16 million in its series A fundraising round. As a form of renewable technology with enormous potential, Dandelion has been called "the next solar". As New York state and the U.S. transition toward a zero emissions future, technologies like Dandelion's have a critical role to play. Dandelion replaces traditional heating systems, and in doing so eliminates the biggest source of carbon emissions in cold climates—the emissions burned for heating. According to the EPA, natural gas and petroleum used for cooking and heating make up 89% of the emissions in the residential and commercial sectors. In New York state, buildings account for a lion's share of overall emissions, at 59% of the total emissions in the state. Dandelion offers a reduction in emissions equivalent to taking two cars off the road each year it operates. Dandelion's CEO, Kathy Hannun was named one of Fast Company's most creative people in 2018. A leader in the Green Tech industry, Hannun made headlines when she finished Dandelion's first round of fundraising the day before giving birth to her first child. In June 2018, Dandelion began installation of the first sub-$20,000 geothermal heat pump, Dandelion Air. The product was designed in-house by the company, which is installed in the backyard of a residential property and is currently financed over a 20-year term.
