Should your next car run on BIO-fuel? Bernard Hidier, Co-Founder KarrGreen

You may recognize today’s guest from episode 5. We’re here with Bernard Hidier, the French expat living in Maine who co-founded Finsulate the non-toxic antifouling solution that looks like velvet and mimics a sea urchin. 

Bernard is back with us because somehow he has managed to co-found and co-manage more than one company at the same time. “Kids do not try this at home!” 

If you remember, Bernard is originally from Brittany France and that is where KarrGreen hails from. Karrgreen is a biofuel company transforming agricultural waste into fuel for cars. With a growing footprint of filling stations in France, KarrGreen’s success does make one wonder why we are digging up lithium for batteries when our abundant agricultural waste could be used instead. 

For Bernard, the corporate structure is as important - and innovative - as the fuel itself. KarrGreen focuses on building local communities, making both its clients and suppliers vested stakeholders. 

Just a reminder, you can listen to Happy Planet pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, or by following one of these links:  Apple , Spotify, Google, or our website.

SPONSORS & PARTNERS

Many thanks to Maine Technology Institute, Maine Venture Fund and Spark No.9 for their sponsorship. 

I’d also like to thank our promotional partners. Investable Oceans is a US-based angel platform specializing in ocean-related startups. 

Oceanovation is a fast-growing hub for entrepreneurs and investors in blue-tech innovation.

KarrGreen
Finsulate
Bernard Hidier
New England Ocean Clusters

Facebook
Instagram
Abigail Carroll LinkedIN
Happy Planet LinkedIN
Twitter

Transcript

Abigail: Welcome to the podcast today, where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll.

You may recognize today's guest from episode five. We're here with Bernard Hidier, a French expat living in Maine who co founded Finsulate, which offers a non toxic anti-fouling solution that mimics a sea urchin. Well, Bernard is back with us because somehow he has managed to co-found and co-manage more than one company at the same time.

 Kids, do not try this at home. If you remember, Bernard is originally from Brittany, France, and that is where KarrGreen hails from. KarrGreen is a biofuel company that is transforming agricultural waste into fuel for cars. With a growing footprint of filling stations in France, KarrGreen does make one wonder why we are digging up lithium for batteries when our abundant agricultural waste could be used instead.

For Bernard, however, the corporate structure is as important and innovative as the fuel itself. KarrGreen focuses on building local communities, making both its clients and its suppliers vested stakeholders. Let's hear it from Bernard.

Welcome back to the podcast, Bernard.

Bernard: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate to be back with you,

Abigail: you are, one of the co founders of Finselate, which is a company that we reviewed and we talked about in a podcast last fall. So it's still available online. but you have also been working for very many years on a project called KarrGreen, which is a project you started in France.

 And now you're, growing that business there and you're talking about maybe bringing it here to the United States. So tell me a little bit about what KarrGreen does.

Bernard: So KarrGreen was born 12 years ago and in the west of France and in a very particular part of France, which is a peninsula, Brittany, and in Brittany, basically post war, the agriculture developed in a very intensive way. An intensive way means using actually a lot of fossil-based or extracted minerals for, actually the crops, but also to feed,an agriculture that, and farming that is based on pig raising, poultry, and dairy farming.

And, getting Into like the years 2000, 2010, Suddenly, this food production system which is really embedded with fossil fuel, um, started bursting at the seams and, one of the signs was obviously the nitrogen and phosphorus runoffs that created algae blooms on the coast.

And so at the same time as Brittany being a very, farming intensive, area , it's also a touristic area. So obviously, one was hurting the other and, it's also a peninsula that actually produced only 8 percent of the energy they use. So the idea was to try to find a way to, actually make people being in control of their destiny and use the resource they had in their hands. and they didn't know or didn't have realized the way they could use it to be able to produce their own energy and their own fertilizer.

Abigail: I love the sound of this. So tell me, how does This work? Can we all just start making our own, energy? 

Bernard: How do we do this? Basically we use a process that's called anaerobic digestion which encompass actually to collect organic waste, all types of organic waste. So from farming, it's going to be pig manure, cow manure. it's going to be also a waste from the agro industry or processing.

So it could be all the, you know, meat processing waste. 

Abigail: can you give me an example? What is an example of meat processing waste? What does that mean? Is that fat?

Bernard: Yes, fat, blood, all types of, yeah, residual thing. So , rich organic matter is actually mixed together with low potential organic matter, such as manure, but manure has more fiber, which is useful too. So basically it's managing the logistics of the different compound to give you an example, the 60,000 tons processing facility we built and started operating in 2016 now, is using 52 types of organic waste. And again, the idea is the people who are bringing the organic waste are also shareholders of the facility. 

Abigail: Well, I want to get into that structure, but first I want to get a little bit more of an understanding of what is this chain you're putting together? like the actual product. So you're bringing all this waste. It's going through a cow's stomach. You've used that metaphor. 

Bernard: Yeah, the reason I use the cow stomach is because a cow stomach, as many people must know, has actually five stomachs. So we don't have five, but we've got kind of three. And so it's a process where you mix these different things, and our chemists are good at trying to find the right balance to have actually the best production of the biogas that's gonna come out of it.

So we would say like, It's two to three weeks to get actually through the different processes in a warm tank to without oxygen to actually generate this biogas. And depending of how you monitor the compound and the mixing of these different organic matters, you're going to have a content of what we're looking for.

actually the methane CH4, which is exactly the same molecule as the natural gas that you get in the pipes all over here that can be from fossil, origins, such as shale gas. It's exactly the same molecule, except that it's coming from a waste. 

Abigail: Right. We're not drilling. 

Bernard: Yeah, exactly. And so you can have a content of, methane that could be like around 70 percent if you do a good job. And then the rest will be CO2 and then impurities. And CO2, today also can be recovered. And, you use actually liquefaction, process at the end of the process. And you're able actually to capture the CO2 and use it because CO2 is very bad when getting in the sky and has greenhouse effects.

So. Same problem with CH4, but it's actually a very valuable commodity and it's used all over the chain production of food processing. 

Abigail: So what are some of the positive benefits of CO2?

Bernard: So, basically It's used in, in, for example, in meat processing in order to neuturalize the environment for bacterias and contamination. But it's also used in the medical field. It's used also in greenhouses. a lot of CO2 in Europe, for example, has been, the byproduct of fertilizer production in Northern Europe.

One of the biggest producer in, Europe is North Ski in Norway, and they use,oil, and gas. their gas field to produce nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, and side product of this production is CO2. The CO2 is put in tankers and sent to the greenhouses of the Netherlands to actually produce vegetables.

So this is something we can actually produce at the local level. And again, what is behind our approach is to be, it's proximity. It's basically the people we need to use. The, the energy need, well, have the possibility to produce it themselves. 

Abigail: Right. Nearby. let's get a little further down the chain. you've taken this through the cow. and you've got this, CH4, which is bio identical to what we're drilling for. And what happens at that point?

Bernard: So there's two ways. up to, um, recently you could actually, you can inject it directly in the grid. And so basically, uh, as I was mentioning, it's exactly the same molecule. So you inject it in the grid and... up to a few years you could actually get paid for that.

What we decided is being able actually to recover it at another part of the grid and actually building our gas stations and biogas stations which can actually feed. trucks that are, actually powered by biogas. So this is one way and that's what we've been doing so far. Again, in these schemes, when we open a, biogas station, we have the same philosophy as for the production units.

We also, in that case, keep only 30 percent of the shareholding of those gas station, biogas stations. And 70 percent is shared between people who have the resource I was talking about, the organic waste. And so they are part of the economics of the gas station, but also people who will be using the energy.

So that can be also the same people, whether they're industrial or et cetera, but also logistics platform and transporters. So that gives them the opportunity to be actually monitoring their own transition to decarbonization. And this is a process that actually is imposed to them, not only by regulation, but also because their clients - think about big supermarket chain or big brands - are now like going through the process of decarbonization fast.

So they basically asking their providers or their service providers to actually show that they are going through this phase.

Abigail: So, can you give me a sense of scale? You're pulling in all this bio waste and let's set aside the supermarket for a moment, but we all fill our tanks. So we all have a sense or we, and we all heat our houses. So how much biomass does it take to, I don't know, fill a car 

Bernard: Well, basically you get to the same autonomy you would have with a full tank, for a car and for trucks, on compressed biogas, so that's the gas that goes through the pipes and then you compress and put in a tank, in a truck, you get, 600, 700, 650 kilometers.

When we go into liquefied, if we liquefy it. and now we've got, now a range of trucks coming into stream and they are actually, they exist in the US and they are coming, also in Europe. You're in liquefied form for the gas and you can go to 1500 kilometers easily. So that's a really long haul.

And so that's totally matching the price. And we price wise competitive compared to, especially in Europe. with diesel on the competitive things. But the other thing you need to take into account is, our clients have to face new regulations about air pollutions in big, city centers. And, biogas burns cleanly. So there's no emission of particles 

Abigail: So that's what I was going to ask you: so you are not drilling. You have a much lower carbon footprint on the processing side. Of course you have to move the waste, but still you're doing these things regionally. 

Bernard: And may I just mention the waste is collected by biogas power 

Abigail: Yeah, right. Okay. So there's one concept here. I really don't understand. If you have methane that's bio identical,why are the emissions not identical?

Bernard: We're talking about the fact that, uh, when you drill, uh, gas, that's not the same footprint. And basically that's you extract a fossil fuel based thing compared to actually recycling something. And I need to add something because we've been. looking so far only at the energy side of it. So basically I was talking about the 60,000 tons of waste that comes in.

This is partially liquid and partially solid. but at the end of extracting the process, like the famous two, three weeks of getting the biogas out, you still have something and this something is almost 60,000 tons of something. So it's basically you still have something and this thing is. What is residual is called a digestate, and the digestate is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus.

Abigail: Right so that's your fertilizer. 

Bernard: Exactly. So, but you can actually concentrate it, extract the water, that's what we're doing too. So we're able to recover water in a form that's going to be actually usable for agro industrial process. So agro food, it's very important. Water resource is constrained and more and more. And,on the other side, we give back to the farmers a fertilizer that they can use instead of the nitrogen ammonium that was produced by fossil fuel and potash, which is extracted. And potash is the first resource in the world that we're going to run off. Potash is essential to guarantee the growth of, any kind of, agricultural crops. And this is the resource we're going to run off the fastest. 

Abigail: How many of these gas stations do you have? 

Bernard: So we have, uh, six, we're opening them in different parts of France because the idea is to basically have the network. And so we build the, cooperation and I would say the partnerships on the local basis. So it Takes more time compared to, uh, Classical oil and gas company who can decide to buy, you know, real estate here and invest the full amount of a gas station.

We would talk about 1. 5 million euros. What we do is like all people, commercial people, go around and go meet. the people who have waste, um, organic waste, and organic waste cost to dispose of, and they go also and meet the, uh, logistics platform and the local transporters, and they build those partnerships.

So it takes more time, but this investment in time and money, because time is money, guarantees that those systems are, like, for the long term. Everyone on both sides, the people who provide the resource on one side and the people who will be using the energy on the other side in these stations, they are around the table.

So they know how the price is fixed, they're interested in the economics working for these stations and take a very good care of these stations. We're very proud about how clean they are because nobody will like drop a paper because that's theirs. so this is built for, it gives us the base load on the off tech side.

So basically they will be the people who are like shareholders will bring their trucks to, take gas,from these stations. On the other side, the people who have the resource, and the organic waste will be also like committed to make this station work. And then we've got the third tier, which is the new customers and the people who can come now today in France, buy a biogas car and come to these stations.

And in order to get them on board, we decided to go one step further. And that was a dream we had years ago when we wanted to go one step beyond. We have,the municipalities, we have the towns, we have the, entrepreneurs, the companies understanding and wanting to get in, and we say, how do we get to the citizen consumer?

That was our dream, and there was nothing we could do. Obviously, there was the carbon credit, but we were very, suspicious about those systems. So we decided to look at it differently, and we decided to measure, and trace, through blockchain, the carbon emission reduction that the production of our biogas, generates. And what we dowe're not selling it against a carbon certificate. We... Emit tokens and we give them to our customers. We reward them and then they can exchange those tokens between themselves. So we create actually a goodwill of recognizing that the people who have invested in those cars, The transporters who made the effort of paying a bit more for like a biogas power truck. Though they will get the return because it, actually operates more efficiently and it's less costly to maintain.

But, we give them the rewards. And, the idea has been, we're able to quantify the emission reduction when someone fills up their car. There will be like an amount of token issued. And we're going to split some to the customer, some to the distributor, and some to the producer because we can trace it back to the producer

Abigail: so interesting. I mean, there's so many ways to look at this. Um, but there, you did say, so you need a special car to run this fuel. 

Bernard: Yeah. Well they ... are they are the same combustion engines... Think about the car you use if you use a fuel powered car. What happens the first thing you do is like the liquid you've got in your tank You need to mix it with air to make gas. The problem is like it's not very efficient, okay? It's getting more efficient and there's work being done. Here you have got the gas right away So basically what you see is like on trucks and on cars you have potentially longer, life duration for your, combustion engine. And also you've got a cleaner way of, getting the combustion. And so the maintenance is less. 

Abigail: So who's buying biofuel vehicles? right now? 

Bernard: people are starting to buy, at the local level. all stations are just, I need to mention, we also producing a green electricity and we're distributing green electricity. So our model today on our basic stations are biogas and green electricity. And we generate green electricity from solar panel that we have on top of the stations and potentially on extra real estate we've got next to the station. When we actually find a good spot for our station, we might have extra space and we produce additional electricity that we're able to store or sell locally. Again, with people participating in the investment, co-investing with us. 

And today, yes, you see, transporters investing in gas trucks. Why? Because that's the only way in the future they will be able to get to the centers of big cities. There's restrictions have been put, they've been differed this year, in France because of You know, recovering from COVID and high inflation, and the gas price going up in general, there was a lot of constraint on the transport and transport companies.

But this is coming. Basically, there's a problem of, inner city, uh, air pollutions, and these trucks are able to get in because they're under the criteria and the limits, 

Abigail: So they have, better emissions ratings.

Bernard: Yes, absolutely. Yes. No, like spectacularly. You're talking about 80 percent to 90 percent less emissions of particles.

Abigail: we're going to hear a quick word from our sponsors, but when we return, we'll hear what inspired Bernard to start KarrGreen and why he thinks Maine could be the perfect home for their work in the United States. 

Welcome back to Happy Planet. My guest today is Bernard Hidier of KarrGreen. I asked Bernard to tell us what sparked the idea of this project 12 years ago.

Bernard: Okay, so at the time, I had a company, I was investing in, forestry and trying to do, again, decentralized production from, discarded biomass that had no value, but like looking at small, co investment, again, same philosophy with, local . collectivities and local towns. we did one, we started one exactly where we've put the first methane, anaerobic digestion facility.

 and we did it with biomass. and then we discovered that all these issues I was mentioning, like even the price of, agricultural land in Brittany was skyrocketing because the, food industry didn't know where to discard their waste and they were a limitation of how much you could put per hectare because of nitrogen runoffs.

So we put them around the table and started building that. and that's kind of organically how it worked. And today we've got, probably, uh, identified, around 120 million worth of projects, that we can do. And we are already involved in, two big, projects. one in west of France, not far from the first one, and one in east of France, for which we've been approved by the European Union.

And the idea would be to build these facilities and do the liquefaction and recovery of CO2. And we have the next step, we're ready for the next step, which is we'll be able to generate and produce green hydrogen from our CH4, but that's only when market will make sense. So we're not exposing ourselves to the market at the moment, yet we're ready. 

Abigail: Yeah. It's a rodeo. I mean, I, the green hydrogen story is so interesting. We've had a few people talking about green hydrogen on this program. 

Bernard: Well, to,be honest, there's green hydrogen being produced, uh, today in land, in France, in some situations which I can't really understand. And we know roughly where we are in terms of price when we're ready, we are very competitive. 

Abigail: So I want to get back to the stakeholder engagement a little bit because I think this model This community model is really compelling. You're creating communities. I mean, I've always said, that, you know how this oyster farm, the community wants you to succeed or they don't want you to exceed and succeed and they decide.

And what's so interesting is that you are, bringing so many different players into this and it's decentralizing an industry that is centralized

Bernard: No, I mean, it's coming from, historically, it's culturally, it's coming from my background. and I'm from West of France, they were like mutualization system, mutual banks. my grandpa was at the end of one, then my father was there. And again, I'm talking about local banks where people put their money.

And when someone has to build a barn, well, everyone not only will you know, vote to get the money, but also help build the barn. So, so this is really like ingrained and I really pay a lot of respect of the way people were doing things at the time. And they were also very conscious of what they had in their hands.

So there was no, they were not disconnected from how they were producing things. Everything was really used, and so this kind of sense has always been like kind of irrigating what I do. And that's why I think, uh, a year and a half ago at, here in Portland, like I was asked to do a talk about innovation and I was like, why are they asking me about innovation?

And then I ended up saying, well, it's more "in" that's important because it's in you. So you all innovators just think about your history, what you learned from the previous generation, et cetera, and make something you like, because you don't have to have a MIT degree or whatever,

Abigail: For sure, so, you're raising money right now, and how does this stakeholder model affect that. Or does it?, 

Bernard: it does, because, um, behind the green, label of many funds, there's the necessity to, give like a high return to investors. so obviously that selects a lot of people out, and, but that. You get to people who, really have a mandate and are looking to put their money to good use and being able to show credentials. so it's, different profile of, I would say investors. 

Abigail: Its not you classic VC, but there is money to be made, it would seem. 

Bernard: yeah. I mean, we, again, the initial ask is to look at, green bonds and, the returns are like, uh, we're talking seven years and, because these models, work very well. nevertheless, there was expression of interest to come in capital, but we'll see how it goes.

Uh, we privileged actually, Capital if it comes from people who are, either technical partners or like opening new markets for us, it needs to be not only money, it needs to be money with something else, because that's how we are. We are small structure, but we build very, I would say strong partnership with, people who are able to help us with the industrialization.

And also I would say the, standardization of our blocks. So we talk always about our, Lego blocks. And so we've got the Lego of the compression. We've got the Lego now of the liquefaction and that means you could put a gas distribution station, out of the network of, gas and also collect it directly into a farm here and there.

Abigail: And, and we've got the Lego for the hydrogen distribution, but again, we put them when they make sense to everyone that's around the table and it works price wise.Amazing. So, you started this in France, and... Europe has a different environment than the United States,regarding everything that is climate related, 

Bernard: hmm. And price, price, energy price, too, because, uh... I mean, America became, the United States became not only a huge producer, but almost one of the first exporters of energy. And that's the trend that's pursued because suddenly in order to substitute to Russian supply, Germany and most of Europe has to rely on one way, like the Gulf, and the other side, the United States of America.

So it's a different market yet. Um, I think it's interesting being in Maine because, and especially recently I've been, hearing about initiative about, you know, making food production sustainable in Maine. one of the, aspects I think, uh, need not to be missed is our, uh, food production these days, whether it's the food production itself, but like fertilizer, transport, and all, you know, decarbonization one, two, three, like these three steps need to be, understood from the start. I think it's very important that in this reflection, which I think is really good, it feels good to be in Maine and seeing this kind of. thinking process, but that aspect would be important.

And, what we've done so far, uh, which I describe as, uh, decarbonization on land, now is about to happen, on the water. So on the sea,in Brittany, and I can't tell much more, but, yes, the same applies to, fishing fleets. And, you know, we're able actually to, to, help them with that too. 

Abigail: so would you start this project in Maine? It would Maine be a good test site for you? 

Bernard: Yeah, yeah. Maine has the right vibe for it. I see that the right vibe for starting Finsulate. and it's interesting because it goes beyond, purely, I would say the economy and the approach and it's actually, uh, it's the feeling that we had moving with my family five years ago and finding a strange, familiarity, between what Maine is, what Mainers are, how they look after each other, how they look after their environment, and where we're coming from, which is, well, I'm coming from west of France. yeah. There's a lot of... So it's... Yeah. It's a natural fit in my way. And again, Maine has, then this power of, uh, uh, what is it? "As Maine goes, so goes the nation," they say like no, 

Abigail: Who says that? Governor Mills? 

Bernard: I don't know. Like it's apparently it's a coined phrase that's been going on and on, but it's true. It's, you can see, um,yeah. For Finsulate, I go nationwide and talk to people and they look up to Maine on environmental and, I would say, this approach of a responsible approach about how to do things and protect the environment so... 

Abigail: so, speaking of Finsulate, you are an entrepreneur with two massive projects. how do you manage?

Bernard: I probably don't manage properly. 

Abigail: They all seem to be going in the right direction, so what what is the key? 

Bernard: uh, first of all, the KarrGreen project is, uh, first of all, my main partner is, on the ground every day. And we've got a great team, and it's a small team, but very efficient team. And we've built those relationship about now for the last 12 years. And so that helps a lot, but that requires for me to get up very early at times, to take calls or being on video calls, especially with partners, et cetera.

But, uh, but it's okay. Then I take a nap and then I get back on Finsulate where I've got a fantastic, business partner here. Um, who's also very supportive and the support of our team in Europe. So it's, stimulating. 

Abigail: it sounds like the key is good partners. 

Bernard: Yeah, look, I think the, uh, I would say key element of what we do is we have no religion about anything. Okay. So we're not stuck into a business model. CH4 is the one that we've been, I think, really managing and um, knowing very well and testing very well. But then we are very flexible.

The idea is really to come, I think, to each situation. You need to look at what are the local resource, what is the waste, what is whatever they have. And then get these people around the table and mutualize them and tell them, look, you don't know, but like your neighbor also would like to come with you.

And these people you don't know who are transporters, they would like also. And you get them around one project and you build it. Sized to what they need, and that's the key. But you're not prisoner of a business model or a technology. You're able to be flexible. Today we are assessing technologies coming from different parts of the world.

That will give us actually, we hope, a lot of flexibility to really go even further in terms of small, deployable and standardized systems. But again, will be the local situation that will dictate 

Abigail: I love, I love a decentralized economy, and it's kind of ironic because France is one of the most centralized of the world. 

Bernard: Yeah. Yeah 

Abigail: And, uh, and maybe that's what you were feeling back in Brittany.

Bernard: No, it's totally Jacobinism in France is part of the..., 

Abigail: so tell me this, what, like, what gets you up in the morning, like at four o'clock to get those calls? Like you seem to be very driven. what's the big goal for you? 

Bernard: I would say that when I go back to France and if I go back to where I'm coming from, uh, there's people my age, so I'm in my mid fifties now, um, who are farmers and,there's a lot of, farmers bashing in France because, oh, they use all this, Uh, fertilizers,these chemical products, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, you need to look at the situation they they are in. They are prisoners, uh, dairy farmers in France. they send their milk every day or every other day to what was called a cooperative, but doesn't behave as a cooperative anymore. And they will know only, um, two weeks down the road, how much they're going to be paid per litre.

And in the meantime, they have, uh, to just, make a living. They don't know what the weather's going to be, whether they will be restricted in, using water for their crop. And the fertilizer prices multiplied by eight last year, 

 What I can do at my little scale is to say, okay, we're going to give you like, um, a bottle of oxygen because we know that if you're given the opportunity, you want to pivot. You're not like in love with what you do. And to be the statistic that's around us is "every other day, a farmer in France commits suicide."

So let's not be crazy. food system we've built is not working anymore. Uh, we saw it during COVID here, when suddenly you had in Midwest, uh, culling of hundred thousands of pigs, because the, slaughterhouse and the pig sausage facility couldn't process because they were suddenly, like the, the restaurants were closing.

There's a formula that I love: Actually, I studied a bit at the University of Cambridge and it's rewiring the economy. I like that rewiring the economy and I'm trying to rewire it at a, human scale. That would be kind of, what drives me and, and also because when you meet people, because when you do the job we do, it's like to get people around the table.

Suddenly you've got people who don't know each other or had never like heard about the business model of the others, or even their story or who they are. And we sit and we have a lunch because we're in France when I go back, or we have a talk through Zoom, et cetera.  and it's. it's community, it's sharing, it's talk, it's socializing, 

Abigail: That's great. So are you optimistic that we're going to meet our climate agenda? 

Bernard: I don't know, It's, you know, the data is so, uh, mind boggling. I think we've, unfortunately, we are passing some thresholds and we don't know what's going after. So the models are like, built, you know, with kind of a repetitive, uh, kind of pattern, but the problem is like when you pass something, you get into a new world.

So I'm trying not to focus on that, and that definitely not the first thought I've got when I wake up in the morning at two. I'm just focusing on making, the people we're going to meet on Zoom or talk to, uh, make sure they have a living tomorrow. Because this is, you know, what, what happened over the last year and a half is suddenly like, okay, there was all this, agenda, which is great.

Again, I'm not discussing it - this agenda about saving the planet, but now we've got to save livelihoods. And so what we're doing here is really saving livelihoods and the cherry on the cake is we have an impact. Whatever it is, as we can measure it, but in the right way to rewire the economy or rewire their livelihood in a more sustainable way, where they can be resilient, that they can have hope that there's a future for the next generation, and they're in control.

Abigail: I love it. I love it. that's beautiful. Um, Bernard, thank you for coming. This has just been amazing. 

Bernard: It's always a pleasure to discuss with you, Abigail. 

Abigail: Your creativity and your vision is just beautiful and I can't wait to start seeing KarrGreen here in Maine. Anyhow, thank you, so much. 

 A big thank you to Bernard for coming back to Happy Planet to talk to us about KarrGreen. When George Bush said the problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur, he clearly had not met Bernard. 

if you are interested in learning more about KarrGreen, check out their website. www.karrgreen.com. And if you'd like to learn more about Bernard's other startup Finsulate, check out episode five.

 Thank you once again for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you tune in and leave us a rating and review. It really helps new listeners discover the show. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me, Abigail Carroll. I am also the executive producer. The talented Matt Patterson is our producer and editor.

Composer George Brandl Egloff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting HappyPlanetPodcast.Com.