Company: Fornax
Founder: David Leviseur (CEO) and Alex Godsell (COO)
Website: https://fornax.energy/
About Fornax
Fornax is on a mission to decarbonise homes by solving financing and other challenges that are blocking mass deployment of clean technology in the UK and slowing our progress to net zero. Because some 28 million homes produce almost a fifth of all UK carbon emissions, the government wants homeowners to transition from gas boilers to heat pumps. A target has been set to install at least 600,000 heat pumps each year by 2028 so the UK can meet legally-binding carbon targets.
Homeowners today can save energy and unlock bill savings with this technology (heating accounts for 85% of home energy consumption) but only if they can afford to upgrade their heating systems in the first place. Even after accounting for government grants currently available to homeowners, heat pump systems are still unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, getting a heat pump installed remains a complex, high-friction journey for homeowners. Solving both the financing challenge and upgrade complexity is central to driving mass uptake of heat pumps, to achieving UK decarbonisation targets, and to future-proofing our housing stock.
To get us there, Fornax has delivered a UK first: The Heat Pump Plan. This allows people to spread the upfront cost of their new heating system over time (up to 12 years), and includes installation by carefully-vetted, skilled installers, plus annual servicing and breakdown cover for the duration of the plan.
Since helping their first customer in 2023, the consumer response has been hugely positive, and Fornax has built a pipeline that will 10x its existing customer base over the next 12 months. Helping customers switch to green heating puts Fornax in a strong position to support homeowners with the full decarbonisation of their whole home in the years to come.
Behind this startup is duo David Leviseur and Alex Godsell, who bring together a unique set of experiences that have enabled them to tackle this complex problem. David spent almost a decade working in Evercore’s energy infrastructure advisory team, delivering creative capital-efficient renewable development platforms across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.
It was here – when he was trying to work out why the UK was lagging behind other countries in its uptake of home heat pumps – that he came up with the idea for Fornax. David is the architect of Fornax’s business model and its plan to improve the affordability of clean heating systems for the mass market.
Alex has spent the past decade building startups across health, data and technology and is an expert in business operations. Prior to this, he spent five years working in financial derivatives and risk, expertise that he applies today to the creation of Fornax’s underwriting model that drives its lending platform.
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