77 - Democratisation of energy market with Jemma Green

This week Chris is joined by Jemma Green, the Executive Chairman & Co-founder at Powerledger. Powerledger uses blockchain technology for energy and environment commodity trading. The two discuss how households and organizations can trade excess solar power peer-to-peer and how blockchain technology helps to securely track local energy trading.  Listen in to find out more about the innovative environment commodity trading platform and its role in the democratisation of the energy market.

Powerledger’s homepage: 
https://www.powerledger.io 

Transcript

Broadcasting from the commodity capital of the world, Zurich, Switzerland, this is ‘Insiders Guide to Energy’.  

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| Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript

| 15:51.70 | chrissass | welcome to insider's guide to energy I'm your host chris sass and with me today is Gemma Green Gemma welcome to the program. Well I'm excited to have our conversation today. It's.
| 16:05.33 | Jemma | Thanks for having me.
| 16:19.60 | chrissass | Interesting from from my perspective to find out a little bit about what you're doing I know blockchain is is on your radar blockchain has been a lot of Hype and a lot of talk throughout the years being in the energy industry I think we've gone through the hype cycle of overpromising and now moving to the point where I hope it's starting to deliver. So during our conversation I look forward to hearing what you have to say with that. But I think it makes sense for our audience to start with a brief introduction of who you are and a little bit about your company.
| 17:14.40 | Jemma | Sure. Ah, so I'm a co-founder of power led we're a company that makes software. Um, that is about creating markets that remove the obstacles to none renewable energy. We've been operating for. 6 years and we've got about 20 plus clients in None countries and we set up the company really off the back of like if you observe the energy crisis or talk to like any energy um expert the sense of market failure really becomes apparent and. If you dive in like a little bit further. It becomes clear that we're going to need energy markets to take account of time and place and by matching energy consumption. Um, to energy generation by time and place I think we can start to address some of the issues like the duck curve which is too much solar during the day and not enough consumption or curtailment which is like a fancy word for throwing energy away or fuel poverty. You know people having to choose you know in many parts of the world right now between. Heating and eating. So um I think that um you know our philosophy and the core belief that really got us into business in the none place is that genuine markets will find the best way forward and the converse is also true that centralized um energy markets will always fail in the long term. So. We make software for electricity retailers and network operators and large corporates that allows them to track and trade the energy for you know that they're um that they need to you know, run their business or supply their customers.
| 20:35.40 | chrissass | So six years is not a particularly old company I would still put that in the younger category. Um is this what you started out originally is that the problem statement that that made you become a founder or has it evolved over those 6 years
| 21:05.71 | Jemma | Ah, well our purpose from the get go was the democratization of power for a sustainable future and that still is very much our purpose and our vision is clean energy that works for everyone on the planet. So I think that those things are. You know if you look at our white paper which we wrote in None you'll see those same messages in there in terms of and also the products that we had articulated in that you know, really a vision statement. They are still the products that we're working on albeit with some of them with different names. But I'd say that the our. You know I didn't expect this but that you know the the concept I would say have really been enduring and are still guide post to what we're working on.
| 22:31.20 | chrissass | And then where are you today in terms of a solution. So is it in widespread use or where where is your solution in the market today.
| 22:49.45 | Jemma | Um, probably I'll give you a few examples so we're working with the fourth largest electricity retailer in France on a solution called choose your mix so customers commercial industrial customers and also residential customers will be able to specify. I want solar from this farm a wind from that farm and will actually measure the output of those assets um within a kind of time period like an interval. Um, so that the the buyers know they're actually getting energy from that source and it's not being oversold or double sold. We're working with the largest um, renewable energy certificate registry in the us emres and we've just gone live with that this month where buyers and sellers of Rex are able to trade and settle res on our platform connected to the registry so they can purchase renewable energy certificates. Cover their commitments like companies that have committed to be None renewable or none renewable can purchase certificates on our platform and we'll be rolling that out in the asean region as well on our near term roadmap. Um, we're also working with like a large developer of renewable energy projects in Thailand they've got seven hundred Megawatts in their portfolio. We've got like a peer-to-peer project in Bangkok with None commercial buildings and about none of power a day is traded on that and we've just gone live with a. None project in Chang Mai in the north of Thailand a demonstration site at the university there. Um in Austria we're working with a retailer there developing and what's called an energy community solution which is off the back of um, a piece of ah a regulatory directive. From the Eu called the clean energy package which is really around close proximity trading and consumption or generation and consumption of renewable energy. Um, so we're developing a solution that they can offer their customers. So you know a school or a community group can. Offer energy to its members or mums and dads and they can trade energy and settle energy with each other. So yeah, there's quite a lot of different use cases for both electricity retailers for large corporates that have committed to renewable energy and also for electricity grid. Operators network operators that want to allow trading of energy to relieve congestion as an alternative to augmenting the physical infrastructure. So traditionally if you've got like congestion on a grid you might upgrade a substation now. There's a push to look at how that that spend could be reduced by.
| 28:11.91 | Jemma | Encouraging transactive energy beneath a substation that relieves the congestion and avoids the need to upgrade the substation in the None place. So yeah, that's it.
| 28:25.26 | chrissass | So are you the marketplace for these are you are you a virtual marketplace is that what you've established on your platform.
| 28:38.17 | Jemma | Yeah, we offer we we've developed a marketplace that the network operator can offer to retailers within its grid to relieve congestion or a retailer can offer its customers so we can whitelabel that and the tracking piece. Ah. And the rex renewable energy certificate trading module is more focused for multinationals or rre 100 s companies that have pledged to be 100% renewable so they can um, identify where they're at in terms of you know their target and their actuals for renewable energy and um. Look at down to an hourly interval level at each of their sites around the world where they're at in terms of procuring energy which could come from on-site generation or a power purchase agreement or purchasing certificates. So our platform helps integrate that information so they can form a. Ah, clear picture of what where they're out against their targets and identify what they need to fill in terms of purchasing ppas or renewable energy certificates as well. So so the solutions I would say are broadly for for utilities and um, large corporates.
| 30:48.50 | chrissass | Um, so.
| 31:03.60 | chrissass | None None question that comes to mind and we've covered this quite a bit on the podcast with Rex is not all renewable. Energy is created equal right? So if if your plant is let's say in the middle of of a city and you're buying it from another state or another region that's buying solar. You're not really. Applesto-apps comparison on green energy. So is that part of a problem statement that you solve are you just enabling them to have the res to almost green wash or feel good about the the green energy they buying even though it may not be comparable of getting it nearby or source locally.
| 32:06.50 | Jemma | Yeah I mean that was really to the comments that I made earlier about taking account of time and place and um, you know it has been acceptable practice. For example, you know you say you're operating in New York to buy Rex from Texas but um I think that companies. Realized that they were creating other problems in grids of oversupply and congestion and um, you know curtailment was becoming really prevalent which is you know a real economic failure loss of output and income for the generator. And um, you know, virtual power power virtual powerpoint purchase power purchase agreements. Vppa's like a financial transaction but really not attending to the physical grid and so there was a mismatch and we've seen really in the past eighteen months the corporate sustainability leaders set a new standard around that um called none carbon free energy and Microsoft and Google are really leading the way around that they've both made commitments to get to none renewable energy or carbon-free energy. And it is carbon free because they are factoring in nuclear power into that. Um, by I think 2030 and there are other players that are also looking at evolving from one ah hundred percent renewable energy which is annual matching which is the kind of approach that you just alluded to to None hourly matching. Um, which really addresses that that issue of overbud oversupply curtailment grid congestion because ah, you know if you look at the countries that have a high penetration of variable renewable energy. They also have the highest electricity costs and there's a strong positive correlation. Because of centralized price signals. So what it's done is um, you know caused overbuild of renewable energy in the northern part of Germany which has um, resulted in large spend on network and ancillary services costs which is ultimately pushing up the price of energy and um. These centralised price signals that don't attend to time and place are exacerbating the um cost of energy like the total cost of energy and that's I think part of the reason why there's backlash against renewable energy as well. Because even if the levelised cost of electricity like the unit cost of generating solar is cheap. If. It's far away from consumption or it requires you know grid stabilization um services you know frequency control ancillary services these kinds of things then um, you know overall the total cost is going to be higher and that's what we've seen like you know people got really sort of.
| 37:35.25 | Jemma | Myopic about the generation costs but not looking at the total costs and what was missing really was price signals that are time and place based so that if you've got oversupply in a particular part of a grid you might have a different price signal to down the road where you know there's our Undersupply. So. I Think that that that's really the the what we're that I would say the new paradigm that we're moving into to be able to hit Net zero targets. You know at the country level or region level and then also for corporates really to you know, evolve their approach. You know From. What was considered as perfectly valid to you know as you pointed to perhaps considered to be greenwashing in certain respects.
| 39:02.10 | chrissass | So I don't clearly have an understanding of what it is that you built So I get the problem statement from the conversation I get where you're talking about the industry or the world wants to go and I understood your mission statement in your kind of opening comments. But what specifically did you build to solve the problem.
| 39:46.69 | Jemma | Yeah, so we make solutions for electricity retailers that they can offer their customers. Um, we make solutions for network operators and that they can allow retailers to participate in like marketplaces that they can participate in local energy markets. And we make solutions for large corporates for them to be able to track and identify what energy they have procured and what they need to procure and what res they want to buy and the ability to trade and settle those. So I'll just unpack that further for you. So for retailers. Um. Um, mentioned we're working with equarter they're developing a new solution to offer their customers called choose your mix and so we will white label that and their customers will be able to specify not just I'm on a renewable tariff but they can see the list of renewable generation assets in France. And actually pick the ones that they would like to procure their energy from so we are the solution provider for that um that tariff um the
| 41:50.48 | chrissass | And what does that do to their rate if if they choose is are they willing to pay a premium or are the renewables because it's plentiful at the time of day less expensive. How does that work on the economic side.
| 42:12.81 | Jemma | Yeah, so it is a premium service in that particular case but not always that solutions that we provide are not always premium services. But yeah in that case, they have a section of you know customers like um like global brands that they that. Buy energy from them for which that granularity is important so commercial and industrial customers. You know french retail brands that have made commitments are very interested in being able to take a count of energy and go you know beyond that sort of. Paradigm that you were referring to into something that is very authentic and deep green. Um, and then in France the solution energy communities. The legislation from the clean energy package allows retailers anyone to set up and become a retailer and set up an energy community. So the retailer we're working with wants to offer that that service to like a school for example and so the school could run their own energy community. So mums and dads can trade energy with each other as well as procure any other differential power they need from the energy community provider. And we are developing a solution to white label for that for that purpose. So.
| 44:46.34 | chrissass | Is that a reality yet are folks actually individuals capable of you know, maybe behind the grid kind of generation and selling and buying their their own power an individual level today.
| 45:08.75 | Jemma | Yeah, so we've already done extensive testing with that um retailer and we're about to launch the kind of market solution for for that purpose. So yes, it's already been done successfully and now we're looking at rollout and scale up.
| 45:43.12 | chrissass | In scale up meaning what what percentage like I don't have a lot of friends that have capability. You know, maybe they have battery capacity because they're Av or maybe they they're doing some different things have solar on the rooftop I Guess do people have.
| 45:50.10 | Jemma | Like more customers.
| 46:21.48 | chrissass | Inclination to do this or do they have the inclination to sign up to software that would just manage all this and and be kind of transparent to them.
| 46:31.51 | Jemma | Yeah, so it's all retailer led so the retailer offers their existing customers the ability to do this and it's all seamlessly integrated into the retailer solution now in terms of um, ah. Are there buy buyers and sellers. So you mentioned households that have solar or batteries. They're going to be sellers by and large but then there are households that have neither solar nor batteries and they will be buyers and the value proposition for them is really for the buyers buying local renewable energy at. Perhaps a cheaper rate than they would grid source energy and for the the sellers they can sell they can utilize their battery for sources other than self-consump and additionally monetize their investment in those assets and. Also get to more renewable energy autonomy as a household and as ah as a region. So I think that the the value proposition for the retailer is getting new customers. Um maintaining um a margin retailer margin and also. Um, ah, retaining customers as well. Having more sticky customers and then in terms of um, the network offering so you know I mentioned that example with a substation. Um, we're doing a project in New South Wales with a network operator um called endeavor energy. And they it's um, they have a substation that would otherwise be upgraded and cost a lot of money to do so but instead they're allowing retailers to um, retailers and their customers to trade with each other beneath the substation and. Um, consume that surplus renewable energy and to to stop the congestion at the substation level and endeavor energy estimate as much as 15% of network spend can be alleviated through offering these non-network solutions. So that's a network distribution distribution. Utility. Solution but they allow electricity retailers customers to trade with each other as a part of what we call a local energy market and we we published a report with guidehouse about this. We just launched it a few weeks ago at distribute tech in Texas and um. This will be the none deployment looking at at this really about how do you scale renewables by providing local time and place price signals and reduce the need to augment the network and drive up overall electricity costs. So it's a network led solution that also involves retailers.
| 51:53.80 | chrissass | Wish I would have seen that as a distribute tech for Insider's guide as well. Absolutely we did episode from there but interesting model so is is that a band-aid solution to.
| 51:58.51 | Jemma | Um, but you will I'll send it I'll send it to you.
| 52:23.30 | chrissass | To get us there because of the demand is going to be if you look at Fleets going on you know ev fleets and things of that nature and the demand at the substation is is probably going to be fairly high is this kind of helping them bridge the gap until they can increase capacity or do you think this is a longer term. Important play.
| 53:02.95 | Jemma | Well in some cases it will defer the augmentation of the of the network. Um I wouldn't necessarily call that a band-aid solution I think network deferrals like you know, very um, legitimate way of managing you know, better managing your infrastructure. In some ways it can avoid it altogether and as you say there'll be more batteries that come online and those batteries can be better utilized because if you just use your battery for self-consumption that will you know have a certain payback period. But if you can and provide additional use cases that can move your payback from say None ears down to six years that's ah compelling proposition to increase the size of your battery and those the more batteries that are existing in the grid the more likely it is that that is a more enduring non-network solution as opposed to a temporary one.
| 54:45.94 | chrissass | And and is this a unique substation situation where there's power generation or an industrial area or something that has wind or solar in this particular area or is this going to be common across the entire footprint of this particular energy company.
| 55:20.37 | Jemma | It's very common I would say um, you know they're expecting around 45% rooftop solar pv penetration and that is very commonplace and if you look at like um, ah like particularly in the older grid like older suburbs. You've got a lot more of this kind of issue going on with um, ah you know congestion you know legacy that those those substations are not necessarily. You know designed with this sort of hybrid distributed situation in mind. So. You know I think track the transformers and the tap setting ranges. You know they're not adequate adequate to really limit the voltage issues and um, you know as a part of endeavorer energy's future grid strategy they're they're really embracing the marketg grid interaction. For a cost effective customer focused approach in the future which I think is really beginning to invade. You know, um, shape their investment strategy so and their network has over 30000 substations and the the. The bigger challenges are around the established network areas and they estimate that the non-network solutions could defer at least None of the investment in low voltage and high voltage network augmentation. So it's pretty significant if you put that into context on the national electricity market which is the East Coast of Australia None spent every year on network orug plantation. So 15% of that is you know is it not a trivial sum of money and if that is not being spent. That's not being smeared over everyone's electricity costs the bills which is pushing up. You know you know, pushing up, everyone's electricity bills.
| 59:01.22 | chrissass | How much does the enterprise or business need to change its business model to take advantage so you talked about Pv I'd imagine that that although we're early game that that it's It's better for an early mover because there's going to be demand but as everybody gets coverage. Aren't we going to have surplus energy during peak sunny days even at the substation level. So If if all the businesses in the region. Add solar. They'll they'll use their solar but where does this model break.
| 01:00:00.41 | Jemma | Well, the price signal can be It doesn't have to be just beneath None substation like a local energy market could be None substations for example or even down to a feeder level and so you could be allowing surplus solar to be drip fed out in a way that the the. Um, the grid can handle that at the substation level and then utilize um you know, further up upstream in the superior grid. Ah but done in a way that that is um, you know able to manage you know voltage reactive power congestion things like that. And then you can have two substations and the local energy market operate beneath that those 2 substations. Um so energy sharing can happen in that respect. Oh yeah I don't know sorry I'm so sorry.
| 01:01:38.46 | chrissass | Talk good. We'll edit that out. No worries. Um, let's let's change gears a little bit and so you found this company. What specifically were you an energy person or a technologist.
| 01:01:43.19 | Jemma | Second oh please.
| 01:02:15.68 | chrissass | To to start start to go solve this problem How how did you get into tackling this issue.
| 01:02:25.19 | Jemma | I was an investment banker I worked in London for None ears I went I spent the none half of my career in mainstream finance. The second half I I voluntarily like got involved in a recycling project at work and. Introduced recycling facilities to J P Morgan's London officers and ah the project was um, like we rolled out recycling bins and but then some people were throwing their recycling into their trash can at their desk. So I I thought the project needed a part 2 and if we got rid of. Bins and put both a trash can and a recycling bin at the end of the aisle of desks then you'd increase the recycling rate which would save like another I think half a million pounds a year on top of the the initial recycling program and um, we rolled this out with the support of the chief operating officer and I became the most hated person. In the office and people started a Facebook page called bring the bins back and I was blamed for rats in the office and um I thought oh this is way more interesting than my day job by the time I was working in exotic and hybrid equity derivatives. Ah and um. Jpmorgan at the time was setting up like an environmental and social risk management unit and I really wanted to work there. Um, and but they wanted somebody that had a lot of experience in that field and they did end up hiring somebody who had a lot of experience but no banking and then they suddenly thought that we could work complimentarily. Together and so um I was fortunate to be at really change careers in my twenty s from mainstream banking into sustainability and I worked in that team for 6 years so I was looking at the bank's lending and financing activities including energy mining oil and gas. From an environmental and social risk perspective. So I was helping prepare prospectus with risk disclosures for listing companies on stock exchanges or bond issuance m and a and I went on and studied and did um some postgraduate diplomas in sustainability and cross. Like to partnership and then a masters by research looking at credit ratings and I basically finished my thesis and thought I'm going to move back to Australia and there's no banks in ah Perth where i' based and so I had to invent a different career for myself and. Between leaving London and coming back here I um did quite a bit of hiking and then got this idea that I wanted to build an eco village and I was a bit of a crazy idea shared it with a friend and she said oh you should talk to a professor about this and I reached out to.
| 01:08:02.87 | Jemma | Professor and he said you should contact this professor in Perth Peter Newman so I reached out to him and he said that's a great idea. why don't you um do that in fremantle and copy it in the mayor of Fremantle and why don't you do it as a ph d applied research. So I got persuaded to do this ph d in electricity market disruption and. Use that to design um, solar and battery system for an apartment building and I was struggling to find software that could create a marketplace within the apartment building. Um, that would allow you and I to be allocated a portion of the output of the solar and battery system. But if you weren't home. You could trade your surplus allocation with me which would provide you income to offset your bill and I couldn't find anything that did that and then a former jp Morgan colleague of mine introduced me to my business partner John Bullitch and um I just had Emily who you saw a minute go seven weeks earlier and um. John came to my house I called up my mum and said could you come over and hold the baby while I talked to this guy and he um was actually had developed applications in the blockchain sector in different sorry blockchain space in different sectors. And was developing applications not in energy. But I asked him well can it do anything in energy like you know this is my problem with my ph d project. Can it solve that and we started to look together and saw that it could absolutely do that and we. Um, we started to develop that idea further and about three months later we set up the company in May of 2016 and yeah, so it was really not my intention to do that and I finished my Phd on this topic. Ah, but. Yeah I would say I came from a but of banking and then sustainability background and they're more recently looking at the market layer for electricity. But we we have a lot of like um, ah electrical engineers in the company and people that have got a lot of experience with developing grid solutions. So we. We have obviously expertise around that and since forming the company we've um, created the power token which is an access token. So clients can pay their software licensing cash or power and if they pay in power. We can contract to return it at the end so they're relatively incentivized to pay in power and. Um, ah, that's a cryptocurrency that is traded on like more than a dozen dozen exchanges around the world and this week we've just launched ah a blockchain for recording energy transactions which is really for purpose low energy super energy efficient run on renewable energy.
| 01:13:28.71 | Jemma | And has high topu we were using ethereum which can only process None to 12 transactions per none but we've moved to a salina based ah Blockchain which can process 65000 transactions per none which is really important for scale to solve the problems that we talked about. Um, you know you're going to need a lot of throughput. A lot of transactions. Um, um to for it to be viable so we saw the shift to a solano based solution is really important. Yeah, so.
| 01:14:20.76 | chrissass | Well so that's a lot that is quite ah, quite an explanation. So so from from Banker to founder and then you managed to capture just about every buzzword that that the industry has from crypto to blockchain. Um I guess what comes to mind is.
| 01:14:48.25 | Jemma | I'm sorry.
| 01:15:00.72 | chrissass | Why do we need a distributed ledger to do this why why is that important so Blockchain as I said in the intro has had a lot of hype cycle I've personally been a part of number of blockchain efforts along the way and have seen mixed results in blockchain when not used.
| 01:15:23.67 | Jemma | Who.
| 01:15:36.20 | chrissass | Properly in energy and I say not used properly because I think people raised money on the word blockchain the same with crypto so maybe help me understand why the tech is important to your solution.
| 01:15:55.47 | Jemma | Yeah I mean you don't really need a blockchain to do what we're doing. You can do it without a blockchain. That's the short answer. Um.
| 01:16:11.30 | chrissass | Okay, but you chose blockchain So there's probably a reason.
| 01:16:19.43 | Jemma | Yeah, well you know you know you don't have to you don't have to have barcodes to run a supermarket. You can have a supermarket without barcodes. Um, it's called the corner store. It's not like you go to the supermarket because of the barcodes. No I don't know. Do you do that? Chris.
| 01:16:57.80 | chrissass | Not particularly.
| 01:16:59.27 | Jemma | Ah, you go I'm great to this supermarke you got barcodes? No, you don't do that but because it's got barcodes. You know the stock control is really efficient. Um, there's less mistakes when you go through the till um, you know it's a fast process. The products are there. Um, so it provides you it sits in the background and it just makes things work efficiently and.
| 01:17:45.64 | chrissass | Okay, so you're saying what I'm hearing you say is the tech isn't the value proposition. The value proposition is the markets you're creating is that what you're trying to tell me Okay, sorry I don't mean to put words in your mouth. But I just.
| 01:18:03.39 | Jemma | Yes, yeah yeah I think that that is it I mean what the blockchain does provide I think when you're creating new markets and you want people to participate in new things and there's value being exchanged you want people to trust the system as well. And so there's it. There's having it recorded on a blockchain. Um, you know having a record that is immutable I think builds trust and encourages participation. So I think there's that other layer to it and I would say that um it um. It. It has other functions that are not really fully utilized yet for example, using digital currency as a settlement tool so that you know as you you know? new technology is experimented. You don't necessarily use all the bells and whistles from the Getgo. So the record keeping layer and the. You know, having it operate these new markets sufficiently. Um, it is perhaps the initial use case. But um, you know more considered use cases could include trade and settlement as one and the same entry or. Tokenization of certificates to avoid duplication or double counting of of certificates or selling a certificate that's been retired or cross-part trade you know reducing counterparty settlement risk. So if you and I are trading certificates and we're in different countries. Someone's got to send the money. Before the certificate gets issued so you've got the risk of not getting you pay but you don't get the product whereas if you do that all on a blockchain you don't have that because the physical and financial settlement are one and the same entry. They can't be separated from each other. So I think that there are benefits from a functional perspective. The blockchain can provide as well. Um, which are some of which are being used and others are still in experimentation phase.
| 01:22:04.68 | chrissass | And then talk about the cryptocurrency. That's interesting that you you needed to or decided to start a currency specific and that you're you're encouraging folks to pay with energy. So maybe a little bit of the thinking behind that would be useful.
| 01:22:32.75 | Jemma | Yeah, so the power token as I said is a like software license. Um access token so you can pay in cash or power. Um, and sometimes we've had clients that are paid initially with cash but then figuring out how they can pay in power and. Um, we've actually got like our Thai client now is going to be a node on our blockchain and are going to basically stake some of the power tokens that they own on the blockchain maintain a node of the blockchain and receive a reward and we've allocated a certain amount of power tokens. Um, for that as Well. So The power token is an access token. It's also can be staked to maintain the blockchain itself and we really did that because um, you know to to realize Ultimately you know to realize all the benefits of um. The blockchain you want to start like you know, looking at different ways. It can be utilized so we're basically experimenting with these different use cases and increasing acceptance and adoption around the technology to get to really realizing its full potential I would say um and you know we've seen I like. Positive response I would say ah over time from clients being wanting to hold crypto um to figure out how to record it on their balance sheet to now wanting to you know, maintain nodes on our on our blockchain as well.
| 01:25:24.50 | chrissass | It's very interesting how how are you structured so you've given us a lot of use cases in an example, pretty global footprint from everything you've talked about so staffwise how big is your organization today.
| 01:25:45.51 | Jemma | Ah, we have about 50 staff most of them are in Perth. But we do have like a reasonable footprint in the us in Europe the uk india so you know covid I'd say was a catalyst for. Things so many businesses that were right for change and in Australia we couldn't travel. We were really locked down for a long time and so providing in-market support couldn't be by us traveling. We needed to hire people locally so that had us rethink the business. Um, and I would say that um. You know, notwithstanding that the maturation of the markets and you know needed more local support local time zones and whatnot. But in terms of our operating model I'd say we would be doing more of that. Even though we're not in that kind of lockdown phase I think that that that is going to be like. We'll give greater emphasis to you know? How do we have a ah you know, distributed operating model for the business over time.
| 01:27:46.96 | chrissass | And how does one go about becoming a customer so you you talked about energy companies. You gave the substation example is it your team approaching them or is it someone listening to a podcast like this saying hey that's. And interesting use case and you know saving fifteen seventeen percent substation level and and deferring some costs would be helpful to us. How do they engage or is is the market already well established and people say well we know this market exists and we just go to this this market I mean that what's the process.
| 01:28:44.93 | Jemma | I think it's it's evolved over time like when we started the business. Many companies weren't really like developing strategies around non-wet non-network solutions. But now you'll find most utilities are um and um, many of the. Projects that we did were just an individual within a company that was really wanting to pioneer and was inbound queries that we were responding to um, but over time now the companies have got. Strategies. There's regions that have defined themselves with regulary regulatory reform. So I mentioned that european example in the us the none order 22 22 it's really shifted the kind of narrative around local energy for the you know isos in the us and they're all now like implementing local regulations. To respond to that tariff order um or order rather and then like in India we did a project in Utar Pradesh which is the largest and most populous state in India there's 225000000 people living there and it was a small project 200 house demonstration for peer-to-peer. But as a result of that. The government issued a regulatory decree allowing Blockchain peer-to-peer trading across the state as a way to grow renewable energy without the need for subsidy because most of the growth in renewables in the past twenty years has been through beating tariff subsidy. And that's that blunt centralized price signal that I mentioned to you which is buying it None None 5% renewable energy. But once you get to None twenty thirty percent you start to see these perverse issues in the grid like you know, oversupply congestion voltage reactive power curtailment all the you know all the the ailments. A centralized price signal and so they see they want to leap frog and not do make the mistakes of any of the high incomee oes ed countries and and look at how they can grow renewables without subsidy and actually match time and place better and they bring state canarica is looking at um. Ah, similar approach so you know sometimes it's more long range regulatory reform which you can anticipate like the european example and other times it's like doing the demonstration project actually catalyzes. People's thinking and you know people in you know Vietnam don't want to see it. Ah, you know. Austrian example they want to see a thai example that they can relate to something that's regional. So our strategy had been to get these kind of lighthouse projects um up and running so that that could really you know focus people's minds around what might be possible in the context of their region and then.
| 01:34:11.99 | Jemma | I would say now it's much more targeted like we haven't informed you aware. There's the biggest opportunities for scale and we're really sort of focusing and our resources on those areas more proactively.
| 01:34:34.18 | chrissass | And then how competitive is this space since you started it is is there a number of players trying to create I mean I've talked to other folks that have similar concept Concepts maybe executed slightly differently. How big is this Space. You know if if you're putting out a request for proposal or for reoverments you know. You know going down a path. They're probably looking at multiple solutions is is it gotten crowded.
| 01:35:19.37 | Jemma | Um, it depends. Um, you know in terms of companies that have blockchain and actual blockchain for recording energy transactions. There's really only one other company that does that and then rec trading. There's a few that have you know rec trading marketplaces but they're not. Focused on the kind of none granular piece and some of them have added blockchain in but I would say it's more of a sideshow than the main show and tracking wise There's some very evolved players in that space that have you know, really been spearheading the growth in. Um. None carbon free energy for multinationals. Um, so yeah, there are some that are just focusing on None piece of the value chain and there's not really any one player that is doing all aspects of it which is our strategy so I would say depends on the segment.
| 01:37:10.90 | chrissass | And then how far along are you on your journey. You started out with a pretty ambitious goal so where is it today on on impact you've made.
| 01:37:30.30 | Jemma | Ah, well, um, our big hairy audacious goal um is to be the undisputed global leader in distributed and decentralized energy markets with None users and our 3 year highly achievable goal is to be the emerging global leader in distributed and decentralized energy markets with None users by ah, end of December Twenty Twenty five and we're on track to achieve that. So um, there's you know there's obviously there's a lot that goes into you know a company scaling. Which is you know a combination of you know preparedness market readiness and um, ah embracing I would say learning moments like if you look at new sort of predictable predictable trajectories and um hypergrowth companies. They've really got a culture of um, you know. Rapidly figuring out what works and repeating it and what doesn't work and cutting it and so I think that yeah you know this is a new energy paradigm that's being created and ah you know through the renewable movement through the net 0 movement. Um, through the none carbon-f freee energy movement but I would say that things are really stepping up a notch and maturing so to your earlier kind of question around you know the hype around blockchain I think you know like any new thing you know and as you pointed out, you know there was a time where companies were just tiing the web blockchain at the beginning of their name and you. Stock price was going up 300% and there's lots of stories about you know the early stage of tech in the millennium with this kind of thing happening but nobody was going to say we're no tech's not going to exist no like that you know tech industry of today was born in that era and you know Blockchain is and. And nascent technology and there's a lot of experimentation going on and most of the use cases had been focused in the early stages around you know wallets hardware um ah, crypto exchanges. Um, but now we're starting to see the maturation of other businesses around tracking you know for provenance and these new use cases as well around like energy. So I think that you know there's a lot more work to be done but you can see that when we started the company could ask people have they ever heard a blockchain and. If I was in a room giving a talk to None people. Most people would put up their hand whereas now if you ask that question most people know quite a lot about it so you can see that maturation happening and it's pretty much analogous to the you know adoption that you've seen of other technologies even going back far as you know.
| 01:42:55.57 | Jemma | Telephony Refrigerators microwaves you know the the kind of adoption curves around that.
| 01:43:07.66 | chrissass | So blockchain. Yeah I agree I think we're past the hype cycle where you know as you go through a garner kind of typical new technology coming out model I ah, ah, don't disagree. Um I guess None question I would have as we kind of get towards the tail end of our interview is. What are the hurdles that keep this from being widely accepted what what hurdles are still in the marketplace that you need to overcome or government or policy or whatever is keeping this from being widely deployed.
| 01:44:06.57 | Jemma | Well I think it's very context specific like you know I talked to you about the european regulatory reform or um, the indian example or what's happening in the us. We even have a version of it in Australia called the 2 sided market initiatives. But they all look slightly different to each other. But I I think that like ironically centralized renewables created like you know a schism in the conversation around energy and it's made many people hate renewable energy and they've kind of conflated. Centralized planning of renewables rather than renewables per se so renewables doesn't have to be high electricity costs and I would say that you know the road to a new energy system needs to take out this kind of like in the same way you had it with Blockchain too many acolytes. You can have this with renewable energy. And I'd say that the lack of awareness around time and place is the biggest enemy to you know widespread adoption of renewable energy. You know energy is not like cocoa beans. You can't just store it and you've got to understand the grid the physical grid dynamics um to actually create an energy system that works for everyone. Otherwise you're going to start just just growing. We just get to 100% renewable but not really and appreciating that and inadvertently driving up electricity costs which leads to fuel property leads to you know, offshoring of industries. You know it's an economic disaster so I would say that's the biggest challenge. Bringing more understanding around the complexity of energy so that there can be ah like adoption that is scalable of renewable adoption of renewable energy that's scalable.
| 01:47:44.46 | chrissass | Awesome! My last question is where you if folks are listening. They're interested and they're excited what you're doing where you on growth. What what kind of are you bringing New team members on. Are you looking to add to the team and what skills are you guys looking for.
| 01:48:12.95 | Jemma | Ah, we are growing our team with software engineers. So um, yeah, welcome reach out to me on Linkedin if you're interested. Um, we're also growing our team in India. So if you're based there reach out. And in terms of um, ah like what next that we haven't we haven't raised capital. Um, since 2017 and um, we've just we're just about to announce. We've got a new shareholder. That's. Um, purchased a large stake from an existing shareholder and that's a esg tech fund called sangga sangga capital and they're um, yeah, they're really focused on like esg and tech which is quite an interesting niche but you know. I think having um, ah, corporate partners that you know, really want to you know, speed up the adoption of renewable energy taking account of time and place. You know we'd love to talk to companies that. Ah, working in this space and and look at partnering with them would be fabulous.
| 01:50:38.88 | chrissass | Well awesome I've enjoyed the conversation day I think we've gone all over I enjoyed your personal journey hearing about how you got to where you're at and seeing what you're doing to democratize markets and we're using the technology do that? Thank you so much for being on the program today.
| 01:51:10.69 | Jemma | Thanks for having me Chris.
| 01:51:17.38 | chrissass | For audience I hope you've enjoyed the content as much as I have if you had please subscribe follow share the content and don't forget to follow us on Youtube and Facebook and we will talk to you again next week bye bye