Today, we’re rebranding the “Design a Difference” programme as the “Just Energy Transition Lab,” or for short, the “JET Lab.” We’re also making other important changes to the programme.
Yes, I know we’re likely to get drowned out in search results by NASA’s JPL, and I’m OK with that. In fact, it was a very deliberate decision. It gives me some small joy to be able to name one of our projects in a similiar vein to the Lab I’ve deeply admired over many years. Even now the JPL landing page features the slogan “Dare Mighty Things” and it breaks out my goosebumps. I can only hope that our own humble JET Lab can one day aspire to deliver a fraction of the value to humanity that JPL has.
The changes come as a result of some very tough but important lessons learnt by us over the last year. The biggest of those being that the scope of the original programme was simply too large and unweildy. In my founding blogpost, I described the programme as focusing on “mostly, but not exclusively, on infrastructure related projects – water, electricity, transportation, buildings, healthcare and education infrastructure etc.”
Admittedly (and in hindsight), that scope was anything but focused. As we spoke with possible funders, especially the ones with a reputation for backing particularly impactful projects, the feedback we kept hearing was around focus. “What makes you folks uniquely positioned to develop innovative solutions in these areas?” are the types of questions we faced.
After taking a hard look at the programme, we’ve scaled down the scope and tweaked the basic premise of the programme. We’ve chosen to focus on the “energy transition” in large part because our community provides us with a clear strength in that space. We have a number of engineers and other professionals in our community and networks with significant experience, skill and knowledge in the energy domain.
Even then however, “energy transition” is a large area with a massive design space, and there is therefore still the tension between scope size and ability to actually deliver impact. The resolution we’ve adopted to manage this tension is to only adopt projects within the energy transition space that clearly fill a gap in the current landscape.
The programme’s flagship project, for example, is the “Non-profit solar” project. In this project EWB-SA acts as “non-profit independent power provider” where we build and manage rooftop solar systems for children’s homes, frail care centers and the like. This is project is situated in a clear gap within the energy transition space – currently only government and the for-profit sector generate electricity in SA. This project aims to seriously develop a “third approach” – namely a non-government, non-private power generator. Of course the project is still in it’s infancy (focusing for now on serving other non-profits), but it’s ambition plugs a gap in the current solution set.
And then there is the inclusion of the word “Just” in the new programme name. “Just energy transitions” are an acute focus currently (especially against the backdrop of COP26) among many stakeholders. Conceptually, “justice” has always been at the heart of our organisation – we’ve striven to bring engineering capability to under-resourced communities in a bid to create a more just society. After all, any under-resourced community is an injustice.
Focusing on the just energy transition in South Africa is therefore a particularly natural fit for us as an organisation, and far more comfortably answers the questions around why we are to be trusted with this ambition. We are grateful for the hard questions we’ve faced, as it has demonstrably allowed us to develop a strategy more likely to deliver impact.
Much of the principles and mechanics from the original conception of the Design a Difference programme will be carried over into the JET Lab, with some necessary exceptions. One change that will be made is that each project in the JET Lab will be required to stand on it’s own feet – that is, attract it’s own funding and demonstrate a clear ability to “plug an existing gap.”
A year from now, it may be that I’m left to write to you all once again and confess a fresh set of lessons and detail yet more changes. While I naturally hope and aim to avoid any type of catastrophic failure, I’m encouraged that the culture of our organisation is one that openly embraces improvement even if it comes in the form of tough love.
Perhaps EWB-SA will one day be one of the largest providers of electricity in the country, and I am hopeful that we will be able to point at these changes as a key source of that success.
