Exporters lead green energy drive to hand power to local communities

Small, agile start-ups are driving innovation in the sector, with companies such as MeshPower bringing electricity to those without access to a plug or a light switch at home or even in their local vicinity.

“Every fifth person in the world does not have instant access to electricity,” says Lukas Lukoschez, the 26-year-old chief executive of MeshPower.

The four-strong company based in London builds and supplies mini electricity grids which it places in remote villages in Rwanda and India.

Powered by renewables (primarily solar), MeshPower supplies an individually metered service to between 10 and 50 customers on a plug and pay basis – with the aim eventually to enable customers to buy over their mobile phone.

“Despite the lack of electricity, these customers have mobile phones. They send their kids for hours to cities to charge their phones,” Lukoschez says. “This pay-as-you-use system is cheaper than the villagers buying paraffin or wood and reduces the community’s carbon footprint.”

As of this year, MeshPower is testing six systems, three in Rwanda and three in India, and is a finalist in the Shell Springboard competition to find revolutionary clean energy companies, which climaxes on Tuesday.

The study from the global energy giant found that 67pc of exporting low carbon SMEs are already selling their goods and services to emerging economies, particularly in Mexico, the UAE, Turkey and South Africa, with a collective market of £15bn.

British renewables consultancy Syzygy has been present in South Africa for the past six months. The business was founded by John Macdonald-Brown and Neil Sinclair – a former commercial property executive and City trader respectively. It advises corporates on renewable embedded energy generation – how to create and use electricity on site, which in turn takes pressure off the national grid.

As well as a string of corporate clients in the UK such as Aberdeen Asset Management and Land Securities, the duo have worked for Mercedes-Benz in South Africa. “It is where the UK market was five years ago,” says Macdonald-Brown. “They are switched on to the concept of green energy. The issue isn’t cost of renewables but a lack of supply, and Cape Town is having brown-outs [an unintentional drop in voltage in an electrical power supply system which results in the lights dimming].”

Commodity prices combined with the global political energy situation, such as the Crimean conflict, has reinforced the need for nations to control their own supply, he continues. “Renewable energy is not just about a need to be ecologically sound, rather hedging prices by paying slightly more now but a lot less in the years to come.”

But for small businesses global expansion is fraught with problems.

Neil Sinclair, co-director of Syzygy, says: “We have so much work in the UK that we can’t focus as much as we’d like on overseas business. We are therefore looking for grants or funding to expand internationally.”

This issue is picked up in the Shell study – SMEs face disproportionate challenges, it claims. Around 24pc of low carbon SMEs cited a shortage of working capital to finance exports as the primary barrier to sell overseas, and early stage funding for such ventures has decreased by more than 50pc since 2012. “The banks just aren’t there,” Macdonald-Brown adds.

And, according to Mark Jankovich, chief executive of the environmentally friendly chemicals company Delphis Eco, global demand for British services is growing.

He bought the failed business, which makes cleaning products for households, hotels and catering companies, in 2009 and shut the international arm.

“The recession hurt those who looked at a low carbon strategy and there was little room for international growth,” he says. “But now every professional firm has to do it; to win a tender you must be seen to be doing something tangible.”

Delphis Eco, which is now turning over £2.5m per year, was the first company in the UK to be awarded the European Eco-Flower and has won a Royal warrant. Such accolades help the reputation of the British low carbon industry when winning work from China, where Government and industry are cleaning up pollution, or the Middle East, where state buildings and hotels in Abu Dhabi are being retrofitted with low carbon systems to meet new regulations.

It seems one of the star attractions of buying British is the sector expertise that does not necessarily exist on the ground in some emerging markets. When it comes to the UK’s low carbon SME industry, knowledge really is power.

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