I am extremely proud to inform you that IES was founded 30 years ago today, on the 10th June 1994.
It has been a long journey and we have achieved a lot in that time. From landmark projects including Heathrow’s Terminal Five, to the Dubai Opera House, our technology has helped to improve the performance of no less than 1.5 million buildings over the past three decades. However, I am confident that we will continue to achieve much more going forward.
IES was founded in 1994 and I was working from my bedroom. This was long before anyone knew anything about the impact of climate change. In addition, making buildings more energy efficient was not yet high on anyone’s agenda.
So, our 1994 mission was to make every building in the world use energy as efficiently as possible. The long term aim was to preserve our coal, gas and oil reserves for future generations as fossil fuels were (and still are) finite.
The world has changed significantly since then. And as global temperatures continue to rise, climate change has come to the fore as the most pressing issue of our generation. Now, with the built environment accounting for a staggering 37% of global carbon emissions and 34% of global energy demand, there has never been a greater need for technologies such as ours.
Our VE technology, which supports whole building performance analysis for the design and retrofit of buildings, has been making a significant impact globally via our customers for decades. Our new digital twin product suite, the ICL – and more recently, IES Live - is taking us into the operational phase of the building lifecycle. We aim for our integrated suite of tools to help anyone from design concept, through design, operation, and retrofit, to deliver the most energy efficient, comfortable and low-carbon buildings possible.
The climate change impact on buildings will be significant, so we have an exciting and extremely challenging job in front of us. However, I know we have tens of thousands of customers/users who will use our software in their mission to decarbonise.
I would like to thank all the people who have helped IES grow year on year. This includes current staff, ex-staff and all of our customers around the world.
Our customers have made a major contribution to make buildings energy efficient and, more recently, reducing carbon emissions aiming to make all buildings zero carbon.
In particular, I would like to thank the large number of staff who have been with IES for over 20 years. They have been through a lot of hard times and I would like to thank them for all the effort they have contributed. Without these long term staff I would not be writing this note.
Here’s to the next 30 years, when we will have passed the 2050 target of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5°C. And while there is certainly reason for pessimism, with current projections indicating we will likely surpass the 1.5°C threshold much earlier than in 2050, we must not give up. I am hopeful through the continued efforts of the IES team and our user base that we can continue to play our part in getting the global built environment to zero emissions.
My team are up for the challenge. I expect most of our users are up for the challenge. Are you?
Happy Birthday to us. 😊