[MUSIC] I want to pick you up on this issue of developing countries and the special sort of situation they might find themselves in in terms of fossil fuels. Because for us, perhaps in the UK, in Europe, the global north, it's a little bit easier to say we have common budgets, we have to transition to renewables, we're undertaking these steps and others. Whereas for some of those countries, it might be more difficult to do. And fossil fuels might be the easier solution, or seemingly easy solution that meets a lot of criteria. What's to be done about that in a developing country context? >> This is where we've really had breakthroughs in technology, in microgrids, in high efficiency LEDs, and just the drop of cost of solar panels. And right now, it's cheaper for many people in the developing world to have a micro solar system than to continue buying kerosene or having to haul wood. There's a technological force which is helping this transition along. As I said before, the scientists and the entrepreneurs have done a very good job. And these technologies are being rolled out increasingly rapidly in the developing world. I think there's been a very nice coupling with digital technologies, mobile payment systems have enabled the financing of micro goods systems. So this area is small but it's going to grow exponentially. So I think that just like the many developing countries did not have to lay millions of miles of copper wires for telephone systems and they went straight to mobile telephony. Many people on this planet are going to go straight to renewables. >> So there's a case for leapfrogging development. >> Yes, absolutely and it's because the mobile networks are already in place, the micro payment systems can be implemented. And the technology right now exists for very low cost solar panels, low cost high efficiency LED lighting, LCD televisions screens, highly efficient refrigeration units. >> The solutions are genuinely there. If you go to most sub-Saharan African countries, they could immediately implement a solar panel with some energy storage solution. And maybe mix that with some wind and some geothermal, say, in countries like Kenya. The solutions are there, they could be implemented in 10, 15 years. Additionally for sub-Saharan Africa, there are 600 million people who are nowhere near the grid, won't probably ever be on a grid. The future for renewables really and energy systems generally probably globally, are for distributed systems where you have local communities and local business being supplied by local renewable energy systems. And that's an opportunity for places like Africa or Southeast Asia to leapfrog what's happened in the West and move directly to distributed renewable energy systems. Maybe instead of using things like blockchain to have peer to peer pricing. >> What we've seen over the last 150 years with the development of centralized energy systems, when you had one simple source of energy that was extremely energy-dense. What you wanted to do was get that into a power station, burn it up, and send the resultant power out to wherever it was needed. And we've spent 150 years building those networks to get that power from A to B. What you have in the Global South is countries where those systems simply haven't been built. There are a number of countries where some of the systems are partially in place, but they are subject to a lot of theft. They are not necessarily robust or resilient. One of the things about a distributed energy system and one of the reasons it's actually appealing in the Global North as well, is this idea that distribution means resilience. It means that when one node goes down there are other sources of power. What makes it really exciting in parts of the world such as Africa and Asia, in those large countries with massive amounts of simply land and geography, is that you can put down a power station, you can put a solar farm in the middle of nowhere. You don't have to actually put down some cable and see that energy transmitted across 5,000 miles. The amount of power you lose simply by transmitting it makes it almost worthless. So to me, the idea that all over the world we can build our own, be it at an individual level which I think is further in the future, but at a community level. And have a robust and reliable way of generating clean electricity for our communities, is an incredibly powerful concept. And, in fact, can be done for factories, for industrial parks, there are different ways to blend those different power technologies together. >> So what are the concrete examples? Can you give an example of how this leapfrogging is occurring in countries in the Global South? >> One of my favorite examples is actually in Africa where a company is using, it's effectively, it's deploying small shacks covered in solar panels with charging points for mobiles. So it's also working in conjunction with microloans to actually make microloans to individuals within those villages who then use that phone to do business, do transactions. It works very closely with a lot of the leapfrogging that's actually happened with telephony, which has been a great example. What you see a great deal of is that there are no land lines, but everyone's got a mobile phone. So there are businesses operating in that way. So having that power source enables that spread of economic growth, that growth of independence, to spread across a nation. [MUSIC]
