1. NO POVERTY

Leveraging Disruption to Save the Planet | Morgan Stanley

Written by Amanda

For Flanagan, the evidence that climate change can cause catastrophic consequences came in the powerful example of Hurricane Katrina. “I grew up thinking our government would take care of us during emergencies,” she says. “I was shocked at how woefully unprepared we were for that disaster.” As she explains, “The need for renewable energy is obvious, but currently solar and green hydrogen are time-consuming and complex to deploy.” That’s a problem, particularly in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and for the nearly 1 billion people with little or no access to electricity. Flanagan co-founded Sesame Solar to try to change that. “We wanted to make renewable energy solutions mobile, rapidly deployable and easy to use,” she says..

In 2018, Sesame Solar provided the Ministry of Public Health in Dominica with solar-powered nanogrids after much of the island was destroyed by Hurricane Maria, and it is currently building solar- and green hydrogen-powered medical and security nanogrids for the U.S. Air Force.

Berrien worked for a series of utility companies straight out of college. Eventually, she realized there was an opportunity to help them avoid blackouts during high-peak usage by incentivizing businesses to become more energy efficient with tax credits earned by gifting their excess energy to marginalized communities. Eliminating energy waste in buildings helps balance the electric grid, reduce carbon emissions and eradicate energy poverty in those communities. The model works a bit like a ride-share business, says Berrien: “If your car is sitting in your driveway and you aren’t using it, you have the opportunity to lend it to someone else who needs it at that time. That’s essentially what my customers are doing but with power.”

After launching the business in 2016, she’s grown it to encompass states as far south as Florida and as far west as Indiana. Incentivizing businesses to keep energy consumption low isn’t just a win-win for them and for utility companies, it’s good for the environment and for the communities that reap the benefits of low-cost energy options.

Cooper launched Rheaply in 2015. Though the company isn’t directly involved in energy production and reduction, it’s having a positive impact on the environment. The company’s origins can be traced back to a research lab at Northwestern University, where Cooper, who was pursuing a PhD in neuroscience, noticed it was commonplace to toss out lab equipment that was still usable. He started an intramural sharing program and soon discovered that his system could be adapted for nearly any business, from Fortune 500 companies to federal agencies to other universities—and that there’s a market for unused assets of all kinds that the Federal Reserve estimates to be about $630B2. “There is an economy of the things we don’t use and that’s called the circular economy,” says Cooper. “What we’re trying to build at Rheaply is technology to map who has what and to scale that economy. Globally, it’s a four-and-a-half-trillion-dollar opportunity.3

As he points out, it’s also a crucial endeavor in the effort to fight climate change while helping redistribute assets to communities in need. “Even if we all moved to renewable sources of energy, we would only affect about 55% of climate-related impacts. The other 45% has to come from scaling a circular economy, because no matter how much you green the grid and all these things, we still consume too much.”

Source: morganstanley.com

About the author

Amanda

Hi there, I am Amanda and I work as an editor at impactinvesting.ai;  if you are interested in my services, please reach me at amanda.impactinvesting.ai