Tania Pinto talks with John Furrier at AWS Public Sector in Washington DC #AWSSummit #theCUBE https://siliconangle.com/2018/02/26/it-takes-a-tech-village-to-tackle-the-worlds-energy-crisis-at-scale-awspublicsector-womenintech/ It takes a tech village to tackle the world’s energy crisis at scale It sounds like a fairly basic solution for today’s energy crisis. Take large amounts of organic waste, convert it to biogas, generate electricity and heat, and store the excess for later use, making life easier for millions of people without access to sources of reliable energy. Simple. Yet, behind this basic approach from a startup called SEaB Energy Ltd. lies a more complicated and fundamental issue. The world is a big place with a lot of people and many problems that can’t be quickly or easily solved. How exactly can technology play a role and make a meaningful difference in the lives of citizens around the globe? Finding a way to convert waste (plenty of it everywhere) to reliable energy (not so much) is a good place to start. An estimated 1.2 billion people lack access to the world’s energy, with a significant number of them located in developing Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly 80 percent of them reside in rural regions. SEaB, a participant in the PeaceTech Accelerator program supported by Amazon Web Services Inc., C5 Capital and SAP NSz, offers an intriguing glimpse into the potential for technology to make a difference in the energy sector as other firms take on equally significant tasks, such as improving education or enhancing the quality of life in cities throughout the world. For SEaB, it starts by taking the technology on the road. The firm has organized a Kickstarter campaign to convert waste to energy in remote communities in India. “We are doing the Kickstarter to fund the first two systems we would like to deploy there,” said Tania Pinto (pictured, right), sales and marketing executive at SEaB Energy. “After we’re in the first two villages, our goal is to find local manufacturers and actually expand to all of the remote places that have no access to energy.” Pinto spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the PeaceTech Lab at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., as part of theCUBE’s special AWS Public Sector CUBE Conversation series. They discussed the motivation for starting her company, the science and technology behind waste conversion, and the support of AWS for her startup’s initiative. This week, theCUBE spotlights Tania Pinto in our Women in Tech feature. Converting poop into energy The genesis for SEaB’s waste conversion model came from one of life’s common occurrences. The founders stepped in it. At their farm in the English countryside, Nick and Sandra Sassow tended horses that generated more than enough waste product to go around, according to Pinto. After stepping in a pile of manure, Sandra challenged her partner to find a way to use what was lying on the ground around them. So he did. SEaB’s process involves using modular, odor-free, anaerobic digesters in 20-foot shipping containers to process organic waste. The resulting biogas can be used to create electricity or heat water. “We came up with waste power in a box, appliances that are made to tackle climate change,” Pinto explained. “Essentially, it’s a biological process.” By offering self-contained units where waste can be processed and turned into energy onsite, the company eliminates the less-than-green situation where the material must be trucked to large-scale conversion facilities. Early customers included a U.K. hospital and a supermarket in Portugal. More recently, the company installed one of its anaerobic digestion systems at a U.S. naval base in California. Watch the complete video interview with Pinto below: