Solar in Africa: Lived Necessity

In this episode, Stewart Alsop III sits down with Tom Faye — experimenter, author of The 90 Day Client Acquisition Code, and founder of Carbon Credits Marketplace — to talk about solar energy, off-grid living, and the solarpunk vision of a technology-powered utopia. They cover everything from perovskite solar cells and portable container-based solar systems, to carbon credits, ESG investing, and blockchain verification of clean energy output. The conversation also winds through AI training data, business automation, and the data labeling industry before circling back to some bigger questions about human nature, geopolitics, and what genuine self-reliance looks like in 2025. You can find Tom and his work at Carbon Credits Marketplace on LinkedIn and his energy consumption data visualization is also shared there. His book The 90 Day Client Acquisition Code is available for those looking to explore business automation further.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Tom Fay and his work
01:03 Understanding Solar Punk: Utopian Tech and Culture
02:15 Current State of Solar Technology and Storage
03:45 Living Off-Grid: Solar, Batteries, and Remote Work
06:11 Solar Energy in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities
12:21 Powering Communities with Mobile Solar Solutions
16:50 The Vision of Solar Punk: Self-Sufficient Communities
22:54 Existing Examples: Great Barrier Island and Others
26:06 Overfishing, Environmental Challenges, and Technological Solutions
28:34 Using Technology to Address Second-Order Environmental Problems
36:35 Data, AI, and the Future of Energy Management
43:13 Carbon Credits, Blockchain, and ESG Reporting
45:27 The Geopolitics of Green Energy and Resource Control
46:53 How to Connect with Tom Fay and Future Projects

Key Insights

1. Solarpunk represents a genuine near-future possibility, not just an aesthetic. As solar panels and lithium batteries become cheaper and more efficient, the vision of abundant, decentralized clean energy is becoming a practical reality rather than a utopian fantasy.
2. Perovskite solar cells are pushing efficiency roughly 22% beyond conventional panels, and the bigger revolution happening right now is on the storage side — cheaper, higher-capacity batteries are what will truly unlock solar's potential at scale.
3. Africa may leapfrog the West on solar adoption, just as it leapfrogged landlines with mobile phones. People in energy-scarce countries viscerally understand the value of clean power in a way that people in the West, accustomed to reliable grids, simply don't.
4. Portable solar container units — self-contained, deployable systems — already exist and are making off-grid energy viable for farms, mines, remote lodges, and even data centers, with a roughly five-to-one solar-to-load footprint required.
5. Carbon credits generated from verified solar output, tracked via IoT smart meters and stamped on blockchain, represent a long-term business opportunity that survives political shifts because institutional investors and banks operate on independent ESG mandates.
6. AI training data is a present and real economic opportunity, but a shrinking one. The window for humans — especially lawyers, scientists, and specialists — to get paid for their expertise is closing fast as labs pivot toward synthetic data generation.
7. True self-reliance comes down to four things: food, water, power, and transportation. With solar and Starlink, the gap between remote wilderness and connected civilization has essentially collapsed — something unimaginable even a generation ago.