Melbourne · Sydney · Manila
Sohail Hasnie
I develop and finance clean energy and electric mobility projects in the Asian markets most funders find hardest to underwrite. Nearly four decades in the energy sector, twenty-two of them inside a development bank deciding which projects got built.
Nine things occupy my time. Here they are.
Energypreneurs Advisory
Taking clean energy projects from concept to financial close across Bangladesh, the Philippines and Central Asia. A small management team and a network of twenty-one senior advisors resident in the markets they cover.
energypreneurs.org → The venture Page coming soonSecond Life Mobility
Converting the Philippine jeepney fleet to certified electric drive at a third the cost of replacement, paid for out of the diesel it stops burning. The vehicle body outlives its engine — conversion captures what's left.
Read the programme → The podcastEnergypreneurs
340+ conversations with the founders, financiers, engineers and officials actually delivering Asia's energy transition. Targeting 400 by the end of 2026. Also where I talk about what I'm building, and speaking engagements.
Watch on YouTube → The writingTen years on the ADB blog
Off-grid solar, batteries after solar, swapping instead of charging, conversion instead of replacement. Everything the advisory firm now does for a living was argued here first, between 2015 and 2022.
Read the archive ↓ The footageFilms from the field
Inside a running turbine, off-grid installs in Tajikistan, a yurt heated by coal in the Kyrgyz Republic, the first forty e-trikes on a Manila street. Shot on site, mostly 2015–2018.
Watch ↓ The other thingPhotography
Thirty years of carrying a camera through the places the work has taken me — portraits, travel, Australia, and the events worth remembering. Prints available.
See the galleries → The one I stoppedGIY Hydroponics
Years spent building hydroponic systems for Philippine hotels and restaurants — salad grown in the kitchen that serves it. Delivered, commissioned and paid. Dormant now, and looking for the right operator.
The story ↓ The roomSpeaking & Toastmasters
Thirty-eight years of explaining complicated things to people who did not have to listen — ministers, boards, village meetings. Toastmasters, motivational and general speaking here; keynotes and commercial engagements through the firm.
More ↓ Where I postThirty thousand followers, and where the formal argument happens — articles, the Energypreneurs Briefing every Friday, and the running commentary of someone who has watched this sector from the inside for thirty-eight years.
Connect →
Ashgabat, 2018 · test-driving a Model X the year Australian EV sales were under one per cent · a regional airstrip, somewhere the scheduled airlines don't go
The short version
I started in the energy sector in 1988 at the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, then spent four years as Manager Pricing at Victoria's Office of the Regulator-General — now the Essential Services Commission — through the privatisation of the Australian energy market, assessing tariff submissions and helping write the wholesale market rules.
From 2001 to 2022 I was at the Asian Development Bank, latterly as Principal Energy Specialist. I led projects from concept through approval to implementation worth more than US$2 billion, and ran a live portfolio of around US$600 million as team leader. Among them were several ADB firsts: the first solar project (Mongolia, 2001), the first energy efficiency project (Philippines, 2008), the first cross-border interconnection (Indonesia–Malaysia), the first public sector electric vehicle project anywhere (Philippines, 2012), and ADB's first energy project in Turkmenistan (2018, US$500 million).
I founded the CAREC Electricity Regulators Forum in 2005 and advised on establishing China's electricity regulator. Then I moved to the developer's side of the same table, which is where the interesting problems are.
Most of what I do now comes down to one question: why do obviously sensible energy projects in Asia fail to get funded, and what has to change for them to succeed? Usually the answer isn't the technology.
Writing
I argued all of this in public first
I wrote for the Asian Development Bank's blog through the years I was inside it. Read them in order and the advisory firm's whole thesis is already there — off-grid solar for households the grid will not reach for a decade, batteries only after solar, swapping instead of charging, conversion instead of replacement. I am now building the things I was writing about.
- Off-grid solar Electricity in a Box: Looking Back at Our Off-Grid Journey
- Off-grid solar How the Unelectrified Poor Can Leapfrog to Off-Grid Solar
- Storage Got Solar? Now Add Batteries
- Electric mobility Battery Swapping Can Propel India’s Electric Car Revolution
- Electric mobility How the Kyrgyz Republic Can Become Central Asia’s Electric Vehicle Hub
- Generation Game-Changer: Can Solar Energy be Generated in Old Gas Power Plants?
- Efficiency Watching Invisible Energy Loss – Yes It’s Possible
- Outlook Clean Energy Predictions for 2018 – And Why I was Wrong About 2017
- Rural economy How the Gig Economy Can Transform Farms in the Developing World
- Technology Power Walking: Turn Each Step into Clean Energy
Video
Short films from the work
Shot on site, mostly between 2015 and 2018 — inside a running turbine, off-grid installations in Tajikistan, floating solar in Korea, an e-trike assembly line in Manila. Watch them in sequence and you are watching someone work out, on camera, what he would later go and build.
Second-life batteries for off-grid solar
2:57 · the Second Life Mobility argument, nine years before the company
Tesla's Powerwall 2, and Electricity in a Box
0:43 · the same idea at two very different price points
Inside the running turbine
0:25 · hydropower rehabilitation, from inside the machine hall
Off-grid in Tajikistan
2:23 · the market the 60 MWp programme is now aimed at
Electric vehicles for the base of the pyramid
1:05 · on the e-trike line — who actually buys these
How to put together a solar system
9:00 · panel to controller to battery, start to finish
Electric bus in Sydney
2:27 · groundwork for the EDSA bus pilot in Manila
Floating solar in Korea
1:06 · one megawatt on 13,200 square metres of reservoir
Coal heating in a Kyrgyz winter
1:02 · inside a yurt, asking whether twelve-volt DC could replace the coal stove — the question that became the home battery work
First 40 e-trikes in Manila City
0:43 · January 2018 — the US$504 million programme finally reaching the street
Speaking
Two different rooms
Most of my working life has been spent explaining something complicated to people who were under no obligation to listen — a minister, an investment committee, a village meeting, a board chaired by a head of state. That is a craft, and it is separate from whatever technical thing I happened to be explaining.
Here — the craft
Toastmasters, motivational and general speaking. I joined a Toastmasters meeting in the Kyrgyz Republic and they put it on their site; the video is on my channel. This is the side that is about how you hold a room, not about megawatts.
Through the firm — the work
Keynotes, conference panels, expert briefings and commissioned commercial engagements run through Energypreneurs Advisory, alongside the record of where I have spoken and on what.
The one I stopped
GIY Hydroponics
For several years I ran a hydroponics business in the Philippines, building growing systems for hotels and restaurants — lettuce and herbs harvested in the kitchen that used them, instead of arriving wilted from a farm and two ferries away.
The model was salad as a service. Not one large central farm, but small standardised units sited where the food is actually eaten, installed and maintained under a service contract rather than sold as equipment. In a country of seven thousand islands, distributed beats centralised on freshness, on cost and on waste — and the further you get from Manila, the more decisively it wins.
It worked. The last installation was delivered, commissioned and paid for.
I stopped for the least interesting reason available: bandwidth. The energy work took every hour I had, and I never found the right operating partner on the ground. The company is dormant rather than dead — the designs, the product catalogue and the operating knowledge are intact, and I am open to talking to someone who wants to run it.
It is the same lesson as everything else on this page, which is why it is here rather than quietly forgotten. The technology was never the constraint. Getting the thing to the people who need it, financing it in a way they can actually use, and having someone competent on the ground — those were the constraints. They always are.
Get in touch
Project enquiries, speaking invitations, podcast guest proposals, or a print you want to buy — all fine.