Kate Steel, co-founder and CEO of Nithio, a start-up focused on financing clean energy companies and informing climate investments in Africa. In this episode, Kate talks with Katie and Rose about how we can fund universal energy access, the off-grid sector and its trajectory, and what she learned from launching Nithio.
Kate Steel is the co-founder and CEO of Nithio, a start-up focused on financing energy access in Africa. Previously she was the Director of the Energy Office at Power Africa (USAID), the US Government led partnership to double electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa. Before joining USAID, she focused on renewable energy and energy access investments in Africa and South Asia at Google and worked on grid and off-grid energy access in Africa and South Asia, including managing Lighting Africa, at the World Bank.
Show Notes
- Kate’s memo on why, for Africa, it’s grid + off-grid, not grid vs. off-grid.
- Learn more about Nithio.
- Kate on LinkedIn.
Transcript
[00:00:00] ROSE MUTISO: I’m Rose Mutiso.
[00:00:07] KATIE AUTH: I’m Katie Auth and this is High Energy Planet, the podcast from the Energy for Growth Hub about new ideas to solve global energy poverty and the people behind them.
[00:00:15] ROSE MUTISO: On today’s show is Kate Steel. who is a co-founder and CEO of Nithio, a startup focused on financing clean energy companies and informing climate investments in Africa. Previously, she was the Energy Office Director at Power Africa, the US government
[00:00:28] ROSE MUTISO: led partnership to double electricity access in sub Saharan Africa. Before joining USAID, she focused on renewable energy and energy access investments in Africa and South Asia at Google and the World Bank and IFC’s Lighting Africa Initiative. Kate also serves as one of our advisors here at the Energy for Growth Hub and we’re very lucky to have her.
[00:00:45] KATIE AUTH: So I’ve known Kate for, I did the math before this podcast, for a decade, which is crazy. We
[00:00:51] KATE STEEL: Oh, wow.
[00:00:52] KATIE AUTH: Isn’t that crazy? Um, we both started working at Power Africa at around the same time, and she’s a mentor, she’s a close friend, she’s one of the smartest people on issues of energy finance, access, and innovation. She’s also worked in the field from a bunch of different perspectives, from research, as a bilateral development funder, and from the private sector. So, we’re excited to talk to her about how energy access, and the industry around it has changed over time and where she wants it to go next. So, Kate, it’s so awesome to have you here.
[00:01:33] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. Welcome. Welcome.
[00:01:35] KATE STEEL: Thanks for having me. Excited to talk to both of you.
[00:01:38] ROSE MUTISO: so side bar also just did the math real time very difficult math. And I’ve also known you for about a decade, completely in parallel to Katie. So, um, three decades between us.
[00:01:49] KATE STEEL: Yes, that just shows how long we’ve all been working on these problems that have not been solved yet.
[00:01:54] KATIE AUTH: I know, right? So we’re gonna start by going a little bit back in time and hoping you can tell us just something about how and where you grew up and how it shaped you.
[00:02:05] KATE STEEL: Sure. So I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, kind of on the border of Durham and Chapel Hill. It definitely shaped me in terms of basketball preferences and strong interest in deep Carolina rivalry. I’m a, I’m team Carolina, but also grew up near a lot of research universities, a lot of focus on. Kind of medicine, education, engineering. So I think that that was really instrumental. But also I think growing up in suburban North Carolina, I was lucky to be exposed to a lot of other things that were out there. It was a fairly diverse community, but also kind of felt like I didn’t get exposure to a lot of the rest of the world. So definitely came out of that childhood with, with really a desire to see a lot more of the world.
[00:02:49] ROSE MUTISO: So Kate, you and I have something in common, which is we have, we both have three engineering Degrees each, but have never worked as engineers. Um, so, um, after graduating college, you took a gap year teaching in Kenya where you ended up being fascinated with energy access. And so was there a specific moment you remember that really crystallized the issue and why it matters for you? And also please, please tell, tell us, and for the benefit of all the parents pushing their kids into an engineering degree, how engineering factored into all of this.
[00:03:18] KATE STEEL: engineering is fantastic. I think, uh, you’re absolutely correct. I’ve never worked as an engineer, despite doing the three degrees in engineering. I think engineering is just a framework for approaching problems. it teaches you to break down a complex problem into, and work your way through it. So, I absolutely would encourage people to go into engineering, even if they don’t think they’re going to work in it. But yeah, I was finishing up my engineering degree, my undergrad degree, and trying to think of what I wanted to do next, and decided I did want to take this gap year. I wanted to, not just travel the entire time, but actually stay in one place and teach for a period of time and get, I’d always wanted to go to Africa and felt like this was the chance to kind of jump in and do that. And so, picked Kenya. I had found a school that offered volunteer teacher, placements, which was really fairly early days of the internet. So like not totally sure it was going to exist when I got there.
[00:04:14] ROSE MUTISO: People haven’t figured out how to catch fish yet.
[00:04:16] KATE STEEL: Yeah, exactly. But it was also, very limited information about what to expect, so luckily that worked out great. I was just in Nairobi and was staying almost across the street from where the school used to be. But I, while I was there, there was, this was in 2000, there was a power crisis going on, not uncommon in that era. So the power was on, yeah, I’m sure. So there was a schedule of when the power was supposed to be on, when it was supposed to be off. I obviously didn’t stick to that entirely. , but got me really interested in the power system in Kenya and had studied mechanical engineering. So kind of looked into like basically what had gone wrong, that there wasn’t universal access. Because at that time in Kenya, fewer than 5 percent of people in rural areas had access to electricity. There were constant power cuts. , and kind of figured out this was not an engineering problem. Like if you just needed to build a grid, obviously there was a lot of examples of how to do that. That wasn’t the issue. So that got me. much more on this track of, well, what were the policy decisions? What was the,financing, all the management that had gone into creating this grid and kind of not being able to build it out for something that was a pretty technically easy thing to do. And so that, that’s kind of what got me hooked on this.And, 20 years later, 25 years later, almost, still working in that area.
[00:05:31] KATIE AUTH: Before you arrived in Nairobi, had you ever even, like, thought about the electricity system as something other than, like,a thing we all take for granted? Had it ever interested you before?
[00:05:42] KATE STEEL: So weirdly, so I said this on another podcast is actually the thing that, uh, I had lied about earlier. Um, because I always say this story from Kenya as how I got interested in this. It’s actually not entirely true.
[00:06:00] ROSE MUTISO: Plot twist, dear listener.
[00:06:02] KATE STEEL: The month before I started my sophomore year of college, I did a program I think it was called the Treat Fellowship that we, we had hosted students from Japan, Thailand, and Singapore throughout my freshman year with a, I think there were five of us on, on campus. And then we traveled there for a month and kind of spent a week or so in each country and when we were in Thailand, we were in Northern Thailand and spent the night in a village that, had really recently gotten electricity. And talking with the people in that village, they said, like, this had been, they told us a lot about what it had been like before they got electricity, how many people had been leaving, they couldn’t keep young people in the, in the, community, and what had changed when they had actually been able to bring electricity. So I actually got kind of interested in the social dynamics of electrification and had written a case study for, I took a science technology and society class, sophomore year, that wrote a case study on. Village Electrification in Thailand. So was kind of interested. I think it ended up in an Australian textbook, but uh,
[00:07:00] ROSE MUTISO: that’s So cool.
[00:07:02] KATE STEEL: that was like the kernel that got me interested in it. but it was really the experience in Kenya that kind of, at that point I didn’t decide that that’s what I was going to do as a career, but Kenya is really what set me on that full trajectory.
[00:07:13] ROSE MUTISO: So one thing I really love about this is we were both in Nairobi at the same time in like the year 2000 experiencing, terrible blackouts. And like the lesson you took from it is that like, I want to work on this space. I want to like solve, help solve energy access and electrification. And the lesson that I took from it completely in parallel was I want to go to college and study physics.So, interesting, uh, interesting, like same, same phenomena, different, different.
[00:07:42] KATE STEEL: everyone impacted differently.
[00:07:43] KATIE AUTH: So, the energy access sector has always had kind of an uncomfortable relationship with the idea of subsidy. I think the driving idea behind a lot of early energy access programs were to make the sector entirely commercial and to kickstart markets that could ultimately stand entirely on their own. and the idea of subsidy was almost like a dirty word. We didn’t want to talk about it. But now, it. feels like that’s starting to change. So, I’m curious, how have you seen funders start to change their thinking around market support and subsidy over time, and what would you like to see moving forward?
[00:08:16] KATE STEEL: It’s a great question. And I think my thinking on this has shifted quite a bit, even going back before Power Africa to Lighting Africa, when I was at the World Bank and we were establishing that program. The idea was to try and make it fully commercially viable. No subsidies. Subsidies distorted the market. They created all of these, these challenges that,
[00:08:34] ROSE MUTISO: I remember all that. Yeah. That was a core
[00:08:36] KATE STEEL: Yeah, it was, you never talked about it. Yes, exactly. And, and so coming into, and then with Power Africa, I feel like our goal was what’s What’s kind of the small amount of public funding that we can provide that will unlock all of this private capital? Um, and I think what we missed, or I’ll say I missed, was we felt like we were doing market activation and this was something that was going to lead to a self-sustaining market without really thinking about the fact that the. What we were doing was going to bring commercial money or private money into the easiest projects to do.
[00:09:09] KATIE AUTH: Yeah.
[00:09:10] KATE STEEL: And then you’re going to have to do the next hardest projects and the next hardest projects and the next hardest projects and we see this with, with off grid solar, where the goal was kind of market activation to do some support early, especially with Lighting Africa and with these programs like Power Africa and others that help support the companies, help to like get them established, and then the idea would be they could grow in a self sustaining way. And I think they did grow, and I think they’ve served the vast majority of the customers that have relatively easy ability to pay. And they’re not, I mean, if you look at the number of countries that don’t have market activity in the off grid solar space, and there’s not really incentive for the companies to go into those countries. Cheers. and you start to square that with how do you provide universal access, it’s going to require massive amounts of public and philanthropic capital. And I think that’s where, you know, all of the, the RBF program, the results based financing programs, the goal was to kickstart. And I think what we’re realizing now is the first wave of RBF connects the people who almost could afford it to begin with. The wave after that is going to have to be probably double what it is now and then triple. And like, maybe you’re going to get to like 10 times to actually serve. the, the hardest to reach households. So I think it’s, it needs a lot more discussion, open discussion between private capital, public capital, all the different, uh, actors to see like, what, what is that ratio actually going to be? Cause I think it’s going to be significantly more public resources than we had been planning on.
[00:10:34] ROSE MUTISO: Who do you think is the best place to lead this, this recalibration to like, who do you want to step up? Which kind of institution, um, which kind of player needs to step up to, to take us into this new, new phase of how access should and can be funded to, to, to, to reach the hardest to reach.
[00:10:55] KATE STEEL: I mean, I think the, I think the World Bank and the M300 initiative is moving in the right direction. I think being able to, put significantly more World Bank resources on the table, bringing in African Development Bank, again, trying to put more resources on the table. I think just making sure that that’s crowding in, not kind of with the goal of crowding in private capital, but with the goal of crowding in additional philanthropic capital, um, and really acknowledging what the what the amount is that’s needed. That’s every time I hear about kind of initiatives to bring in more philanthropic capital, I always think whatever number they have in mind, they need to go up by an order of magnitude. It’s going to be take far more resources than people I think are planning for. But I do think the World Bank can be a really strong convener on that process.
[00:11:40] KATIE AUTH: And alongside the, the extra capital, I also feel like we need to be more honest as an industry with ourselves about. the people we’re targeting. So, you know, 10 years ago we were talking about the bottom of the pyramid when, to your point, Kate, like the people that were actually getting targeted for commercial systems were not at all the bottom of the pyramid. And so just being a little more, um, kind of honest and forthright and, uh, thoughtful about the different segments of the market and the different approaches that they’re going to require seems important. Mm
[00:12:15] KATE STEEL: still households, these were still households that didn’t have access to electricity, so it’s not like they were extraordinarily well off and this was subsidizing something they could afford anyway. I think it was still extremely important to, you know, over 500 million people have received access through, through off grid systems. That’s incredible, and that’s something I think the sector should be extraordinarily proud of. But I think reaching the next 500 million people is going to take a bit of a different approach. And I think what we need is for the, I still think the private sector is the best at delivering services. I still think the financial infrastructure, like what we do at Nithio, needs to be, uh, led by private companies. But I think just figuring out a way to make sure the flow of capital is more concessional, more of these philanthropic resources, I think that that’s what will, um, kind of, how do you get that through that private system? um, will be how it really scales.
[00:13:08] KATIE AUTH: So that’s a really good segue to Nithio. So at the tail end of your time at Power Africa, you started advising this firm that we know and love called Kapanda Capital, which is a venture builder focused on African businesses. And they approached you initially because they were interested in using, demographic data to better predict customer payments and credit scoring in the off grid sector. And this became Nithio, which you cofounded and you’re now the CEO of. so can you explain in two sentences, I’m sure you can at this point, what Nithio does and why it so important?
[00:13:41] KATE STEEL: Fundamentally, we use data to unlock financing for energy access in Africa, and maybe digging slightly more into that, we use the data analytics to better understand payment patterns and risk for lending to off grid households so that we can unlock receivables backed financing for off grid power companies, provide them that, that working capital that they need to really scale. And I think that starts very targeted on kind of off grid energy and, and households, but what we’re really trying to do is broader, That big picture of using data to unlock financing overall for energy access, as well as for climate resilience. Could we see those two as really well interconnected?
[00:14:16] ROSE MUTISO: So you guys at Nithio found success really quickly, and actually more quickly than you anticipated, . So you immediately started working with some of the largest energy access company and several of them actually lowered their minimum investment size requirements so that you could come in. What do you think was Nithio’s biggest value add for them?
[00:14:33] KATE STEEL: I mean, in hindsight, I’m not sure success feels like it was that quick just because it did take us a long time at the beginning, launching a company years before a pandemic is a tough time to start. But, I think that we were able to show that we had one, that we had a small nimble team. We can move quickly. We could make decisions quickly. But that we all set a really strong understanding of risk, and I think that we’ve seen that play out in what our portfolio looks like now and the number of companies that we’ve been able to work with, not just the some of the largest companies in the space, but also. Really, really small companies that I think we can provide a lot of service to by helping them better understand their portfolio. But, I think it was, was really good for us to early on to be able to lend to some of the larger companies and get established and, and really start to build up our reputation. But, but definitely the early days seem, like they didn’t move that quickly.
[00:15:19] KATIE AUTH: well, I want to dig into those early days. You mentioned the pandemic, and obviously this is right after you guys launched. Every economic sector in the world is kind of thrown into disarray. and there were, there was a time when you actually anticipated that the entire off grid industry might collapse. that hasn’t happened, obviously. I’m interested in you kind of unpacking why you think it proved so resilient in the end and kind of what surprised you about that resilience that you weren’t necessarily expecting.
[00:15:53] KATE STEEL: It was definitely more resilient than expected. In April of 2020, we had, I think we had a call where 90 stakeholders from the off grid sector joined, probably testing the early, capabilities of Zoom, and basically talked about, like, what are we going to do? Everything we’ve been working on for the past, uh, you know, for me, almost 20 years at that point, like, has, is going to collapse. Because we felt like people wouldn’t be able to go out and make sales, there would be just basically everything would grind to a halt and, and this would cause, disruption that we couldn’t come back from, and so we started putting together this Energy Access Relief Fund, turned out fundraising for that took, significantly longer than, than expected. But, in the meantime, the companies actually showed, I think the two things that, Helped were, one, COVID in most countries in Africa was not as bad as it was in in Europe or or the U. S. , but I think there was very controlled curfews and lockdowns and things like that, but overall extremely young population in most countries, my Nigerian team would want me to say there are hardier people. That was their excuse for why, or reasoning for why Nigeria did not get as hard hit, but I do think that that that helped so there wasn’t a really strong lockdown. Also a lot of countries had offered energy as an essential service. So sales could continue and sales agents could go out, but I think it also just points to the fundamentals of this market. I think there’s been a lot of, questioning of the pay as you go solar sector in the last year, as there’s been just a lot of challenges. and, I’m always extremely optimistic because I think the market fundamentals are so strong. And I think COVID really proved that, that if you have a really essential service that people highly value that’s being offered to them in a format that they can access and in a payment pattern that they can access, there’s no reason that shouldn’t scale. And I think we found with, with COVID, the surveying showed that people continue to make their payments almost above everything else except for food. And so as long as they liked the service, if the service would continue to be high quality, if they had problems, they could get help, etc., they would continue to pay for it because it kept the lights on, it kept the TV on, it kept the radio on, and that was extraordinarily valuable. And I think that’s what really made it through. A lot of the companies actually had really good sales during the pandemic because people were at home more and valued having all those services. Definitely some of the smaller companies did not make it through. , and I think that’s, we saw that across every sector with, with COVID. So I, I won’t say it was entirely rosy, but it did show that there was a lot of resilience.
[00:18:26] ROSE MUTISO: So, one of the things I remember from my early, early days working in this a bit more actively within in this sector was that there was kind of something I think we, the kind of IFC, World Bank, Google and type of reports would refer semi euphemistically as like the gray market, right? So, you know, basically all of the, of the, grid products and services that are being delivered, not from this kind of more formal kind of globally connected companies that are getting invest investment from, you know, from outside Africa and this and that, that like a lot of people are just getting the energy service from a marketplace and buying some product and taking it home. So to what extent do you think that the kind of companies that you’re working with and for are still on this kind of like narrow sliver of the kind of off grid market. um, and and, and do you see yours, do you, you know, versus, yeah, and, and how, how does this impact potential growth into the future?
[00:19:30] KATE STEEL: So I think this was really a success of Lighting Africa that, I don’t know if most people remember, but one of the earliest Primary components of Lighting Africa was quality assurance, that there was a feeling that if people kept using these really inferior solar lanterns, some of which weren’t actually solar, that it would basically ruin the reputation of solar and a real market would never take off. And so we created the Lighting Africa testing standard that had these quality assurance components to it. And we would only work with companies that had gone through the testing and had their products certified. And there were some shifts over time as to what, that was primarily with lanterns. So pretty straightforward to test what those components were. That’s transitioned to obviously including the larger component systems to including, um, it’s now shifted out of, of the world bank, which was a good thing to the, the Verisol standard. But I do think it was successful. There’s, it’s not to say that there’s not bad quality products on the market. But I think there’s so many options for good products and good suppliers that I do think that’s a little bit less of an issue. I think you see it’s probably still more in like the small lanterns. I think there’s probably more kind of fake products or really low quality products in the market. But once you get up into , systems with, with lights and, and appliances and things like that. I think most people are sourcing those from a pretty reputable source. which is good because it means that they should be lasting considerably longer and, and giving people more trust that they can finance those systems over several years.
[00:20:58] ROSE MUTISO: that’s really, really great to hear that like that those early investments in quality assurance, are paying off and that actually that as people move up the, you know, to high energy services that they are, must rely on the good stuff. So that’s, that’s really good to hear.
[00:21:12] KATIE AUTH: So one thing we saw that was really interesting, is that Nithio is now, I think, considering getting into lending for electric vehicles and kind of using your data models to understand payment risk in the mobility sector. I’m curious what you anticipate the difference being between that and financing household assets, if anything, or is it essentially, you know, just a very similar, asset class and, and financing need.
[00:21:41] KATE STEEL: Yeah, I think, and maybe for people who immediately picture cars when they think of EVs, I think when we’re looking at most of what’s happening in, especially in East Africa, it’s two wheelers, and electric motorcycles. And in some ways we see it as extremely similar, that it’s household asset financing. We would think of it as kind of a productive use asset because most people are financing it in order to run a business using it, like delivery driver or, kind of Uber, uh, Uber driver. But, so we would think of it the same way, that it’s, a, there’s less risk because it’s something that people are deriving income from we think it’s a little bit more risky just because it’s a higher end product that’s more expensive, and because you need infrastructure to make it work. And I think there’s still debates as to whether charging or battery swapping is going to be the model that everyone uses. But, I think in terms of, you know, how we’re looking at it right now, where it’s a single vehicle purchased by a single householder or individual. It’s very, very similar. I will say like, we’re extremely excited about the EV market and especially what we’re seeing in East Africa. However, I do have some concerns that it’s going to get pushed the same direction as, uh, solar home systems. When pay as you go first launched, there was a real push for growth at all costs and that you, you know, Can’t have interoperability. You’re really looking to be dominating the market without really sound, unit economics. And I do see some, some hints that that is happening with the EVs, that there’s a lot of funding going into, electric motorbikes right now to, to several companies, which I hope are growing in a sustainable way and, and really thinking through what’s this going to look like when we have 10, 000 bikes on the road. Are we making money off of all of those bikes or are we losing a little bit of money off all of those bikes? And I think that’s something really important to get now before reaching scale. Because I think there was a myth within solar home systems that there was some sort of network effect and scale would, there was more economies of scale than we thought. And I think that’s possibly a little more true with electric vehicles, but you still have to get the fundamentals
[00:23:40] ROSE MUTISO: Well, that sounds like the kind of question that Nithio can really help a company answer, right? With data and all that? Okay.
[00:23:46] KATE STEEL: Yes, that’s what we have
[00:23:48] ROSE MUTISO: this, this, this, this question has reminded me of kind of, another, kind of another memory from my time in the off grid sector, which was this idea that, off grid energy companies and pay go companies in particular, like their, that, you know, the solar home system was not the ultimate, like, product or their, you know, their IP comes from the customer base. The data and then, you know, and all of that information turns you into this general purpose, like financing company, or you can add on, you know, different business types on top of the space of data. And this EV question seems to bear out possibly that theory of change. But do you have you seen this? Have you seen this theory of change play out that, you know, payco companies can kind of monetize and, repackage their understanding of these customers to expand into new, new, new spaces?
[00:24:39] KATE STEEL: Definitely. And I think there’s two types of PAYGO companies. I think there’s companies that started out as product companies. , they were around before PAYGO and saw PAYGO as a way to sell more of their products. But, but at their heart, they’re kind of a product design company and their goal is to put out high quality energy products. And then I think there’s others that started as essentially financing companies. where the goal was to finance anything and solar was a really good, sticky product to, to start with. And I think once they’ve got that financing model working, they can then expand it to other products, which I think is a great thing. I mean, opening up access to finance for, for millions of people is, uh, is really, life changing. I think where we see some struggles in the sector is with companies who are both or neither, and they, you know, started doing pay as you go solar from the beginning, maybe with a little bit more emphasis on product or a little bit more emphasis on credit, but they’re running two really complicated businesses, without knowing which one is dominant or with having them probably too close together and not, enough of separation between the two businesses. So I think that’s the, where some companies have struggled is, figuring out how you focus on credit quality, how you make sure, you’re kind of selling to the right people, where your distribution side just wants to make sales. And I, I think that’s, where we, we see, we can add again, a lot of value from Nithya’s side to help unpack, like, what does your portfolio look like? And where are you seeing repayment risk? , but I think the companies that.
[00:26:08] KATE STEEL: started as clearly one or the other have had a little bit easier path.
[00:26:11] ROSE MUTISO: Super, super interesting.
[00:26:13] KATIE AUTH: So Kate, last question for the interview segment. What has changed the most about you? So not your work, but about you as a person and as a professional since you started in this sector?
[00:26:25] KATE STEEL: That’s a really tough question, I would say.
[00:26:28] KATIE AUTH: That’s why we leave it for the end.
[00:26:30] KATE STEEL: Yes. Um, maybe I can, I can turn it around on you and say the thing that hasn’t, changed as much. I’ll say a little bit. I obviously have matured. I think I’ve like figured out a bit more about what’s needed to make the market work. , and throughout my career, I’ve gone back and forth between private sector, public sector, really trying to see how they, they work together. and I think Nithio in some ways is the culmination of that. Cause we’re trying to bring in , this blended finance and public and private capital together. but I think the thing that hasn’t changed is I believe this is a solvable problem. , and I think that we, we focus so much on the 600 million people who lack access in Africa, you know, over a billion people who lack good access worldwide. , and I think we need to flip that around and say 90 percent of the world has access to electricity. This is an absolutely solvable problem. We just need to do the last 10 percent and we need to really focus on not doing it perfectly or not making sure we maximize every single subsidy dollar. But just recognizing it’s pretty unconscionable in 2024 to still have 10 percent of the world lacking even basic access. , and really just focus on getting that done because it is, back to what we started with, this isn’t a complex problem in terms of the engineering. If we wanted to connect everyone to grid access in the next, let’s say, six months, we could do that, if we had enough money, and we were confident that the management would be sustainable and we could continue to run those systems in a sustainable way. so that’s where I think, like, I remain optimistic just because it isn’t that much of the world that’s left. It’s some of the most difficult places to connect. So I think it’s not a simple problem, but I really think we can get it done and need to kind of just get on with it and, uh, focus on implementation.
[00:28:14] ROSE MUTISO: I find this really interesting because I, I think, cause I am, you know, quite Africa focused in my work. And in Africa, it’s like, you know, 500, almost 600 million people without access, which is about 50%. and So when I think about it in those terms, it’s a little bit daunting, but then when you put it in the global scale, like you are doing that, this is just 10 percent of everyone in the world. And that if we pull together, you know, this, this should be doable. I think that’s, that’s like a really interesting perspective flip actually. So, Kate, it’s time to play short circuit, which is a rapid fire round of serious and kind of mostly silly questions. So are you ready?
[00:28:53] KATE STEEL: Ready.
[00:28:54] ROSE MUTISO: So what’s one thing about you that would surprise other people?
[00:28:58] KATE STEEL: Uh, I don’t know if this would surprise people who really know me, but I’m, I’m an incredible introvert. I don’t mind being social. I like talking in public, but very, very introverted.
[00:29:06] KATIE AUTH: fill in the blank, the energy access conference circuit is blank, which this is a funny question. I now realize coming after your confession of being an introvert.
[00:29:18] KATE STEEL: No, I don’t know if I can do it in one word. I, this is going to sound very harsh because the word I thought of was redundant. I think there’s too many, there’s too many events at this point. So I think it distracts from the, the getting stuff done. It’s fun and it’s great to see people, but I think there’s a few too many events that we could consolidate.
[00:29:37] ROSE MUTISO: I think you handle that very diplomatically. Okay. so uh, happiest memory from the time you spent in Nairobi.
[00:29:44] KATE STEEL: a thousand things. I’ve been going to Nairobi at least once a year, except for COVID for the last 24 years. So I could think of so many things, but I think the, maybe the one that springs to mind is I worked on a World Bank project. This is kind of a random one to come up, but, working on slum, like informal settlements, slum electrification, um, that ended up, after I left, I like worked on the design and, uh, kind of build up of the project, but has actually been really successful. And I think when, um, I got into, um, When I finished up grad school, I, my two goals were just to have, be an expert in this space and, and feel like I was making an impact. And I think seeing that project and then, um, some other ones I worked on really connect really large numbers of people, um, that’s one of my favorite memories. And getting to meet some of the people who are beneficiaries of that program.
[00:30:35] ROSE MUTISO: really cool.
[00:30:37] KATIE AUTH: That’s awesome. And now like taking Elizabeth back has gotta be cool
[00:30:41] KATE STEEL: was going to say that’s such a cop out to say like taking my daughter to Kenya is very fun. we just got back from there.
[00:30:48] KATIE AUTH: um, in an alternate universe where you did not choose to go to Kenya after undergrad, what do you think you would have ended up doing?
[00:30:55] KATE STEEL: So when I finished undergrad and was looking to go to Kenya, the three things I was planning to do as possible. jobs were one was, uh, appropriate technology for developing world, which was kind of what I ended up doing theater design. so, I ran the student theater company at Stanford and worked in the drama shop doing set construction. Uh, most of the time I was there. Uh, and the third one was toy design that I did two internships with Hasbro, uh, while I
[00:31:25] KATIE AUTH: That is so cool.
[00:31:27] KATE STEEL: those were the three things I was considering. And I remember telling one of my cousins actually, before I left for Kenya, that I wasn’t making a choice, but by going to Kenya, I probably was making a choice, because what were the odds I was going to do this year of travel and come back and do either a toy designer or theater design? Uh, but that was probably going to push me in the direction of doing, more of this appropriate technology and,
[00:31:49] ROSE MUTISO: not too late. Maybe, maybe some, off grid solar themed toys.
[00:31:54] KATE STEEL: I mean, if we solve this, I could have a second career. So we’ll see.
[00:31:58] ROSE MUTISO: Pick one, of these for a perfect vacation day, surfing or skiing?
[00:32:02] KATE STEEL: Oh, both.
[00:32:04] KATIE AUTH: Come on.
[00:32:04] ROSE MUTISO: Where can you do both?
[00:32:04] KATIE AUTH: No, you can’t.
[00:32:06] KATE STEEL: In California, I actually have done, uh, skied one day and surfed the next.
[00:32:11] KATIE AUTH: and final one, you’ve obviously, we’ve talked about all the different angles that you’ve come at this from. Is there a constant KATE STEELe mission statement that has held true?
[00:32:21] KATE STEEL: Universal energy access.
[00:32:24] ROSE MUTISO: That’s a good one. Okay. Well, hopefully, hopefully we’ll get to the point where we can realize that. And then you’ll just have to have a new mission statement.
[00:32:31] KATE STEEL: Exactly.
[00:32:33] KATIE AUTH: Last episode, we talked to Joel Nana, who is a Cameroonian researcher working on kind of city level energy transitions across Africa. And he’s very fired up about the boom in grid tied rooftop solar across Africa. And he’s curious about How you see the future of off grid and on grid technologies intersecting in the future and whether your view of that relationship has changed at all in recent years, especially as, renewables have evolved and taken off in different ways.
[00:33:16] KATE STEEL: that is a great question. I am very fired up about rooftop solar as well. A great connected rooftop solar. I mean, when you see so many places having just hundreds of thousands of diesel gen sets, why not do solar, especially where the regulation allows for it? So, I think 15 years ago I wanted to start this as a business with, with friends, so I’m, I’m very excited to see that it’s finally taking off because that would have been a terrible time to start it. It would not have worked. But I think we are finally getting to the point, I’d like to think that actually the off grid solar is partly pushed for that because it’s shown the feasibility of solar and, it’s also helped with driving down, We’re increasing the efficiency of appliances so that you have highly efficient lighting, highly efficient TVs, and all these things that can plug into these systems. And I think that’s just shown, like, that you can get real power, you can’t see me doing airquakes, but real, real power, from solar. And so I think that there’s a great opportunity for, you know, some businesses will probably specialize in one or the other. I think the financing model is a little bit different. Obviously, the, kind of urban, dent systems are significantly more expensive because they’re powering, households with white goods and and other appliances. But I do think that there are companies that might end up doing both and maybe end up doing some cross subsidization. , I think the biggest thing that will stand in the way is, regulation. And I think this is where governments can be really, helpful in, you know, off grid solar is, is not really regulated beyond, it’s essentially a fast moving consumer good. It’s a, a stereo of an appliance. whereas if you are grid intertied and you do have a lot of standards, if you’re selling back onto the grid or if you’re just behind the meter, there’s a lot more that, goes into, to regulating that that system. So I think as much as governments, and regulators can, can pave the way for those businesses to work, I think it’s fantastic. And I, I’m really optimistic that it’s going to be a big part of the market as well.
[00:35:02] KATIE AUTH: yeah, it’s a really exciting thing to see.
[00:35:08] ROSE MUTISO: All right. Thank you so much, Kate. This was wonderful having you. A lot of fun. And we look forward to seeing what you and your colleagues and Nithya are up to in the next decade.
[00:35:17] KATE STEEL: Always nice to talk to you both.
[00:35:20] KATIE AUTH: Thank you, Kate,
[00:35:26] ROSE MUTISO: That’s it for today’s show. High Energy Planet is a production of the Energy for Growth Hub, matching policymakers with evidence based pathways to a high energy future for everyone. Find out more at energyforgrowth.org and share your questions and thoughts with us @energyforgrowth on X and LinkedIn.
[00:35:42] KATIE AUTH: And if you liked today’s episode, be sure to rate and review the podcast and tell a friend about us. Audrey Zenner is our senior producer. Join us next time for more High Energy Planet.