Heritier Bagonza is Nuru’s Senior Manager of Business Development
Why do you personally work in renewable energy?
My desire to work in the field of renewable energy comes from my college experience at "Université Chrétienne Bilingue du Congo, UCBC" in Beni, North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over my four years of college, along with other students coming from Ituri provinces, we lived on campus around 7-10 kilometers from the city, where we only had access to electricity for about 7-8 hours per day. Doing assignments, readings, and research after college was not always possible unless you had a decent computer with autonomy or walked 7-10 kilometers from school to the city center to get electricity. In addition to this personal experience, we studied the issues resulting from the lack of access to reliable energy in our university program.
Energy represents a fundamental piece of development. The lack of access to reliable and affordable energy holds back positive development-related outcomes, such as economic growth, health, education, and job-creation, and wellbeing. Energy access must be addressed if we want to see significant change in countries like the DRC and make a positive impact on the planet as well. It was extremely challenging for me to realize how the lack of reliable electricity holds back the DRC from its full potential, despite the fact that it also has its own tremendous amount of energy-related potential.
Considering these realities, I joined Nuru at an early stage because I believe in the company's objectives. Furthermore, I knew that the only way I could help my community to tackle its energy challenges and make a significant difference was to support the development of energy projects that would provide them secure a reliable electricity supply along with improved health care treatment (for medical supplies like vaccines, the presence of lights for births or emergency surgeries at night, etc.) that saves move lives. This is what I call a positive change for communities in the DRC and why I work in renewable energy.
How does your company engage with local communities?
Engaging with local communities is critical for the acceptability of the projects that we are developing in the DRC. Proactive community engagement not only develops positive relationships, but also contributes to the work we do to improve the overall wellbeing of the community through several activities we develop, including:
Conducting community engagement activities during market and project assessments, which allows us to gather feedback and design projects that meet the community's true needs.
Running capacity building sessions during project implementation to help ensure local labor participation.
Developing a local community framework to facilitate communication and support project planning, construction, and operations throughout the process.
Tell us about a recent or upcoming project. What is most compelling about it?
My journeys in the energy field have been incredible. I've learned a lot about many aspects of project lifecycles, including project development, partnership, and navigating very complex and nascent regulatory frameworks like the DRC to get the job done. However, over the eight years I've worked with Nuru, I'd like to point out two projects that gave me a lot of accomplishments:
First, I see one of my life’s great accomplishments so far as successfully developing the company’s first impact project in rural communities of Tadu and Faradje near DRC's Garamba National Park (in collaboration with the park and the EU). Today, due to the project's success, the communities of Tadu and Faradje villages, as well as households, businesses, and, most importantly, health care facilities, benefit from 24-hour, reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity for the very first time in the history of these villages. In addition, this project has provided the children of that community the opportunity to benefit from advanced and cutting-edge energy technologies that were installed to ensure the energy service quality and sustainability for more than two decades.
Second, I am proud of supporting the development of the company’s Series B projects that targeted the cities of Kindu, Goma, and Bunia in the DRC. I eagerly look forward to the commissioning of these projects, which will significantly boost the energy efficiency around these three strategic DRC cities and for the surrounding communities.
How can/do “Peace RECs” support your project development?
P-RECs are essential for project development. This is especially true for renewable projects targeting frontier markets, where needed investment is acquired at a high return rate, which impacts project costs and affordability to end users. Getting P-RECs for a project provides comfort to developers, lowers project costs, optimizes O&M costs for the company, and serves as a potential entry point to attract more investment to fund high-impact renewable energy projects.
In addition, P-RECs assist developers like Nuru in responding positively to social obligations identified within the project community, such as public streetlights and lowered connection costs for health care facilities to improve the services quality, helping to save lives.
What impacts does renewable energy have in the communities where you work?
The main impact we see in our communities include the following:
Accelerating the connection of more homes, businesses, and healthcare facilities to electricity and increasing its productive use in the communities (e.g., electrical milling machines, barbershop business, cold storage business, etc.)
Creating job opportunities for local communities
Connecting water treatment facilities and water pumps to better serve the community
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to using fossil fuels like diesel
Improving night time security through public streetlights
Unlocking the development potential of communities where we implement projects