Q1. What motivated you to join Shizen Energy Group (SEG)? What is your career background?
Randy: There are two reasons why I decided to work at SEG. First, I always wanted to work at a company that is providing a real contribution or value to society and does not only prioritize profit. I was charmed by SEG’s purpose, “Take action for the blue planet”, and its vision, “Co-create a 100% renewable-powered planet”. As someone who was born and grew up in a developing country, I found that RE is one of the key solutions to reduce the gap between developing and developed countries. Every country has its own RE resources (wind, sunlight, water, gas, etc), and if those are developed, each country could become sustainable in its energy production so their financial resources could be used to fund other important areas which are important for the development of the country, like education and healthcare.
Secondly, I don’t want to work in a typical strict corporate atmosphere. I always wanted to work at a company that supports its employees to unleash their true potential while respecting each character and not forcing everyone to be the same. I believe I can be myself and fall in love with my work in that kind of environment. I feel that SEG has what I was looking for when I was in the interview stage. Fortunately, I knew my feeling was right as soon as I entered SEG.
Q2. What are your current job responsibilities?
Randy: I am working with the consolidation team within the accounting and tax department (AT). The team was started at the end of 2021. Currently, we are building the structure of the team while creating a consolidated financial report at the same time, which is not easy. However, my work will enable SEG to see the financial result of Shizen Energy as a group. I’m proud to say that my team and I were the first ones who mapped all related companies within SEG. I love this work since not only I’m doing what I love, this job also enables me to get to know and work together with many crews from different departments, companies and countries. I was lucky I could participate as a committee member in ALL Meeting 2022 too.
Q3. What are your aspirations at SEG?
Randy: I want to make SEG the most trusted partner among the stakeholders. Our stakeholders comprise many parties, including the Shizen’s crews (employees), business partners, investors, lenders, suppliers, the government, and every household that uses electricity. The first objective is to be able to deliver the financial report accurately and in a timely manner. Secondly, to provide that financial information for the management so they could use it to make the most correct business decisions for the company. To do that, the AT team will play a big role and I need to help build my team.
Q1. What motivated you to join Shizen Energy Group (SEG)?
Gosuke: I was inspired and excited by the future envisioned by the founders in which we live in harmony with RE. I love to travel, and during my long holidays as a student, I used to travel all over Japan with the Seishun-18 ticket. While I was amazed by the fascinating food and culture I encountered in each region, I was also reminded of the current state of depopulation. In the future envisioned by the founders, RE power plants would not be built in major cities, but as an asset rooted in each region that would attract funds and people. I joined the company because I believed that through SEG, RE would not only solve the problem of global warming, but would also create funds and jobs in each region and protect the food and culture of the community.
Q2. What are your current job responsibilities?
Gosuke: I work in the Asset Management Dept., operating and managing solar power plants after they have been constructed. In the operation of power plants, there are stakeholders, including banks that provide financing, investors, O&M companies that manage the plant, and companies that handle accounting and tax procedures and much more. While building a cooperative relationship with stakeholders, I try to control risks and maximize profits from a medium- to long-term perspective. Because multiple solar power plants need to be managed simultaneously and I need to make decisions on behalf of investors, it is necessary to have the ability to handle multiple tasks and have extensive knowledge for decision making. Each day, I really appreciate the advice that I can receive from senior crew members to carry out my tasks.
Q3. What are your aspirations at SEG?
Gosuke: I would like to increase the number of solar power plants around the world that can continue to generate electricity safely and stably for as long as possible. In recent years, disasters caused by post-developed solar power plants have been occurring frequently, and it has become not uncommon for what was built for a better future to have a negative impact on the surrounding environment and neighboring residents. Each power plant has different characteristics depending on the country and regional environment and conditions, as well as on the person who designed it. I would like to increase the number of forever-Earth-friendly solar power plants by providing appropriate maintenance, repair, and value enhancement for each power plant.
Q1. What motivated you to join Shizen Energy Group (SEG)? What is your career background?
Kevin: I met Shizen Energy through a career fair organized by JICA in Tokyo. In this event, there were various companies which seemed to provide a good start to my career in Japan. Among these companies, Shizen Energy stood out as it was not as popular, however, had ambitious activities despite the company’s youth. Also, unlike others, the members of Shizen Energy were very engaged in explaining the company’s mission and vision, while also assessing the value I can provide to their modest team. Through these short conversations, Shizen Energy opened to me the opportunity to create an impact to different regions around the world through RE regardless of my short career.
RE and climate change mitigation has always been of interest to me. I grew up exposed to the outdoors and saw the impact of climate change on the environment in local communities in the Philippines. Putting together growing up in a family that worked in the Philippines’s energy industry, working in a power plant EPC company myself, studying about climate change and meteorology, and me wanting my activities to have a big impact unlike what it would be in a large rigid company, venturing into RE with Shizen Energy seemed logical.
Q2. What are your current job responsibilities?
Kevin: I am currently a wind resource and siting manager, as well as a general project manager for all the company’s wind energy projects. I manage a team that deals with site assessment, layout identification, and wind simulations. Given these are the center of every wind energy project, I coordinate in between and collaborate with different work streams such as M&A, ESG, cash flow modeling, financing, legal, procurement, among others.
In a general sense, I see my responsibility as everything required to develop, build, and operate a power plant that will generate as much electricity as possible through wind energy to offset global carbon emissions.
Q3. What are your aspirations at SEG?
Kevin: Policies are integral to completely decarbonizing global energy supply. Current policies, however, have not been effective enough to push and implement this yet, mostly I feel due to lack of comprehensive understanding of the social, environmental, political, and economic systems that are entangled around the RE industry. Through my work in Shizen Energy, I aspire to understand these systems well, and hopefully be one of the key policy makers sometime in the later years of my career.
