Ep20: Richenda Van Leeuwen 'A Life of Energy Access and Inclusion'

ML

Hello, my name is Michael Liebreich and this is 'Cleaning Up'. My guest today is Richenda Van Leeuwen. I first met her around 2010 when she was at the UN Foundation, building a network of practitioners bringing energy access to people around the developing world, we worked together on Sustainable Energy for All, and also on a project called Project Bo, where we raised money and we built a resilient power supply for a neonatal intensive care unit in Sierra Leone. Richenda is now Executive Director at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Please welcome Richenda Van Leeuwen to 'Cleaning Up'.

ML

Richenda! Great to see you. How are you?

RVL

I'm doing very well, under the circumstances which we're all finding ourselves in. Thank you. How are you, Michael?

ML

I'm well, I'm well. I'm tempted to ask, what I will ask, what circumstances is that the electoral circumstances, or the COVID circumstances, or something else that we need to know about?

RVL

Um, I would say all of the above, but particularly COVID. Right now, given that it's a... We had the record, sadly, of 130,000 cases here in a single day in the US, and my family who are in England, you know, living under the second shutdown, and I gather across Europe, it's just really a really difficult time right now.

ML

Yes, it is. It is. It's grim. The light on the horizon is that it appears, that a vaccine will be with us and ought to work. But so fingers crossed for that, but it is certainly grim. Pretty much around well, Europe, and certainly in the US right now. Where are you actually calling from?

RVL

So I am calling from the Washington DC area, actually in Maryland, in the US.

ML

Right. Maryland? Well, I mean, which area of the US has not been a battleground in the recent election?

RVL

Yeah, interestingly, I think Maryland is pretty much a blue state, but our governor is a Republican, and he decided to vote for Ronald Reagan this time, so... I'll leave that up to all the viewers to determine how wise that was.

ML

When you say 'he voted for Ronald Reagan', you mean... He wrote in? Quite extraordinary. Well, there gonna be so many weird and strange stories before this is over. Hopefully, the result will be robust, the result that's been announced. And today, as we film this, our PM, Boris Johnson, apparently spoke to President Elect Biden and referred to President Trump as the former president, so we are all terribly excited here. By the time this is aired, you'd have to hope that the result has been formalised, but I guess there is the tiny, tiny chance that something else has happened. But I want to... Let's set that aside, we may come back to that and think about how that might play out in the sort of areas where you've been working. And perhaps, let's take the audience back to when you and I first met and work together, you would have been, I think, at the UN Foundation, if I'm not wrong, because it was probably around 2010. It might have been a little bit before that. I'm not quite sure.

RVL

Yeah, I'm trying to remember as well, Michael, because we may have met initially when I was still working on the venture capital side and private equity side with Good Energies, where I was working from 2006 to 2010. And then, because of the recession here in the US at that time, I moved over to the UN Foundation in 2010. Just in the sort of the embryonic stage, if you will, of the whole work that became Sustainable Energy for All. So, I joined the UN Foundation at the beginning of June in 2010. And very quickly started working with Dr. Yumkella, Kandeh Yumkella, Tim Wirth, our former Senator Tim Wirth, our president at the time and others, on the beginnings of the initiative. And I was actually reading or listening to the audio that you recorded with Kandeh earlier today, and you were reminiscing about the meeting in Mexico with Carlos Slim and I remember that very well, as well. Not so much for the artwork that you'd mentioned. But more when I arrived in my hotel room, there was a very nice package, a welcome package, on my bed, welcoming me with two rather nice male silk ties. So I have to say my husband was very appreciative of those. But my gender was changed for the purpose.

ML

<laugh> You've covered an enormous amount of ground there in your opening remarks. And, but you're right. So first of all, for the audience, there is, I think, it's Episode 16 with Kandeh Yumkella, is very relevant here, because Kandeh was the leader of first... I got to get this right... UNIDO.

RVL

Oh, that's right.

ML

Yes, it was UNIDO, but then was charged by the Secretary General of the UN with pulling together all the threads around energy within the UN system. And that became Sustainable Energy for All, and well it became, first of all, UN-Energy, and then Sustainable Energy for All. And now SDG-7 on energy. And that's all explained in Episode 16. So if you want to do these things in the right order, in the order of the conversations, then maybe do that one first. But you made a very important point there, hidden in those remarks, that you had spent time with a company called Good Energies, it was a venture investor, they did a lot of investment in solar. But you have a fairly, I would say, blue-ribbon or, I don't know quite what the right wording is... finance, private finance background, the first part of your career was just money making finance, that was what you did, right?

RVL

I'm actually, I'm kind of like a cat with nine lives professionally. So the Good Energies private equity life was about life number three, or four. Even prior to that I had worked on micro- enterprise development for women entrepreneurs, among the poorest of the poor with a group called Trickle Up out of New York for a number of years, and really focused on how entrepreneurship can be helping very low-income people. And then the family that had been very supportive of that work, invited me to come and work with them for a while. And that, then sort of morphed into.. beginning to work and lead the work of Good Energies in emerging markets. So, you know, I've done a lot of business school and other speeches, you know, for students and things who have sort of said to me: you know, so what was your background that took you into private equity? And I say: well, I probably have the most eclectic background that took me into private finance, because, no, I didn't work in investment banking, and then move over, I actually come from a background of having worked in the humanitarian sector with refugees, or having worked in post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia and Kosovo. And then working also on women's micro-entrepreneurship, before I moved into Good Energies. So but the solar piece, you know, takes me back to a 10 year old child who saw solar for the first time in Wales on a very rainy day. And for... At that time, at the Centre for Alternative Technology, when they've only just opened their visitor centre. This is really cool. This is really interesting. And I kind of kept that over the years, I've always had an interest in the environment. And so you know, I've married that at

various times of my career with a for profit motivation, and at other times more on the non-profit side.

ML

Okay, so I have to confess, I thought that you had had a career in sort of banking and then gone into the venture and then... But it's actually been much more, you've crossed that barrier a few times. And actually, because, you know, where we're going with this is that you are, you know, pretty much the global great expert on entrepreneurship and microfinance and small enterprises that are helping to solve energy access issues in the developing world. And now I'm learning that you actually had done some of that in the distant, in the more distant past. And of course, just your visit as a 10 year old girl to the Centre for Alternative Technologies in Wales. I've been there and it's the most extraordinary thing, is it not? Have you been back since?

RVL

I have not. But I did tweet them just recently to say: hey, do you realise that you really, really inspired me way back when? And they probably need to change their name by now because I think solar and wind are no longer alternative, given everything...

ML

I hate the word 'alternative', I mean, you now have a situation where more than three quarters of all capital that's flowing into power generating technology around the world is going into wind and solar. And yet they're called alternatives like, well, what's alternative about when three quarters of the people are doing it? But that is the Centre for Alternative Technologies... I'm not sure what its Twitter handle is or its URL, but we'll put that in the show notes. Because it is a truly inspirational place, they have actually kept up pretty well. I mean, their programmes, the reports they've written about 'how you could get to net zero' and so on. You know, definitely still ahead of their time. And, you know, it's just this sort of jewel, which very few people know about, I didn't find out about it for, I would say... probably I'd been a decade in the sector before I even heard that it existed so... Fire that PR person or do something, because we know, it's a fantastic resource. It really is.

RVL

Yeah, I just to say I probably, I mean, will come back to this, I think, a little bit later when we talk about women in renewable energy sector, but I probably would have taken a harder science track early on as that girl, except at the age of 16, when I was doing my O-level physics, my physics teacher said to me at the time: Richenda you can do physics, but you're too quiet in the class, so I don't recommend that you take it any further. Now, interestingly, he didn't say that to any of the boys at the time. So you know, I hope, I hope we're well beyond that. I mean, in the US, there's something called Title IX. So I think there would have been litigation involved in that. But

you know, I was a shy 15 - 16 year old, so So I didn't take physics to A-level but I have to say

it was lot of satisfaction that in 2012, or 2013, I was invited by Cambridge University to go and give a keynote speech on the physics of sustainability, which was all around energy access. So I have to say, eventually, and I don't know if my physics teacher is still alive, would be watching this, but I have to say that there was some feeling of satisfaction to be invited to do that presentation, eventually.

ML

Well, you know, we have this thing in the UK called the watershed, which is nine o'clock at night, you're not allowed to swear before nine o'clock, some people will be watching before nine o'clock. So please don't swear at your former physics teacher, although, it would be justified. It's also an extraordinary thing to say, because of course, you know, being good at physics has no correlation whatsoever with being quiet or not quiet. It just seems a an extraordinary thing to say... Hopefully, women in STEM and, you know, we will... I suspect we'll come back to this...

That, but that, you know... That pendulum does seem to be swinging somewhat, there's still a long way to go. So you ended up at the UN Foundation. And, you know, I tried to remember when we... Well, sort of the exact time when we worked on what became very clearly Sustainable Energy for All, but there was also this Practitioner Network, the Energy Access Practitioner Network that you put together. And I associate the time when I sort of got to know you, that was your, you know, that was your thing. That was your big project. What was that about?

RVL

Yeah, so that was certainly one of my things. And that was built on the work that I had done at Good Energies, when I was at Good Energies. I mean, I had the best job in the world there. Because half of me was focused on commercial, emerging markets, renewable energy transactions, and we were quite early, then, you know... But we were... Good Energies were putting $500 million a year into solar PV globally, we were the largest global investor in solar PV. But we were looking at things like run of the river hydro in India, and I was looking at biogas digesters in Bangladesh. And we were looking at sort of wind transactions in Chile and just all over, and it was a great job. The other half of my job was also as a Board Member of Good Energies Foundation, where we were providing grants and soft debt and equity to help seed some of the early stage off grid energy providers, that then actually formed the core of the network of energy access practitioner, that became the Network, as we built it, then into Sustainable Energy for All, particularly because we were seeing that, at that time, grid extension was seen as sort of the only real way to provide electricity to people who did not have any electricity in their communities or their countries. And we were really seeing that, actually, with the economics changing for renewable energy and some pioneers along the way, like Selco, where I've been on the board since we provided an equity investment into them of $750,000, while I was at Good Energies...

ML

This is Selco in India, because there's a few Selcos.

RVL

Selco is in India, solar electric light company, which is a pioneer in solar home systems for mostly off grid families as well as those with very unreliable grid. And they've really been a pioneer in showcasing how you can actually make a business out of it. I mean, they've been profitable since 2007. And they were one of the companies that became the core of the Energy Access Practitioner Network, which was really, I would say, it was half advocacy and half therapy group at the time, because there were a lot of people working on solar and other off grid, renewable energy solutions around the world. But they weren't... They were working in silos and didn't necessarily have opportunities to speak to each other. So I would have a friend who was in northern Argentina trying to provide the last of the solar home systems to mountainous families in northern Argentina, having the same kind of issues as an entrepreneur in the Philippines. But they had no way to connect to each other. They didn't know about each other, and their voice was not really being heard. So part of it was really bringing together this collective voice of the off grid sector to say: there really is a dare there. and this needs to be supported, and it needs to be recognised and embraced in policy level circles. Because that there really is this new thing happening, we see the economics are supportive now. And actually, rather than just looking at grid extension as being the sort of the only way to bring electricity to these off grid communities, this other work, this off grid work really needs the support of policymakers. And it also needs the financing behind it to help it really take off.

ML

And I mean, the Good Energies story is so incredible, because they did these investments in solar, they then... Some of them went public and a few hundred million euros of investment became worth, you know, <inaudible> billions. And then of course, the whole soufflé collapsed. And it all went a bit pear shaped even though I suspect that the value was created. But you ended up then at the UN Foundation and you were building this incredible network and resource. And one of them the... Around that same time I met, you know, you've reminded me of course, Harish Hande who is the CEO of Selco India. And I would have met him at probably Clinton Global Initiative events, or maybe World Economic Forum events in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and I've been enormously impressed because he was an incredibly... He is an incredibly articulate advocate for this model of off grid entrepreneurial, innovative energy provision, isn't he?

RVL

Yeah, absolutely. He's also, I mean, he's won the the Magsaysay Award for his work, you know, which is sort of the equivalent of the Asian Nobel Prize. And, and certainly, I think, the two real

pioneers were Selco in India, and then Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh, that also took solar home systems to scale within that country, with subsidy support from the World Bank, the Norwegian government and others, but really showing that it could be done at scale.

ML

Grameen Shakti, was Dipal Chandra Barua, was it not?

RVL

That's right.

ML

He was one of the early... I think he was the first winner of the Zayed Future Energy Prize

RVL

That's right, in his personal capacity. That's right, I actually sat on the selection committee for a number of years for the Zayed Prize. So we saw a lot of really interesting energy access companies, come through that prize.

ML

One of the problems of, you know, having these conversations, is that I start to realise just how many people have played such extraordinary leadership roles that I need to get on to 'Cleaning Up' in future and certainly, they would be on that list. And it'd be a pleasure to reconnect with Harish. So you built this Practitioner Network, and it was a database, and it was a set of activities around bringing together this groups, that their voice could be heard. And, and I guess, in a way I was doing from a very different platform, I was also just communicating or, you know, providing data on actually how cheap and how functional these technologies, whether it was the off grid solar or the grid scale solar, sort of... You know trying to not persuade people but just pointing out, just providing data that they actually worked. And that job is not... it's still not fully done. I mean, there are still people who think that this is all sort of amateurish energy that is doesn't really work, doesn't solve people's problems, and that the only real source of energy is a big, centralised power station, even if it has to be coal, connected to a grid. Even if, frankly, in some of these countries that you're working in, that might take 30 or 40 years to get a grid to rural Niger or rural Ethiopia or rural Mali or wherever.

RVL

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I mean, I have to say that Bloomberg New Energy Finance or New Energy Finance, as you started out, you know, the data, the data has always been extremely

helpful in, you know, in providing that sort of data backdrop to help support the arguments that we were making across the sector. You know, which is economics of changes is viable. But yes, I've had many conversations with senior policymakers in a number of different African countries, where they said to me in past years, you know, solar is a vanity, we need real energy. And that's also partly because they came up, you know, through the ranks, and were trained in coal, and oil, and gas. And so, I think, it also is a reflection of a mindset, you know, that we've had to sort of crack and change the mindset, even as the economics were showing the way. I mean, even today across Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Energy Agency, I think we are only at about six gigawatts of solar now, in 2018. Now, that's still way more than the 300 megawatts we had back in 2011. So you know, there has been a sea change, but it's still only about 1% of the installed capacity. So, you know, we still got a long way to go there. And, and a long way we can go, I mean, there are some great, I would say low hanging fruit opportunities, not even just looking at grids. But in Nigeria, in fact, the number of small gasoline generators that are in use, the collective capacity of them, is around 42 gigawatts, which is eight times the installed capacity of the grid. Now, you know, if you're looking at it from a CAPEX standpoint of just the cost of the generator versus the cost of a solar system of equal capacity, then you'd say: okay, solar doesn't make sense. But if you're factoring in the OPEX, and if you've got some patient capital that doesn't mind, you know, that it's going to be... It's going to be a return over a number of years, then, you know, you look at the the OPEX and it takes maybe seven or eight years. And it will be less than that, you know, very soon to show that actually overtime, it makes sense. And then of course, you have the other externalities in terms of the lack of pollution, the lack of toxic fumes. That makes sense. So that there are other areas as well, I have to say there's a group, I want to give a shout out to called A to EI, the Access to Energy Institute where both Rachel Kyte and I serve on the Advisory Board. And they've just been doing a lot of really interesting data crunching to showcase, you know, what can be done in terms of helping to bring in renewable energy solutions in countries like Nigeria.

ML

Well, so Rachel was our guest on Episode 2. And to that point about Nigeria, very specifically, this evening, which you won't have seen, because it's just going live, just premiering now, Episode, I'm going to say, 18, is with Nancy Pfund. And one of her investors... She's, of course, the preeminent venture investor... Maybe of her time since she was early into Tesla, but certainly one of the highest profile women venture capitalists in ever, one of her investors in something that used to be called off grid electric, I believe, and it's now renamed, I think it might be called... zero, or solar. Zola. There we go. Zola. And Zola is focusing on... replace those diesel generators with Nigeria as a focus and she talks about it in the episode. That trip that you mentioned down to Mexico, I think it was in 2008. That was my first real exposure to Kandeh, probably the first time that we got to hang out and we were there as guests of Carlos Slim. He was at the time the wealthiest man in the world, he was worth some $50 billion, which of course now doesn't, you

know, doesn't get you in the top, you know, however many... And I remember the ties, which also appeared in my hotel room. They were two ties laid out and packed very nicely in the bed. And one of them silk ties, one of them had ice cream cones on it, I remember, and the other one had little telephones because, of course, he was the... That was the foundation of his fortune was telephones. I don't know why the ice cream cones, but I remember.... And we then went into these meetings with this artwork on the on the wall. And I remember this, I remember there was a meeting, Carlos Slim was in the meeting, we were talking about energy access, the issues that you've just been talking about. And there came a point where he sort of clicked his fingers. And they rolled a video, and it was the 'Carlos Slim something, something Foundation' had been doing energy access with very poor, indigenous Mexican women in the villages. And you know, it was very dramatic, very moving images, these very poor women, and how they were sort of feeding sticks into the fire. And then they ended up with a cookstove. And they ended up with some lighting. And, and this was the work... and I was thinking: you're worth 50 billion, can't you just spend a couple of billion and just solve this problem instead of sort of, you know, spending a few 10s, whatever it was that he spent. I didn't want sort of be... I didn't want to be the person who says: excuse me, I'm just not impressed. But there was an element of, you know, the sorts of... I don't know... You can get very cynical being around some of these kind of, you know, moon-shot Messiah billionaire types, who are not doing the work that you've done on the ground? Or am I

... Do you ever feel that? Or am I being excessively cynical here?

RVL

No, I mean... I think, to put a more optimistic spin on it, just to say that I'm really pleased that the Rockefeller Foundation has come out in the last week or so, and actually made a billion dollar commitment towards energy access, and particularly, you know, they're throwing their lot in with helping to support a lot more mini grids, renewable energy mini grids across Africa. And so, you know, I do see the role of the large commitments, and I think it's really helpful. But the one caution, I would say, and this is something I've talked about with the team at Rockefeller Foundation, is it's not only about the connections, you know, we've got... We can use these big numbers that we've come down from about 1.2 billion people lacking electricity to about between 800 to 900 million today. So yes, we've made progress. But it's not just about those connections. And you and I, Michael, having worked on the electrification and health side, we'll probably come back to this. It's really about how you can tie the availability of that electricity to help solve other development issues. So it's about, you know, it's about the education that a child can get from being able to study under lighting in the evening, it's about being able to provide modern health care, it's about also being able to use electricity as a catalyst for new types of business activity, which is kind of where I'm working now. You know, I've just changed recently...changed jobs recently. And I'm not specifically working on the energy piece, although we have some engagement with that, I'm working much more on the entrepreneurial ecosystems, because I do see that there's still something of a disconnect at times between the provision of

the energy and the actual catalyst that then happens in the local economy. And even in the off grid sector, we are seeing that most of the large companies right now, are actually still international companies and not domestic companies, because they are finding it easier to get the capital. So the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, which has been, you know, a real, very valuable industry association for a number of the companies in the off grid sector, came out with a report in October that said, you know, there were really... The three largest transactions were all of international companies, groups like Greenlight Planet, that came to see me back in 2008, when they were just a little ideas that are starting out, and not the local companies. So you know, I think that's one of the things where we need to look at, how to make sure that local entrepreneurship is being spurred that the benefits are going into those local economies? And while, you know, Nancy is terrific, and I love Nancy and, you know, the work she's done at DBL Investors... You know, we want to make sure that local shareholders are getting those benefits and not just people in the Bay Area. So we have work to do there and really looking at how are we supporting those management teams? Are they getting the access to capital? Are they getting the right kind of support? And where I am right now at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, we've been doing a lot of data gathering around acceleration initiatives, we've actually found, we have something called GALI, which is a Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. And some of the results from that, have actually shown that at times acceleration can increase the gap between male-led and women-led enterprises, for example, which is kind of disturbing. And also that it tends to be that male-led enterprises have an easier time getting access to equity, whereas women that enterprises tend to be able to access debt instead. So you know, there are some areas where we still see some systemic challenges that are not exclusive to the energy sector, but certainly affect the off-grid energy sector as well.

ML

Let's try and come back to the issues around gender and the equity of equity provision, if you want, the issue you've just raised there. Because I want to just touch on a couple of other things on the way there, and I rest assured we will get there. One is that you've raised a very important sort of trend that I see happening, not just in the energy access space, which is the focus shifting from energy, from the supply side of energy provision, to what is the job that the energy does, what are the energy services. And one place that I see that is just the discussion about primary energy versus final energy or usable energy, in the kind of statistics game, because every time people talk about primary energy, they're talking... the biggest thing is coal, because it's so damn inefficient. That primary energy is mainly made up of thermal waste in coal and gas and, and nuclear power, and frankly, also oil because most of it doesn't go into turning the wheels of the transport. So, we're now starting finally to focus on, well, what is it we need in the economy? And I think in the developing... the access space, the analogous trend is we start to say: how do we make sure that the vaccines stay cold? How do we make sure that the babies have oxygen? How do we make sure that the sewing machines aren't down for six hours a day? And so it's much

more of a sort of goal focused? And of course, it's probably more complex from your perspective, because now you don't just worry about the electricity piece, you've actually got to think about entrepreneurs and supply chains and cultural issues around what sorts of jobs people take and so on. Is it more complicated? Am I characterising it rightly?

RVL

No, absolutely. And I think the thing is also the question of who's doing that work. So, you know, at Rocky Mountain Institute, where I was, until September, you know, we were doing a lot of work on mini grids in Nigeria, and really showcasing some of the cost reductions that you can get to make a commercially viable mini grid, and working very closely with the Rural Electrification Agency of the Government of Nigeria, where the current head of Sustainable Energy for All, Damilola Ogunbiyi, used to be the Head of REA. And, and one of the things, you know, that we were discussing within the team at RMI was that the minigrid companies themselves, you know, they are concerned more about having anchor customers who can really make the mini grid commercially viable. They are not really the ones who are necessarily thinking about is there equity in the community, do the women entrepreneurs get the electricity the same way that the other entrepreneurs do? Are we actually maximising the community benefit from being able to really spur local economic development through the use of this electricity. So that's not necessarily something that can go on the balance sheet of the the mini grid provider, who is just desperately trying to have a commercially viable business, which is where we have this sort of wraparound ecosystem services that need to come into play working hand in hand with the electrification, to say: okay, well, do local entrepreneurs have access to capital to be able to grow their businesses, even if there is that opportunity? Where do they get that from? Are the local banks lending, are there microfinance institutions? You know, where do they go for that level of support?

ML

I always thought that the single thing, that whole sort of mini grid sector could do to sort of straighten out a number of pieces of the puzzle, is to start calling themselves mini utilities or micro utilities, because then it suddenly you start to think: okay, well, really the business is all about credit, the business is about finding those anchor customers, the business is about customer service, it's about connections, it's about collecting the money. Because when you call it a mini grid, immediately, to me, it's a bunch of sort of electrical engineers deciding how many, you know, kilowatt hours of batteries to balance the solar, that's really not the difficult bit, is it? RVL

No, that's right, I mean, I think, depending on where you're working, it could be a little bit more difficult than maybe, you know, in one place than another. But I think the challenge has been that mini grids have been, indeed, regulated, like mini utilities. And that's been part of the challenge as well, you know, we have these great regulations in some countries, and I know, some of the

people, you know, at the World Bank and other places have developed these regulations. And on paper, they look fantastic, you know, sort of very conducive environment to being able to develop mini grids, and then it doesn't happen in practice, you know, so it's... But they are very much more regulated than a solar home system provider. So one of the questions has been, you know, in different regulatory environments. In fact, for small, for these smaller mini grids, that you might want to call 'micro utilities', rather than 'mini utilities', should they actually be subject to the same level of regulation as the larger ones, which are indeed more like that 'mini utility'? Just because of the challenges that then come into play.

ML

Yes, of course, because as soon as you call it a 'mini utility', or a 'micro utility', you're more likely to get an allergic reaction from, what's very often a state monopoly utility suddenly going to, you know, but I mean... They already see it, I think it's quite a threat to their core business. Although you sort of say: well, you know, if you're not going to be able to reach these communities for 20

- 30 - 40 years, stand back, you know, lead or get out of the way. It must be tempting to say that.

RVL

Yeah, I mean, the other way is in some places, so one place where RMI has been working in, again, in Nigeria is actually looking at the mini grid as a way to help with addressing instability of the main grid. So what RMI had deemed, undergrid, mini grids, which is basically having a grid-tied mini grid that can help with addressing the insufficiency of the main grid. So, you know, I think there are different ways to come at this one. But I think the challenge has been for a lot of the smaller mini grids, is that they've had that level, that increased level of regulation. But they're also, not every country has a very clear policy environment. So some of them are sort of working in a grey zone. And so the investors don't have that clarity that they need to really be able to say: what's the investment proposition here? And can we, you know, can we really see a way to having a return? It's still in play, it's still being worked out, obviously, COVID has had an effect as well. And certainly the African Minigrid Developers Association, has been leaning hard on some of the development financiers to try and get additional levels of subsidy, because, you know, they have been in a difficult situation, as has much of the off grid sector. In fact, there have been a number, of sort of try and put in some kind of energy access relief fund. And there's a group out of New York called SIMA Funds that have been putting together a relief fund for the off grid sector, to just because so many customers have had issues with payment, like, you know, we have with people struggling to pay their utility bills here in the US and probably in other parts of the world as well. And so, you know, I think, I think right now, in COVID, it's very difficult for a lot of people, but moving on through, I do see a pathway to lower cost mini grids, as I say. You know, whether it's through Rockefeller Foundation or through other work, that can really help to capitalise more enterprise.

ML

And let's talk about one mini grid that you and I know well. And I think that, you know, it does follow on from that discussion about well, you know, the stability of the grid... To that, late 2017, I saw this tweet from a doctor, who was working at set up a neonatal intensive care unit in Sierra Leone, in a city called Bo. And the tweet said: last night, three of our babies died because of a power cut. And really, that should no longer happen in this world where there's solar power and whatever. And so I was at a fancy pants dinner when... I was on my way to a dinner. Actually with the Taoiseach of Ireland, when I saw that tweet, and I thought that should not happen. And the first person I called, I have to say, was you because I knew that you would know somebody in Sierra Leone, who could actually instal a mini grid, and in fact, you know, you did. And that was energy for opportunity. Talk through... that little project, what did you... if you can describe it from your perspective? What did it achieve? How does it sit within the sort of energy access for healthcare, bigger trends that you're working on?

RVL

I mean, I have to say, first of all, a big thank you, Michael, for having taken that on board, because you could have just gone to your dinner, you know, you could have just said that's so sad. And then, and then moved on. And, you know, this is an area that, I would say, has not received enough attention, the whole nexus between the provision of modern healthcare services and, you know, what to me seems, you know, to use a kind of crass term, no brainer, which is: how, you know, given so much of what we deliver in terms of modern healthcare is electricity dependent? How, on earth, do you expect with the best doctors and nurses in the world, then to be able to deliver healthcare without having electricity? I mean, it's just, you know, it's so basic, it's almost like a human right now, I would say, I mean, I would actually said it is. The fact that a lot of health clinics, not only in Sierra Leone, but in other countries as well, do not have either any electricity or insufficient electricity, or they're working on and I've seen a lot of these as well, they have diesel gensets, that oftentimes, maybe during the rainy season, the roads are out, and they can't get the diesel into the clinic, or they only have a certain allotment of diesel per month. And the government may be a little bit shaky around the edges in some places, so that diesel may not go to them in the first place. So there are so many reasons why, in fact, renewable energy solutions are appropriate in a rural healthcare setting. And I have to credit the World Health Organisation which is being critiqued by some of late, here in the US, but really, for their work that they've done around looking at provision of energy services, in low energy provision health care context, and have really worked hard to showcase the value of solar power and energy storage, combined with all of your other energy efficiency measures, like making sure you're using LED lights and so on. And also really beginning to look at the appliances that we use and low wattage appliances. Because, you know, I've been to places where you see these lovely big donations of an X-ray machine, and it's been developed with a stable grid and sort of limitless grid in mind. And they said it rusts in the corner, maybe used as storage or you know, shelving to

put something on, because it's just so unsuited for the context. So, I mean, this wasn't, as we work through this project, it wasn't always easy, you know, just to get that size and that scope, the design elements right, the sourcing, you know, we looked at bringing in some other batteries, you know, we were saying initially, we wanted to bring in some newer chemistry batteries, you know, that are less toxic than some of the older chemistries, but then they hadn't been tested in the Sierra Leonean context. And you know, so we ended up going with lead acid batteries just because they are tried and true and they're known, and people know how to repair them. And so, you know, I think it was a very interesting process just to really look at how we could optimise the solution set. And then, and then of course, tying it into the oxygen concentrators which needed that reliable power to be able to provide the oxygen to the babies, and that one, you know, I'm almost got chills going up my spine as we say that, because of the need, that massive need, that we've seen for oxygen during COVID.

ML

For me, that project was a real education because it's one thing to sit there and say: okay, solar, the cost is this., so the mini grids should work and batteries the cost is this. Completely different picture when you say: okay, let's go instal some, obviously sitting in London, I didn't actually instal and you didn't from DC, from Maryland. But the sorts of issues that we needed to deal with, I mean, everything, first of all, for me, that project really brought home the fact that energy access, just being able to tick some list and say this village or this town has got energy access. If you have a power cut and you're a baby on a ventilator, you don't have then... That is not a power supply unless it's a resilient power supply. So there were learnings around that UNICEF who gave the ventilators, I mean, bless them, they've given this equipment. But as you say, if you haven't got anywhere to plug it in, that's the equipment was worth about $15,000. And we ended up having to raise over 100,000. And it ended up spending about $120,000 on the power supply for

$15,000 worth of equipment. So there's so many learnings. And rather than list them here, what I will say is, that there was a... You'll remember, I wrote them up, I wrote an article on the sort of 10 lessons five for anybody who wants to do a project like that, and five for the kind of the community of which were a part. And I remember that we sort of knocked that article around a bit, and you had input before it was published. So we'll add a link into that. But then, so then you've got during the time of COVID, of course, we're going to need, you know, diagnostics, we're going to need... Apparently this vaccine needs to be chilled to -70 for delivery. So, you know, I hope you're ready with your practitioners out there to play their part in getting these solutions out to where they're going to be needed.

RVL

Well, the practitioners have become part of Sustainable Energy for All, so you know, I would say over to Damilola to really make sure that they are getting that message loud and clear. But we did see it. You know, we saw this during Ebola as well, when, I remember, with Andy Herscowitz,

who was the Head of Power Africa at the USAID at the time. You know, we were putting out a call for urgent support for health clinics that could be on the... Were on the frontlines of Ebola that still needed the energy. And of course, the challenge there was, how do you then safely provide that energy to a clinic that's also working with, you know, with Ebola patients. And I was in Liberia, just as Ebola was coming across the border actually with, the now, Minister of Health, Bernice Dahn. And, you know, I remember her saying to me, in Monrovia, you know: we've got Ebola at our borders, and neither she nor I knew that actually, Ebola was already there in Monrovia at that time. But the challenge is, and I would say this is probably true, you know, for a lot of humanitarian work, which is that, you know, the old adage about...If it bleeds it leads in journalism, is that we seem to be having to learn these lessons again, and again. Even across India, there's something like as many as 25% of clinics that do not have reliable electricity. Selco and Selco Foundation, which is a non-profit spinoff from Selco company, have been doing a lot of great work with the government of India, on sort of developing mobile COVID testing clinics that are powered by solar, even mobile barges powered by solar that are providing, you know, solar powered medical services into remote areas. And so I think this is just a message that we need to continue to keep coming back to, which is: you can't deliver modern healthcare services without electricity. And, you know, I think we just need to make sure that we continue to beat that drum because, I mean, to me, the most satisfying thing for Project Bo was to learn that actually, the number of neonatal infants, new-borns coming into that unit was increasing because... And they had another problem, which was that they had an increased number of mothers coming to the centre, because they actually saw that the babies were surviving, and then the mothers were getting malaria because they had to sleep outdoors. So you know, there's still more work to be done, you solve one issue and you've got another one that you need to solve. But I think you may remember that I was actually bedridden with a broken leg for much of the time that we were working on Project Bo. And you know, I had two surgeries on my leg, I'd broken my ankle in my front garden and had two surgeries on it, of course, with electricity. And it just really brought it home to me that we are, you know, we are so privileged, we're so blessed and taking it for granted. And I want other people to be able to take electricity for granted in their own community, and so not having to worry about whether that child, whether their new-born, will have the medical services that they need?

ML

Well, that's right. And I remember a conversation with Simon from Energy for Opportunity, where the first design that he came back with was, I just did, you know, use my, the vestiges of my engineering background, and calculated, and I said: but Simon, this battery and this solar, surely it's not big enough to operate the thing 24/7. And he said: well, but that would be really expensive if it was there 24/7. And I said: look, I want these mothers, these babies to have the same resilient electricity supply, as they would have in Canada, where he was from, or in London where I was. And he said: oh, okay, well, in that case, I have to come back with another design, there was just

this assumption that somehow worse was acceptable. And you know, he's a good guy. He was... This was not, it was just... It was just a mindset.

RVL

Yeah. And I've seen that across. I've seen that across. I've seen that across the sector, Michael, you know, I so appreciated, you're pushing him on that, because I've seen so many times when people are sort of said, and I've heard World Bank people and I've done a lot of great work with the Bank. So it's not an indictment of them. But literally say, well, I've got a million dollars here. So if I divide a million dollars by 100 clinics, you know, each clinic gets this amount, rather than actually starting and say: okay, holistically, what kind of medical services are being provided here? What does it need? Both in terms of electricity, and clean water, and hot water, and then actually do a system design on the basis of the electricity needs to provide those kinds of health services. And that was an approach at the UN Foundation that we were really supporting. And I have to say, I'm glad that the UK Government, together with UNOPS, has been continuing to work on electrification of health centres in Sierra Leone, taking forward some of the work that we were doing at the UN Foundation at that time, that got disrupted by Ebola back in 2015.

ML

And I hope they read the article on the lessons to learn because, you know, I was not able... We have the privilege of a lot of well networked, wealthy friends who... And we raised the money crowd sourced and we funded it, but it was purely charitable, there was no business model. But equally, I've not been able to devote myself to doing another, you know, there's probably... We probably need to do 300,000 Project Bos, then we might be getting somewhere. But I want to talk about also cooking, because that's something that never gets the same attention. It's something that you have been deeply involved in and that is clean cookstoves, because, of course, you quite rightly pointed out that electricity, you've now got to the point where there's only somewhere between 800 million, 900 million people without electricity in the world. The lowest number, by the way, that there has been since the invention of the electricity generator. But for clean cooking, it's about two and a half billion, I think. And that means there's two and a half billion people that are still, you know, eating food, cooked using wood, using charcoal and using animal dung. And that seems like a much harder problem. What are the solutions? How do we accelerate that? Because, you know, 2030, SDG-7, 2030. They're supposed to have modern energy services.

RVL

Yeah. I mean, that's also, I mean, it's a great question. And it's a tough one, because I think the focus for many years was and you mentioned cookstoves, and there was a Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. And I think initially, there was a focus very much on the cookstoves. And so they're trying to make, you know, trying to build a better mousetrap, rather than actually looking

at the fuels. And starting from the standpoint of what are the best fuels, and we don't yet have fuel for people that don't have access to grid electricity and even more access to affordable grid electricity. You know, we don't have a really great completely renewable fuel option yet. And that's one of the reasons why I ended up working for a couple of years with the Global LPG Partnership because even though it's a fossil fuel on it, actually from a health standpoint, and the climate standpoint, surprisingly, is still much better than traditional wood and charcoal because it reduces the black carbon particulars, that they produce... that kill nearly 4 million people prematurely every year. Now, that being said, that's not the end of the story. I mean, governments like the Government of India have through that Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana have provided about 50 million LPG connections to women and communities over the last couple of years, really trying to make it ubiquitous in rural areas. That still, you know, that's still a work in progress. I think in parallel to that, there's been a lot of focus on the increased use of ethanol for clean cooking. And certainly, there're some companies in Kenya that are working on those value chains, but they've been a bit difficult to scale. And I think the scalability issue is there. And then the third area that I do think, provides a lot of promise is, when you are looking at electricity, is some of the improved appliances that are now coming into much more use. I mean, we've got induction stoves, of course, here in the US and I'm sure in the UK by now as well. But I'm talking more about things like electric pressure cookers, you know, the Instant Pot, here in the US was a massive hit. And we can use some of these lower wattage appliances, and really focus on making sure there are quality appliances available in those markets, for increasing the amount of use of electricity for cooking. Because when you're decreasing the cooking time, even if electricity is still expensive, per kilowatt hour, you know, you're able to use a pressure cooker, and you're decreasing the cooking time, then you're not using so much of that electricity. And then also looking at being able to put more of these appliances onto mini grids, as I said. So RMI is testing some of these electric cooking appliances through a DFID funded initiative out of the University of Loughborough called the 'modern energy cooking services', which is sort of an R&D initiative, really looking at how we can be moving the cooking sector forward. Now, I would love to say that we have a magic bullet solution that is going to solve all difficulties in the sector, it hasn't been that easy, I don't think it still will be that easy. Um, clearly national action by governments, really, really helps. So I think the Government of India having made a wholescale intervention, even though it was partly government led, partly private sector led, you know, certainly was very helpful. We've seen that level of commitment from some governments, like the government of Rwanda, that is also really, you know, taking on board approaches to addressing clean cooking. But we have to look at it through the sort of the whole, the whole sector change as well. So you can't just look at it as sort of saying: well, you know, we want to support these women-led enterprises at the last mile, that's helpful, and they need that support. And you know, there's, there's a lot of support you can give to those enterprises. But you really need to look across the whole value chain. So whether... if you're looking at the electricity side, you know, you're looking at the fact that the cost of generation in Rwanda is, I think, it's about 35 - 36 cents per kilowatt

hour. But it's sold to the public at something like 32. So the utility is losing money with every kilowatt hour, it sells for electricity. And that still expensive enough that unless you're sort of middle income in Rwanda, it puts it out of reach. So you know, we've got to look at it more holistically. And initially, the electricity and the clean cooking sectors were just not talking and not interacting. And I have to say, you know, I've been so pleased to see in the last couple of years that they've come together more to really look at holistic solutions.

ML

And there's just one other sort of... In terms of those who are cooking using wood and charcoal and so on, there's also the security issue, isn't there? Having, you know, women having to go out and collect firewood that are also very vulnerable. And I think just sort of to log all the reasons why you need to solve this, that also surely has to be pretty high up there.

RVL

Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right. And then there's also looking at it from the perspective of those people whose livelihood depends on charcoal. And when I first started working with women micro entrepreneurs, I was doing a lot of work in Haiti. And one of the things that really struck me at the time, and I didn't have a solution for at that time, was that Port-au-Prince if you were a one of the poorest of the poor women, the only way that you could start a business, that would feed your family with the profits in your business on day one, was with a charcoal business.

ML

Charcoal. Yes.

RVL

And that was back in 2001.

ML

Here's the question, I promised would get back to the gender issues and actually they've sort of surfaced a number of points. But the question, we know, we're running a little short on time. So the question is, is there a time, sort of sunlit uplands where girls, in your case, you said, I think you were 16 at the time, but where girls are studying STEM, like it's just no big deal. Where they are at fully included in the venture industry, in the, you know, in the West, or whatever that is, where they are as involved in the finance, mainstream finance, they're also have the same access to equity, to debt throughout the developing world, where, you know, gender doesn't just come up again, again, and again, through these discussions. You know, is there light at the end of the tunnel? Is there a sunlit upland that you can see? Or are we just going to spend the rest of our careers really coming up against the same issues again and again? I don't know. I don't mean,

because obviously, I come at them not as a woman, you know. I've been working on these same issues, as you know, to the greatest extent of my capability. So are we gonna get there?

RVL

We're already getting there. I mean, I'm optimistic. So you know, we started with the US election, we have a vice president elect, who is a woman of colour, you know, and she's African American, she's Indian American, she will be a tremendous role model to help girls say: okay, I can be vice president. I think, you know, as I say, I was giving a talk to my alma mater, which is the University of Durham, to their environmental sustainability group, which is a student-led group that has just been started in the last few months. And I was really impressed with the young women and the young men, you know, in terms of their thoughts around their careers, their optimism, and the kind of things that they've already been doing. That I have to say, you know, were not options available to me, and I'm not that old, you know, so I see, there's been progress. And I guess I've always lived my career as if those challenges didn't exist, as if we had equality, and then just sort of worked with others to make sure it gets to happen. And then behind the scenes, done a lot of pedalling, you know, I have to say, you know, there are those in the off grid sector that heard me many times, you know, just behind the scenes say to them, how come, you know, your mission says that we're helping solve energy access for women and girls. And then I look at your senior management team, and there's not a woman on there, and I look at your, you know, your investors, and all of your board members, and it's all guys, you know, and I said: look, maybe you've been able to get away with this so far, but you're not going to get away with it for very long. And, you know, I think we've done a lot of work behind the scenes to sort of try and write those things to help the next generations not have to fight. They'll fight other battles, but not have to fight these ones. So I'm actually really optimistic. I've been very involved with the C3E initiative here in the US, which is all about mentoring younger women in the renewable energy sector, it came out of the Clean Energy Ministerial, and it's been massively successful. And I think, you know, yes, we don't have 50/50 men and women yet in the renewable energy sector, but it's increasing. And I think there are many pathways now, that women see, that they can make their careers in the sector. So I'm encouraged.

ML

And I could probably, one could probably put precise numbers on it. But you know, my sense is that, if you go back to that sort of 2010, when we first started working together, probably there was something like 10% or 15% of women, maybe 15%. Yeah, 15% would have been a, you know, a good mix at any vaguely mainstream energy conference. You know, if it wasn't specifically about cookstoves, it would have been about 15% women. And now, I think it's sort of around the kind of 25% to 40%, let's say probably 25% to 35% mark. And it needs to be 50/50. And it should be not remarkable. And we shouldn't be having this conversation. And I think, I certainly speak for myself, I'm sure, I speak for you as well, we're not going to stop until it is.

RVL

Yeah, I mean, the downside, the perverse downside in a way is that, when I used to go back to the Renewable Energy Finance Forum conferences on Wall Street, you know, back in 2007 - 2008, there'd be a room of 300 men and about three or four of us women. So I have to say it made networking quite easy, because we'd all be looking out for each other. But it's great that you don't necessarily know all of the others in the room now. And I think that's the way it should be.

ML

Yeah, yeah. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you so much for spending a bit of time with me here on 'Cleaning Up'. It's a great pleasure to catch up with you. I've no doubt that our paths will cross again shortly. There'll be some crazy project that we can work on together. And I wish you all the best of luck in your new role at the Aspen Network.

RVL

Thank you very much, Michael, and stay safe and may your family stay well, as well. Thank you.

ML

Thanks, Richenda. God bless, bye bye. So that was Richenda Van Leeuwen, who has spent her career working on bringing energy, both electricity and clean cooking to people in the developing world with a particular focus on women and entrepreneurship. My guest next week on 'Cleaning Up' his Claude Turmes. He's the Minister for Energy and Spatial Planning in Luxembourg, but until recently, he was an MEP. And in that role, he was one of the leading voices for the environment, and also for renewable energy in Europe. He has worked on countless pieces of legislation, very often, his arguments have won through. And so, the shape of the EU's energy policy and environmental policy owes a lot to Claude Turmes.