Damian Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Orb Energy.  Damian has a PhD from Cambridge University (Trinity College) in the early commercialisation of solar energy technology in emerging markets, and he is the author of the book, Selling Solar. Damian has lived and worked in India the last 11 years.

Prior to launching Orb in 2006, Damian worked for Shell Solar where he oversaw operations across 7 countries in Africa. He talks about what his motivation was for getting into the clean energy business. "My motivation was, your know it's very simple, it was pretty clear to me that the way that we derive our energy, or have derived our energy was having a pretty negative impact on the environment. And that there were potential solutions out there, notable renewable energy, which would not have the same impact. You can have electricity without having the same impact on the environment. So the obvious source of electricity in the past was coal, especially historically in the UK and US, and coal has a big impact not just on climate change but on acid rain and other issues. So when I was coming through university in the early 90's solar and wind power as energy sources were emerging. So it was a clear improvement in how we derive our energy."

He goes on to talk about why he choose to India to base Orb Energy. "The initial problem, especially in developing countries was that the initial cost was much too high, but once the cost of the technology was brought down for wind and solar, then there was scope for businesses like ours in a place like India, to bring the technology to market in a way that customers could use it."

Miller goes on to talk about what climate change solutions he is most optimistic about. "Well let's take the case of solar energy, just because it’s the one I know the best, but when I started the company in 2006 the cost of a watt of energy was $4 a watt, so if you bought a 100 watts solar panel it would cost your $400, today if you buy that same panel it costs $0.20. So its fallen by a factor from 2006 until 2021 by a factor of 20, which is an enormous cost reduction. It means now that in many places, but particularly in India, we've gone through a transition of solar being the most expensive to being the least expensive. So solar is now cheaper than coal when you look at the cost per kilowatt hour, what you see now certainly in India is that the cost of a power plant is that it is almost 40% cheaper than coal. It is just causing mayhem for the utilises hear who have invested a lot of their money into coal and they are now having to push back against solar energy because they have all these coal power plants that they want to maximise and sell to customers. But the customers are now saying hold on, solar is cheaper than coal so we want to use solar and the utilities are coming up with different ways to block that by adding a cost to solar which is very ironic. So my point in telling you about that example is that in the case of solar the cost has changed so dramatically that I'm extremely optimistic about where solar will be over the next 50 years. If you look at Shells energy scenarios but if you look at 2070, 50 years out from now, they predict that 40% of the entire worlds energy will come from solar, which is an enormous number form where we are today at about 2%. The economics of the lower cost will over time, force the utilities to change."

He continues on to talk about how the storage of solar energy is key to it's continuing growth. "The next big thing for solar energy is storage, of course people want energy at night when there is no sun, or when there is a cloudy day. So the next big wave of innovation required to maximise solar and wind is storage and that is still an area that it will be seen what will emerge but currently what people are doing is taking the same storage technology that is used in electric cars and compiling it on mass, so taking all those lithium ferrous cells and putting them all together into gigantic batteries as a way to store power for when energy is needed. Right now the costs are still much to high to make it viable but the cost is coming down. I think the next new wave that I find interesting is decarbonisation of the atmosphere, because even if we switch everything over to clean energy we have already at least doubled the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from the pre-industrialisation levels in the 18th century, so how do you quickly get that out of the atmosphere I think is the next big question that the world will face."

Lastly Miller discusses what step you can take to have the most impact to help combat climate change. "Well, lots of things, we all face this question on a daily basis about how much does the impact of what we do really effect the broader aim to improve climate change, and of course at the individual level it's hard to feel that anything you do will cause a significant effect, but it all makes a difference. It starts from everything that we eat, where meat and dairy seems to be what they call a high climate impact food. Then there's also how do we get around, so mobility, things like do you drive a car, how often do you fly all these thing have an impact. Then of course, as I have talked about extensively, there's how you produce your electricity and energy in your house. In your own home you can choose to switch to a provider of green energy. Those are just some of the things that come to the top of my mind, but there are so many other things that you can do."