A2P Energy Solution Private Limited

e are applying to the Elevate Prize for getting help in the below mentioned points

• R&D : We have been successful in replacing fossil fuel in industrial boiler through our Green Fuel, next target in replacing coal in power plants. We need connects with right R&D partners for making green energy products which can replace fossil fuel in the Indian Power Plants, journal of Nature Sustainability states, “China and the US are the two largest producers of coal power, but power plants in India take the highest toll in the world when it comes to health”
• Mentorship: Mentorship for helping scale and replicate our work through social entrepreneurship model
• Funding: We are building models for a socially oriented for profit business, so we will need help from Impact funds to help us scale up
• Exploring new markets: this agriculture waste burning problem is there in lot of other countries like Egypt, Thailand, etc. So we would explore the new markets by making the right partners and connections in these countries 

In 2010, Sukhmeet was working in New York on making strategies for Thomson Reuters Financial Products, though that was a dream job but Sukhmeet wanted to work on solving some social challenge back in his home country India. So, he came back and joined Indian School of Business (ISB) as Associate Director working in the field of supporting entrepreneurs.  During his work with entrepreneurs, Govt. and Private organizations on Research to Action Projects in Agriculture, Sukhmeet realized that on one side his two young kids were suffering from pollution arising every year from stubble burning and on other hand farmers are doing suicides because of not meeting their ends and Govt still pushing farmers to spend more on managing the stubble. So Sukhmeet left his full time position at Indian School of Business and started A2P Energy with three aims:

•     Solve the crop residue burning problem

•     Increase the farmers income, and

•     Provide Clean Energy fuel made from crop residue to Industry

In next 10 years, Sukhmeet’s aim is to stop at least 2 million tonnes of straw getting burned on the field, increase farmers income by 15% and replace 2 million tonnes of fossil fuel getting burned. 

India is today the world's second most-polluted country, a recent report by the University of Chicago highlights: “A quarter of India's population is exposed to pollution levels not seen in any other country, 248 million residents of northern India on track to lose more than 8 years of life expectancy, if the pollution levels persist”. One of the major reasons for this high air pollution is annual stubble burning on the fields.

“86% farming households in Punjab are under debt and between 2000 and 2015, approximately 16,606 farmers took their own lives, according to a 2018 joint report on farmer suicides.

A2P Energy uses AI to track waste biomass and then works with farmers to collect and buy that. On one side it generates additional income for farmers and on the other side A2P converts the collected biomass into NextGen biofuels like energy pellets, green coal and biooil. Our aim is to find sustainable solution for using waste biomass and establish these models on the ground, once established, these models are being further scaled up to help more farmers and social entrepreneurs adopt these for helping convert waste biomass into energy products which have capability of replacing fossil fuels. 

A2P’s mantra is to solve social challenges through R&D and innovation and then expand these models through social entrepreneurs with maximum impact at the bottom of the pyramid. A2P innovation is solving one the biggest social challenge of stubble burning in India and also helping increase farmers’ income:

A2P uses AI and  Machine Learning to work with farmers to optimize straw collection and and track farm fires

• Optimising straw collection process: In the straw collection process, the presence of large and continuous fields is necessary to avoid wastage of resources. To tackle this, we use Google map API to extract the images and analyse them using unsupervised machine learning techniques to segregate dense continuous paddy fields from the other crops
• Recommending ideal plant locations: The collected straw needs to be transported to the plant within 20 days to be effectively converted to biomass fuel. We built a machine learning model to recommend optimum location for the plants helping us reduce our costs by 12%.
• Tracking paddy straw fires: We use NASA satellite data to track open field paddy straw burning. This helps us in monitoring the crop burning areas and train farmers for paddy straw collection instead of burning.

About 40 million people get effected by the smog from stubble burning in India, in the current harvesting cycle, through its two plants, A2P energy is collecting 8000 tonnes of waste straw which will save following gasses/material from getting released in environment: Particulate Matter:  24,000 (kgs), CO: 4,80,000 (kgs), CO2 1,16,80,000 (kgs), SO2 16,000 (kgs). Apart from the environmental impact: 400 farmers will be able to earn 15% extra income because of stubble which was earlier getting burned. The straw collection straw effort will generate employment for 192 farmers entrepreneurs and convert 8 villages into no straw burning region.

On one side we work with farmers on buying the straw from them and then from a customer perspective, the industry in North India is struggling to meet its energy/fuel requirements and currently uses fossil fuels. So, all the industries which have boilers are our prospective customers, which is a more than USD 1 billion market in just North India. 

• Our fuel is cleaner and cheaper (10~15%) comes in packaged bags

• Our fuel has 60-70% less moisture compared to conventional fuel like wood

• By using our fuel, the companies become part of the green fuel value chain