Three, Sixty: With Alan Wyley
This is an extract from Issue 85 of SDG Alpha, my newsletter that casts an Irish lens on the world of Impact Investment, Innovation, and Sustainability. In these regular features, I pose three questions on the theme of sustainability to an impact entrepreneur or innovator, to get a better understanding in sixty seconds of how they’re working to achieve the SDG targets.
For this issue, I’m delighted to welcome Alan Wyley , CEO of EnergyCloud , a social enterprise looking to alleviate energy poverty.
On a personal level, what impacts of the climate/biodiversity crisis are you most concerned about?
I am very concerned about the speed of decarbonisation in Ireland (and around the World). The move to clean renewable energy is a key part of this for me for all of the reasons you would expect around the environment, climate change etc.
But I am and have always been driven by a desire to support interventions that helps the disadvantaged in society and there is a real opportunity to use this crisis to effect change in Government policy and ensure a Just Transition. We can use renewable energy to heat the homes of those in (energy) poverty, decarbonise the country (reducing our exposure to fines) and reduce waste as well. A win-win-win for everybody.
Which of the UN SDG’s was EnergyCloud established to address?
EnergyCloud supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
How does the EnergyCloud business model enable the transition to a more sustainable future?
EnergyCloud only have one objective, and that is to use surplus renewable energy to end energy poverty. Today we do this on a pilot basis by using surplus renewable energy to provide free tanks of hot water to those in energy poverty. But our ambition is to expand this out to heating homes using this surplus renewable energy and with Government support we hope that we can deliver targeted rebates to those most in need as well as expanding the rollout of technologies in parallel.