Dan Adams, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Amber Electric

Dan Adams is the co-founder and co-CEO of disruptive renewable energy retailer, Amber. Established at the end of 2017 to take Australia to 100% renewables as quickly and as cheaply as possible, Dan has taken on the notoriously difficult retail energy sector with passion, drive and success.

Ahead of his presentation at Purpose, Dan spoke to us about his vision for a clean-energy powered Australian economy and future. He also told us about diving headfirst into music concerts for social change and how a near-death blood infection galvanised his passion for climate and combating inequality.

Watch Dan Adam’s speak at Purpose Conference in 2022

Going right back to the beginning, when did you realise you wanted to change the way the world works?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the natural world – I love the ocean, surfing, hiking, camping, just being in nature. And if you’d asked me when I was 15 years old, what I was going to do with my life, I would’ve told you that I was going to start a renewable energy company!

Then when I was 19, I got a golden staph blood infection on a surfing trip in Samoa and nearly died in a local hospital. I only really survived because I had travel insurance and was flown off the island to a first world hospital. When I eventually recovered, I couldn’t shake the idea that while I had the right to fly off the island for better healthcare, the local people don’t have the right to drugs that cost just a few dollars.

I started getting really passionate about that sort of inequality and in 2005, decided to organise a Make Poverty History concert. I had absolutely no experience in the music industry or international development, just the motivation from my time in Samoa.

We ended up getting Pearl Jam and U2 to perform in front of 50,000 young Australians, and it was broadcast nationally. Kevin Rudd came to the concert and when he got into power, he cited the concert as a reason for increasing the foreign aid budget.

How did that early success impact you?

It completely changed my perspective on life and made me understand that if you’re really passionate about something and you work hard, you can have a massive impact.

So then I combined my passion about inequality with my drive for sustainability and realised that climate change is the greatest threat to inequality in the world. Not just inequality between countries, but intergenerational inequality.

I spent the next five years volunteering full-time for non-profit organisations around climate and sustainability, running different campaigns, until I figured out that I could create a much bigger impact building a business that was creating positive change in the world.

When you set up Amber, what was most important to you from both a personal and business perspective?

From a personal perspective, resilience is super important because creating change is hard. Nine times out of ten, things won’t go right. And you need to make sure you’re still there when the tenth time comes along so you can take advantage of it.

Even going back to the Make Poverty History Concert, every single band that played at that concert said no to me, and many of them said no multiple times. Every sponsor that ultimately sponsored it also said no to me more than once. So resilience and persistence is absolutely crucial.

I also had some tough life experiences as we were forming Amber and to manage that I took time away from the business. When Amber came to be, I was actually travelling around South America. But I needed that time to look after myself.

“From a business perspective, what’s always motivated me is that sense of purpose and impact in everything. The current energy crisis means there’s real challenges in the market at the moment and being able to see beyond that is super important.”

So how can that move to renewables happen?

I’m passionate about shifting Australia to one hundred percent renewables in the fastest and cheapest way possible. Over the next few years, enough battery storage capacity in household batteries and in electric vehicles is going to pour into our homes to meet almost all of the battery storage that Australia needs to get to 100% renewable energy.

It’s just a software and coordination problem to automate all those batteries and to charge all those EVs in a coordinated way when there’s cheap, renewables in the grid and then to discharge when the grid needs that power, so that we can displace coal and gas.

Large scale storage projects will be important but it would be totally crazy if we didn’t utilise all the capacity sitting in people’s homes. Not only will it accelerate the renewable transition, it will shift hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel companies into the pockets of households.

Where do you see the real challenges to making that happen?

You need to be automating in a way that works for people and creates a seamless experience, but still allows us to use that battery capacity when it’s available to support the renewable transition.

Imagine integrating every different type of device with all the EVs and batteries out there in the market. And then creating the customer experience that allows people to automate those devices in their home in a way that creates value for them, but also works within their lifestyle.

It’s a great vision but if it becomes a big headache, no one will do it.

You need to give people the tools, incentives and technology to use their batteries and EVs to drive the renewable transition and to drive down electricity bills. That’s how we came to the business model of Amber.

So how does Amber work?

We give customers direct access to the real electricity price. When there are lots of renewables supplying to that grid, that price is really cheap. When power’s coming from coal gas, it’s expensive. And so via the Amber app, we align customers’ interests so they can run their washing machine or dishwasher or dryer when there are lots of cheap renewals in the grid.

Then, for customers who have storage, we’re now automating household batteries for customers to discharge at peak times, when fossil fuel generators are charging high prices. Recently, that’s been 100 times the normal price. It means our customers earn the same price as a large coal gas generator while displacing fossil fuels. That’s really exciting to see.

There’s 150,000 people in Australia with a battery, and the vast majority of them, around 85%, are not being automated. If we could automate them all, we could replace multiple gas-fired power stations in Australia, tomorrow, with batteries that are already sitting in people’s homes.

Later in the year, Amber’s building that automation for EVs to make that a really seamless experience. So we put into the Amber app, I want my EV charged by 8am tomorrow morning and we’ll look at the forecast and automatically charge your car at the cheapest, most renewable time possible.

The final one is taking power out of your car battery and discharging it to the grid at peak times to earn more and displace fossil fuels. That’s just an enormous opportunity that will allow customers to earn thousands of dollars from their vehicles.

But trying to completely redefine the business model of electricity retailing is hard.

And building that model from scratch, we probably won’t get everything right and we’ll make mistakes along the way. But this needs to be solved at scale and hopefully we can be part of that solution.

As you’ve moved from concept to a start-up and now into a growth phase, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned?

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that it basically all comes down to the team. You need to hire great people and create an environment where they can do their best work”

One of the real benefits of having a purpose-led organisation is that it’s just motivating and in my mind, all businesses should be about a purpose, otherwise what’s the point? 

Customers want purpose, employees want purpose, and that’s what gets me out of bed every day.

Purpose also links back to the team because it allows you to attract the great people who are motivated people to do great work. We’ve grown from two to 65 people over a few years and I’m sure we haven’t got everything right. But we’ve tried to be really generous to the team and to set people up with the opportunity to do their best work and have a really big impact on the world.

I think the other one is just how powerful incentive alignment is.

It’s been in our pitch deck from the beginning, but you really feel that our customer’s incentives are aligned with our mission as a business. Our model is to just charge $15 a month. We don’t make money by selling our customers power – our only goal is to help people reduce their electricity bills and to support the renewable transition. You really feel that what customers want is aligned with our mission. And what is in our financial interest is aligned with our mission.

If a business gets to a point where those things are not aligned, it’s not sustainable. Having everyone’s incentives aligned with the mission is super important.

Why are purpose-driven businesses having a real moment right now?

I think the moment is here where consumers want to support businesses that are creating change in the world, employees want to work for businesses that are creating positive change in the world, and hey, the world really needs some positive change!

If a business has to choose between financial sustainability and environmental sustainability, there’s going to be a problem. If you can actually align those things and achieve both of those goals, that’s the real sweet spot.

Read more about Dan Adams here.

Read more about Amber Electric here.