About
Jouler is a small company working on a large problem.
We think thermal energy networks will be a meaningful part of how communities address heating and cooling emissions, and that getting the data foundation right on the first generation of projects matters for everything that comes after.
Founder
Erich Ryan
Founder, Jouler
Erich Ryan founded Jouler in 2025 after spending years at the intersection of thermal systems engineering, utility regulation, and energy software. His graduate research at UMass Amherst focused on the techno-economics of district geothermal systems, with published work on campus-scale applications. Before Jouler, he evaluated utility energy efficiency programs for the California Public Utilities Commission and worked on physics-based building models and digital twins at a startup at Greentown Labs, the leading climatetech incubator. The through-line across that work was the same set of questions Jouler now exists to answer.
He's based in Massachusetts and works with partners across the US.
Why we exist
Mission
Jouler exists to help thermal energy networks reach the scale they need to make a real dent in building emissions. We don't have a particular project to champion or a product to sell. What we care about is whether TENs, as a category, become easier to evaluate, finance, and operate over time.
In the near term, that means doing careful, honest work with the projects that are actually being built. In the long run, it means the analytical and data groundwork done on those early projects becomes useful to the many that follow.
How we operate
Values
01
Data drives building.
We're not a research group or a theory shop. The data and analytical work we do exists to make TENs buildable, taking projects from promising idea to permitted, financed, operating system.
02
Honest about where the industry is.
The TEN sector is early. The economics are promising but haven't been proven at scale yet, and we don't think pretending otherwise serves anyone well, including us.
03
Open methodology.
The analytical approaches for evaluating TEN performance should be transparent and reproducible. We publish what we can and contribute to open-source tooling. The value we provide comes from doing the work well, not from keeping the methods opaque.
Questions, potential collaborations, or just want to talk about thermal networks: erich@jouler.net