Why Replacing Kerosene May Be One of Climate’s Easiest Wins

In this episode of Climate Confident, I speak with Alice Chun, inventor of the world’s first inflatable, origami-inspired solar light and founder of Solight Design. Alice shares how a career in material technology and a deeply personal experience with her son’s asthma led her to tackle energy poverty, disaster relief, and carbon emissions with a single, deceptively simple product: the SolarPuff™.

We discuss the staggering health and environmental toll of kerosene lighting, especially in off-grid and disaster-affected communities — and how collapsible, durable solar lanterns are not only cleaner and safer, but can also act as tools for education, safety, and psychological recovery.

Alice walks us through the practical design choices (like sailcloth and origami folds) that make the lights lightweight, shippable, and long-lasting. She also unpacks her field experiences from Haiti to Ukraine, why she insists on personally delivering lights, and the complex balance of running a mission-driven company that also needs to survive commercially.

Key takeaways:

• Why light access is essential for disaster resilience and safety
• How solar design can scale through beauty, durability, and function
• The unexpected link between solar tech and trauma recovery in children
• What business models can sustain social impact in climate tech

For more, visit https://solight-design.com or head to climateconfidentpodcast.com.

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Transcript

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There was a point where I felt like capitalism could make an impact by getting this distributed to regions that didn't have electricity. They could save money on kerosene and use that money for food, education, to start a new business. And so it was a win-win situation and that's what drove me to become a social entrepreneur at that point. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 217 of the Climate Confident Podcast, the go-to show for best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow this podcast in your podcast app of choice, so you never miss an episode. Now, before we get going, I want to give a huge thank you to this podcast's, incredible supporters. Your backing keeps this podcast going and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you're not a supporter and you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You just need to click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tiny url.com/climate pod. Now, you know how we keep talking about the millions and millions and hundreds of millions of people still living without reliable electricity and how clean tech has to reach them if we're serious about climate justice. Well, today's guest actually did something about it. Alice Chun designs solar lights that fold flat like origami, cost a fraction to ship and have lit up refugee camps, disaster zones, and off-grid villages all over the world. She's delivered them personally in Haiti, Puerto Rico, even Ukraine. She's not just talking sustainability, she's hand delivering it to the people who need it the most. So now let's get started. Alice, welcome to the show. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you, Tom. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about sustainability. I'm Alice Chun. I'm the CEO of Solight Design. We make portable origami solar lanterns, and solar power banks for disaster relief and also to help with carbon emissions, for home decor, camping, and power outages. We global distribution and we have a humanitarian mission to give solar light to regions that have no electricity. So Alice, tell me a little bit about the origin story of Solight Design. Because you didn't start off in this company, you started off in academia, if I remember correctly. And you moved into this. So tell me, tell me the reasons why. So I was a former professor in Architecture and Material Technology at Columbia University and also at Parsons, the new school. I had been teaching in design and material technology for 20 years, and after the birth of my son, I'd realised that we'd be going to the doctor's office all the time. And there were so many children with asthma, eczema, autism far more, far greater than when I was a little girl. you know, there's a saying. worried mom does better research than the FBI. Well, that was me and I did the research, and it turned out that 75% of the pollution in the, in New York comes from buildings, not from the cars. So the HVAC, the lighting, the computers are creating the pollution and the increase of this pollution has caused detriment to the health of our families and the health of our planet. And so that's when I decided to focus on solar energy. And early on, I was sewing solar panels to fabric because the trend in material technology is that everything is getting thinner, faster, smarter. And in to get the solar panel technology to become thinner and lighter, this is how I started my research. And the Haiti earthquake happened in 2010, and I quickly changed my studio around at Columbia to be an innovation studio to help Haiti. When we started the research into Haiti, we realised that only 12% of the country was electrified. And most people who are living on $3 a day were using kerosene to light their world at night, which is a deadly toxic fuel. 2 million children die due to the toxins of the smoke, and inhalation. But the thing that really got me was that they were, you know, living on a few dollars a day. They were spending up to 30% of their income on kerosene. And that's when I decided to research every single solar light on the market and everything was very hard non-recyclable, heavy, ugly, utilitarian looking. And I'm Korean origin. But I grew up in the United States and my mother taught me origami when I was a little girl. And all of our products use origami design so that you can collapse, and pack. So you can save on shipping costs and you can deploy them very easily and you can pack hundreds in a box versus other solar lanterns, you could only fit 10 because they couldn't flat pack or were heavy. And so origami became a design tool for all of our products because it saves on production costs, it saves on shipping costs. It's, extremely practical in terms of transit. And it's also an art. So there's a beauty to the aspect of seeing and understanding a form come from a flat object popping up into a, a lotus shape or a cube shape, which is what our products look like. Whenever we've delivered our lights to regions where there's been natural disasters, and we give them to people, it's almost like magic because they see this flat object and they, it pops into a beautiful cube of light, especially with children when we deliver them in disaster zones. Very early on, I, asked the Clinton Foundation to come to Columbia. And back then the person that showed up, he was starting out, his name was Greg Mill. They were blown away with the research that we'd done and the potential inventions for disaster relief, including the Solar Puff. And he invited me to a Green Tech expo in Haiti in 2010, and I was in a tent outside and the dust is, you know, everyone is sweating, saddlebag under their armpits and in walked President Clinton and the president of Haiti. And I show him my prototype, which was glued and duct taped together very rudimentary, And he was blown away by it. He was. in his Southern Arkansas accent. Everybody come over here, come look at this. Everybody look, this lot. I lock your lot. And I was so, inspired by this. And I went back home and checked on my patent to make sure that it was all going forward. And, we ended up launching our company on Kickstarter in 2015 after I did a few years of field testing in Haiti and I had made 500 handmade Solar PS to give out to farmers, most of which were women. One farmer woman said that she couldn't afford the glass to go around her kerosene lamp. And the kids were in a one room house, five kids, and they were trying to do their homework and they were all coughing with burning eyes with all of the smoke from the kerosene. And when she got the Solar Puff, she said that this was a gift from God. The women around her started singing and dancing when they got these prototypes and they ended up using them in the, morning for breakfast before the sun came up because the children had to walk to school before the sun came up. And there was a point where I felt like capitalism could make an impact by getting this distributed to regions that didn't have electricity. They could save money on kerosene and use that money for food, education, to start a new business. And so it was a win-win situation and that's what drove me to become a social entrepreneur at that point. And then since then fast seven years, hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and 3 million people don't have electricity. And we work with nonprofits in disaster relief, and they buy at wholesale from us for deploying disaster relief. We also donate our lights and situations like this, and I fly to these areas myself personally to deliver them as well. And we were able to get over a hundred thousand lights to Puerto Rico to help people that are, were living in the dark. And it's extremely dangerous after a disaster strikes when there's no light because children and young women are the most vulnerable. And that's when you get kidnappings, human trafficking, women are in tents end up getting assaulted when they go to the bathroom at night because there's no light. And if you have light, what we realised in the research was that the women who had light at night, there was a 30% decrease in assault the next day at the medical clinic because of this. And so that was a very powerful fact that I discovered along the way after deploying our lights in, in disaster zones. It made me even more passionate about delivering these lights to regions that need it most. The statistics are that, like in India, 30,000 house fires every year. South Africa, 200,000 house fires every year because of kerosene lanterns. And so, we're actually working with different organisations and I also, have volunteers that go into Africa. We went to Zimbabwe last year to deliver lights to children. Because of Hurricane Maria and our ability to help in Puerto Rico, we were given a very small award by the Clinton Foundation. I was behind the stage and met Hillary Clinton. I told Hillary about how I just came back from Dominica and after a hurricane hits, usually the roofs are blown off all of the buildings because they're usually made of corrugated steel, and they're like razor blades during, anyway, so the children in seven schools in the Colinago region had no schools and they were in different tents, and I had gone there to deliver lights to the children and, it was very weird for me to go into these schools, so many schools, and I felt like I've seen so many big organisations go in and drop off supplies and then they leave and then they come back and do their reports and then leave. And so it was important for me to tell them the story behind this light that they were getting. And I told the children that, you know, when I was a little girl, I was beat up and teased because I didn't look like the other kids in school and I became a fighter, but I didn't fight with my fist. I fought with the light in my heart and the light of my mind. And I'm giving this light to you. I'm giving this Solar Puff to you so that you can also be a Light Warrior now. And Light Warriors fight with the light in their hearts and the light in their imagination, and the sun is the most powerful source of energy that comes to the earth every day. It has enough power to give 7 billion people in the world, the light bulb that will shine bright their whole entire lifetime. But the light of your heart and the light of your imagination is even stronger and more powerful than the sun. And if you keep fighting with that light, there's nothing you can't do. Your dreams and ambitions will grow. And during the day, the sun must kiss the space, which is the solar panel of the the Solar Puff. So that it can gain its energy so that you can read and do your homework at night and your dreams and ambitions will grow. And the kids just get so, giggly and delighted when they hear this.'cause they're like, what we have this, this power that's stronger than the sun. And I'm, and, and I try to assure them that they do. And, it's so important for me to leave the story behind wherever we go because in these regions where disaster strikes, it's hard to find hope. And I feel that the design of this thing, the magic of, being able to take a flat object and, have this brilliant cube of light, is the genesis of hope and the gift of light is the genesis of hope. And I've seen regions where people have lost hope and they didn't survive. So it's extremely important to understand that there is a psychological benefit of light and recovery and emotional enhancement that this brings. The other thing is when I told this to Hillary, Hillary was like, oh, this is such a great story, Alice. I love this story and she said, well, Chelsea and I are doing this book called Gutsy Women. I'm wondering if you would like to be in the book. There's this Spielberg moment where I felt like maybe she wasn't talking to me and I'm looking behind me and thinking, is it really me she's talking to? And, and lo and behold, she, she was serious. And a year later, when I went home, people were like, no, she's a politician, she's a liar. You know, it's not gonna happen. But a year later I'm in her book called Gutsy Women. They had to cut down the number of stories from 200 women to a hundred women. After that, Chelsea and Hillary decided to create a production company, and they did a docuseries based on the book for Apple TV and Hillary and Chelsea spent six hours at my little tiny apartment in New York City to film the episode for Gutsy. And since then was very fortunate to have been seen by the team of Bob Iger. Bob Iger is the CEO of Disney, and this is there were three weeks in between where he had left Disney and gone back to Disney, and that's when I met him on Zoom along with his chief of staff, Nancy Lee, who was incredible woman. Also Korean. He was the nicest guy. because of him, we are able to deliver lights into Ukraine and I personally delivered lights to three children's hospitals and two refugee camps. And I traveled alone through. Ukraine delivering our Solar Puffs, I brought four huge pieces of luggage and filled them up with our, our lights in order to go there. And what we realised is that our colored lights, the lights with six different colors were used for PTSD therapy in children. There were health workers that came up to me after Hurricane Maria and said, you're the one that's invented these lights, and you should know, they, they helped our children sleep at night. They helped the children be able to play games with the colors. They were able to relax and relieve stress and use them as nightlights in order to sleep. Because after an incident like that, many children have trouble sleeping. All children are very afraid of the dark. So when I heard that the children in Ukraine weren't able to sleep because of the power outages, the Russians were bombing all the power stations, and they had experienced multiple blackouts. In fact, it's, even worse now than it was back then in 2023 when I went. And it was because of Bob Iger's team that I was able to go there and deliver this. And we have been able to do a number of projects developing different phone chargers and also bigger units so that you can also charge your phone because communication is so key even here in the developed world, everyone is, feels naked if they don't have their phone. Even in places like Nigeria, people have three phones because one is always charging. So two questions come to mind straight away. The first is, how is your son now? And the second is, why is it important for you to go to these places? Why do you need to go? So my son is fine now. It took a long time. I don't know if you, know. Most people know this, but a nebulizer is something that helps children breathe. And that's basically steroids being pumped into your system to help you gain strength to breathe. This is the common remedy for asthmatic attacks. And, eventually as he grew up and his lungs got stronger he no longer needed to use that. But for children, in New York especially, I see a lot of moms talking about kids with asthma here. And then, as far as going to these, I call them red zones because the Travel Alert Advisory gives countries different colors for how dangerous they are, and the most dangerous are labeled red. And so Ukraine red, Haiti red, Turkey, when they were hit with an earthquake, red, and you know, in the beginning they were like, you're gonna get kidnapped, you're gonna be raped, you're gonna be shot. Aren't you afraid to go? And I told them no, because I could be hit by a bus in New York City any day. And, in fact, I broke my wrist, riding my bike at New York City, because somebody cut me off. I never got my wrist broken when I was in Ukraine or Haiti. But I think what's most important is the story of perception. So on the outside, when you, hear on the news what's happening and people have a preconceived notion of what is happening in the world, but, there's always two sides of the story. There's always another side. And when I went to these places and realised that there was kindness, there was resilience, there was empathy. Like for instance, when I went to Ukraine I visited the hospital and there was a boy that had his leg blown off. And his arm blown off. He was from a very small village in the southern part of Ukraine. And he was in Kiev in the hospital there because the children, main children's hospitals were in Kiev and they're, they're shipped up there after they get injured. And when I gave him the light, his eyes lit up and he smiled and he laughed and he said, look, you know, I could go camping with this thing. We have a forest behind our house and my two sisters and I, we go camping all the time and I'm thinking he's just like my son. These kids are like our children too. There is an absolute connection between what happens on the other side of the planet with what happens with us and. I do believe in the butterfly effect that what we do over here affects what's happening there and, and, so on and so forth. So, you know, just the issue of climate change and things like flood lines, shifting the way that countries have to migrate this sort of thing that happens because of climate change eventually causes war and that, you know, the stripe of territory and occupying territory is something that has gone on for centuries. And this thing that climate change has done to different regions and countries has affected us. In any case then there's this one incident where I walked in and this was a cancer clinic, and all these kids were there, were living in the hospital for two years because of their immune system. And when we gave the lights, they just lit up with joy and they were so happy. And, and this one little boy had a plaster cast on his leg. And he was limping and running to me and got his light. But then he started running away, limping and running. Few minutes later, he's still limping and running, but he's dragging his friend with him and he comes to me and says, give my friend a light too. So, even you know the hardest situations you see kindness and re resilience and joy in the most unexpected places. And that's why I go to these, regions and that's why I kind of defy perceptions and preconceived notions of these places because every time I come back we have these incredible stories of hope, and I think that is more important. And there's this saying in terms of invention, the, mother of invention is necessity. But the daughter of invention is curiosity. And I believe, those are two female characters that are directly linked to invention. But only 8% are female inventors in the United States patent and trademark system. And I think that part of this also is I wanna inspire girls, young girls to get out there and follow their dreams and to be curious to, find a need and find a solution for that need to help make lives better. When I was teaching architecture and talking about innovation in design, I talk about the Greeks and how they thought about time. So there's two characters of time, Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is predictable. He's an old man with a cane, and he's very, very slow and very predictable. That's when you're waiting for the water to boil. And then there's Kairos, which is the origin of chaos, and he has wings on his feet. He's very young. He has a bald head, so you can't catch him by the hair from behind and he flits and fleets about. And so there's a line of time that's straight and a line of time that goes chaotic. And when those two lines of time intersect, those are the moments of innovation. Those are the moments of opportunity where invention occurs, and these are the times that you have to keep looking out for, in order to think about how you can innovate and perhaps an invention will form. In these natural disasters, the chaos of what's happening with climate change is something that, has spurred on the invention of the Solar Puff. Sure. Tell me. Alice, the company that you set up. Solight Design, what is the business model of Solight Design? Because if it was just you going to disaster zones and giving out these solar lights, obviously that wouldn't be a that wouldn't be sustainable Yeah, we don't make much money. Yeah. not sustainable. You're right. We're a small company and we're just trying to do good. We go back to the principles and the values of why we started the company and that has driven our success and driven our challenges as well. It's a, it's a two-edged sword. But our business model is that we do sell online. We sell on Amazon to the market of campers and outdoors people for emergencies at home in the United States, there's been a 60% increase in power outages in the United States alone over the past 10 years, which is huge. Talking about sustainability, our country and many countries have a finite grid. The infrastructure has been built on a finite number of population, but the population keeps growing so, the infrastructure is not enough. And so we have solar energy, we have this need for alternative means of gaining electricity and the whole issue of oil being a finite amount. We can't survive by continuing this, kind of addiction to fossil fuels. So, I call this individualized infrastructure because it's made for, the off-grid lifestyle as well. And in places like Europe and in here, and for gardens, for events, for, you know, we have weddings, people that have weddings that love to give these as gifts to their guests. And we have a donation page as well, so our customers can give a light to one of our humanitarian missions and, that's how we are able to also donate. We, the company also donates a percentage of our profits to these humanitarian missions. Our biggest partners are the nonprofit partners that are also in disaster relief that are able to deploy our light in the thousands in different regions, like, Love Without Boundaries. They work in Cambodia, Uganda India, Guatemala, specifically for children's education, and they order our lights for their programs. There's the Hispanic Federation, which works directly with Puerto Rico and others. Operation Blessings, that's another nonprofit that we've partnered with, and they're actually in Myanmar right now where the earthquake just happened and two, I think 2000 people have been found dead. And we're able to get our lights through our partners to these regions immediately. We're also really thankful to people like you, Tom for sharing our story because part of the power of what we're doing and the power of impact is to be able to share stories that are purposeful and real and authentic in order to create resonance and resilience throughout our evolution. So thank you for having us. As, as you know, you're a light warrior as well, Thank you. And tell me about the materials used in the design of these lights, because, obviously you don't want to be bringing materials in which are plastic, which are non-recyclable, which don't degrade, you know? Talk to me a little bit about the process there of designing those and what they're made from. I was very fortunate to be a professor in material technology and I taught courses at Columbia and at Parsons on material sustainability. And I researched a lot of organic natural materials that are superior than plastic or petroleum based materials and over the years, I searched far and wide and found this material that is sail cloth material, which is very thin but extremely strong because the Solar Puff has this pattern of weave embedded in the surface, and that weave is triaxial. The triaxial pattern is actually what gives it strength. I needed a material that was strong enough to hold its form, but soft enough to fold at the same time and become extremely light. And it's sailcloth that you put on ships on the masts of boats, Right. it's UV coated. It's engineered for extreme weather and it's recyclable. We also have the helix, which is another type of thermoplastic that actually biodegrades. It's not going to clog up the soil if it ends up in a landfill. And our products are extremely durable. We've had some customers say that they've lasted eight to ten years. I've seen them used as a soccer ball in Syrian refugee camps. Quality is very important to us. It would be very easy for us to make something cheap and make higher margins. But we always go back to why we started this company and our principles, and value of durability is incredibly important. That's why people keep coming back to us. Our customers that came to us in 2015 with our first Kickstarter, they're still our customers to this day. This has been like one of our baseline beliefs in creating products. And where to next? What do you see coming next for Solight? Have you got more designs coming out? Have you got more places you want to go to? What are the plans going forward? We definitely want to keep being able to help in regions that are hit with natural disaster and it's a double-edged sword because we wanna help and it's because these terrible things happen, which are these disasters which keep on coming. And there there's more and more of them happening. So even in the United States there's been a huge increase in hurricanes and fires that have hit North Carolina, hurricane Helene. And then there are the fires in the Palisades that just happened this year last, last year. I think that with Lena there was fires in Maui. They're only going to continue. And so, we hope that we're still, know, we're gonna be there to make things better, to help whenever we can. Even though we're a small company, we're doing our best to do the right thing. And I hope to develop other products, larger products that can hold a larger charge so that we can charge computers as well. So that's on the horizon. This is what I have in, in the works so far. Okay, great left field. Question for you, Alice. If you could have any person or character, alive or dead real or fictional as a champion for sustainable light, who would it be, and why? I mean, the first guy that comes to mind is Albert Einstein because I read all of his writings. I think he's brilliant, funny, and, such a genius and yeah, he would, he would be fantastic. Thomas Edison also, I mean, he was somebody that was persevered. I mean, he thousands and thousands of prototypes before he came up with a light bulb. Eventually finding a bamboo wick that could sustain a light longer than any other material in order to get that light to last more than. You know, up to eight hours, which made it commercially viable for the light bulb. I mean, other people were around trying to do the same thing, but he was the one that was able to make this last up to eight hours. And that's why we know his name versus any of these other people that were trying to do the same thing. And in fact, because he found bamboo to be the right material for the wick, there's actually a little bamboo forest that's named after Thomas Edison in Japan, because of this. But anyway, I feel like I am quoting those two people a lot, but I feel like maybe I should, I mean, should I do Marie Curie because she's female? There are a lot of amazing female inventors out there. A lot of people that, that I admire. So it's very, that's a tough question, Tom. Sorry. That's okay. That's No worries. No a very good question. Thank you Sure we're, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Alice, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about? I can't think of anything. I feel like I, talked a lot about all of the points that I wanted to speak about. But if I were to, sum things up, I would say for the young people out there that are looking to make an impact, that have questions about how to start a company or how to create something more sustainable. I have a lot of faith in our youth these days. I think when I look at my son, he's so, well knowledged about everything that has to do with saving plastic, not spending too much on material things. Don't buy polyester for me, mom. I don't wanna wear polyester clothes because those create micro particles that go into the oceans that the fish eat, and that's gonna damage the coral reefs. And because of that, I feel like, kids have an incredible opportunity right now to make an impact by just really observing the world around you and being sensitised to any of the issues or problems. So like for design, I used to say, design is about projecting into the future what doesn't exist, and so is invention, and so is innovation and, and it's not about creating a solution to a problem, it's about problematising the solution, which is we have all these answers already out there, but these answers aren't perfect. They're not working. And they can always be challenged and become better. And so this is something that, I guess I'd like to leave with people and especially the youth in order for them to continue to innovate and bring light to a brighter future. Okay, great. Alice, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? You can just go to our website at solight, S-O-L-I-G-H-T hyphen design.com. There, we have all of our products and also our Give A Light page where you can also buy a light to donate to one of our humanitarian missions. We're also sold on Amazon as well, but it's better to just go to our website, solight dash design.com. Fantastic. Alice, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Tom, and this has been a wonderful experience. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.