Whose Renewable Energy?

The Questions Real Impact Investors Must be Asking Now

We don’t have time to sugar coat this in the era of climate change.

So let me cut to the chase.

Our approach in the US to decades of investing in renewable energy has revealed itself to be a leaky bucket.

We have spent an average of $36.2 billion per year over the past 16 years on renewables. And yet, renewable energy still only accounts for 17.5% of US energy production as of 2019, up less than 1% from the year before.

To swiftly plug this leaky bucket, what we need is a re-orientation of how impact investors — who are at the vanguard of this movement — are assessing The Who, The What and The How in the field of renewable energy investments.

If we keep going as we’ve been going, in another 5 years, we will have thrown tens of billions of more dollars into the leaky bucket with the same lackluster results.

We are not going to solve this immense human, ecological, economic and social challenge by investing and valuing ventures using status quo metrics or by listening to the usual voices.

STATUS QUO QUESTIONS YIELD STATUS QUO RESULTS

I can speak from my own experience as the founder of a pre-seed renewable energy enterprise who has bootstrapped and hustled to get in front of impact investors. And in enough conversations with them at this point on the journey, some patterns in their questions jump out at me:

• Why do impact investors still seek shortcuts for assessing a venture’s potential by favoring whether or not the entrepreneur had the privilege to attend one of a small handful of prestigious universities as a proxy for promise?
• Why do impact investors — in an era of remote everything — continue to favor entrepreneurs who live in and have social capital tied to a particular geographic region?
• In addressing such an entrenched and long-term massive issue like climate change, why are impact investors so quick to ask when is the earliest they will get their money back? They may wrap their question up in jargon about interest, maturity dates or exit timelines, but at the core they seem to still be looking for a quick and easy return when making their investment decisions. It is clear that they are evaluating long term solutions based on short term metrics.

Here’s the thing: There is plenty of profit to be made in the space of energy transition. And I know that it is nearly impossible to have a mission without a profit. But in order to step into a new energy paradigm, we must go about this work in a fundamentally transformative way.

We must ask harder questions and navigate more nuanced answers.

I am a climate tech entrepreneur who grew up in a community directly impacted by rising sea levels and the deleterious effects of fossil fuel extraction, while at home also only having intermittent access to electricity in our daily lives.

This is why the imperative for us to transform our energy system is one that I see and feel viscerally. For me, this is not merely a cerebral exercise or an intriguing topic to ponder. Instead, I know that it is fundamental to our flourishing and vitality as humans in our era of climate change.

IT’S TIME FOR NEXT LEVEL QUESTIONS

As I began building my social enterprise, Quioveo Energy, I remember reading Morgan Simon’s book, Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change. In it, she speaks to current and would-be impact investors, challenging them to think about “The How” of this project called “impact” investing so that it truly rises to and meets the moment.

In the book, Ms. Simon lays out a number of principles that investors should consider when evaluating the merits of an investment. I found that these principles translated well to the context of the renewable and sustainable energy ecosystem. Inspired by them, I came up with a set of questions speaking to those of us who care about climate change and the ultimate goal of a 100% renewable energy future.

When we are evaluating how impactful a sustainable energy venture will be, let’s ask the Next Level questions:

1. Is it engaging the most directly impacted in design, governance and ownership of the energy solution?
2. Does it add more value than it extracts as an energy venture?
3. Does it fairly balance risk & return between investors, renewable energy entrepreneurs and communities from where the energy is sourced?
4. Is the “impact” it is seeking solely defined by investors, or is it also defined and led by the communities at the front lines of climate change?
5. Does investing in the flourishing of this energy venture support those who’ve typically had greater barriers to accessing energy?

FROM THE VIEW OF QUIOVEO ENERGY

Quioveo Energy’s mission is to catalyze the actual use of sustainable renewables by the US electric grid, through technologies that enable community ownership and optimize the flow of energy that is already being produced.

Our cross-sectional business model connects affluent and historically disinvested communities, residential and industrial users as well as the philanthropic sector.

Quioveo’s mission and business model are based on three factors:

• First, they were born from my lived experience of being from a directly impacted community and now an engineer, entrepreneur and citizen in a country with perhaps the greatest single potential for leadership in a new energy transition.
• Second, they are grounded in a fundamentally different view of what the problem is in our energy infrastructure and where the greatest impact can be made.
• Last, they are shaped by our unique solutions that leverage cutting edge technology and the centering of folks that have traditionally been most impacted by the worst effects of climate change.

As I speak to investors and happily answer their usual questions about risk/return, value proposition and how we are different from our competition, in my heart of hearts I wish they would also ask me and our competitors these more fundamental and critical Next Level Questions laid out above.

If they did, it would signal that they are thinking about what solutions really need to be seeded and thriving for a truly transformative future.

And if they did, they would see that these kinds of solutions are not impossible.

They would see just how different Quioveo Energy is.

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Quioveo Energy’s vision is to democratize access to sustainable, renewable energy across the US electrical grid. It starts with our first product, Illuminator, the “Zillow of sustainable energy.”

Anyone with $100 to invest can join us as we embark to reach our crowdfunding goal of $250k. We feel honored to give our communities and supporters an opportunity to invest in us as we grow.

To invest & learn more visit: https://wefunder.com/quioveo