Turning the lights on

Australian entrepreneur Katerina Kimmorley’s pioneering work has made a significant difference to global poverty and climate change. We speak to her about providing solar lighting to slum communities across India and Nepal, how Australia can become a clean superpower in the energy sector and so much more.

- AMY TAYLOR-KABBAZ

It’s a simple idea: provide solar lights for poor families in the slums of India so they can stop using dangerous kerosene lamps at night and save the environment. For many idealistic entrepreneurs, that would be the end of the idea. Not for Katerina Kimmorley, who is the co-founder of Pollinate Energy and a climate and sustainability investor. For Kimmorley, what started out as lights for the poor became a mission to turn the light on for women around the globe.

Lights on

As a child, Kimmorley grew up in one of Australia’s most beautiful coastal areas: the northern beaches of NSW. Life was good; she’d go to university, perhaps she’d do medicine? A good student with a flair for the sciences, everything was possible. Until she saw something very different on the horizon.

“Growing up on the northern beaches we always used to look out over the skyline and out across the ocean. It was a big part of our upbringing. I remember one day, my dad looking out and getting quite emotional — he never got emotional, he was this tough surfie guy — about all the coal ships on the horizon, all lined up waiting for Newcastle and Wollongong. I remember him looking at them and saying, ‘That’s going to ruin our paradise.’ Seeing my Dad emotional like that really shook me up.”

It was as if a light had been switched on inside her.