This week I had the chance to speak with Dr Jemma Green, Co-Founder and Chair of Power Ledger, a Perth based blockchain energy trading company. It was really interesting to hear Jemma’s journey from Perth to London and back to Perth to ultimately form the company which I believe is a welcome disrupter to the energy ecosystem space.

Power Ledger launched Australia’s first home grown Initial Coin Offering (a cryptocurrency IPO) where they raised $US27 million in funding in October last year. The funding is being used to make the Power Ledger platform globally accessible in their provision of a resilient, carbon free and sustainable Peer to Peer energy trading platform. It’s been getting a lot of attention from the likes of Sir Richard Branson who is the subject of a sweet anecdote she shares with us. Jemma is back again to Necker Island this year as Power Ledger is one of three finalists in the Richard Branson’s 2018 Extreme Tech Challenge. which Branson himself is judging.

So far they’ve been busy with number of trials to test and validate the platform in Australia and are undergoing others globally. It’s latest deal with US non-profit Helpanswers will lead to hundreds of clean energy trading projects in US states including California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including stretching to it’s capital, Washington DC. Both companies’ mission is about generating opportunities to make low carbon, low cost energy universally available.

In Asia Power Ledger have signed up partnerships with Tech Mahendra to build microgrids in India and with a major state owned utility provider in Thailand which will lead to a significant uptake of clean energy trading in the Asia region.

We talk about the rollercoaster ride that is the cryptocurrency market and the trend of social media companies banning their advertising, and the cryptocurrency and blockchain space in general.

Jemma was a real gem to agree to being a guest on People My Dog Would Like, as she’s soon to have baby number two, so I was really grateful she took time out of her busy schedule and along with wishing her all the best for the birth, will be rooting for her in the upcoming competition. That woman has winner written all over her.

I hope you can excuse the change in audio quality towards the end of the interview, we had a tech hiccup in our first recording so finished the conversation on an alternative recording channel the following day.

The post Conversation with Dr Jemma Green – Co-Founder and Chair of Power Ledger appeared first on Lizzie Mettam.