RPRE CEO:2020 Wrap Up Message

Dear Friends of RPRE, 

2020 is certainly a year to remember! While it surprised us with many challenges, it also allowed us to spend more time at home with our loved ones, and made us do lots of reflection and introspection. As a company, we updated and strengthened our internal processes and policies. Externally, we met with many great people (via zoom) and formed and developed great alliances and partnerships. 

As a certified B Corp, we focus on a triple bottom line of People, Planet, and Profit, and have also signed the FBN and UNCTAD pledge to mobilise our family business to build a sustainable future and define success across generations.

To conclude 2020, we thought we'd share 20 milestones we are proud to have achieved this year:

PEOPLE

1. Our RPRE team expanded and we made a senior hire and welcomed L J, our BD manager who will be based in Jakarta once the COVID situation allows. She joins us with over a decade of experience coming from top engineering company Worley and looks forward to finding her “ikigai” at RPRE.

2. We hired 3 interns in 2020 who brought much youthful energy to our team. This reaffirms our commitment to education and grooming future talent, and allows us a pipeline of proven candidates to join our team upon graduation.

3. We raised over SGD50,000 cumulatively for Smiling Gecko, an amazing NGO in Cambodia founded by Dr. Hannes Schmid and Soleap Ng. We are very grateful that generous donors reached deep into their wallets and donated to the children and families of Smiling Gecko.

4. We were able to design, engineer, and thanks to a local partner, construct a 230kWp solar PV system for Smiling Gecko to help them lower their operating expenses and be less reliant on the erratic local grid. This will help them reduce their energy expenses tremendously and channel much-needed funds to the beneficiaries instead. Check out the drone picture of the completed solar farm, and this heartwarming video of "We are the world" performed by the children.

5. We signed an LOI with the UNDP Indonesia, with the aim of improving access to clean energy to remote areas across Sulawesi, Indonesia. We will start with 2 pilot sites and scale to another 23 sites, before expanding further to other off-grid areas across Indonesia.

6. We were accepted to join the Indonesian Smart Energy Accelerator program with New Energy Nexus, a global non-profit focused on bringing 100% clean energy for 100% of the population. We learned a lot from the program and graduated wiser, stronger and even more driven in our mission. The intensive program took place over 4 months and was extremely helpful and forced us to challenge many assumptions, and develop many important areas such as finance, human resources, marketing communications and prepare us better for investors.

PLANET

7. We became an authorised distributor for Schneider Electric, one of the world’s leading energy solutions providers. We benefited from their training and technological offerings and will be harnessing their knowledge and expertise on energy efficiency and smart building management, and solar inverters.

8. We are one of the first few companies to join Singapore Power Group's Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) trading platform powered by blockchain.

9. We partnered with electrify and Senoko Energy, on their SolarShare program, allowing us to sell the excess solar energy that we export to the grid, and sell them to consumers who want to purchase solar energy.

10. We also met and collaborated (or soon will) with great companies to provide a holistic offering to the clients and communities that we serve. This includes:

a. Billionbricks - providers of affordable solar-powered homes to the base of the pyramid communities.

b. Kacific – a provider of satellite broadband internet to remote areas.

c. RESYNC – an intelligent cloud-based energy management platform.

d. Wateroam - a social enterprise providing clean water technologies.

11. We are humbled to have won 2 awards this year, with the first one being the Champion of Good award by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC), reinforcing our mission to use business as a force for good.

12. We were also awarded the National Service advocate award by the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). National Service is something that has always been of high importance for us, and even more so now when many more realise the significance between climate change and our national security, whether it is rising sea levels, food security, and just the overall well-being of our nation. 

13. We are also grateful for the many speaking opportunities thanks to the invitation of great hosts such as Asian Venture and Philanthropy Network (AVPN), New Energy Nexus, Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS), and the UN Global Compact. This allowed us to spread our message to a larger audience and advocate the importance of our work, in particular embracing clean renewable energy, and how crucial green financing is.

PROFIT

14. Financially, 2020 was a very challenging year and we were not spared. We had to take measures to manage costs, one of which was moving out of our Singapore office and working from home. We are grateful to the Singapore Government and Enterprise Singapore for all their support, both financial and non-financial.

15. Despite the financial challenges, we remain committed to our impact investors, and paid out the first coupon of our mini green bond right on schedule on 30 June 2020, and will make the 2nd payment without any delays on 30 Dec 2020 too. Our impact investors, (such as Octava Impact Investments) will continue to earn the 7.7% pa return while making a positive impact socially and environmentally. Thank you Latham and Watkins for the super helpful pro-bono legal support in our mini-green bond.

16. While we focused primarily on decarbonisation and helping clients switch from fossil fuel energy sources to clean energy, we also want to address the problem in the bud and focus on energy efficiency services too. We are excited to have signed a deal with a large industrial factory in Indonesia, and we look forward to doing many more energy efficiency projects.

17. We continue to be in discussion with multiple clean energy investors that bring strategic value to our mission. We are grateful for their trust and belief in us and we look forward to bringing them officially onboard in 2021. 

18. We are also pleased to announce that we have in-principle approval of an investment into RPRE by a global non-profit organisation focusing on fighting climate change. Details will be announced soon in Q1 2021 once all the legal paperwork has been completed.  

19. We have big plans for 2021, including many MWp sized projects in Singapore, and across Indonesia including Sulawesi, Batam, Jakarta, Riau and Papua. Projects will be a combination of energy efficiency, as well as clean energy generation via off-grid, ground mount, roof-top and even floating solar projects. We can’t wait for 2021 to start so that we can realise all these projects. 

20. Last but not least, we are very blessed that nobody from our RPRE team or families was infected by COVID, and we will take precautions to ensure it stays that way. Our fight against global warming must push on, and we will adapt the way we work in a COVID environment to adapt and overcome the odds. We must continue to earn our namesake and continue continuously aspire to be the Right People.

In Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and taking the time to follow our progress. This is the decade of decisive action and we started it by being thrown into the deep end. We have 9 years left to achieve the UN SDGs and there is still much work to be done. Thank you for being part of our journey, and we continue to march forward in 2021!

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you Happy Holidays, and let's make next year a better year for everyone! 

Sincerely,

Robin Pho

Founder and CEO,

Right People Renewable Energy