A visit to a small hospital in northern Ghana changed Mahama Nyankamawu’s life forever. “It was dark, they had no electricity and the medicines they had had all gone bad,” recalled the 40-year-old, who went to the hospital after a car accident in 2014.
The experience inspired Nyankamawu to create Volta, a company that builds solar power projects for health clinics, schools and farms across Ghana.
Volta’s customers pay for 25% of the capital costs upfront, and the rest via monthly payments over two years. None of Nyankamawu’s customers have ever missed a payment, Nyankamawu said.
“Our model works best when it’s a substitute for people who are already using diesel generators,” he added. “They’re saving up to 45% on their costs by switching to solar.”
I met Nyankamawu at the Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco earlier this month, an annual gathering of energy leaders from 23 countries and the European Union. The meeting marked the first time the ministers met since more than 170 countries signed the Paris climate agreement to limit the global temperature rise to under 2C, a goal that won’t be met without strong domestic policies that give the businesses incentives to invest in a low-carbon future.
I often hear criticisms that businesses, which account for most of the manmade emissions that are causing global warming, aren’t doing their part to keep the rising temperatures in check. Surveys and anecdotal evidence show that many corporate leaders don’t see their role in this global effort.
But that’s not what I have seen. A growing number of companies are turning to renewable energy to reduce their carbon footprint. I am impressed with entrepreneurs like Nyankamawu and other business leaders who work on making renewable energy affordable and accessible. And they represent progress. Putting money in renewable energy, whether through power purchase agreements with big solar and wind farms in the US, or tiny household-sized solar projects in Africa, was a rarity even just five years ago.
Many Fortune 500 companies recognize a direct connection between climate change and their financial wellbeing. Earlier this month, a half-dozen major companies, including TD Bank and Interface, joined RE100, a coalition of businesses that are switching to 100% renewable electricity. The shift has been especially strong in the US, where large corporate buyers contracted a record 3.2 gigawatts of renewable energy last year, nearly 20% of the 16.4 gigawatts of renewables added to the US electric grid overall. That means tens of thousands of workers rely on solar and wind power to do their jobs, and that number will only go up.
One of the most impressive efforts I heard at the San Francisco meeting came from Lisa Jackson, who leads Apple’s environmental and social initiatives. Jackson talked about the company’s effort to use solar and wind energy to run its own global operations and the factories in China that make its iPhones and iPads, including a plan to bring online 2,000 megawatts of green energy there. The company would work with its suppliers there to build those projects.
Some of the most compelling stories came from Africa. Home to the world’s fastest growing population, the continent is a key front in the Paris climate agreement’s quest. In Tanzania, Off-Grid Electric allows homes and small businesses to install solar systems and pay for them via mobile phone payments. Off-Grid says it’s currently installing more than 10,000 solar units every month in Tanzania and Rwanda, and recently raised $70m from San Francisco-based DBL Partners and other investors to help hire more staff and expand operations.
More businesses will switch to renewable energy if they are able to finance it. We saw a record $329bn in global clean energy investment last year, but that falls short of the estimated $1tn that will be needed every year through 2050 to help achieve the 2C goal. A major emission producing country such as India, which aims to install 175 gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2022, will need an estimated $200bn to reach that milestone. The country attracted $10.9bn in clean energy investments last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
There is one group of investors who could help fill that gap, but they have yet to value renewable energy investments: institutional investors. They manage public pension, insurance and other funds that are worth trillions of dollars. These investors are dipping their toes in clean energy in US and Europe but remain on the sidelines in emerging markets, which they consider particularly risky.
Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, likened the challenge of fighting climate change to climbing Mount Everest: “We’ve just reached base camp.”
No doubt, getting to the top of the mountain will require huge participation from the business community globally.
The window of time to summit is now – and they’ll need to move quickly.
View all comments >