Bringing solar to emerging marketsFrans van den Heuvel – 29 September 2014

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Economics:Fossil fuel development and exploitation is becoming increasingly expensive

Energy security:Political conflict is driving a movement to ensure long-term economic prosperity

Environment:Climate change and the need to reduce carbon will drive sales of cleaner energy

Emergence:Urbanisation driving current and future energy supply/demand imbalance

We are in the twilight of a great energy era (1/2)

The global shift to clean technology is irreversible

3Last week the oil dynasty Rockefellers announced to divest from fossils …..

We are in the twilight of a great energy era (2/2)

1923

Sept 21, 2014

4Welcome to the Terrordome…..

Source: EIA, CIA World Bank, Bernstein analyses

The solar opportunity 1/2

5Recent analyst comment on grid parity highlights how solar is taking from utility profit pools

Growth of subsidy-free solar

The world’s largest solar bridge under

construction in London

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Solar investment in 2030:$3.2trn annually – 25% of all energy investmentSource: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

The solar opportunity 2/2

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Solarcentury

Founded in 1998, we have been around since the early days of the solar industry and are one of the most respected solar companies in the world.

Winner of multiple awards for growth, sustainability and innovation including the prestigious Queens Award for Enterprise

Leading ethical brand founded to address climate change, committed to a new CSR programme, donates 5% of annual profits to charity we founded, SolarAid

7Solar PV to off-set diesel generation and leapfrog current technologies

Clean energy in emerging markets

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Why SolarAid?

•>40% of world’s energy is consumed in the build environment.•Are others left in the dark?

Energy security

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A success story: spreading solar in emerging markets

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SolarAid is a success story; we’re working with the commercial sector to demonstrate that non-traditional markets are economically viable.

86% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population lives without electricity - 110 million households are reliant on kerosene, candles or batteries for light.

Annually, these households spend around $4.4 billion on expensive, dangerous, toxic kerosene.

SolarAid set up SunnyMoney in 2009 to serve these customers with good quality solar lighting.

The situation

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The Problem The Solution

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Selling Lights

FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013 FY 2014£0

£500,000

£1,000,000

£1,500,000

£2,000,000

£2,500,000

£3,000,000

£3,500,000

£4,000,000

£4,500,000

Light Sales - Revenue

FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013 FY 20140

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

700,000

Light Sales - Units

According to the World Bank ‘Lighting Global’ SunnyMoney are the largest distributer of solar lights in Africa

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Doing business differently• Self sustaining organisation – focused on making

SunnyMoney profitable

• ‘Smart-aid’ approach - sell lights through social enterprise SunnyMoney: creates sustainable markets and allows revenue to be recycled

• Self governing – key audience are customers

• Local knowledge and expertise critical

• Embedded ourselves in the market – making lots of mistakes – an appetite and culture for trial and error

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Why it works

• Solarcentury allowed us the flexibility to be truly innovative and independent

• We use market dynamics and customer feedback to define our model – not donor conditionality or shareholders

• Having a commercial partner sharing the same goals and visions supports our development as a charity/social enterprise

• We are a charity and social enterprise – which we can use interchangeably

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Leading the way

• Having the right leadership in place with a shared vision

• Putting our hat over the wall – our goal is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from Africa by 2020

• Using our experience and knowledge to advocate for change (VAT and tariffs/policy climate)

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Challenges along the way

• Making SunnyMoney profitable requires dexterity and flexibility

• Key barriers to market entry are trust and affordability

• Key issues for our business are ‘broken markets’ and stock outages

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Understanding our customers

Invest in getting to know them – we have teams in the field collecting information on our customers and non-customers – to date we’ve had 13,000 research interactions

In Tanzania over 70% of the households we talked to don’t have reliable income; this means that spending decisions are even more important. As Bannerjee says, ‘the poor have to be sophisticated economists just to survive.’

Challenges for customers are a lack of access to credit and market information.

‘Nearly all of the families said they would be very interested in buying a solar light but that they didn’t know where to buy it’. This proves that currently the market is constrained by supply not demand.

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The opportunity

Energy is now being recognised as an intrinsic part of the development process and key to alleviating poverty.

‘Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, environmental health, social fairness and opportunity” Ban Ki-Moon.

With climate change squeezing household incomes as prices of basic goods (food/water) go up, clean renewable (cheap) energy becomes more attractive.

Our customers save $70 which they spend on food, education and business inputs. Since 2009 SolarAid has collectively saved our customers over $285 million.

There is a demand, this is what we are meeting.

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Vallet is top of the class thanks to her solar study light

Frolence Kalogho bought a solar light for her daughter to help her complete her homework after dark. Frolence told us that “My daughter was failing a lot at school so I bought the solar light so that she could have more reading hours. My daughter now is number one in her class.”