Geocene

I was really happy to see that Jules Kortenhorst and C-Quest Capital are finally coming clean, trying to lead with integrity, and admitting that millions of tons worth of carbon credits were over-credited and fraudulent. It takes bravery and humility to look this kind of situation in the face and build back. But it didn't have to be this way! Sensors and monitoring would have prevented this mess. In the morass of the cookstove carbon markets, there is finger-pointing, blame, accusations of malfeasance, and plenty of pain to go around. Instead of deciphering organizations’ intentions and murky carbon calculations, we could be monitoring projects using real data: measurable stove use and fuel savings metrics collected by a statistically significant sample of sensors. For decades, it seemed like the problem of 3 billion people cooking on inefficient stoves was intractable. But along came carbon finance, large amounts of capital were invested, and the sector started making real positive progress. However, the money was probably too easy, and the methodologies surely too lenient. Folks got sloppy, greedy, or both. But climate change isn’t going away, and neither is the global cooking crisis. Clean cookstoves are still an incredibly impactful and affordable way to abate carbon dioxide. Today we have a positive opportunity to build a strong market filled with affordable, life-changing, and trustworthy carbon credits. Sensors can measure what people really do, which stoves they use, and if emissions are really avoided. Geocene’s goal is to create incentives for hundreds of millions of great stoves. Projects should only get paid when they prove with objective data that people truly love to use their stoves. Sensors filter out all the murkiness and show us what’s really happening. Armed with great data, manufacturers and project developers will want to build and deploy the best products possible. Customers deserve affordable stoves financed by carbon credits. It is the responsibility of high-integrity manufacturers, project developers, and companies like Geocene to earn back investors’ trust with data-backed credits that reflect the real impacts of great stoves.

Everyone is always thrilled or excited to post things on LinkedIn, but this is legit. I'm really excited about this. I had the honor of being featured on the "Innovative Entrepreneurs Podcast" with the brilliant Erica Bailey, MBA. It was a special kind of conversation. Erica was a fantastic and delightfully vulnerable host. Her willingness to engage with me meant this conversation went deep, really fast. We talked about common challenges in the workplace, the basic assumptions we all make as leaders, and how we can address the single most common leadership challenge: How to ask a subordinate to perform a task and respond assertively when it isn't done right or on time. I mentioned it went deep, right? Together, Erica and I explored how our past impacts our bodies and, therefore, the decisions we make as leaders. Yeah, it's an emotional intelligence thing. https://lnkd.in/dqK8T9HR

Announcing Geocene SimplePLUG! The world needed a way to monitor and control any electric stove, so we made one. At Geocene, we’re excited that super-clean electric pressure cookers and induction stoves are gaining popularity in emerging markets. Our customers have asked us again and again for an affordable and universal solution for monitoring and controlling electric stoves. But electric stoves have special requirements: They are difficult to monitor with traditional thermal SUMs, their higher costs often require Pay As You Go (PAYGo) financing, and they integrate with electric power grids, putting stress and new requirements on utilities and microgrids. That’s why we created?Geocene SimplePLUG: one device for?PAYGo,?Load tracking,?Usage monitoring, and?Grid power quality analysis. Here are some quick facts: Data measured - Minutely load profiles, including peak and mean power. - Stove usage, including quantity and duration of meals cooked. - Minutely grid power quality, including grid voltage, frequency, and harmonic distortion. PAYGo control - Stoves can be enabled for a defined quantity of calendar days or cooking hours. - Mobile money compatible. - Works offline - no persistent internet connection required. Networking and data access - Use Geocene CrowdCollect anywhere. - Anyone’s Android mobile phone can be used to operate the PAYGo features of the stove and collect data from the stove. - Access, analyze, visualize, and export your fleet’s data from Geocene’s dashboard and API. Integration options SimplePLUG works with any AC power grid: 100-240V and 50-60Hz. To get SimplePLUG into your stove, you can either: 1. Just plug it in: The IEC Type 13 connector allows a plug-and-play connection to most stoves. This may be subject to tampering. 2. Hard cord integration: We work with your factory to install a non-removable cord during manufacture. This option reduces tampering risk. 3. Direct logic board integration. We integrate our Geocene technology directly with your pressure cooker’s logic board. You can then use your standard power cord and leave the exterior of the pressure cooker looking and behaving identically to a standard cooker. This option is the most resistant to tampering. Price Geocene SimplePLUG prices start at $10 + $0.50/month. https://lnkd.in/gXYqjtC4

Digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) is critical for credible cookstove carbon finance projects. However, it's concerning that many projects have approached Geocene planning to use only about 30 Stove Usage Monitors (SUMs) to represent the impact of tens of thousands of stoves—a sample size far too small for accurate estimation. In this blog post, I use Geocene's world-leading dataset and a cool numerical technique called "bootstrapping" to calculate a statistically-significant SUMs sample size. What I demonstrate with this analysis is that most real-world projects need at least 1000 SUMs to reach statistical significance, and a good rule of thumb is for cookstove carbon finance projects to install SUMs on 5% of stoves.