Editors’ Note

Frederik Hendriksen is Co-Founder and CEO of Rensair, a company specializing in advanced ventilation and energy efficiency management solutions. With a strong background in sales and business development, Hendriksen has driven Rensair’s growth across international markets, helping the company establish a significant presence in sectors like healthcare, hospitality, and real estate. His expertise in strategic partnerships and market expansion, combined with a deep commitment to decarbonizing commercial real estate while improving indoor air quality, makes him a key figure in the ongoing innovation within the commercial ventilation industry.

Company Brief

Rensair (rensair.com) is a solutions provider for safe and healthy indoor environments while improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. The company is a pioneer in the proptech space, creating sustainable ventilation solutions for the built environment. Rensair’s new and patented “Smart Demand Controlled Ventilation” (SDCV) solution is proven to reduce ventilation energy consumption and carbon emissions in commercial buildings by more than 40 percent while simultaneously improving indoor air quality (IAQ). This is enabled by patented air cleaning technology, real-time air quality monitoring and AI driven optimization. Rensair’s award-winning air purifiers are independently validated by world renowned scientific laboratories, removing risk as well as polluted air. The company’s air purification technologies – HEPA filtration and UVC light – trap and deactivate a minimum of 99.97 percent of pathogens and are recommended by the world’s leading health authorities as effective and safe. With operations in the U.K., Europe, the U.S., and Asia, Rensair provides for every space – from hospitals and universities to hospitality venues, corporates, or any organization striving to decarbonize their buildings and meet their Scope 1 and 2 targets.

What was the vision for creating Rensair and how do you define its mission?

Our vision is to build a new leader in delivering energy efficient commercial buildings with better air quality than exists today. Oftentimes, when you look at energy efficiency, it comes at the cost of something else – doing less of something else to deliver it – but with our solutions, we not only lower the energy needed for ventilating buildings, but we also improve the health and well-being of occupants. We are able to create real impact without sacrificing elsewhere.

Our mission is to hack HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning). By that we mean to challenge the existing HVAC industry where innovation happens slowly. With our technology we are cutting carbon, costs, and pollutants in buildings. Installing our combination of hardware and software in buildings is able to lower energy consumption and carbon footprint for HVAC by 40 percent while delivering cleaner indoor air.

Will you provide an overview of Rensair’s products and solutions?

We work within three different verticals today: HVAC energy solutions in commercial real estate; clean air solutions, primarily for healthcare; and clean air in transportation which includes a development project to deliver cleaner air in trains. Our HVAC energy efficiency solution consists of IoT enabled hardware that circulates and filters the air inside a building, connected to our software platform Rensair Cloud. Installing this in a building allows for taking in less outside air through the existing central HVAC system, thereby lowering energy consumption while improving the air quality. We are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to decarbonize their portfolios and improve employee health and well-being. Providing clean air in healthcare is our background. I founded Rensair with my twin brother Christian in 2020, but the core technology that we use in most of our products was developed by our father almost 20 years ago for use in Scandinavian hospitals. My brother and I grew up with this technology and one of the first prototypes sat in my brother’s bedroom to help alleviate his asthma. Today, we work with hospitals around the world to improve air quality and lower the risk of airborne disease transmission. Finally, we are deploying some of our patented technology in transportation. The pandemic highlighted the poor air often experienced in public transportation and we are currently working with one of the world’s largest train manufacturers to change this.

How do you describe the impact and value that Rensair provides to its clients?

We deliver three things to our clients: reduced HVAC energy consumption by 40 percent; reduced carbon emissions by a similar amount; and improved air quality. Many are unaware that HVAC accounts for 40-60 percent of a building’s total energy consumption so installing our solution can reduce total operating costs by 16-20 percent. From a clean air perspective, all our solutions are centered around delivering optimal indoor environments. This not only keeps occupants safe from pollutants such as viruses and bacteria, but clean air is also directly correlated with performance and cognitive function.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth?

The biggest opportunity we have right now is helping organizations, landlords, and commercial tenants reduce their carbon emissions and reduce energy costs. This is particularly true in the context of ongoing regulatory changes that are requiring building owners to reduce their carbon emissions – for example, Local Law 97 in New York. Here we have a quick, efficient, and scalable solution that addresses that need. Rensair is headquartered in London, and our U.S. offices are in New York. Both markets are major opportunities for us as we help some of the world’s largest organizations take meaningful steps towards net zero.

How valuable has it been to build a strong advisory board for Rensair?

We have learned that the world of commercial real estate is small and from a business development perspective, we are very targeted in who we want to get in front of and work with. Throughout the Rensair journey we have been able to bring onboard some very experienced professionals who have been instrumental to the trajectory we are on today. As a rapidly growing business, receiving outside perspective and experience from senior business leaders has been invaluable. We are very grateful for the impact that they have had and are excited to continue bringing on further advisors who support this mission.

Did you always know that you had an entrepreneurial spirit and desire to build your own business?

I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I guess I was destined to end up as one myself. Post university I had the opportunity to work for large organizations including Morgan Stanley, but I also worked with and invested in growing companies in Japan, China, Zambia, and Europe. There is something fundamentally exciting about developing a company from the ground up that I think can be hard to find elsewhere. With Rensair, I love the industry we are in as we can differentiate ourselves through knowledge and science while tackling some of the largest issues of our time. While it is hard work, I think the process is incredibly rewarding.

How do you and your brother focus your efforts leading Rensair, and what has made the working relationship between the two of you work so well?

As I mentioned, Christian and I are twin brothers and we grew up in a small place in Denmark. We ended up in the same class throughout our school and this continued through university where we achieved the same bachelor’s and master’s degrees. We always found that we worked well together in various settings which included working for a venture capital fund in Zambia and our time at a late-stage growth company in China and Japan. I have found that our skills complement each other really well. Christian is more operationally focused while I lead our sales and business development efforts. In terms of running the company, it is invaluable to have a close partner that I can discuss and agree on strategy with. I think it gives us a unique advantage that we have known each other our whole lives.

What are your priorities for Rensair as you look to the future?

I am very excited for the coming years. In the short term, we are very focused on growth as we deploy our solutions with clients. We have seen that our energy-efficiency solution clearly meets our clients’ needs as lowering operational expenses and reaching decarbonization goals remain top of the list for most organizations today. Linking this with improved employee health and well-being is where I really see us differentiating ourselves in the market. Over the past year, we have been fortunate to land some major clients and our expansion across their portfolios are set to accelerate the growth of Rensair. On a longer time horizon, I am excited to make our vision a reality. As we continue to innovate and develop our product offerings, I can see us becoming a new leader in the sustainable HVAC space.