Plymouth Goes Green

Photo: Marshall Franklin Long

Noble Conservation Solutions co-founders Matt Noble, left, and Lev Buslovich.

Redefining Green

The creation and collaboration of Plymouth-based Noble Conservation Solutions.

When you hear the word “green,” what do you think of?

The Earth? Recycling, reusing, efficiency, sustainability—perhaps wind power, solar power, LEED design? Or maybe your brain goes straight to the Almighty Dollar—los dineros, cold-hard cash, savin’ Benjamins.

But why not both?

Combining the two “greens” is at the core of a small-but-growing Plymouth startup that began literally in the backyards and on the soccer fields of our hometown’s neighborhoods with two friends—Matt Noble and Lev Buslovich.

A Soccer Story

Cofounder and chief executive officer Matt Noble, for whom the company is named, is the one who’s been in the industry for more than 15 years, specifically energy managemetnt and lighting retrofit. He’s a certified consultant with a CEMBA energy management license as well as a CLMA certification. An expert engineer, he’s received national recognition for his quality and innovation in environmentally sound solutions.

Lev Buslovich is cofounder and chief operating officer who has a background in product strategy, marketing, operations and business improvement for Fortune 500 companies, including GE, Target and Carlson. So where, then, do the two converge?

“We are neighbors, literally three houses away,” Buslovich says. “I coach our daughters in soccer … I was always hearing Matt talk about work, all these terms like HUAC, lighting, control systems, all these things that I didn’t really understand, so finally one day I just asked him, ‘so what the heck do you do, exactly?’”

Turns out Noble’s cousin had started a lighting efficiency installment company in 1994, way back when the country was just on the edge of the lighting boom, and Noble himself installed hundreds of projects. “I don’t even know how many conservation projects I’ve done throughout my career,” Noble says. “In 2006,-7 and -8 alone, I know I did 3,000.”

The two talked for hours about green initiatives, the environmental benefits of lighting systems, but more so what a no-brainer this sort of work was (and increasingly so was becoming) to all companies, from retail to residential to industrial complexes, because it was a huge cost-savings, not just energy-efficient by fiscally efficient.

“I believed in what Matt was doing, and I had been trying to push a lot of these sorts of developments from the inside at the companies I was working for,” Buslovich recalls. “It sells itself, really, so I pitched the idea of ‘conservation solutions’ to a couple of clients myself, and right away found an interest.”

The pair launched Noble Conservation Solutions (NCS) in December 2007 and incorporated in January 2008. “When we started, I wanted to be an implementer; I wanted to see the project actually be done, see the savings in action,” Noble says. “It helps you get better at your engineering.”

“Matt is a very strong designer, but he wanted to do more,” Buslovich concurs. “And that’s what we can do with this business.”

The Three Collars of NCS

 “Sometimes ‘green’ costs more money than it saves,” Buslovich says. Think about the hybrids, and all those cash-for-clunkers deposits that just got wasted. And those replacement hybrids are expensive, too, to both the consumer and to the environment, which soaks up the excess churning of industrial emissions in the cars’ production that wouldn’t have existed if all those clunkers were used for just another year or two.

“We like to talk in terms of ‘practical green,’ saving your money and our planet,” Buslovich says. “The companies that are most-green for altruistic reasons often quickly realize that green has a cost to it. We focus on what saves the most, costs the least, and then those companies are more likely to continue on to the next step of environmental impact, which is more attainable after saving the money.”

Buslovich likes to term it by collars that everyone is familiar with: blue, white and a new one, green. The engineer is the white collar; they’re innovative and technically precise. Then their ideas get passed down to the implementers, the contractors who are often the blue-collar workers. Somewhere in the mix in the sustainability movement comes the third green collar; these are the integrators, consultants and project managers who have a depth of knowledge regarding the why and wherefore of utilizing the white collar initiatives, but rarely do the three converge. When they do, however, you find the greatest cost savings, and this is at the core of NCS’s philosophy.

“The goal is to have one point of contact: We bring these three collars together, as well as integrate multiple technologies, each unique to each individual project,” Buslovich says.

You might be wondering, what exactly do they do? Specifically, they design, consult on and install more efficient lighting, energy management systems (EMS, think switchboards), HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning), other engineering projects that go along with their work and water systems.

More savings are available via rebates, maintenance and tax credits, and NCS professionals consult on all of those, too. “Our technology can use less energy, and therefore also tighten the hours the technology is used,” Noble says. For example, “We had one client who said he hadn’t turned off the lights in 15 years; the large warehouse of offices just wasn’t designed to turn them all off at once, and so they often just stayed on all weekend. By simply redesigning the EMS—the physical placement of the light switches into one space—we saved them $50,000 a year by turning off 3,600 lights all at once. Cost was only about $10,000, and now he’s got cash-flow to do more.”

The NCS team is not involved in promoting any one system over another; they merely present a few of the numerous options available and give recommendations based on what the company’s needs seem to be. The final system install is always up to the company itself. “At the heart of what we do is we save money through producing and offering the best design, but also we are able to then implement that design,” Buslovich says. “That way nothing is lost in translation. That is what green means to us.”

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