6 Ways that Rats and New Energy Nexus are alike!

As this week marks the beginning of the Year of the Metal Rat for those following and celebrating that zodiac (much of the world in China and East Asian countries like Vietnam, Singapore, Korea and Japan), I’ve taken a tangent in to the topic of rats. It turns out that New Energy Nexus and rats have some things in common:

1. Personalities birthed in prior years of the rat, metal or not, are supposed to be energetic, friendly, clever and a little bit stubborn. I think there are some strong similarities, at least organizationally! Mos def on the energetic, friendly and clever front. And persistence is a common trait of many of our team.
2. Supposedly there may be a rat within six feet of you now. The connection I could think of is that within six feet of you now is one of the technology solutions New Energy Nexus is working to spread — like Lithium ion batteries. Since 2012, our CalCharge program has been working to advance advanced batteries because they are the lynchpin tech for mobility (EVs) and the electricity markets’ (think grid storage) transition. They have succeeded due to their use in devices such as cell phones.
3. One ecologist is quoted in the excellent Quartz obsession about rats, as saying that we know more about polar bears than rats. This reminds me of our energy systems, especially electricity. While we live with this power like a fish in water, as consumers we know almost nothing about it. A few guys can geek out on their internal combustion engine car but for the most part we don’t understand how we move around much either. We need more education and understanding so we can manage energy.
4. Apparently there is one scientific paper published every hour, using rats as a test subject. I reckon, with no empirical basis, that there’d be one scientific paper published every hour, using photovoltaics to write them (PV is one of the key solutions we promote at New Energy Nexus!). Why do I say this? Because satellites. They’re all solar-powered (well I think there was one nuke powered one but that was a bad idea). Think about that: all the telecoms are dependent on clean energy technologies!
5. There’s fascinating data on the yield losses in African farms (15%!) and number of people that could be fed (2o0m!) with the agricultural produce that rats pilfer each year. This again is reminiscent of electricity and the opportunity we have with smart, modern technology to tighten up the supply chain with energy efficiency from source to use. New Energy Nexus has long supported a focus on this opportunity space for new business and value creation and even had the grand-daddy of the work on our Board (see the Art of Defiance). Heat loss and waste is even worse than what rats do to food in the old steam-based electricity grid, which is why we need modern distributed renewables to reach the 1 billion without power.
6. Rats and the successful clean energy companies that we work to foster at New Energy Nexus are spreading really quickly. If nine rat pups were born on January 1st, by the end of this calendar year (and the Gregorian New Year celebration!) they might have 11,900 descendants! That’s the find of fecundity EV adoption in Indonesia, solar home system spreading in Uganda and building smart sensor tech in America needs to show, though I’m unsure they’re on quite that fast a reproductive clip!

Let me know if you see any other similarities with us and rats!?

Last but not least, may this year live up to the portent those who follow this horoscope see — that it be full of generosity, kindness and diligence. The world’s going to need it in 2020 and beyond!