Willie Brent: 0:03

The per capita energy consumption of a average Nigerian in one year is less than one third of whatever typical refrigerator consumes in the United States in a year. So that's a person versus a refrigerator, right? So there is a huge disparity between what people have and where they need to get to, to have access to modern energy

Tom Raftery: 0:28

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast. The number one podcast, showcasing best practices in climate emission, reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice, to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 128 of the Climate Confident Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support for this podcast has been instrumental in keeping it going. I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable. With options starting as low as just three euros or dollars, that's less than the cost of a cup of coffee, and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tiny url.com/climate pod. Now without further ado, with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Will. Will, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Willie Brent: 1:49

Yes. Hi, Tom. Great to be on the podcast. I am William Brent. Chief Marketing Officer for a company that builds mini grids in rural Africa and India. I'm an American and I've been working in the clean tech climate solutions space for the past 20 years or so, and I could say a lot more about myself, but I'll stop for now until you want to dig into whatever it is we want to dig into.

Tom Raftery: 2:16

Cool, cool. What's the company name? Will just, you, you, you didn't mention it in your intro there.

Willie Brent: 2:21

Well, that's ironic being the chief marketing officer that I didn't mention the company. Yeah, it's called Husk Power Systems. Okay. And it was, it was founded 15 years ago this year actually in India by our co-founder and CEO Minoj Sinha, who I work with very closely.

Tom Raftery: 2:38

And the name Husk, where does that come from?

Willie Brent: 2:41

It comes from our legacy technology solution, actually, which we still use, but it's no longer the lead technology. So Husk comes from rice husk and Manoj when he started the company in his home state of Behar in the northeast part of India that he and his business partners who are also from India wanted to try and address the, the situation with energy access in Bihar, which was dismal at that, at that time. You know, a hundred plus million people in the state. Probably 60, 70% of the people didn't have access to electricity. They wanted to do something. Okay. And so they decided that they would try to use waste rice husks, cuz it's a big rice producing area. You turn that into syn gas using a gasifier, and then use that gas to power a generator that would then deliver electricity through you know, sort of a rudimentary transmission and distribution network to villages in Bihar that didn't have electricity. That was the initial technology that that was used, um mm-hmm for the past six years or so. So we, we kept the name, but we've actually pivoted about six years ago to be more of a solar plus battery led technology solution. Although we do still use biomass gasification for our larger, the larger communities that we serve.

Tom Raftery: 4:07

Okay. And I mean, I, I was gonna say why, but obviously you've answered that. Why? Because 60 to 70% of a place not having electricity is suboptimal to say at least particularly for that 60 to 70%. For that 60 to 70% who didn't have access to electricity. What were they doing to meet their energy requirements before having access to electricity?

Willie Brent: 4:35

So maybe this is a good opportunity to back up for one second and, you know, provide a little of context about where, where the world is today in regards to energy access. So the issue of energy access is, is that right? That there are still many people in the world today who don't have any access to electricity. And then there are many more who have access to unreliable electricity. So the, the latest statistics from the powers that be put, the number of un-electrified still at around 700 million. There's two to three times a multiple of that of people who don't have access to reliable electricity. And so, you know, the, the, the fact is today that almost one 10th of the world's population is un electrified, which is a, a, a it's, it's inexcusable, really. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the fact that two to three times more, three, probably three times more that population has access to unreliable electricity is also just, you know, something that, that's hard to square. So, you know, the, the, the default for the people who are totally un electrified are highly polluting expensive solutions like kerosene. Which you know, you can imagine is awful for indoor, indoor air pollution and then diesel generators. And so you, you're, that's for people who can obviously afford it, candles as well. In the last 15 years there has been a uptake of small solar lanterns and what are called pico solar solutions. That can provide lighting can provide phone charging, and maybe can power one small appliance. But that's targeted at individual households, um mm-hmm. Or individual businesses, whereas the mini grids that we build, so we build mini grids in these rural communities. They serve the whole community. They consist of a generation asset. In this case it's solar panels plus batteries. And then we, we put in poles and string line wires to connect homes and and businesses in that village. So we've created a, a community based solution as opposed to an individual end user based solution. Because our, our sort of founding principle is that we want to be able to provide enough electricity that, that gives people and, and small businesses the, the ability to be part of a modern economy. And if you're just providing small rooftop solar systems to a a household or a small business that doesn't build the sort of economic vibrancy and opportunity and jobs that you need to actually bring not only people out of energy, poverty, but out of poverty as a whole. Right. So that's really a, I, I, I say that that's a, that's really at the, at the core of our mission as a company, we're a for-profit business, but, you know, our, our mission is to end energy poverty and then through other aspects of our business besides just generating electricity and delivering it. Also bring people out of poverty as a whole by giving them more economic opportunity. So it's the legacy of failed centralized grid extension persists today, and you still see a huge amount of kerosene and diesel use in rural communities in South Asia and across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tom Raftery: 8:05

Okay, and I guess two questions arise outta that. So the first is, what is the business model for you? I mean, going in, putting in a generation asset and a storage asset and then drawing wires to each of the homes in the community. That's an upfront cost. Can that just be deployed in the villages that can afford it? And so is there an certain amount of inequality there? I'm guessing not so maybe talk about how you square that circle, but also you mentioned so second question also, you mentioned that this brings the likes of jobs. And again, talk a bit about how you get from having electricity to having jobs and growing economy and things like that. You know, join that, join those two dots.

Willie Brent: 9:01

Yeah, I can talk a little bit about business model. Maybe that'll help contextualize the, the, the question. So as I said, you know, we build and own and operate mini grids, right? These are typically systems that can deliver electricity. So we start with about 50 kilowatts peak of, of, of solar plus batteries. It can, it can generally connect, let's say 200 to 400 connections in a, in a town or a village. Okay. What we found over the past 15 years is just cuz you build it doesn't mean that they're gonna come. Right. There are just underlying issues in all rural communities around. Whether there's enough critical mass in those communities to have enough economic activity to, you know, to warrant a mini grid. Right? Can, would the demand, will the demand be there? And so what we've done over the past 15 years is actually rethought how we look at rural electrification and, and, and taking it out of just the realm of providing electricity to what's needed to stimulate demand in order to you know, offtake that electricity. So as a result, we've built layers around electricity and integrated those into our, our business model. And those layers include appliance sales and financing. So we actually sell and finance appliances both for household use and for commercial users. So businesses, Welders or, you know, companies that sell refrigerated goods or whatever it might be, that sort of more machinery type of of sales, but also household sale TVs and fans and the, and the like, so that, that both provides more opportunity, better lifestyles to our customers that we're serving. It also improves the economics of the asset that we've built. Right, because as you said, it's a pretty capital intensive business, right? We're spending, you know, let's say roughly a hundred to$200,000 to build a mini grid. You know, we have to re recoup those costs, and we're not gonna do that unless we have enough demand in the communities that we serve. So, providing appliance sales and financing is a key element of that. A another component of our business model is integrating energy services into the communities that we serve. So, In India, we've been doing water purification on as a, as a sort of Husk business itself, where we, we use our, the electricity to purify water and sell it to the local communities, right? Because not only do they lack electricity, many of them lack access to drinking water or you know, enough drinking water. Agro processing hubs where we work with local farmer collectives to aggregate the, their production. We set up an agro, a processing hub. We purchase the equipment to to be used in that hub. They come, they process their harvest into a finished product. We help them actually package that and then access markets. Right. So that, that, that's a sort of agroprocessing example. We're experimenting now in Nigeria with two-wheeled electric motorcycles and a leasing model and battery swapping model for rural communities that we serve there, which are very dependent on two-wheel transportation for a lot of things. Okay. So we, we, that, that provides a lot of, previously unavailable services that are more affordable, that not only provide electricity mechanization of things that were previously manual and, you know, better economics to do certain things, but it also creates more we think, but we're still trying to quantify that more employment because it frees up costs that were previously sunk in diesel or other fossil fuel solutions that they could reinvest in hiring new people or starting new business or expanding their business. Right? So the energy services component is a a growing piece of our business model. Okay. And then lastly, there's one other element there, which is, you know, we build, as I said, we build our mini grid. So over the past 15 years, we've actually developed a very strong construction, in-house construction capacity to do that. And so there are many customers in rural, the rural communities that we serve that may want a standalone rooftop solar solution. So we actually build, install, and then transfer what we call cni, commercial and industrial rooftop solar projects for, for standalone customers that want their own solutions. So all of those things combined create a sustainable business model that's allowed us to get in Q4 of 2022 to profitability as a company where we're now in a position where we can really start to scale to the point where we need to because this is a solution that the World Bank has identified mini grids. The, the, the solution I'm referring to. Yep. It's a, it's a solution that the World Bank says is the most cost effective way to bring electricity for the first time to almost half a billion people, yet we're so very far away from that. So, you know, the, the issue of being able to scale. And be able to come up with a sustainable business model is a, is a, is a large step forward towards reaching that promise of, of electrifying 500 million people.

Tom Raftery: 14:22

Interesting. And the solution you have, is it kind of a cookie cutter solution that you can just, you know, copy and paste from village to village or community to community or town to town or whatever we're saying? And, and, How do you identify which communities or villages or towns to actually light up and which not?

Willie Brent: 14:51

So it is cookie cutter as we've designed it. It's a, it's a standard system. We start at the same generation capacity. We understand, you know, the, the design that's required, the integration that's required. So none of it's bespoke, right? It's all, it is cookie cutter and, and can be replicated quite quickly. In India, for example, we can now roll out 16 of these mini grids per month on a sustained basis. We wouldn't be able to do that unless it were a standardized model that we were, we were. Now that limits us because, you know, that suits only a specific profile of community, right? Yep. And, and we've, we've, we've landed on that profile after a lot of trial and error, and we now understand, okay, this is the profile of a community that we can serve with mini grids that will be good for them and good for us and sustainable over the long term. Cuz we're building these things for 20 to last, for 20 to 25 years. So as a, as a, as a result, we are very standardized in terms of our systems design and, and deployment. And we also are very standardized in terms of what is the profile of the community that we're looking for. So we have a, a, an algorithm that we've developed. That allows us to use GIS and other, you know, on the ground surveys to really quantify the demand profile and other aspects of a community to determine before we invest a cent whether this community will be a viable mini grid for us. Right? And so based on that scoring system, we have a 90% certainty that the, the mini grid that we build will be economically viable and be able to serve the community for the long term. That, that's, that's a first step, I would say, right? Yeah. We had to, we we're, as I said, we, we have investors who are expecting a return on their investment. We need to, we needed to find a, a viable business model, and that meant we had to be very focused on the type of community that we're serving. As we scale, the hope is that, and I think the intent is that we can bring our costs down further. Our, we have what we believe is the lowest levelized cost of energy in the mini grid industry today at under 30 cents per kilowatt hour. We think we can get it down to 20 cents per kilowatt hour over the next coming, few coming few years. If we're able to do that and drive those costs down, hopefully we can then pass on those savings to customers and move from the current profile, which is still in the bottom of the pyramid, but it's towards the, the top of the bottom. We can hopefully start to move down towards the middle of the bottom and start to serve more marginal communities because our, our pricing structure and cost structure is better. So that's a, that's sort of a long-winded ex explanation of sort of our thought process about that. But we knew, we knew that we had to start with a viable business and in order to do that we needed to have, be very clear about the type of community that we could serve long-term on a sustainable basis.

Tom Raftery: 19:00

Okay. And it's a product as a service offering, right? It's not that they're buying the generation facility, it's that you maintain ownership of it and then bill on utilization.

Willie Brent: 19:11

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a utility model in that sense from the electricity perspective. I mean, utilities don't typically do appliance sales and financing energy services, rural cni, but they do do electricity sales and bill collection and managing that net, that distribution network. We do that and we we actually do it on a pay-as-you-go basis. So we, we collect payment upfront each month as opposed to at the end of the month, right? So bill collection I is not so much of a, an issue for us, especially cuz we've digitized it through the mobile app that we've developed. So all of our customers can manage and pay for their energy use a hundred percent online through that app.

Tom Raftery: 19:50

Okay? So if halfway through the month they're coming towards the end, they can top up

Willie Brent: 19:55

Very easily and they do all the time.

Tom Raftery: 19:57

Okay. How scalable is it? And by that I mean, so you mentioned that you roll out 50 kilowatts and that serves a village of two to 400 houses, if I remember correctly. I've got a five kilowatt solar array on my roof, and it's not enough to serve this one house. So as you're adding more services, I, you know, the, the houses or in, in, in that village or the dwellings in that village, I'm sure you know, their electricity requirements will increase. So can you go from 50 kilowatts for that town or village to 70 to a hundred? Or where does the cutoff point? Or is that even a thing?

Willie Brent: 20:45

It's definitely a thing. But your comment about your house in electricity usage reminded me of a statistic that still boggles my mind. I think it came from the Energy for Growth Hub, which is a, an organization based outta DC that does some really interesting thinking around energy access, energy poverty, and whether we're actually solving for the problem that we need to solve for, which is the provision of modern energy, right? Sustainable development. Goal seven is universal energy access. It, that's, that is reliable, sustainable, affordable, and modern. Okay. And that, that last, that last one modern often gets overlooked and it gets overlooked because it's the hardest thing to do. Sure. So according to the latest statistics that I think I said earlier, 700 million people now still lack energy any energy access. That number was probably twice that 10 years ago. So the world development community is now claiming that we've elect brought energy access to, let's say a billion people over the last decade or something like that. Maybe, maybe it's less than that, but whatever the numbers are, it doesn't really matter. You know, more or less a billion people, let's say. But what is that energy access? It's, is it modern? Does it give them the ability to live a lifestyle like that you live in, in, in your home? No it doesn't. In fact, the statistic that I wanted to mention is that according to that Energy for Growth hub, the per capita energy consumption of a average Nigerian per in a, in one year is less than one third of whatever typical refrigerator consumes in the United States in a year. So that's a person versus a refrigerator, right? So there is a huge disparity between what people have and where they need to get to, to have access to modern energy. And our, my contention is that, you know, although the solutions that have been deployed over the past decade and created that reduction in the number of people who don't have energy access, hasn't solved the fundamental problem, which is that people need modern energy. You know, and so that's where we're trying to get to, right? We're, we're building a, a long-term energy infrastructure that can provide modern energy and build economic opportunity. So, you know, to go back to your original question, however, it, we can do that in a modular way, right? So the system that we've designed right now, it is designed to, you know, connect 200, 400 connections in a, in a community. But it's, it's modular and it can be as demand grows, as economic activity increases, that can then, you know, grow on, in a modular way as well. So you add another 50 K kw and another 50 kw, or you integrate a biomass gas, the gasifier that allows for you know, a significant amount of capacity as well. You're diversifying away from only solar and batteries. So that's intent intentional that we've designed that system to be modular. So, you know, if, if our contention is, is correct that we can, you know, create more economic activity, we can create more demand over time. We can easily grow the system and hopefully then also bring in customers from those communities who might not have been able to afford the, the electricity to begin with, right? Because not everybody in the communities can. That's just a, a, a, you know, unfortunate reality. We have to start somewhere. As we, you know, as we grow the economic activity as we grow the demand, that's the, that's the intent is to bring others into the modern energy economy.

Tom Raftery: 25:05

Okay? Cause as I was doing some maths there in my head 50 kilowatts to 200 houses is 250 watts per house. If, if I'm anyway good at mats at all, which is dubious, but it's, it's around 200. It's 250 watts per house, per household, and that's at 200. If you go to 400, then it's 125. The microwave oven in my kitchen is 800 watts. You know, so right there you can see, so obviously in those, if you want to get people to using devices like ovens or microwaves or, I mean, I dunno what our dishwasher would be, but you know, it would be probably around a kilowatt as well maybe. So each of those devices is a lot larger than just a single connection to your home. So it's obviously, it's obviously still. Not a huge amount of electricity you're delivering per household, or or you're going to have to scale as to your point as people scale up their usage. Because, you know, it's 250 watts is tiny.

Willie Brent: 26:18

It's very tiny. I mean, it's, it's it doesn't even scratch the surface of what people need. But you know, there's this concept of the energy ladder, right? And what that looks like is, and what they've research has shown is that, you know, as people start to use energy, they naturally want to use more energy and they figure out ways to do that, right? Yeah. And we're helping to, helping to provide ways for them to do that. And as, so as economic activity grows, as people understand what it means to have access to energy, what it can help them to do, you know, maybe they think, oh, I'll buy a a small refrigerator that can chill soda, and I'll put it outside of my doorway and I'll start a small soda sales retail business, right? Mm-hmm. And then I have more money from that business to use, more power to do something else. And that's what we're seeing, right? The trick is trying to, to do a better job of quantifying what the socioeconomic impacts of these things are. And that's, that's a, that's a gap that still persists today. There's still a general I think bias that, oh, well, you know, you go, went in and build a mini grid, but you know, energy demand didn't actually increase. Well, it didn't increase because there's nobody there doing the world development work that's needed in order to stimulate economic activity, stimulate demand. So, you know, that's essentially what we've become. We've become a, a rural an enterprise that is looking at rural development through the lens of access to energy, right? So that's why all of those layers on top of the electricity are needed. But essentially what we're doing is, you know, economic development through the, the, the entry point of, of energy. Energy is just the beginning for what, what's needed. But this gets into a whole other conversation for me, which is, you know, the perception within the multilaterals development banks, governments and others who so influence how energy systems are planned and, and invested in, at the, in the countries that we're talking about, and how there's this fundamental disconnect. If you wanna get into it, we can, but, you know, ba basically, you know, the, the, the point is that there are these legacy systems that people are used to investing in. Governments and their funders are used to investing in large infrastructure projects with big ticket sizes, right? And that's how they move their money, and that's how they win a reelection. And that's how they are, have been doing things for decades. It hasn't solved the problem of energy access, right? It hasn't solved that problem because what's needed is, is it decentralized digitized solution that can scale across these wide areas that are very expensive to get to using the traditional means, right? Yet they're stuck in that mindset. And so we are penalized as private sector mini grid developers for not being able to deliver tariffs or prices for our services, at a on parity with a heavily subsidized grid, right? So we're competing against the grid, we're competing against diesel. They're all heavily subsidized on both an opex and a CapEx basis. And, and yet we're, we're expected to be able to survive as a private sector business on a purely you know, cost reflective tariff basis. And, and that's just, folly, right? Yeah. That, that is a, a fundamental, you know, issue that needs to be addressed because we're actually taking a huge burden off the back of governments and of development institutions, putting it on our own balance sheet, and actually providing a much greater value to these communities and just electricity. We're providing a whole multiple layers of service on top of that, yet we get penalized or looked down upon or treated on an unlevel playing field. When everybody should be doing everything they can to figure out how to get more of us into the market drive the prices down even further and serve the people who need to be served. And if those things, those assets get eventually integrated into a grid, great. You know, they're built to be integrated into a grid. And if you have the right regulatory and policy frameworks in place, then that integration will happen seamlessly and everybody will win. Right. But we're such, we're so, we're so much stuck in a a feedback loop of status quo inertia that, you know, that's, that's very difficult to make happen. But anyway, I'll get off my high horse. Sorry about that.

Tom Raftery: 30:50

No, it's a fair point. The, the global subsidies for fossil fuels are just insane. The amount of money that they're being given in subsidies all the time. And it's, it's not always directs money that they're being given, but it's subventions, which makes their energy cheaper, which just is insane considering the damage it's doing to the planet. But I'll get off my horse now, my high horse now. You mentioned that you guys are going to, or going to try to reduce your energy costs from 30 cent per kilowatt hour to 20 cent per kilowatt hour. How does that work? What's, what, what are you hoping to do there to get that cost further down?

Willie Brent: 31:30

Yeah, so this is a good chance to jump in maybe to the technology side of things. So it's, you know, it requires a lot of business model and technology innovation. And we've invested heavily in both and we're seeing the results. We're actually under 30 cents per kilowatt hour. We're about 27 cents per kilowatt hour now. And, and we have a, a roadmap to get us to 20 cents. And just,

Tom Raftery: 31:50

just a lot of before you, before you go there, that 27 cent per kilowatt hour, is that the consumer price?

Willie Brent: 31:57

That's our cost of, of generating that electricity. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 32:01

Okay. Okay. So the consumer price is a little higher probably.

Willie Brent: 32:06

It depends on what sort of environment you're working in, but yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be plus whatever we're the, our cost, whatever our costs are. Sure. So, So, what was I saying? So the the way that we're gonna get down to 20 cents per kilowatt hour is through a mix of ongoing business model innovation. So we'll continue to look at energy services and other things that we can integrate into the business that will augment demand on, on the grids, augment demand from the communities that we're serving. And at the same time, you know, looking more deeply at things that we're already using, like IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The only way that we're gonna scale our business sustainably as a business, but also sustainably from a climate perspective is if we can integrate this technology stack and is very, you know, focused on around digital, like AI, like IoT, that allows us to, to, to build as many of these things and manage them as, as efficiently as possible. You know, with, without having to rely on a huge amount of, of CapEx and opex, right? And so optimizing both of those things using technology is really, really critical and we, we, we, we know that we can do that. We already done it right, to get us to where we are today. We just, were in a conference at, at the UN in New York recently where we got a, a prize for the work that we're doing with AI in our business. And so we we're on that path and we know that if we stick to that path and further in increase investment in R&D, we can get to you know, where we wanna get to.

Tom Raftery: 33:46

And as a matter of interest, what are you using AI for?

Willie Brent: 33:51

So right now we're using it for a lot of demand forecasting for our mini grids, reducing losses is another area where we've been able to use it. You know, our losses compared to the main grid are, are much, much lower. And in part that's the result of integrating things like AI. But, you know, I think we just scratched the surface to be able to, to think about how AI can be applied to scaling mini grids. And, you know, I think what's exciting to me is getting down to the individual customer level and figuring out, you know, what AI can do to try and optimize their usage as it as it relates to our assets.

Tom Raftery: 34:30

Okay. Fair enough. There is mention on your website as well, Will of education, so I know that's a, a big part of what you guys do as well, but we haven't talked about it yet. Can you just give us a, a quick rundown of what kind of educational initiatives you guys are performing?

Willie Brent: 34:47

Well, so for markets like Nigeria, you know, at the most fundamental level these are many, many customers who've never used electricity before, right? As a service. And so there's a lot of education that goes into helping them understand what should they be, how much electricity should they be buying a month? And if they buy that amount of electricity, what can they do with it? Can they have lights for X number of hours a day. Can they charge their phones? Can they buy a fan? You know, and also understanding, you know, what their average income is to help them calculate all of that and educate them about how to make a informed decision as a consumer, right? So we, we take that responsibility very seriously. We don't, we wanna make sure that we're not taking advantage of anybody in the communities that we serve. So educating them about sort of the, the energy literacy and what goes into that, that's one, one thing that we do. We also do a lot of activities and training focused on women micro, small and medium sized enterprise owners. And so that's a, that's a, a focus for us to try and increase the number of women entrepreneurs in the communities that we serve. So we, we do specific market marketing campaigns aimed at supporting them, but as part of that, we also do training around financial literacy, customer acquisition and retention, you know, basic concepts around how to better run a business is also something that we do from a training perspective. And then, you know, the education around you know, for example, the, the farmer collectives that we work with, helping them understand if you partner with us through this agroprocessing hub, and you aggregate your production into that hub and come up with a finished product through using a mechanization you, and then package that into a, a package good that then can go to wholesalers and retailers and market. You're gonna increase your income and helping them sort of understand what that journey looks like. So there's, there's multiple layers of of, of how we're educating our customers. Because again, you know, this is, this is part of our business, you know? Yeah. We didn't necessarily understand that when we got into it, but it's become a core aspect of what we do and making sure that we are, you know, bringing our customers along with us on the journey in a, in a informed way.

Tom Raftery: 37:11

We're coming towards the end of the podcast now Will. Is there any question that I have not asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Willie Brent: 37:23

Yes. Well, I think there's many things that we could talk about. I think that, you know, one of the things that I, I often talk about Tom, is that because of this inertia, because of the status quo that we're talking about right now, there really needs to be a generational trans in terms of leadership. Who's, who's actually running the show that determines how the energy systems of the future are being built in these countries. And that's, that's development finance institutions, it's entrepreneurs and, and business people. It's government, there needs to be, in order to accelerate to the place that we need to accelerate to, without that shift in, in, in thinking, that comes with the generational change. Mm-hmm. I think it's gonna be very difficult to do that. So that's a, that, that's an, that's a call to action for those institutions to really embrace, trying to bring in more fresh thinking from a younger generation into their leadership. But also it's a call to action to people out there who might be listening, who are looking for a way to get involved and do something that's meaningful. Because we're hiring a lot of people, other companies in our industry are hiring a lot of people, and we need that, that young fire in the belly to really get to where we need to in order to solve this problem. So that's one topic I would mention. And then, you know, for the finance community we can maybe leave that for another conversation, but they, they, they need to increase their, the level of risk appetite that they have. Hmm. This is never, this, this problem will never get solved unless that's a, that's fundamentally a addressed because they talk about it. They're supposed to be addressing solutions that are risk riskier. And bringing that concessional capital into a market that will then hopefully crowd in more commercial finance that can allow us to scale further. But that risk capital, especially during the growth stage for a company like ours, is absolutely absent. And in order for this industry to scale and for us to solve SDG seven by 2030, which is the goal, which by the way will never happen on our current trajectory. Those, those investors with risk capital need to actually do what they're supposed to be doing and invest in risk.

Tom Raftery: 39:37

Okay. Just left field question, or maybe not. What about things like carbon credits? Is that something that you could access and, and sell given that you are given there's an appetite for them and that you are decarbonizing. It's, I guess it's hard to quantify, but if people are moving off diesel generators and kerosene lamps onto renewably sourced electricity, then surely there's a a market there for, for carbon credits.

Willie Brent: 40:10

It is. We've already started to monetize that in India. We did that maybe starting three or four years ago. So we pre-sold all of the offsets that we're creating by displacing diesel. In India and we, I think are looking at doing also rec sales, renewable energy certificate sales in as well. So both on the rec side and the offset side, we're, we're definitely monetizing that. Exactly what the potential is in terms of incremental revenue, I think it's the, the verdict's still out, but we are doing that. And I think the other thing that, that, that's interesting there and we haven't really talked about is, you know, cooking is a whole other aspect here, right? So there's electricity, there's access to electricity, but there's also access to clean cooking. And that's a huge that's even a bigger problem to be honest. And it's, it doesn't recieve the attention that it deserves, but that's potentially a huge carbon offset opportunity. If you can move people from biomass cooking to electrics, types of electric cooking, then that I think could be quite interesting. Still unclear how to do that and whether it's viable. I mean, we've looked at cooking extensively. And it's a complicated solution because of the, the spike in electricity usage and other asset, the cost of the, the, the cookers themselves. Sure. So, so there's, there's, there's barriers there. But if we can crack through that somehow and come up with a solution that integrates clean cooking with, you know, for example, mini grids, that could be really interesting from a carbon offset perspective as well.

Tom Raftery: 41:41

Fascinating. Fascinating. Will, that's been great. If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the topics we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Willie Brent: 41:51

Husk power systems.com is our website. You can also access all of our social media channels from the website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. We're on all of them but the website's the best place to go to.

Tom Raftery: 42:04

Perfect. Great Will. That's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Willie Brent: 42:09

Tom, my pleasure. Great to see you again and keep up your great work.

Tom Raftery: 42:17

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to Tom raftery@outlook.com. Or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please, don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.