Green drywall maker eyes windows, insulation

Serious Materials, the green drywall guys, want to expand.

“We find insulation very interesting,� said Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, which has developed a technique for making drywall that consumes almost no fossil fuel, during a session at the Environmental Ventures conference sponsored by Dow Jones taking place in San Mateo.

The Silicon Valley company has raised $60 million from Foundation Capital among others as part of an effort to become the green building material king. Buildings consume roughly 40 percent of the power generated in the U.S. and that’s just the energy used to run the buildings. Construction and building materials gobble up another 12 percent. The company’s mission statement goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emission by a billion tons annually through efficient manufacturing and the introduction of green materials.

Serious has delivered beta samples of EcoRock, the company’s green drywall, to customers and hopes to release it commercially by the fall, said Surace. Traditionally drywall essentially consists of gypsum that gets cooked at high temperatures. Serious has devised a chemical mix that congeals at low temperatures, sort of like Jello. The company plans to run its factories on solar panels.

Serious will also later this year come out with its Thermaproof windows. The windows consist of panes of coated glass that sandwich in krypton gas.

The windows can cut home energy use by 15 to 40 percent, Surace said, and insulate far better than even EnergyStar rated windows. The windows, in fact, insulate as well as walls.

“The main difference between our windows and walls is that you can see through them,� he said.