Bringing the Energy Transition Back to the People Philippa Tsai on From Yunus' Three Zeros Vision to the Next Mile of Social Virtual Power Plants

In 2014, Tsai, together with CEO Juan-Min Wang, received authorization from Professor Yunus to establish the Taiwan Yunus Foundation. Through the "108 Pioneer Angels Initiative," 108 individuals each contributed NT$300,000, raising NT$30 million to formally launch the foundation.

By Xin-En Wu

In Taiwan's energy transition discourse, policy design, technology deployment, and market rules often dominate the conversation. Yet another group—those who actually live within the power system—frequently remains invisible: vulnerable households, aging communities, civic power initiatives, rural regions, and Indigenous villages.

"It's not that they are unwilling to participate," says Philippa Tsai, Chairperson of the Taiwan Yunus Foundation, at the outset of the interview. "The problem is that the system was never designed to include them. Energy transition should not be an arena reserved for capital owners alone; it is fundamentally a question of social justice through institutional design."

The Three Zeros Vision: Integrating Energy into a Framework of Social Justice

"At the heart of it, everyone has the potential to change the world."

This belief originates from Professor Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, founder of Grameen Bank, widely known as the "father of microcredit," and currently the Chief Adviser (equivalent to Prime Minister) of Bangladesh's interim government, as well as Chief Adviser to the Yunus Foundation.

Yunus challenged the conventional capitalist doctrine of profit maximization by proposing the concept of Social Business—enterprises designed to solve social problems through market mechanisms, where social impact, rather than shareholder dividends, is the primary objective.

Beginning in the 1970s, Yunus pioneered microfinance programs in rural Bangladesh, later establishing Grameen Bank to provide financial access to those without collateral or formal credit history. His work demonstrated that financial systems need not exclude the poor. Over time, this model expanded globally, impacting more than 300 million people and contributing to poverty alleviation, community capacity building, educational access, and infrastructure development.

In 2014, Tsai, together with CEO Juan-Min Wang, received authorization from Professor Yunus to establish the Taiwan Yunus Foundation. Through the "108 Pioneer Angels Initiative," 108 individuals each contributed NT$300,000, raising NT$30 million to formally launch the foundation. Over the past decade, the foundation has localized Yunus' Three Zeros Vision—Zero Net Carbon Emissions, Zero Poverty, and Zero Unemployment— within Taiwan.

"Energy transition is where these three goals converge most naturally," Tsai explains.

Rather than operating purely as a charitable organization, the foundation has focused on building non-dividend, financially sustainable business models. Through social enterprises, it addresses the financial barriers to community-level energy infrastructure, ensuring that energy revenues flow back into local communities rather than being extracted upward.

Philippa Tsai, Chairperson of the Taiwan Yunus Foundation

Technical Practice: Empowerment Through Community Virtual Power Plants (C-VPP)

Looking ahead, Tsai is actively seeking corporate partners to jointly pilot Community Virtual Power Plants (C-VPP) with the Taiwan Yunus Foundation. She stresses that if VPPs are viewed merely as grid-balancing tools, their potential is being underestimated. When aligned with the Three Zeros Vision, VPPs become a form of social contract for energy governance.

The foundation's proposed C-VPP framework includes three core pillars:

1. Social Aggregation

A social enterprise or the foundation itself serves as the aggregator, integrating distributed rooftop solar and residential energy storage. This enables individual households—otherwise excluded by scale or capital constraints—to participate in Taiwan's power trading mechanisms, such as ancillary services markets, and receive remuneration for providing flexibility.

2. Resilience Premium Redistribution

Under the social enterprise structure, technical revenues are redistributed with explicit social objectives:

・Energy poverty alleviation, through direct electricity bill offsets for vulnerable households;

・Disaster resilience, via community microgrids that ensure critical services remain operational during extreme weather events—"power outages without loss of essential functions."

3. Local Employment Circulation

Through the foundation's "Three Zeros Academy," local youth are trained in VPP monitoring, electrical maintenance, and system operations, anchoring green jobs within their own communities and preventing talent outflow.

Institutional Pathways: From Isolated Projects to Systemic Change

According to Tsai, today's energy markets are largely designed for actors with capital, technical capacity, and risk tolerance. For marginalized communities, exclusion is not a matter of willingness but of institutional distance—the entry points simply lie outside their lived reality.

Education therefore becomes the most critical leverage point. The Taiwan Yunus Foundation regularly organizes Grameen Schools, Yunus Social Business Salons, and Three Zeros Academy programs, offering ESG-focused training and public lectures that lower knowledge barriers and disseminate international sustainability trends to a broad audience. "Transformation is not about saturating landscapes with equipment," Tsai emphasizes. "It's about ensuring no one is left outside. Social enterprises are not subsidies or one-off charity—they are self-sustaining mechanisms that connect the gaps between government and markets."

She describes three roles that social enterprises can play in the energy sector:

1. Designing business models for those excluded from markets, enabling communities unable to afford upfront costs to participate in renewable energy and revenue sharing;

2. Shifting vulnerable groups from aid recipients to co-operators, where energy income becomes locally governed value rather than passive assistance;

3. Providing replicable solutions to institutional blind spots, allowing successful local models to become templates for policy diffusion.

When Virtual Power Plants Meet the Three Zeros Vision: A Technical Solution—and a Social Contract

Internationally, Virtual Power Plants are typically framed as system optimization technologies. Under Yunus' Three Zeros Vision, however, Tsai argues that VPPs can evolve into something fundamentally different.

"A Three Zeros-oriented VPP doesn't just connect electrons—it connects communities to the energy transition."

Her vision of Community-VPPs reframes rural areas and Indigenous villages not as grid peripheries, but as active nodes within the energy network. "Zero Net Carbon" is advanced by integrating local solar, storage, and flexible demand to maximize renewable utilization; "Zero Poverty" is addressed through revenue- sharing mechanisms that reduce household electricity costs and strengthen public facilities; And "Zero Unemployment" is achieved by localizing system operation, maintenance, and energy management, creating pathways for green employment and skills development among marginalized populations.

Anchored in social business principles, C-VPPs become circular systems of energy governance and local regeneration, rather than short-term demonstration projects.

Taiwan, Tsai argues, does not suffer from a lack of technology. The real constraint lies in institutional pathways that block technology from reaching communities.

In Philippa Tsai's view, social enterprises are neither subsidies nor one-off charitable interventions. Rather, they operate through self-sustaining business models that bridge the gaps left unaddressed by both government policy and market

For households, rural regions, and Indigenous communities to become genuine participants in the energy system, three conditions must be met simultaneously:

First, lowering entry barriers for small-scale and distributed energy, allowing household rooftops, community microgrids, and behind-the-meter resources to become legitimate market participants. Second, establishing intermediary institutions—such as social enterprises or VPP operators—capable of absorbing technical, regulatory, and market complexity on behalf of communities.

Third, and most critically, ensuring community decision-making authority over energy revenues, so that benefits are not consumed by administrative layers but translated into tangible improvements in daily life: lower electricity bills, enhanced disaster preparedness, and better public services.

Only when communities can enter, be supported, and decide can energy transition truly move people forward—rather than leaving them behind.

Tsai cites Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh as a reference case: a social energy enterprise that addressed both electricity access and employment by training local residents—particularly women—as installers, operators, and community liaisons. Energy revenues were reinvested into local services, and communities collectively managed sustainable funds, turning energy into a self-reinforcing development system.

"Energy resilience is never about how much equipment you install,” Tsai concludes. "It's about whether communities can hold together when it matters most."

For Tsai, the maturity of Taiwan's energy transition should not be measured by technological reach alone, but by whether it can traverse the last mile—the narrow roads leading into neighborhoods and remote villages. It is not just about opening markets, but about whether those without capital are given a place inside them.

A virtual power plant grounded in the Three Zeros Vision does not merely connect electricity flows; it connects communities directly to the energy transition itself. Building on this premise, Philippa Tsai advances the concept of a Community Virtual Power Plant (Community-VPP)―one that reframes rural and remote areas not as the periphery of the grid, but as integral nodes within the core of the energy network.

Today, the Taiwan Yunus Foundation's initiatives span inclusive entrepreneurship, financial literacy, social innovation ecosystems, cross-sector governance, and sustainability talent development, working closely with government agencies, universities, and corporate partners to build locally viable social business models.

"Social enterprises are essentially non-dividend enterprises with market discipline," Tsai says. "They exist to ensure marginalized groups are seen in institutional design, included in market rules, and recognized as co-creators of value in energy transition and sustainable governance."

As the foundation marks its tenth anniversary, it is launching the 168 Sustainable Angels and Ten-Thousand Stars Initiative, inviting broader participation from enterprises aligned with Yunus' principles.

Ultimately, Tsai insists that the costs and benefits of energy transition must not reinforce social divides. Pressure should not concentrate on the most vulnerable, nor should rewards accrue only to those able to bear risk. When the weakest positions are included, the most distant places are seen, and those without capital regain choice, energy transition ceases to be an engineering exercise—it becomes social progress.

Taiwan's energy future, Tsai believes, is not just about moving forward, but about moving forward together. Only when the energy transition reserves space for those without capital, upholds the spirit of the Three Zeros Vision, and values shared dignity over speed, can a truly net-zero society emerge.