7th EBAC meeting took place in Bangkok last Sunday. Due to the still on-going political situation, the UN building in Rachadamnern was closed and the meeting was kindly hosted by the Chairman of Greenspot Co., Ltd. Mr. Chote Sophonpanich at their office. It was nice to see some familiar faces, but even nicer to see a half room full of new faces and more younger generation as well.
The whole weekend became quite action packed as both task forces that I am part of had meetings at the British Club, scheduled for the day before the EBAC meeting. Green Business Task Force chaired by Mr. Carson Wen opened the day with an inaugural meeting for the members to get to know each other better and select the projects to support the UN ESCAP Sustainable Business Goals.
It was really nice to meet a room full of new people – all working in green business. Carson opened the meeting as the Chair welcoming everyone to the meeting and thanking all for coming despite the political crisis situation. Ms. Barbara Meynert, who chairs the Connectivity Task Force, spoke about ESCAP and their Sustainable Development Network.
In the introduction session, I witnessed three very interesting presentations about clean energy: wind, bio fuel and ground energy storing by Gilad Regev, Anthony Dixon and Bruce Hicks respectively. Evan Husney from Nokero joined us via video Skype call and presented Nokero and consumer solar tech devices. I talked next about 3D printing, and despite not really being a ‘green technology’ as per se, it has it’s material and resource saving aspect, through which it might play a role in the future as a ‘sustainable development technology’. It was nice to hear how Bao Yu’s organization in China is building green lab projects there utilizing examples from Finland, and how Hong Kong has their own sustainable business development awards organized by Ivan Chu. Finally, two investment bankers Simon Hua and Vincent Chan talked about their focus in investment in green businesses and technologies.
Over the lunch Carson introduced his latest venture, Kalina cycle, through a very interesting video that described the quite complex process in an easy-to-understand manner.
After lunch I proposed a project that we have been working with Carson – Lighting a Million Lives, which is a donation based initiative that aims to bring lighting solutions to rural areas where people have no access to electricity. After the presentation unfortunately I had to change meeting rooms as Connectivity task force meeting was about to begin.
The Connectivity Task Force, which has been active for almost a year now, is getting ready to launch it’s first project: Myanmar SME Link platform that connects the often starved SMEs to services and investment + partner opportunities. It also serves as an information source for business in Myanmar.
The evening ended with a buffet dinner, hosted jointly by Carson and Barbara. It was a long, but very fruitful day. I have to say that I was very impressed with the expertise and devotion to their cause of all the members of the Green Business task force and I really look forward to developing new projects together.
