Dr. Jemma Green
Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Powerledger
In 2012, Jemma Green was on a 12-month hiking sabbatical from her banking job in London, when her thoughts turned towards developing an ecovillage.
The opportunity for more solar panels was obvious, especially in a condominium or apartment building, but how could one make the sharing process stack up efficiently?
In particular, how could you make the payback, rewards and returns mirror the investment, expenses and utilisation? Without that alignment, the prospect of more solar on rooftops was just wishful thinking.
Convinced blockchain and a less centralized paradigm was the key to resolving some of the challenges, Jemma, alongside four other co-founders, took her newly published PhD thesis and used it in part to form the basis of a startup company Power Ledger. It was formed on a shared belief that individuals and communities should be free to choose the way in which they interact with the electricity network; this would need the development of a power system that was at once resilient, affordable, decarbonised and democratised.
After successive proof-of-concept projects, the first commercial application of Powerledger was launched and Powerledger software was ready for larger implementations across regulated electricity networks.
In 2017, Jemma and the Powerledger team undertook an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), receiving more than $34 million towards Power Ledger’s growth. The Australian Financial Review conveyed this as “Australia’s first cryptocurrency IPO”.
Under her leadership, the company has gone from strength to strength and now has more than 20 clients in 12 countries. Projects developed are centred around the themes of transactive energy, energy provenance and energy certification all of which are predicated on blockchain and cryptocurrency. Clients include eKwateur (provenance), M-RETS in the USA (certification), Chiang Mai Thailand with TDED (transactive).
In 2018, Powerledger was awarded the crown by Sir Richard Branson for the Extreme Tech Challenge, and Jemma was awarded EY Fintech Entrepreneur of the Year.
The combination of Jemma’s achievements to date and her experience in steering a high tech venture makes her an ideal judge in our EY Entrepreneur Of The Year awards.
