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An Interview with Sasha Davis on the Economic Power of China

by Sasha Davis

April 9, 2018

This interview with Sasha Davis, a professor at University of Hawaii, Hilo, was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for frank news.

Recently, the economic power of China in the region is influencing many Asia-Pacific locales to question hosting U.S. bases. People in places like Okinawa, Guam, Saipan, and Jeju Island, and South Korea more generally with the THAAD controversy, are concerned about how hosting U.S. military activities hurts their ability to attract Chinese tourists and investment.

OK. Yeah, I believe that one of the things influencing the way in which some of the places in the region are viewing American bases, and more American military operations and such, is the fact that China is becoming economically more powerful in the region. There are islands all around, like Okinawa, but also further out in the Pacific like Guam, Saipan, that are increasingly interested in attracting Chinese investment and Chinese tourists. And in the case of Japan, like overall last year, the figure I believe is around 6.5 million visits from Chinese tourists, and many of those to Okinawa. And so this has really become one of the major engines of the economy in some of these places. And so there's been a reluctance on the part of some of these countries to increase the militarization of the islands in a place like Okinawa, where the U.S. military is so prominent. I think there's a belief that some of the military landscapes being so close to some of the tourist oriented landscapes, can be a bit of a conflict for the industry.

What is the official U.S. military response to the pressures we’re facing from China?

Oh that's a good question. You know, I think that the U.S. military response has been a little more focused on what the Chinese military has been doing, as opposed to some of the investments and economic pressures. Things such as the way the U.S. has been doing the freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea, or the recent visit by the USS Carl Vinson I believe to Vietnam, as a way of sort of shoring up security relations with Vietnam. Kind of to show some solidarity against the Chinese there. But I haven't seen as much in terms of U.S. military pushback against the economic influences of China in some of these places. And I think part of that is that it's not necessarily read as a security threat. But I’m sure it's on the minds of military planners and people in the Department of Defense in Washington D.C. I'm just not sure if I've seen much of a military response to that Chinese economic influence.

Should there be a military response?

Well I'm not sure if the response is necessarily a military one as much as a political and potentially economic one. I think that it comes down to a little more with the U.S. you know, thinking about how it shores up its security relationships in the region. I think it needs to think about the fact that from the perspective of these islands, they have to look at the financial opportunities the United States might be bringing. And I'm not sure if that's today, quite as obvious as the potential positives of Chinese investments, or Chinese tourist spending in that part of Asia and the Pacific. And I think one thing that needs to be done is there probably needs to be more coordinated efforts with the State Department and the Department of Interior for places like Micronesia that fall under those parts of the U.S. federal government. Things like trying to cut aid to those countries, or having any kind of restrictions about migration abilities from places like Micronesia. It's something that isn't going to attract or keep those countries kind of oriented towards the United States.

I think the U.S. has to think about the fact that they have to negotiate with some of these countries knowing that the Chinese are trying to influence and negotiate there too.

How do you compare potential economic opportunity from China to say, security from the U.S?

Yeah it's interesting because I was just reading, and I think it was in some of the press coverage of the of the U.S. aircraft carrier visiting Vietnam, where there was a quote by somebody in Vietnam that says, you know, everybody likes the Chinese money but nobody trusts the Chinese. And of course maybe that's a little bit of a hyperbole saying everybody wants the money, and everybody doesn't trust them. But I think that is definitely an attitude I've seen across the region where a lot of the countries are very interested in the economic development, but they are wary of what the ulterior motives might be of that investment in places like in Micronesia, or Guam, or Saipan. There are real concerns over, is the Chinese government trying to buy influence? Or potentially through these large infrastructure projects, potentially putting military assets in there later. That comes up both locally and in U.S. concerns for the region.

Do you have any particular fears about what those consequences might be?

Yeah, I think some of the perspective I try to take from doing research in the region is to take the view of trying to kind of stand on the islands in the region and look outward, and look at what are the things that say the Chinese offer or what are the pressures coming from China, or the influences. And then looking at the United States and saying, what are the pressures or influences coming from the United States? And I think the islands that are there in the middle have to kind of try and navigate their own path through this larger context. And I think that there's been a pretty big concern about the consequences of American military activities in places like Guam, in places like Okinawa, and also in places like the Marshall Islands.

I think traditionally there has been some opposition that has kind of arisen in these islands because of the negative environmental and social consequences of that militarization. And so this is where a lot of the people, that are like the independence movement, say that more sovereignty movements in the region are usually kind of against U.S. political power or what have you. But now China is kind of entering the scene and there are a lot of concerns about if the islands in the region cozy up to China. Is this sort of changing one kind of imperial power for another? You know, is one more dangerous than the other, and this sort of thing, or destabilizing. On the other hand it also presents some opportunities now for governments in the region to kind of play one power off of the other. For things like getting investment, or aid, or just like you know, political attention.

I think China has been doing a pretty effective job of sort of doing a charm offensive if you will, in places like Micronesia. They'll have the head of Micronesia come to China and roll out the red carpet, and the fans, and promise aid and all the stuff.

Versus the kind of response they get when they arrive in Washington D.C. which is that they're kind of ignored to a large extent. I think those things matter.

And in terms of the fears for the region I think mine sort of center on obviously hoping that there are still peaceful relationships that are maintained between the U.S. and China. Partially because if you look at most of the military strategies that involved military or military conflict, they involve those battles happening over those islands, that use them as bases and as battle spaces. Particularly around Okinawa, the East and South China Sea. But also further back with places like Guam, which would obviously be targeted. So I think from the perspective of those islands, they would want to make sure that those relationships between the big powers don't really sour.

Do you think economic pressure from China could change the dynamic between the U.S. and South Korea?

I think that there could be some. You know I certainly don't see the South Korean government abandoning their military alliance with the United States as long as there is a North Korea that is threatening. I can't imagine that that would be seen as kind of politically palatable. But yeah, the rising economic influence of China does mean that South Korea has to think more about kind of watching their steps in a sense. In terms of the way in which U.S. militarization in South Korea is perceived as being a threat to China. I think the THAAD controversy is a great example of this, where the South Korean economy, particularly the tourist economy, but also some of their exports and some of their companies that operate in China, were absolutely hammered by what is essentially a Chinese boycott of South Korea after they agreed to allow U.S. missile defense to come into South Korea. Because China looked at it as being aimed towards them, or as kind of destabilizing the deterrence that Chinese missiles could play in Asia. And so I think that South Korea has to be conscious of that.

But in terms of like, the base in Pyeongtaek and that sort of thing, you know, there are other domestic concerns in South Korea from people that want less dependence on U.S. military, or chafe at the local effects of militarization, of the operation of the bases, and the way the land was taken around Pyeongtaek, and then some of the environmental and social problems with the exercises.

But I think overall, that South Korea maybe now, sort of has to think about playing both sides a little more than they may have been in recent decades, and I think maybe a model for this would be like the Philippines. The Philippines was once, even a few years ago, very staunchly pro U.S, very anti China. The stuff from the South China Sea was really reaching a fever pitch and then politically things shifted. Where now you've got the Philippines really playing both sides and looking for Chinese investment. They're kind of putting the U.S. at more of an arms length, at least rhetorically. But yet they also are still certainly keeping those military connections in place in the Philippines, and don't want to alienate the U.S. so much that they feel like they might be at the mercy of Chinese power in the South China Sea. So I could see South Korea kind of taking a similar tact. But you know, the South Korean leadership is a little more reasonable than the Philippine leadership right now. But I think their context is somewhat similar.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah. I mean one thing that I think is important to kind of reiterate, is one of the things that I think is an under-appreciated aspect of the US's ability to maintain security relationships in these places, like South Korea, or Okinawa, or Guam, or other areas in the Pacific. I think that Americans need to understand that being next to these large military installations is seen as a sacrifice, as a burden. You know, there are major environmental and social consequences of doing that, and Americans shouldn't take this for granted. That these will always be there, and they can operate however they want to without having to care what people in Okinawa or Guam or South Korea think. Because many bases and training ranges have been negatively impacted by people in these places having opposition to the bases. So I think it's important that Americans recognize that more complex terrain these bases are in.

I agree we just take it as it is. It’s important to think critically about it, which obviously you do as a profession. But for everybody else to look at it through that lens.

Another key thing like said, I don't know if Americans appreciate, is even if there's an agreement between say the U.S. and Japanese government, if enough people in Okinawa don't want that base to be there, then it will get worse. It doesn't get built, or gets delayed for years, and years, and years, and so there really needs to be, I think more engagement at the local levels and recognition that things have to be done differently. I think to kind of respect local wishes in some of these areas.

What about in other regions? How is China’s presence in Africa affecting U.S. presence there?

Well I don't have a lot of on the ground knowledge of what's going on other than I know the different U.S. military installations and operations that have been going on across the Sahel, and also in the Horn of Africa, and how China is increasing both military presence in those areas side by side with their investments. And you look at the whole, One Belt One Road project, of China developing the infrastructure to connect China to Africa, particularly to East Africa. And they are having more economic, political, and military operations and focus on that region. And it's also a region that now the U.S. is paying a little more attention to as well. Partially because of the existence of the different kind of fundamentalist Islam groups in the area and their connections to terrorism in Africa. So I think there are some similarities there with Africa as well as in the Pacific. I think that they operate in those regions where, it's sort of between the empires if you will.

Africa - edit

You have these larger powers like China or like the United States, or you know even large countries like India, that are kind of trying to project their ability to facilitate their security projects in those areas. And when you look at places like Africa, or even the Western Pacific, they're on the edges, and the contact zone between these larger powers, and they’re borders of a kind. And so I think that it's because those areas are unstable, and because it's not necessarily clear, kind of, who's sphere of influence they may be under, it's a place where there's potential for conflict or at least for competition between the different great powers. And so because of that it can definitely cause destabilization both in Africa or in the Indian Ocean, or even out in the Pacific.

Does it seem like a play for hegemony on China’s part?

Absolutely it is.

You know it's interesting because as you know, some of the literature on China's traditional conceptualizations of hegemony, and what they politically strive for — a lot of their political tactics and strategies have been about preventing US hegemony. Not so much necessarily to produce their own. Because there's actually a lot of concern that what comes with being a global hegemon in terms of you know, all that you've got to do to back it up militarily. It costs a lot of money. Chinese strategies that I read about, tend to imagine their preference as sort of a multipolar world where Chinese interests are kind of not hemmed in as much by a U.S. kind of hegemony. But that's not necessarily replacing it. But certainly they want more wiggle room. And I think some of their moves towards the west, towards Africa, into places like Central Asia, come from a concern with U.S. power in the western Pacific

Chinese military and political strategists read the U.S. strategies of what war in the Pacific might look like. And most of the U.S. strategies are centered around being able to blockade China's east coast, not let trade in or out, and keep them hemmed in.

A lot of what they've been doing is about creating a back door to that, creating rail links to Southeast Asia, or Central Asia. Energy supplies making them much less susceptible to U.S. naval and air power in the Pacific.

I think that plays into their strategies of aiming towards Central Asia and towards Africa. It is also about kind of having an escape route I guess from an American power that's amassed in the western Pacific.

Right. That makes sense. Well, thank you again for your time.

Sure! No problem.

Becoming Prosumers Of Energy

by Ruth Santiago

February 16, 2019

This interview with Ruth Santiago, a lawyer who works with community and environmental groups in southeastern Puerto Rico, was conducted and condensed by frank news.

How do you think of energy democracy?

Energy democracy stems from the effects of energy coloniality and how certain jurisdictions have been used for extractive and exploitative practices and have become sacrifice zones for operations that create great wealth for other people over time.

How did you get involved in this work?

I got involved because of proximity. We have this saying in one of the groups I work with that says, "The environment unites us and identifies us." Not just the subtropical dry forest, and mangrove forest, and salt flats, and offshore cays, but also things that impact that environment – they also unite us and define us.

I was raised to a certain extent in Salinas. I spent my formative, adolescent years here. I was born in the South Bronx, my parents were part of the return migration to Southeastern Puerto Rico. They were from a municipality that's a little bit further east of Salinas, but very similar in many ways in terms of being part of the sugarcane monoculture, a high concentration of Afro descendent people, and real situations of struggle and survival. They decided to return to Puerto Rico when I was 12. I was raised along this Southeastern coast on and off from that time. One of my memories of growing up here as an adolescent was the Aguirre Power Complex being built in the early 70s. It was something that came to us. We did not come to the nuisances. Nuisance was built where we are.

The government of Puerto Rico tried Operation Bootstrap. Rapid industrialization and a very intense industrialization program that affected Guayama with industry coming in. First, light manufacturing and then the petrochemical industry. Then, pharmaceuticals, which are still very present. These energy plants were meant to serve more than the communities. These big, central station, fossil fuel plants were meant to provide energy to those heavy industrial uses that consumed and required a lot of energy.

What we saw in two places in Southern Puerto Rico, one here in Salinas and the other over in Guayanilla in Southwestern Puerto Rico, was how the power plants were set up very close to the petrochemical industries. We had the Phillips Puerto Rico Core Petro Refinery. Aguirre Power Complex was basically in service to that and other heavy industrial users. People were told they would get jobs. They said, "Oh, we're going to generate upwards of 2,000 jobs." People were a little skeptical and concerned about how that would impact the possibility of safe fishing at least. They were told it would not be impacted. Ultimately, what happened was Phillips did not generate anything close to 2,000 jobs and folded after a few decades, but did leave a terrible legacy of contamination to air, water, and land. People lost a lot of their ability to do the subsistence fishing even.

Aguirre Power Complex came in stages. They had two power plants in one. In 1972, they set up what was known as the Thermoelectric Plant. Again, people were told they’d get jobs from this. Again, the plant does not hire many local residents. It’s estimated there was 20-25% local hires, and the rest came from all over, anywhere but Salinas and Guayama. The same thing with the Combined Cycle units, because as I said, it's two plants in one.

At the dawn of the 20th century Puerto Rico got its first coal-burning power plant and the only coal-burning power plant that was established by AES. They're a Delaware corporation with their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, but they do business all over the world. In November 2002, they started a brand-new, so called clean-coal power plant. It's been disastrous. Again, people were told, this is going to be beneficial in terms of stimulating the local economy and bringing down the electric rates. None of that happened. What has happened is that people are getting more and more exposed to pollutants and heavy metals and public health is being impacted.

Your work seems two-fold. One is dedicated to producing energy that is actually clean and that will not leave a legacy of toxicity. The other is in trying to invert the power structure of how that energy is produced and sold. Correct?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Can you talk about your work in both areas and how they come together?

We have done a lot of resistance work, and a lot of work to promote community alternatives on energy and sustainability issues. There's a long history of activism here. I became more active in energy issues around 2003. We started participating in the monitoring of the Aguirre Power Complex and how it impacts public health, air quality, and water. Both the sea water and the potable water. The only source of potable water here is the South Coast Aquifer. That was monitoring.

We started participating in different administrative proceedings with a group called Comite Dialogo Ambiental, the Environmental Dialogue Committee. Then we participated in proceedings against PREPA, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, but also the AES Corporation.

I've done both administrative proceedings and litigation in courts related to different impacts from those plants, and most recently a company called Excelerate Energy out of Texas was proposing to build what they call an offshore gas port and a marine natural gas pipeline, that we just defeated. It would have been running right through the middle of Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and impacted corals and seagrass beds and offshore cays and all kinds of things, and the ability of people to do subsistence fishing and ecotourism and otherwise just use and be in the environment.

We've done a huge amount of work with respect to the coal combustion residuals or coal ash waste related to the AES Power Plant. The coal ash waste is a concentration of heavy metals, toxic heavy metals that were being spread all over, and is now being accumulated at the AES Power Plant site in Guayama, Puerto Rico.

That summarizes the energy resistance work that we've done. In terms of going beyond resistance and seeking to build the solutions and the alternatives, we've done a lot of environmental education, both with Comite Dialogo Ambiental Inc. and another group, an umbrella organization called, Eco Development Initiative.

Prior to the hurricane in conjunction with IDEBAJO and a community board called Junta Comunitaria del Poblado Coqui, in Salinas, we helped start what is known as the Coqui Solar project. It's a community solar initiative. It was started with lots of workshops and consultation and collaboration with professors, like Efrain O’Neill from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, which is the technical campus here.

It was, for years, before the hurricane, quite a struggle to get people to understand, to want to move towards solar energy, especially rooftop solar communities. It was going very slow. We were certainly doing the education work and the policy work, but not getting very far on the ground in terms of actual implementation of the first steps, the pilot project for the solar community. But right after the hurricane when it became clear to, I think, everyone in Puerto Rico and probably anyone familiar with Puerto Rico that the current electric grid does not work for the people of Puerto Rico. People have been much more receptive to the Coqui Solar project and initiatives of solar communities and other alternatives to central station, fossil fuel generation.

Can you tell me how a solar community works?

That's something that's being developed right now. The way people in Coqui Solar envision it is people who have the appropriate rooftops, usually cement, which is not the case for everyone, are able to come together to think about and work on generating energy using PV systems on their rooftops. It's certainly much more than just everyone in the community having PV equipment. This is beyond just a technological solution. It's about the social agreements necessary to make that energy and that technology serve community needs in the most efficient way.

Are you seeing a lot of progress in new ways of approaching energy? From the community, but also from a municipal government level?

That's really hard to answer. Certainly with the mind set and attitudes. There's much more receptiveness to the things that we've been talking about for years about solar communities. That has definitely changed and there's a lot more interest and it's a very dynamic situation with respect to energy. After the hurricane, honestly, people realized we're basically on our own here and the government, local, federal, municipal, comes to help us. We have to figure out these solutions.

We're seeing a lot more on the formal scale. A group called ACONER, the Association of Renewable Energy Consultants and Contractors, say they're doing five to six times the number of installations they were prior to the hurricane.

Things have definitely changed. We don't know exactly how much.

There is what can be called, lip service. A lot of lip service about renewable energy which is dangerous, especially with the government of Puerto Rico. They're saying they're adopting the 100% renewable energy goal for 2050, and I think 50% by 2040, but their actions are promoting lots of natural and fracked gas. It's a tricky situation in that sense because you hear everyone saying we adopt renewable energy, but not only are they putting the money elsewhere, they're also talking about a kind of renewable energy that's not community-based,.

What we're seeing is that the government is being pushed by every energy company you can imagine. It seems everyone has an interest in doing some kind of project here, including at utility scale. That it is not the same as the kind of alternatives we're talking about in terms of solar communities.

Why is this an urgent issue for you right now?

We saw here in Puerto Rico, that it's a matter of life or death. People need to take this into their own hands, energy by and for the people. Become more than just passive consumers but actual producers of energy and control their means of production.

We knew before the hurricanes, and we experienced it afterwards. This huge and deadly hurricane was compounded by this terrible electric infrastructure system. It's not serving the people of Puerto Rico in a real way. Maybe that was the best we could do at some point, but that's no longer the situation here and we an opportunity to do things differently. To do better. Much better.

Energy Access Is The Foundation Of True Democratization

by Shazia Khan

February 13, 2019

This interview with Shazia Khan, an environmental lawyer, expert in off-grid clean energy solutions, and founder of EcoEnergy, was conducted and condensed by frank news.

Can you tell me about your background and how you came to this work?

I'm a Pakistani-American. I visited Pakistan a lot as a child, and speak the language, so I have a lot of personal ties there. My professional background is as an environmental lawyer. Energy is my area of specialization. I started my career at the World Bank, but had this idea in my mind, even when I was in law school. How do we take something like energy access and make it a priority for the private sector? Which is often times the group that has the resources to make the changes that need to be changed. What can you structure to create incentive for them to get involved and support a social mission or goal?

The idea came in 2001, but since then so much has changed. This concept of social enterprise and entrepreneurship, which didn't have a name back then, started to evolve in a really beautiful way. A lot of companies in the private sector, and a lot of investment firms, decided that a triple bottom line, including an environmental and a social impact component to their investment decisions, was important. For whatever reason, it's important to them, whether it's part of the PR campaign, or whether it's genuinely important to them, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that some resource dollars are now being allocated towards social impact projects.

While I was at World Bank, my boss's boss was working on the Inga Dam Power Project. The World Bank decided they were going to increase their renewable energy portfolio by 20%. They started by building huge hydropower plants all over the world. The Inga Dam Power Project would have the ability to electrify all of Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East, but they put it in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was and still is, quite conflict ridden.

Even if somehow the energy that was generated wasn't all diverted for industrial or commercial purposes, how was it going to trickle down to people living off the national electric grid? Would there be an incentive to electrify those people? The way energy access has unfolded in the West is through government subsidized programs. There's been grid expansion so that anybody, no matter how remote, within the country, will be electrified. But emerging economies and frontier markets don't have the money to do that. So what can they do? One thing they can do is leverage technology. Mobile technology has made a lot of things possible that weren't possible 20 years ago, certainly not 50 years ago.

I started thinking about, is there a more grassroots approach to electrification, and does it have to be as expensive as it is now? Does it have to be that a power plant has to be built, it has to cost millions of dollars, sometimes billions of dollars, and then need to be very labor intensive? Even after the fact, the costs are so high, is the customer whose been connected able to pay for that service? Maybe not. I run across people all the time where power lines go over their homes in rural Pakistan, and they choose not to be connected because it might cost them $60 or $70 a month. The reason it's so expensive is because they're having to cover the cost of building that infrastructure.

What we do is called distributed solar. It's taking small solar home systems and putting them on the roofs of homes and small businesses. Some people are like, "That's cute, but it's not a long term solution. You really need to wait for the infrastructure for the grid connectivity."

And to me, that's like someone saying, "Well your cell phone's really cute, but you should really be waiting for the infrastructure for a landline to be built into your house." That's ridiculous.

That's really antiquated, and as soon as people found that cellular phones were actually much more convenient and much cheaper, they started adopting them in a widespread manner. That's happened all over the world, and wasn't anticipated. In this same way, I feel that distributed solar can be adopted, deployed rapidly, much more efficiently, and cheaply, than traditional grid expansion.

I did field work in 2008 in Pakistan, and in 2009 launched a non-profit called Eco Energy Finance. The purpose of Eco Energy Finance was to build a business case for affordable solar energy for off-grid people in Pakistan. We had to do extensive market research first to understand who this group of people were, what all the different segments were, and then what their purchasing power was? What their purchasing power was genuinely. Not, "Let's shove this product down their throats and hope that they can afford it, but what can they actually afford? And can we match a technology and a product to them, and distribute it to them?”

I met my co-founder in 2010. He was working on energy access surveys, and I had just received a very small grant. We decided to team up and build a skeletal team of 12 people to go and collect this data. We went to 44,000 households. Really trying to understand the true picture of what their lives were. We wanted to understand their consumer preferences without any sort of bias. What type of technology or what use cases are really going to fit their lifestyle? Then we spent three years market building.

We tested a number of different products, and within that time, a new technology became available. It's called "Pay-As-You-Go Solar." The concept is that in the same way somebody in a developing country will go every month and pay for their cell phone. Pay-As-You-Go technology for solar allows you to do the same thing. You go to the same mobile money agent and you give them a fee – we can remotely unlock the corresponding amount of electricity to them, and they get an automatic receipt on their cell phone. If they don't pay, we can shut the system off remotely. When they do pay again, we can turn it back on. It's just like a cell phone.

Only 13% of people in Pakistan have bank accounts. We're, at the same time, generating a credit score for them and deciding who we're going to take a bet on because ultimately what we're doing is financing the cost of a solar home system for them. We're buying it, they pay us a deposit, and then they give us monthly payments until the system is theirs. They can also pay rent every month and we can just perpetually rent the system to them.

We did that for seven years, had 200 customers, and a repayment rate of over 85%, which is pretty high. We decided, "Okay, this is a commercially viable model that we can take to investors." So we re-launched as Eco Energy Global. Eco Energy Finance, the non-profit still exists and we will use it again to go and explore other markets, but Eco Energy Global went out to raise investment money.

Things are going well, but it's been a long road.

To clarify, you’re using off-grid solar as your primary energy system? Do you feel like that's the future of energy? That everything will be private?

I think we'll get a happy medium. For instance, our customers all have these independent solar systems on their houses. But that's because they're coming from having zero demand, to now having a little bit. Eventually we’ll have to connect them. We’re going to be piloting a mini grid next year. I think what will end up happening is that people will either have community based micro or mini grids, and they will be able to plug and play the systems they already have into that system.

Alternatively, in areas that are much more established, I think there will be a way for private, maybe community based solar to feed into and supplement the grid that already exists. I don't think in developed countries the grid is going away necessarily. It's relatively affordable. It's relatively efficient. But I think there are other ways to have an interface between these newer technologies where people feel like they have more say and more control in the fuel source. People will start pushing towards renewable and demand that of their utility companies. As long as there's a way to integrate new energy capacity being generated into those systems, I think that's where a lot of the work and the evolution will come.

With solar and wind I worry about resiliency. When you're dependent on something natural that you can't control, and there is no mass process for storing energy, what happens in a scenario where there is no sunshine, or too much sunshine? How do you deal with that?

That's a really great question, and that's becoming an increasingly important question as time goes on. There's this race for storage capacity. How do you take renewables and store them? I think a lot more innovations will come out of that. In a country like Pakistan with very high solar radiation, it's not as much of an issue just because it's sunny all the time.

Does too much sun ever cause outages?

No. Our customer will be able to power the product for four hours during the day, and then they'll have, say 16 hours of power. There is a battery being used. There is a battery in the system. The batteries will have to get larger and larger and more and more efficient. It's not a problem to us right now, but that will be a problem for the whole industry moving forward.

A race in the tech to create storage.

Yes.

How affordable is solar?

We've got a solution that's a four watt solution that costs $35 a system. Somebody will pay a couple dollars a month for 18 months until they pay it off. Then there's a larger system that's a 12 watt, and costs $80. People will pay $9 a month until they pay that off. Then there's the one we sell the most, the 50 watt system, and that costs $100. Whatever configuration a person wants, we can supply them with that. Then like I said, we're going to be piloting a mini grid soon too.

What we really look to do is figure out what people are currently spending and then try something comparable in cost to, or less than, what they are already spending. A lot of the small business owners, for instance, don't usually use kerosene, they use diesel generators, but that diesel generator might cost $35 a month. We can offer them something for $28 a month, and as they're paying $28 dollars a month to us and paying off the product, the fuel source becomes free. Whereas a diesel generator you have to pay in perpetuity.

Are you looking also to integrate this idea into U.S. energy systems?

Probably not to be honest with you. There's 1.4 billion people globally who are completely off the grid, zero electricity. We will look more at markets similar to Pakistan. We're looking at Afghanistan next. I'm really interested in looking at overlooked markets, and for whatever reason, people are not interested in going into these countries, but there's definitely a demand. Bringing something as basic as electricity could be life changing.

We're not the only ones doing this. I would say globally there's about 15-20 entrepreneurs just like me who do this in frontier markets. I met colleagues that are working in the Philippines, all over east and west Africa, Vietnam. Any place there's a high density population and a huge off grid population is a good place for us to go to.

Energy access is a basic infrastructure people need to improve the quality of their life. Electricity is an underlying basic infrastructural need that needs to be in place before anything else can be delivered.

Energy access for us is a starting point and a very, very critically important one because it's a foundation to so many other things, and to true democratization.

If somebody has to walk eight hours a day to go and collect fuel wood, they're contributing to deforestation, and that eight hours a day could be spent doing something more productive. As far as countries like the United States, what I see happening is that consumers have demands unlike the consumers of 20, 30, 50 years ago. People care about where their money is going, where their dollar is going, and they want to know that it's being used in a way that drives what their personal values are. Consumers will probably be demanding more and more clean energy, to be integrated into the traditional grid system. The technology to become grid independent if you're a person that wants to do that, is becoming available. So, that might happen too.

I wonder how we'll be able to participate in clean energy on a large scale in Western countries with our current grid.

It takes, on average in a developing country, nine years to have a grid line built out to you and hook you onto it. That's somebody's entire childhood. Being an environmentalist with my family originating in Pakistan, I was thinking, this is a country of 210 million people. It's about to be the fifth largest country in the world in terms of population, and the population's not slowing like it is in India or in China. How are we going to meet the demand of these new people? Two thirds of the population is under the age of 35. We need to figure out ways to meet the demand. They're going to continue to have growing energy needs.

How do you define energy democracy?

Democratization means giving people access to the basic infrastructure that's available to people in other parts of the country. If you extrapolate from that globally, developing countries are not able to contribute to their local or national economies, or to the world economy, because they don't have access to basic infrastructure, and that's why they're not able to break the cycle of poverty.

Globally, there needs to be a democratization of energy, because it's one of the fastest ways to allow people to break the cycle of poverty and enable them to contribute to their household and to the local and national economy.

It has to be done. Now it’s just how are we going to do it, and how can we do it quickly, and can we think of new ways to do it? Why do we have to rely on antiquated ways of doing things now that we have new technology? It's an equalizer.

International development experts have figured out it's really important for developed countries to help developing countries have democratized energy, and for everybody in these countries to have access to basic infrastructure, like clean drinking water, electricity, healthcare, and education. It makes for a much more stable population.

Any time we speak with or work with the U.S. government, there is a clear recognition that if the United States wants to spend their money on security, outside of military aid, building basic infrastructure and making sure people have access to basic infrastructure, is good for security.

That's interesting.

We need people to have a chance at living within a certain standard. You don't know where the next major insight or breakthrough is going to come from. If people don't have a fighting chance to develop a thought or an idea, because they're so focused on meeting their basic needs, those innovations won't come to light. A rising tide lifts all boats.

If we can leverage technology to make energy access quickly and cheaply and efficiently, I think it's a win-win globally. It's definitely a priority globally. It's one of the sustainable development goals. It's Number 7 in the Universal Energy Act, so there is a recognition globally that this should be a priority, and it's just a matter of getting there.

There are a lot of us working on it, we'll get there eventually.

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