Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Game Changers. I'm Matt Goldman. As
Speaker 1: the Earth is facing an increasingly consequential climate crisis, inquisitive
Speaker 1: minds all over the globe are hard at work trying
Speaker 1: to find solutions, and many of them have been able
Speaker 1: to translate their Eureka moments into action at a greater
Speaker 1: pace than scope than sometimes gloomy headlines might have us think.
Speaker 1: In this four part mini series, will meet the visionary
Speaker 1: minds who attempt to sculpt the future of sustainable energy
Speaker 1: and global resources. We'll get a peek behind the curtains
Speaker 1: of their factory floors here of the sometimes surprising origins
Speaker 1: of their ideas, and be introduced to a potentially greener
Speaker 1: tomorrow in this episode micro Grids and micro Economies. Currently,
Speaker 1: I believe the households which have got power in Kenya's
Speaker 1: approblemly about so there is another we just got no
Speaker 1: power at all. Their household is indicated largely desa in
Speaker 1: the rural areas. That's zachary Io, a man who knows
Speaker 1: about power and electricity. As a former executive at the
Speaker 1: National Power Company, he helped expand Kenya's electricity access from
Speaker 1: eighteen percent of the population in two thousand ten to sixty,
Speaker 1: the highest in mainland East Africa. But born and raised
Speaker 1: in rural Kenya, he also experienced the country is often
Speaker 1: inadequate access to electricity early in life. The first time
Speaker 1: I had power in my in my village was in
Speaker 1: the year nineteen. Before that, there was no power at all,
Speaker 1: completely set up the starts of living. Why extremely very
Speaker 1: very low because the communication was zero. But the country
Speaker 1: is not alone in its struggles. About six fifty million
Speaker 1: people in Africa live without access to power and a
Speaker 1: continent marred by inequality and poverty. This raises an uncomfortable question,
Speaker 1: how do you bring people out of extreme poverty without
Speaker 1: wrecking the climate in the process. Conventional wisdom says it
Speaker 1: will require the burning of enough fossil fuels to counsel
Speaker 1: out any progress that developed world makes on emissions. But
Speaker 1: in rural Kenya, a small experiment is underway aiming to
Speaker 1: see if it's possible to have the economic uplift without
Speaker 1: the environmental catastrophe. It's spearheaded by power Hive, a privately
Speaker 1: licensed utility company where Ako is currently the executive chairman.
Speaker 1: Here let's go my arms crossed, or does it okay okay.
Speaker 1: Arriving in Africa in two thousand eight, Power Hive CEO
Speaker 1: and founder Chris Horner found a challenge enginge landscape rife
Speaker 1: with potential. Things have not really moved very much in
Speaker 1: the last hundred years, with the exception of course, of
Speaker 1: mobile phones and mobile money and things like this. So
Speaker 1: what's happening not only in Kesey and other parts of Kenya,
Speaker 1: but all over Africa and other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: This is a huge gap in terms of those that
Speaker 1: have electricity and those that don't. Here in Kisy, Horner
Speaker 1: found the perfect circumstances to try out his new solutions.
Speaker 1: Power Hive Senior business manager Laura Kiplegat explains, well, we
Speaker 1: went to Kesi because we were looking for a community
Speaker 1: UM that is on the fringe of the grid like
Speaker 1: most rural communities in Kenya, but did have the population
Speaker 1: density to make sense for us as a business. And
Speaker 1: Kis is a happy medium. You know, they have good son,
Speaker 1: good people who are willing, you know to sign onto
Speaker 1: the project um but they it had all the components
Speaker 1: that we needed, you know, to make our business work
Speaker 1: that business. Power Hive currently manages around twenty five micro
Speaker 1: grids in the Kisi region, grids that operate on solar
Speaker 1: power stored in batteries ideal for the sunny climate. These
Speaker 1: mini grids are power systems that supply enough electricity for
Speaker 1: a small community. Schools and homes get electric light and
Speaker 1: internet service. Agricultural labor like maize milling, doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be done by hand anymore. Electric pressure cookers eliminate the
Speaker 1: need to chop down trees or burn charcoal to make meals.
Speaker 1: All of these things raise the standard of living and
Speaker 1: relieve the environment. But there's one big problem. Our typical
Speaker 1: communities are generally subsistence farming. Most of them are not
Speaker 1: formally employed. Most of them don't have formal education or
Speaker 1: have not completed anything really beyond primary education UM and
Speaker 1: are really the bottom of the pyramid in the economy.
Speaker 1: When we first came into too Kenya and into Keys,
Speaker 1: we quickly realized that our consumers are too poor to
Speaker 1: pay for energy power. Hive solution is as simple as
Speaker 1: their solar panels. Create a microeconomy to bolster local businesses.
Speaker 1: So we've introduced electric vehicles. We've introduced electric milling machines
Speaker 1: to to to provide a better, lower cost solution for milling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the starkest example of this could be found in
Speaker 1: Poko Poa Power Hives ambitious poultry farming initiative. Most of
Speaker 1: our communities are subsistence farmers. These are people who are
Speaker 1: already wearing chicken, but are limited by the capital you
Speaker 1: know UM issue, and are limited by exposure and understanding
Speaker 1: of how to to scale a poultry business. So we
Speaker 1: developed a program to bring commercial poultry farming to our communities,
Speaker 1: create an income for for our communities, and then also
Speaker 1: create a good energy customer for us as a business.
Speaker 1: So we set up CUCA Poa UM in sort of
Speaker 1: joint partnership with local corporatives whose members are all power
Speaker 1: hive customers UM. We tend to have groups of ten
Speaker 1: typically they're all women UM or at least about women
Speaker 1: across our twenty brewderhouses. Then the corporative bringing the capital
Speaker 1: to build the infrastructure, so they'll build a brooder house,
Speaker 1: they'll buy all the equipment necessary UM, which is the
Speaker 1: heating lamps, the lighting lamps, UM feeder trays, UM and
Speaker 1: water troughs, and then power Hive brings in the chicks.
Speaker 1: We provide batinary services and feed, and then we also
Speaker 1: help help them secure off takers for the poultry at
Speaker 1: the end of the cycle. It's a virtuous cycle. For
Speaker 1: power Hive, they give their customers the money and guidance
Speaker 1: to start businesses that use their electricity, and then a
Speaker 1: portion of the income from those businesses pays for the electricity.
Speaker 1: So the poultry business is great because it provides food security,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a commodity that can actually help
Speaker 1: generate cash and bring cash into these communities that basically
Speaker 1: severely lack cash. And as an investor, you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that we really focus on because you know, we
Speaker 1: want to make a return on investment. We also in
Speaker 1: order to do that, we really have to invest in
Speaker 1: the communities in which we work, uplifting our customers to
Speaker 1: become better customers, happier, healthier customers. Most most subsistence farmers
Speaker 1: will keep about fifteen to twenty UM kanyegee chicken, which
Speaker 1: is like a free range chicken um and these would
Speaker 1: mature between eight two year eight months to two years,
Speaker 1: depending on the species. UM. When you look at the yield,
Speaker 1: you know of commercially grown chicken, you're producing chickens and
Speaker 1: selling those in six weeks, so this is exponentially increasing
Speaker 1: the potential for for income for all these communities are involved.
Speaker 1: Power Hive currently operates on a all scale, but Laura
Speaker 1: believes that the domino effect could be substantial for both
Speaker 1: the company and the community. Well. Statistics show with women
Speaker 1: who are engaged in business and are able to control
Speaker 1: their income, which they're able to through informal cooperatives, women
Speaker 1: tend to invest more in business, they tend to invest
Speaker 1: more in in education, and that has a huge knock
Speaker 1: on effect in their communities. UM. Typically you'll also find
Speaker 1: the community members who do see UM or are exposed
Speaker 1: to successful businesses get inspired to do that themselves, you know.
Speaker 1: So you'll have people on some of our grids UM
Speaker 1: starting barbershops, UM, people starting maybe smaller versions of UM
Speaker 1: poultry farms UM which they can afford. And all of
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't had the exposure
Speaker 1: or understood how it can be done or that it
Speaker 1: can be done. There's one of our customers who was
Speaker 1: involved in one of the first Cucupoa projects and she
Speaker 1: went on to start her own brooder and I think
Speaker 1: she's producing herself three thousand chicken um, and that's just
Speaker 1: off of the back of the experience that she gained
Speaker 1: on Cucaca. And as far as Chris is concerned, there
Speaker 1: might not be a more powerful way to build sustainable
Speaker 1: power grids in Kenya and Africa in general than by
Speaker 1: solar micro grids. Twenty years ago, the price per kill
Speaker 1: a lot of a solar panel was about six dollars.
Speaker 1: Now it's twenty cents. History has shown us that you know,
Speaker 1: as recently as the nineteen sixties and parts of the UK,
Speaker 1: there was no electricity in these villages, right, The same
Speaker 1: same exact sort of customer profiles existed then that we're
Speaker 1: seeing now. So it's just so we have to have
Speaker 1: a bit of patience, we have to have a bit
Speaker 1: of vision. But in order to really accelerate this adoption
Speaker 1: of distributed energy and solar and the sort of businesses
Speaker 1: that we're looking at, we really need to make it economic.
Speaker 1: We need to make it so that the local Kenyan
Speaker 1: pension funds and other other funds will invest in these
Speaker 1: types of businesses, so that these these grids, in this infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which by a way, it's much more advanced and better
Speaker 1: than any of the infrastructure we even have in the
Speaker 1: United States is now being brought here is something that
Speaker 1: is truly bankable. So yes, they've been left in the
Speaker 1: dark for the last you know, fifty years, longer than
Speaker 1: their counterparts in the UK, some of them. But the
Speaker 1: benefit is they have the best technology now. They have
Speaker 1: the solar lithium ion batteries and all these other technologies
Speaker 1: that we've put in place that will stand the test
Speaker 1: of time and have been built to last. It's opened
Speaker 1: up a huge opportunity in Africa to deliver energy and
Speaker 1: energy storage and this whole grid infrastructure, an ecosystem that
Speaker 1: we're creating in a much lower cost way and in
Speaker 1: a way that actually is going to create a long
Speaker 1: term um distributed energy system that is actually going to
Speaker 1: serve Africa for generations. This episode of Game Changers was
Speaker 1: produced by Magnus Hendrikson and presented by me Matt Goldman.
Speaker 1: It was based on a video report produced by myself
Speaker 1: and Alan Jeffreys. For a visual experience of Game Changers,
Speaker 1: check out our videos at Bloomberg dot com slash Green.
Speaker 1: Francesca Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. See you
Speaker 1: next time.