African Clean Energy (ACE) is a B-Corp certified enterprise focused on enabling decentralised access to clean energy for rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. We do this by manufacturing and directly distributing our proprietary product, the ACE One Energy System.

African Clean Energy

The ACE One has several smart capabilities, including usage logging that allows us to underwrite all of our carbon emission reductions with real data. When connected to our ACE Connect App, users gain access to a range of services, from loan tracking to monitoring their own usage patterns.

ACE Connect

The ACE One includes a solar-charged LiFePO4 battery which gives off-the-grid users access to essential electricity to plug in an LED lamp or charge their phone, thereby cutting down users’ phone charging costs.

Light Your Home

African clean energy

Our Vision & Mission

Our vision is a world where clean energy and connectivity is for everyone.

Our mission is to eliminate the worst forms of poverty on a platform of clean energy and smartphone technology.

As a certified B-Corp, we commit to reinvesting most of our profits into our social mission.

Read our Code of Ethics

African clean energy

The Energy Challenge

Accessibility

Around 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to modern, clean energy. This restricts them to using open fire cookstoves which emit high levels of smoke, exposing users to Household Air Pollution (HAP). Without access to electricity, these households must resort to buying paraffin and candles for lighting, as well as extra phone charging costs.

HEALTH

Over 4 million people in the developing world die every year from illnesses attributable to HAP. Most of these are women. Diseases related to HAP kill more people every year than AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined.

Carbon emissions

21% of global black carbon emissions come from residential fuel burning, mostly in the developing world.

Deforestation

The unsustainable harvesting of wood is causing massive deforestation, especially in Africa.

African clean energy

The Industry Challenge

There have been attempts to address this energy challenge by distributing improved cookstoves or solar home energy systems.

Solar Energy Systems

By giving consumers in the developing world access to electricity, solar home energy systems succeed in cutting their high expenditures on paraffin, batteries and phone charging. However, they lack the capacity to support thermal energy generation. So they do not carry the health, gender and environmental benefits of a cookstove.

Improved Cookstoves

Improved cookstoves are widely recognised as mitigating the health, gender and environmental risks associated with rudimentary energy access. They also significantly reduce fuel need. However, there has been a push within the clean cooking sector for more affordable solutions to this energy challenge, with the result that the majority of clean cookstoves in distribution tend to be cheaply produced and lack future-proof design. They lack the ventilation to produce a clean or powerful enough burn to disrupt negative cooking habits.

Our solution

The ACE One

The ACE One is an integral energy solution to this challenge. With the ACE One, ACE uniquely combines future-proof hardware with smart digital infrastructure and responsive physical infrastructure to give isolated, off-the-grid consumers access to clean thermal and electric energy at an affordable cost.

THE ACE ONE

Our Solution

Hardware

The ACE One is a solar-biomass hybrid energy system which provides for the electrical and thermal energy needs of its users while emitting negligible levels of smoke, protecting their health.
The electricity access provided by the ACE One allows users to charge their phone or plug in the LED light attachment which saves them money on electrical energy expenses, making the ACE One affordable.
The efficient burn of the ACE One plus its ability to burn any dry solid biomass fuel (animal waste, crop residue, small sticks) reduces the need for unsustainably harvested wood fuel and protects our environment.

Digital Infrastructure

Since 2019, the ACE One contains ‘smart’ capabilities, allowing customers to connect it to their smartphone. This allows for the ACE One to be switched off remotely, granting customers more flexibility in their loan repayments and reducing the loan risk.
Through our android integration each ACE One can be pared through the ACE Connect app which allows for data collection, service uses and more.
The ACE Connect app also enables customers to keep track of their loan repayments, as well as granting them a direct channel of communication with our customer services.

Physical Infrastructure

Skilled team of maintenance services on the ground ready to support our customers through any product malfunctions.
Sales teams who travel to communities to demonstrate using the ACE One. They have the facility to set up contracts and loans on the spot.
Expanding our physical infrastructure of mobile retail shops throughout our markets to provide continuous access to clean energy products and services. This project is being co-funded by the European Union.

95%

of customers interviewed have stopped buying paraffin

63%

of customers interviewed now exclusively use clean energy

83%

average savings on energy expenses

59%

of customers interviewed say they no longer need to spend money on energy

Our Social Impact Report 2022

African clean energy

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that everyone enjoys peace and prosperity by 2030. ACE’s activities stimulate impact across 12 different SDGs, with direct, measurable outcomes for poverty alleviation, environmental preservation, gender equality and health.