Our Story

“If LED lights save you so much money – then why don’t they pay for themselves?”

That was the question that launched our award-winning business. In just three short years, UrbanVolt has grown from an idea (albeit a pretty good one) to helping the largest companies in the world reduce their carbon footprint in facilities across three continents. When the founders of UrbanVolt sat down together for a quiet drink one rainy evening in Dublin, I am not sure they realised the revolution that they were starting would grow so rapidly and effect so much positive change around the world.

The consumer LED lighting revolution had proven that there were 80% energy reductions available when you made the switch, but businesses had yet to embrace LED lights. A single warehouse or factory could have the same impact as hundreds of homes. If we could get industry to make the change, we could really make a difference in the fight against climate change. How could we make it easier for those larger corporate energy users to reduce their carbon footprint?

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

― Albert Einstein

Instead of looking at the problem the same way as everyone else in the lighting industry, we took a step back. We combined our skills from corporate finance, facility management and logistics and set about building a service offering that would deliver LED lighting to industrial clients — without any need for upfront investment.

We had three simple overarching principles that we believed would accelerate the business world’s adoption of LED lighting – (a) it had to remove the need for any upfront investment (b) it had to remove all the operational hassle and (c) it had to be fully off-balance sheet for the world’s largest energy users. Sounds pretty simple, right?

It took over a year – fueled by late nights, thousands of gallons of coffee, and many wasted hours with ridiculously expensive lawyers and accountants – to build our award-winning Light as a Service platform. We even spent a few extra bucks to trademark the acronym LaaS.

“The only truly sustainable energy is that energy which has never been consumed.”

– Kevin Maughan, CEO of UrbanVolt

Fast forward just a few short years and we have achieved what we originally set out to do – we have dramatically reduced energy consumption, and our clients save millions of tons of CO2 and millions of dollars in energy costs every single year. Along the way we have outgrown our offices twice, won countless awards for our innovative business model and we even found time to become Ireland’s first B Corporation.

As a Certified B Corp, UrbanVolt meets the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability. Becoming a B Corp hard-coded our original mission into the DNA of the company and we are living proof that business holds the key to changing the world.

After helping hundreds of companies to dramatically reduce their energy consumption, we then took the next leap forward and created Dataful.

“Decisions without data is just guessing. And one of the reasons large companies haven’t fully embraced sustainability is the data vacuum.”

– Kevin Maughan, CEO of UrbanVolt

Dataful allows multi-site companies to immediately quantify the scale of the opportunity when it comes to energy reduction and CO2 savings. Thanks to our invite only app, companies no longer have to spend months (or years) carrying out site surveys and data analysis on sites across different territories. With just a few pieces of readily available information, companies can now assess their global portfolio.

So we invite you to join our growing list of clients who are doing the right thing for the planet (and their bottom line).

Leadership Team

KEVIN MAUGHAN, CEO

Kevin is a start up veteran. In 2010 he founded Novaerus, which became the fastest growing biotech company in Ireland. Prior to that, Kevin was the CEO of Caterpillar Ireland and Director of Merrill Lynch’s Financial Advisory Centres in EMEA, with 26 offices and €8 billion in assets under management.

GRAHAM DEANE, COO

Graham was a co-founder of Novaerus, where he managed product development and the supply chain for a rapidly growing global business. Prior to that, Graham was Group Operations Director for Caterpillar Ireland and held a number of management positions with Fortune 500 companies such as Xilinx and Flextronics.

DECLAN BARRETT, CCO

Declan Barrett was most recently the founder of Complete Property Management, a company he founded in 2008 and successfully exited in 2014. Prior to that Declan held key management positions in the FMCG industry with Johnson Bros and United Biscuits where he was responsible for growth in Ireland.