Why Humanitarian Aid Now Depends on Energy Strategy

In this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I chat with David Nicholson, Mercy Corps' Chief Climate Officer, about their impactful work at the intersection of climate resilience, energy access, and humanitarian action. Mercy Corps operates across 42 countries, tackling critical issues around food and water security, governance, and economic opportunity—all with a climate focus. 

David explains why energy access, often overlooked in climate adaptation, is vital for vulnerable communities. We dive into the power of renewable microgrids and solar-powered solutions that enable cold storage and water pumping, helping farmers preserve produce and communities manage water resources in increasingly extreme climates. David shares insights into projects like a solar mini-grid in an Ethiopian displacement camp, which is providing electricity and boosting economic resilience for 18,000 people.

We also discuss the challenges of driving energy solutions in fragile regions, from funding obstacles to the perceived risks that discourage private investment. David advocates for a ‘just energy transition’ to address these barriers, one that not only prioritises decarbonisation but includes the world’s most climate-impacted communities.

If you're keen to learn about the critical role of energy access in climate adaptation, the emerging clean energy solutions for vulnerable areas, and how organisations like Mercy Corps are shaping a more resilient future, tune in to this episode. You won’t want to miss this insight into climate justice at the frontline.

Sign up to Climate Confident+ for deep dive analysis of the major climate and energy stories of the day.

Transcript

Copy

David Nicholson: 0:03

We're now putting half as much of public money into this challenge of access than we were in 2019. That is a signal of the challenge that we're, up against here. By the same token, even without this public support, the amount of investment from a private perspective, we're seeing going into the energy transition is growing and growing significantly. So it takes much less public and philanthropic capital now to stimulate private investment than it used to

Tom Raftery: 0:31

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 195 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping the podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. To become a supporter. You simply click on the support link in the show notes of this, or any episode or visit. Tiny url.com. Slash climate pod. Now in today's episode, I'm talking to David Nicholson, the Chief Climate Officer of Mercy Corps. And in upcoming episodes. I'll be talking to Ana Nacvalovaite from the University of Oxford, would we be talking about sovereign wealth funds and their impact on climate. John Lang CEO of the Net Zero Tracker, Chris Kruger CEO of AYK Energy, and Katie Anderson from the Environmental Defense Fund where we'll be talking about methane. So some really, really good episodes coming up. But back to today. And as I mentioned, I'm talking to David Nicholson. David, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

David Nicholson: 2:11

Well, thank you, Tom. Thank you for having me. My name is David Nicholson. I'm the chief climate officer for Mercy Corps, the global humanitarian and development organization.

Tom Raftery: 2:19

Okay. Can you tell us a little bit more about Mercy Corps? I mean, I know you said it's global, but you know, talk to me about whereabouts it operates, how many people are involved, what the scope of the organization is, what is it you're doing for people, that kind of thing.

David Nicholson: 2:35

Yeah, absolutely. So, Mercy Corps has been around for, almost four decades now. And, during that period, we've been working multiple, many countries around the world, supporting people suffering from oppression, extreme poverty, and increasingly the climate crisis. And helping to build resilient and productive, just communities. Currently, Mercy Corps works in 42 countries around the world. I have around 6, 000 colleagues now, out doing the hard work in those 42 countries. And it really spans the spectrum. In some of those instances, we are responding to very acute humanitarian needs. We have teams working currently in places like Sudan suffering from a now long ongoing political conflict that's causing a large amount of displacement and associated challenges. We also have teams in places of more protracted crisis where we're trying to figure out how do you cope with. The impacts of the climate lens on top of existing challenges that have been around for many years parts of sub Saharan Africa that this confluence of climate change and conflict to really driving humanitarian crisis and not an ongoing sort of barriers to development places like DRC, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria through to places that are a little bit further along a little bit more stable and a little bit further along their current trajectory places like Colombia and Indonesia that have many challenges of their own, but it's a slightly different kinds of context that we work in. So it's quite a wide range across all of those places that through lines for Mercy Corps is we look at a set of outcomes that we think, all human beings deserve. We look to increase food security and water security as sort of fundamental building blocks of resilience and development as well as good governance and peace building and economic opportunity. And those are the four outcomes that any of our work across the world is driving towards my role at Mercy Corps is as the chief climate officer to ensure that. We're able to not only understand how climate crisis is impacting communities that we partner with around the world, but ensure that we as an organization are best set up to try and advance those positive outcomes we're seeking in the face of this sort of dynamic risk environment that we're now working in.

Tom Raftery: 4:43

Could you share a little bit about your journey to becoming the first ever Chief Climate Officer for Mercy Corps? You know, What kind of sparked the passion for becoming, for combining humanitarian work with climate action?

David Nicholson: 4:55

Sure, I thought, you know, I'm not a climate scientist. I often like to tell people what I'm not because people hear climate change and think you must be a climate scientist or, even an environmental scientist, and I'm neither I had a passion throughout my life for the natural world and for the environment and combined that with an interest in sort of global development issues in my early career, I ended up going to graduate school to study sustainable development as a broad based topic of interest of mine and ended up studying it. Focusing in on climate and environmental issues as things that sort of sparked an interest in me and just, you know, this is. 15, 16 years ago now, but even at that point seems clear that this was the emerging threat that was likely to undermine a lot of global peace and security and development that we were seeking. So, I took an interest in this combination of topics, at the time, environmentalism and climate things was sort of put in this bucket of. This is what the environmentalists do and they weren't, it wasn't really very human centered, but these things came together quite clearly for me. I had the opportunity to work on a, to spend sort of cut my teeth early career in the island of San Andreas, which is a small archipelago in the Caribbean, which is part of Columbia. And, you know, when you work on small islands you sort of get to see how closely connected the ecosystems and human systems are. This was a time where we were building out a marine protected area, trying to figure out what sustainable livelihoods look like in a place where, the through line between changes to how you manage the ocean to, people's livelihoods is very, very close. And I learned a ton from our local partners and the civil society groups in San Andreas are really driving that work. And it really helped me sort of connect these things together. So I had an early career that tried different parts of the climate change conundrum. That was partly adaptation work, but there was also some clean energy involved in there, but trying to grapple with climate risk and how do you restore and manage ecosystems in a changing environment. I got to work with a ton of environmental scientists and learn a lot. I spent some time in East Africa then. I was seduced by the early carbon markets. There was an early wave of investment in carbon markets. I was there 12, 14 years ago now, looking at getting clean energy projects off the ground in ways that can get international investment through carbon finance. I was quite seduced by this idea because it was a way of getting foreign investment into countries. It didn't just rely on philanthropy or public money, but was an additional kind of money. I still think this is a good idea when managed correctly. I got to learn a lot about clean energy systems and markets while there. And then ended up joining Mercy Corps as a large sort of human centered organization that was increasingly interested in this intersection between climate change, natural resource management, and the humanitarian development goals of the organization. So I joined as a clean energy specialist and climates, and then very quickly became the climate specialist since then I've really been, collaborating with a whole range of colleagues around the world to raise the issue and bring more centrally these environmental and climate challenges to the work that Mercy Corps does and ensure that we are able to be as impactful as possible, you know, in light of these climate risks, but also taking advantage of the opportunities that, clean energy revolutions have brought or, new technologies have brought to enable, natural resources through remote sensing and observation in different ways. So there's lots of positive trends associated with this challenge that we've been able to bring into the work that Mercy Corps does. couple of years ago, Mercy Corps refreshed our global strategy and brought climate change very much into the center of our mission and global focus. And we realized that if we're going to be serious about this it's a, we have to make sure our programming Both considering climate risk and taking advantage of those climate opportunities, but also, you know, a broader as an organization. We have to change. This crisis is so huge. We can't. It's not just about our programming. We have to be able to influence policy. We have to be able to influence how money flows from philanthropy. We have to ensure that we're bringing in and nurturing different kinds of human capital and talent within our organization so that we can do things differently. So I took on this broader reaching role across the organization to try and help change our trajectory a little bit so that we can be as impactful as possible.

Tom Raftery: 9:12

And what has surprised you most in your journey to where you are today?

David Nicholson: 9:17

It's a really good question. There tends to be, cognitive dissonance between the difficulty it can be to draw these threads together between climate environmental issues and sort of human centered issues. In the global capitals that I work in or with the funders and partners, you know, I'm sitting here in Washington, D. C. and involving lots of conversations. And sometimes these things remain more siloed than I would like, compared to when I do have the opportunity to go and visit our country teams and see the work they're doing. These things all match together. It's not difficult when you are able to engage with farmer cooperatives in sub Saharan Africa. A couple of years ago, I was in northern Kenya. In a county called Wajir, which is largely a pastoralist area where we're supporting, the evolution of the livestock sector, you know, camels, goats and cows in this area to adjust to changing conditions. And, there's no question in anybody's mind some of the most eloquent descriptions of what climate change means and how it impacts people has come from. Engaging with, municipal government workers in those areas, or even the herder communities themselves. And these things just so much clearer in those places than they are in the places where the funding decisions are made.

Tom Raftery: 10:27

All right. Makes sense. One of the big teams in your work has been the intersection of climate resilience and energy access. So, can you explain why energy access is such a key component for achieving climate justice and what role it plays in broader adaptation strategies?

David Nicholson: 10:45

Yeah, so it's no surprise to anybody that energy is a central piece of the conversation for climate action, right? And we're very familiar with that. And we know, and it's, you know, we're increasingly aware that this energy transition, which is the terminology we use for moving away from fossil fuels at a global level. Is the centerpiece of our decarbonization work, you know, we are seeing rapid progress and uptake of renewables globally and other forms of energy that allow us to decarbonize and that has to be. Much quicker, and that's clear to everybody. What has interested me for many years in my career is actually the role that clean energy plays in sort of advancing other development goals and specifically advancing community resilience to climate threats. And I think this has been a little bit underplayed and something that we're trying to bring a bit more attention on through our work. When I started my career, one of the Sustainable Development Goals number 7 focuses on universal energy access and There was a lot of progress on this particular goal. You know, when I started, we used to talk about 1. 3, 1. 4 billion people globally that lacked access to modern energy services. And that number is now declined and we're at about 650 million. So that seems like a really good news story. And of course it is. But what we've realized is much of that progress was really made by rapid electrification in, countries like China and India and this 600 or so million people still lacking access to reliable and modern energy services is a very stubborn number. And actually we've been seeing some backsliding on that over the last three or four years. The graph has stopped going in the correct direction and has actually started to creep up in the wrong direction. And not only this is a scene, you know, we're now off track to meet the sustainable development goal of of universal access by 2030, but it also really undermines. The potential for adaptation and resilience for those communities. These are the communities that are both least responsible for and most impacted by the climate crisis. When we think about climate justice, these are the communities that really have a right to this investment. And so why is energy important for adaptation and resilience? We think about adaptation as a concept that you have to do some things differently. Conditions around you are changing, you know, and that's true of all of us, right? We all live, we all look out the window, we all see the news, we know things are changing. And our livelihoods, the way that we make income, the systems within which we operate. aren't designed for those conditions. And that's true everywhere in the world. So in the places that we work, lots of them are agriculture based. Lots and lots of communities that we work with rely on growing food, herding animals for their livelihoods, for their income, as well as for their nutrition and food. And those changing conditions impact those people very quickly. Now, we know that energy is reliable. Modern energy services do magical things to help. people be more resilient, right? And this seems obvious to those of us sitting in the places we're lucky enough to live, but cold storage, being able to put produce in a refrigerator is a huge way to protect against food loss. If suddenly you're in a very hot or unusually wet climate where food will be lost quickly. The ability to pump water out the ground when you're in a period of protracted drought is really important. The ability to receive early warning systems or advice from specialists who can help say the growing season has changed this year and we recommend that you plant earlier or plant a different thing or here's a way to learn about new crops and new products and new seeds that might be valuable. All of this is sort of fundamental building blocks for a more adaptive. Food system, a more adaptive community. And if you don't have access to power, you don't get any of that. So these things come together really clearly for us at Mercy Corps and I think with the laser focus on energy transition, we have lost a little bit of focus on this energy access piece of the puzzle.

Tom Raftery: 14:27

Okay. And Mercy Corps is a presence, as you mentioned, in over 40 countries and obviously reaches millions of people through your climate related work. From your experience, what are some of the most significant barriers to implementing renewable energy solutions in these fragile climate vulnerable regions?

David Nicholson: 14:47

As you can imagine, there are a number of barriers, but probably the overriding one is a perception of risk that we see among funders. And now it's very easy for, anytime you talk to somebody from an implementing nonprofit, they'll tell you that funding is a problem. Of course, it's a problem. That's obvious to everybody. But I do think there's a bit of a specific issue here related to the energy work because we've seen there is a reluctance to think about longer term programming. Longer term efforts in places are fragile for understandable reasons. You know, there is risk there. Countries can backslide in various ways, and it can lead to a loss of investment. So we understand that, but we think the perception of risk is higher than true risk. We're trying to demonstrate ways in which if you think about how to do this work a little differently, we could see much quicker growth and trajectory. So I can give a few examples of that. But first of all, a lot of this energy investment can be private sector driven. And this is really important. You know, there's the clean energy revolution that we've seen around the world has enabled distributed power systems. Now, what that means is we don't have to rely on centralized grids that have huge power plants and run hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines into very remote districts because Many countries we work in, governments have been saying they will do that for decades and that hasn't happened for many reasons, including it's very, very expensive. And we take a lot of public money, the grid systems in the US and the UK and Germany and others were certainly funded by public money. So, this opportunity for distributed systems exists. We know businesses can actually charge for power. And they can get on their feet, but they require subsidy to some reasonable degree. They require funders who are willing to take risk. And we're seeing more and more of that now but we're seeing there is an incredible uptick in pretty innovative companies. I'm going to focus on sub Saharan Africa, because that's where the majority of that 660 million people live, there's a large number of companies that have grown up in the last decade that are providing either small scale solar home system solutions or larger scale community systems. That can power what we call productive use that can power, those agricultural applications or business applications in various ways that we've talked about. And they've struggled to raise the capital needed, and that capital needs to be blended, right? Some of it needs to be from some free money from somewhere, right? Some public money or philanthropy and then bring an impact investment. What we think our role here is, is to work with those companies to help them demonstrate they can be successful, even in these sort of less predictable, slightly unstable environments so that we can up that investment massively. Because in the long term, Mercy Corps can't. We can't get to the scale required. We need the private sector to be doing it, but we can help, manage some of that early risk so that some of these companies can grow and get on a scale trajectory as quickly as possible.

Tom Raftery: 17:31

I had husk energy on the podcast a year or so ago there. Would they be one of the companies you're, one of the types of companies you're talking about.

David Nicholson: 18:08

Great example you know, Husk is one of the earlier movers in the off grid micro grid space have done a tremendous job of. You know, I believe they started in India, which has been a real focal point of innovation for for community scale power and have expanded their reach to sub Saharan Africa and have done a great job of developing a technology that's efficient and developing business models. And I'm sure your guests from house would have explained that, you know, that still requires subsidy and demonstration and even the likes of hospital struggle. Without extra support, they can support wealthier communities, but they will struggle to serve truly the most vulnerable. So their ability to chip away at that 660 million people on their own is quite limited. If you imagine a community that has latent demand for power, and that there's lots of things that can use power and sometimes do you go out to the middle of, You know, quite far away from Nairobi or Kampala or somewhere in sub Saharan Africa, and you'll see old rusty generators that people are paying for, and you'll see a lot of power available. So there is demand there, there is ability to pay, and I think this is where the perception of risk comes in, the perception that there's no ability to pay is often incorrect. People are already paying for power almost everywhere in the world. They're just generally paying too high a price for really bad service. But there is a requirement for the husks, and we've worked with a company called PowerGen. There's a whole raft of these companies out there now that are doing a really great job. And we try to encourage them and figure out how to use public money and philanthropy to encourage them into the riskier areas. Let me give you one specific example. In Ethiopia that we've been working on for a while. One particular population group we're interested in is displaced people, there are, over 100 million people that have been displaced from their homes worldwide. Currently, this is, a high point, and that's, a result of both conflict and climate change and the sort of slightly complex dynamics between those 2. And these are only going to, you know, this is going to increase as climate change displaces, you know, acute extreme weather events, displace people from their homes. Now, the overwhelming majority of those people I think it's the numbers around 80 percent of displaced people globally lack access to electricity. Now, when you hear displacement settings, people assume these are very temporary, you know, we conjure images in our mind of sort of UN tent camps out in the desert somewhere where people have been forced to run to, which of course exists. But, hopefully it will be temporary and people can go home or after a hurricane, people will need temporary sending and of course, afterwards, we hope they can go home. The reality is the vast majority of people do not go home or at least not very quickly. The average lifespan of a refugee or IDP camp is, you know, these numbers change year on year a little bit, but it's not far off 20 years. And when you go visit any of these settlements, they develop relatively quickly into ecosystems with economies. Jobs are created, organizations like Mercy Corps are investing money in you know, tends to be getting cash and vouchers, supporting local businesses there's interactions with host communities and business transactions and all sorts of livelihoods activities happening. But happening without access to power, and that is a huge limiting factor and it prevents people from all of those adaptive things that we talked about. Because if you're in an IDP or refugee settlement somewhere in the world, you're pretty vulnerable to an extreme weather event. So we've been looking at ways to harness all of that power demand potential in a place like an IDP or refugee camp and create a system that serves those. So we've been doing this in Ethiopia. We actually launched a company ourselves. Called humanitarian energy that has one pilot site in a shed a camp in the Somali region. Now, this is one of these settlements that I've been talking about where you have about 18, 000 people living there, most of which have been there for 15 years plus. It's quite integrated with local host community. There's business transactions and businesses that have emerged but existing without power. Now, the host community has electricity service from the Ethiopian government, but because the IDPs and these are internally displaced people from Somalia that have come over the years to flee various waves of violence that we've seen there the government is not going to provide power to those camps because they are temporary in nature, even though they're very long term. So we have used that and across Ethiopia, there's actually 4. 7 million people forcibly displaced. So this is a huge population of people who are very vulnerable to climate change and all sorts of other challenges. So we actually started a company that built a mini grid, which is, you know, a centralized solar bank for those who are technically minded, 254 kilowatt power system. It's a whole huge bank of solar panels, huge bank of batteries, and a bunch of wires that run to people's households, we were told that we probably couldn't get a license from the Ethiopian government to do this, but we did, and we were the first to get such a license and then we were told that all refugees don't have any money, they can't pay for power. And in the first few weeks of launching this offering we had 800 households pay the sign up fee, which is a significant amount of money and signed up reliable energy services so they can support their small businesses. There's 300 small businesses that are signed up. Along with a few larger ones that are you know, use a lot of power for grain milling or a lot of metal work happens in these places. Cause there's a lot of, recycling of scrap metal to create things. Very creative environment to be in. So, we have a now a successful pilot that we're trying to scale up that has shown to our funders that, this is a risky population that would never pay. But actually, you can make a business model work. It's not to say that 11 be 100 percent commercially viable, but with the right subsidy, we can do this in many, many places. So, yeah, that's an example of where we see progress being made. I want to touch on another example, if I can, Tom, that another role for Mercy Corps outside of those displacement settings, we see huge amounts of innovation in not just the power provision from a microgrid perspective, but the specific technologies that use power to support, particularly to support farmers. Small scale refrigeration units, solar pumping systems that can be mobile can be moved around because farmers can't often buy them, but they can rent the power for a certain period of time and share with their neighbors. So there's a lot of innovation for technology that is designed for these specific environments. And one thing that Mercy Corps does, we have an initiative called Energy for Impact, which specifically looks at nurturing small and medium enterprises in the energy value chain and figuring out how to support their growth. We're seeing, this innovation, particularly in hubs like Nairobi, where if you visit Nairobi and go to some of these innovation hubs where there's lots of. Startup companies emerging that, it's the energy, excuse the pun, the energy is so tangible among those groups. It's very impressive stuff. So there's a bunch of companies. You know, we've been supporting over the years. Sometimes we'll actually work in facilitating finance. Energy for impact initiative runs a crowd power program, which sees crowd funding for these businesses come together so they can get basically affordable debt to help them get off the ground. That's a limiting factor for many of these kinds of companies. That platform itself has helped get$50 million in extra debt financing into companies in Sub-Saharan Africa that are working on clean energy initiatives such as the chilling or e-mobility is a big thing. How do you, you know, ' chilling the food is one thing. You also have to get it to market, right? So that's another And, small scale lightweight electric vehicles offer for a huge potential for that. we've been working with a company called Savannah circuit in Nairobi that developed a low cost refrigeration unit. That is mobile. You know, it's sort of bolted onto the back of a lightweight vehicle and it's really helping that value chain for produce to come back and forth. We're seeing mobile chilling make a huge impact in the camel milk market. Tom, I don't know if you have ever tried camel milk. I have not, It's a very popular product amongst ethnic Somalis in East Africa. It's a little sour for my taste, but I'm sure You would get accustomed to it. But that is a product that, you know, the ability to chill that and transport it to larger markets means that you know, from some of these northern counties of Kenyan and also true in Ethiopia. To some of the towns means that you can gain get a much higher price for it. So investing and supporting through a crowdfund platform or through technical assistance. other forms of access to investment capital is really an important part of what Mercy Corps does.

Tom Raftery: 26:29

Interesting as well to hear you talk about e mobility because it's a topic I'm very interested in. I've been driving an EV since 2018 and a hybrid before that for 10 years. But normally when you hear people talking about EVs, one of the criticisms that people level against them is that they're too upfront expensive. And yet you're talking about it in terms of being used in areas like sub Saharan Africa. It's not one of the first places that would come to mind when thinking about EVs. So how are EVs making inroads in places like that? And I mean, you mentioned they're being used for transporting goods to market. Are there other uses as well?

David Nicholson: 27:12

Yeah, so we see a lot of innovation in this space the work that we do, you know, certainly Mercy Corps, Energy for Impact program is supporting a bunch of different EV companies as well as Mercy Corps Ventures, where we actually have an equity venture fund that supports early provide seed capital in the form of an equity investment to start ups in that sort of. That have a potential for high adaptation Yeah so we see a lot of innovation in this space the work that we do, you know, certainly Mercy Corps, Energy for Impact program is supporting a bunch of different EV companies as well as Mercy Corps Ventures, where we actually have an equity venture fund that supports early provide seed capital in the form of an equity investment to start ups in that sort of. That have a potential for high adaptation impact. So, we touch on EVs across the spectrum of these different sort of tools we have to support business growth in the places that we work. And there's a couple of ways that we're seeing the EV innovation grow. And the The upfront capital is a, major part of the problem. a lot of the innovation is around that financing. What are the rental models, battery switch models? You know, how can you reduce the burden about front ownership and actually look at, supporting. Businesses to, use them as a fee for service model that makes the financing work a little bit better. That comes with all sorts of innovation around tracking software. And, you know, there's lots of things that that applies to the cities that we live in. When you see these electric spikes all over the place, right? That We're also living in places where oftentimes. Alternatives are more expensive. Know, when you get out, you know, when you get a couple of 100 miles away from a capital city, petrol, diesel is very expensive. So it's, you know, if you are, if there is a source of reliable electricity, if somebody has figured out the distributed renewable energy hub. Then power is quite available. So that's part of the innovation as well as how do you get if you can get that power generation out to places where these are useful, it can be a cost effective model. so the transport of food and produce is a big part. Just transportation around cities as well, though. motorcycle taxis are a huge part of the way people get around. And, you know, they're very high use. So, as with any EV, if your use is very high, then the economics start to make a lot more sense. So we're seeing a lot of shift over to those in places like that, which I think is very positive.

Tom Raftery: 29:40

I've only ever been on motorcycle taxis in Paris and in the UK, and both times it was for connections from an airport to somewhere. they happened to get through traffic faster in the UK, twice I did it and it was getting from Heathrow to Gatwick when I had a tight connection and very, very, very successful I'm, I gotta say. And in Paris, in Paris, I was landing and I had to get to a meeting and same kind of thing, cut through the traffic. No problem. So really, yeah, but so that I can imagine how successful they'd be in sub Saharan Africa. Absolutely. It makes a lot, it makes a ton of sense.

David Nicholson: 30:18

Yeah, absolutely. And lots of interest in this sector.

Tom Raftery: 30:22

So you've attended the New York climate week and you are going to be attending COP 29. What's one message or case study you hope to spotlight at these forums to shift the global energy transition conversation towards more inclusive solutions.

David Nicholson: 30:40

So focus staying focused on this clean energy question. One thing that we have done is we recently published a paper that outlines our position on this clean energy for adaptation and resilience that pulls together all of the examples. Some of those that I've mentioned along with others where we think we're talking about clean energy as actually part of a disaster response strategy. We're working in the Caribbean to build out distributed renewable energy hubs to act as the disaster preparedness and response places where we know grids will go down. So there's a whole piece of this puzzle related to disaster preparedness. The key message that we're sending is that we have the solutions. We've seen, we have enough evidence now where we know and I say we, you know, I certainly think Mercy Corps, but our partners, the businesses we work with, our peer organizations there is a lot of positive momentum in this area of advancing the energy transition to support these more vulnerable communities. There are solutions there. We know a lot about the right financing mix. But we have to take a little bit of the attention that we're putting on the general clean energy transition and make sure that we stop backsliding and get back onto a positive trajectory for access to energy. It is a question of focus and I will both in New York Climate Week. I had several discussions on this topic and the same will happen at COP where the urgency of decarbonization. Is used as a reason to not get distracted from these sorts of applications. I very much understand that position, but we, as a sort of human society, we have to be able to walk into. At the same time there's a really important climate justice issue on the table here. And if it, if the energy transition is truly a just energy transition, which you do help people say, then we have to make sure that a proportion of the financing and the focus and the enthusiasm is focused on. These kinds of solutions for those people who are least responsible and most impacted by the climate crisis.

Tom Raftery: 32:36

Okay, similar to my talking about EVs and they being expensive and you wouldn't expect them in kind of sub Saharan Africa. I think people's thinking about energy is probably quite similar. If you could give people one mind blowing fact about the impact of energy access in rural communities, what might it be?

David Nicholson: 33:00

So I'll answer the mind blowing fact and I sort of wish I didn't go on the on the challenge side here, but I feel like it is really mind blowing. The public investment in access to energy has halved in the last 5 years. So we're now putting half as much of public money into this challenge of access than we were in 2019. That is a signal of the challenge that we're, up against here by the same token, even without this public support, the amount of investment from a private perspective, we're seeing going into the energy transition. Is growing and growing significantly. So it takes much less public and philanthropic capital now to stimulate private investment than it used to. So that's the head of us. And I will, rather than the fact, let me just tell a very quick story of visiting I'm going to go back to what I spoke about before, where this was an area with both agriculture and pastoral communities. Who are very much on the forefront of the climate crisis by increasing by having reliable electricity, plus the application of that power. I visited the municipal government's new G. I. S. suite that was part funded by our colleague Cisco and Google. They had a part of the county government that for the first time had this incredible array of, remote sensing data experts who were able to hone in across the county on where, you know, what parts would be too dry to grow things, where in the county people should take their animals, where they might see conflict because of diminishing resources. This access to information is so fundamental here and information truly is power in a positive way. And enabling that through not only a reliable electricity and then the application of that to access all of this innovation that we're seeing in the rest of the world can absolutely transform a community and a country.

Tom Raftery: 34:56

Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities for the renewable energy sector to make a difference in humanitarian context? And what role do you think organizations like Mercy Corps should play in the next decade?

David Nicholson: 35:09

I think the, you know, we're riding a wave of cost reduction right now, which has been huge. We know now there's absolutely no debate in question that in almost everywhere, renewable energy is just. So now that we've driven those costs down, the absolute priority has to be refining the business models that work in different places. And when I say business models, it's a combination of who owns and manages the system. And, how a few structures work and these things have to be different everywhere. There's no one model that works everywhere. So, providing enough financial support to nurture this growth of innovative companies and civil society organizations that can refine business models that work in a particular context. To the point where we can scale them rapidly and refining that business model means you can go to investors and very precisely say we can get a subsidy of X percent and then private money can come in on top and we expect returns to be why we're at that point now where we can do that quickly and then we can really drive large amounts of money to this solution.

Tom Raftery: 36:15

Okay. Left field question. If you could have any celebrity or fictional character alive or dead as a spokesperson for secure access to energy for all, who would it be and why?

David Nicholson: 36:32

Oh, what a good question. An advocate for access to energy. I don't know why this answer is coming to my mind right now, but I, when I think about energy, I have just finished a weekend of watching my kids play soccer. So this is why my head is in this space. But I would love one of the most incredible. Examples of managing energy. I ever see is Lionel Messi. Just the ability to keep playing at the level he is at his age shows a great example of energy management, and he has reached the point of influence globally that I think we could really harness. So I'm going to say, let's get him to cop to help us advocate for global access to energy. I think would be a would be a net positive.

Tom Raftery: 37:17

not who I would have thought of, but

David Nicholson: 37:19

Not, who I would have thought I'd come up with either. But, you know, you put me on the spot.

Tom Raftery: 37:23

We're coming to the end of the podcast. Now, David, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this? We haven't touched on that. You think it's important for people to be aware of?

David Nicholson: 37:35

Yes, there is a really important aspect to this question that I don't want to miss out. And that is the importance of the links between and the importance of gender equity when it comes to access to energy. This is such an important part of this puzzle. There's a couple of layers to this, like, at a global climate action level, we continue to see that investing in women and girls is one of the most important routes to success. And there's many, many reasons for that. And we see that across the work that Mercy Corps does. Specifically in the energy space, when we work with communities that have very low access to energy and modern electricity services, it is the women that suffer most they're almost always the ones that take on the burden of the manual labor. And it dominates all of that human capacity that could be used elsewhere, if we were able to increase efficiency and provide solutions to that energy use. So there's a pure human capacity part of this question that I think is really important, but also an equity we've seen in places where we are very intentional about ensuring that energy solutions are inclusive. And when we say inclusive, we mean that we understand the design of systems, the kinds of services available are designed ideally by women, with women involved, the companies that are providing these solutions are led by women then we see much better results. And I think this is a really key part of the equation that we continue to focus on, you know, just a very quick example our, climate venture fund is investing in of the companies we've invested in so far, 50 percent are women owned businesses. And that's very intentional because we see success. This is not a virtue signaling issue. We see that's a success and that applies across climate action globally. I want to ensure that that remains central to conversations around climate action as a whole, and particularly in the access to energy conversation.

Tom Raftery: 39:32

Super. David, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

David Nicholson: 39:40

The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. You'll find me David Oliver Nicholson is my full name and you'll find me under Mercy Corps there. And then if you would like to see some, I referenced a recent paper on our access to energy work. If you go to Mercy Corps. org. And then click through to our climate work, you'll see a series of papers that lay out our positions on on different areas of our work.

Tom Raftery: 40:03

Great. I'll put those links in the show notes, Dave. So everyone has access to them. Super. That's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming in the podcast today, David.

David Nicholson: 40:10

Thank you, Tom. I enjoyed it.

Tom Raftery: 40:13

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.