Smart Gas

One of the coolest thing about oil & gas production is that it empowers a vast amount of people.

No where is that more visible than in societies where availability of sufficient energy at the time of need is something close to a miracle. Today, my rich-energy peers have instant power available to them at the the turn of a key, a flip of a switch, or the opening of a valve. Energy providers have mechanisms to make me pay for what I used. Also, I have built a good payment record. These are critical ingredients for a society to become more patient and trusting.

It was not always like that in the country where I grew up. Before natural gas became the cooking, heating and electricity source of choice in the Netherlands in the late 1960s after the discovery of Groningen Gas, it was often only available on a pay-as-you-go basis. Gas meters like the one below were coin operated to manage payments.

A century later, a similar change is happening in some places around the world, most notably Africa. Today, this innovation is wearing a more modern coat. Envirofit Smartgas 2.0 uses a mobile phone to prepay for gas use. Pay-as-you-Cook lowers the adoption threshold for users by lowering the up-front money they would have to pay for a whole canister of natural gas. People who already use charcoal enjoy this particular benefit already, as users are already on a typical daily purchase for this much dirtier product. Getting LPG on a daily pay schedule levels out this particular benefit of charcoal.

That leaves the purchase of the stovetop as an initial investment. The Bettering Human Lives Foundation is working with African entrepreneurs to help lower their customers’ threshold for stove adoption, most effectively by providing loans at much lower interest rates than can presently by obtained there. While these loans provided through your donations enable entrepreneurs to expand the scale of their business, the match works out that a donation of about $50 to the BHL Foundation makes a one-time stove purchase a reality for a family.

On a side note, I am contemplating asking my Substack subscribers (thank you for reading!) to donate $50 through me (<$1 per post), which I will then match in a donation to BHLF for the first 1,000 subscribers. That’s because I am a fan of BHLFs model that gives people a hand to help themselves, as opposed to a hand-out. I also support their 5k run on October 5.

The smart model lets local people help themselves. Smart Gas 2.0 will provide cleaner cooking fuel, help reduce premature deaths from indoor air pollution associated with dirty cooking, and saves time - especially for women.