The Beam Interview Series, Edition 38: Martin Baart Of Ecoligo

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

CleanTechnica keeps on publishing some of The Beam interviews and opinion pieces twice a week. The Beam magazine takes a modern perspective on the energy transition, interviewing inspirational people from around the world that shape our sustainable energy future.

This week, Anne-Sophie Garrigou, journalist at The Beam, interviewed Martin Baart, co-founder with Markus Schwaninger of ecoligo, a solar utility that provides low cost electricity to businesses and industries in emerging markets.

Hello Martin and thank you for your time today. Can you tell us where did the idea for ecoligo come from?

Markus and myself were active for some years already when we met. Markus supported the German development cooperation GIZ in its duty to engage with German companies entering markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, and I was working for a company that was active in the project development of solar PV projects in these regions. We discussed these projects at the conference and afterwards both realised the tremendous potential of solar projects in the region.

Markus saw that many companies entered these markets with pilot projects that often received grants and that after these initial projects, they failed to implement further projects. On the other hand I was trying to find investors for our projects — a task that was bound to be difficult, as the financing did not match the projects in terms of return expectation, volume and duration of the finance. Also, we both saw many projects fail after 2–3 years of operation, as no one took care of the maintenance.

Markus and I realized that a financing solution that matches projects, combined with a model where operation and maintenance are covered, was the solution the market needed.

In emerging markets, what are the main energy and power supply problems local businesses face? And how does ecoligo help solve these problems?

Businesses in emerging markets really face two main problems: Firstly, the energy supply by the utility is often not sufficient in terms of capacity. The underserved market faces energy shortages mostly affecting the operations of the business through blackouts. In some severe cases, enterprises also face scheduled outages, also known as rolling blackouts or load shedding, where the utility is announcing planned power cuts.

The second problem the economy is facing is that energy costs are high in absolute terms, but also as a percentage of the overall operational cost of a business. Often being the highest single cost item, businesses strive to lower their energy cost in a fight over competitiveness.

In which countries do you see the most potential right now for ecoligo?

The most potential for ecoligo is in countries that are in the so called “sunbelt region”. This includes all Sub-Saharan Africa, plus South-East Asia and the Caribbean. The obvious reason is that here the sunshine is significantly higher than in other regions of the world. In addition, the customers of ecoligo  —  commercial and industrial businesses based in these countries  — are facing rather high energy costs. This combination makes ecoligo’s business model attractive.

Our current focus countries are Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania, as Markus and I have large networks in the industry here. However, we do pursue opportunities globally.

Read the entire interview here.

Subscribe to The Beam here.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

The Beam

The Beam Magazine is an independent climate solutions and climate action magazine. It tells about the most exciting solutions, makes a concrete contribution to eliminating climate injustices and preserving this planet for all of us in its diversity and beauty. Our cross-country team of editors works with a network of 150 local journalists in 50 countries talking to change makers and communities. THE BEAM is published in Berlin and distributed in nearly 1,000 publicly accessible locations, to companies, organizations and individuals in 40 countries across the world powered by FairPlanet.

The Beam has 481 posts and counting. See all posts by The Beam