18.02.2020.
How does African Clean Energy’s Contribute to SDG 7?
“It is a little known fact that cooking is the fourth biggest killer in the world,” says ACE COO, Judith Walker. "It's this huge invisible elephant in the room because, in the western world, we are so used to being able to waltz into the kitchen and whip up a healthy meal. In fact, cooking indoors kills more people than Aids, Malaria and TB combined; over 4 million people."
Over 2.6 billion people in the world lack access to modern, clean energy. This restricts them to cooking on a rudimentary open-fire cookstove. In terms of smoke emissions, having an open fire in your home is like burning 400 cigarettes an hour. With that in mind, the profoundly negative long-term health effects of cooking on an open-fire cookstove are perhaps less surprising. Women, who tend to be the primary users of open-fire cookstoves in the house, suffer these effects the most.
Most open-fire cookstoves are fuelled with solid fuels, usually, firewood or charcoal which add to the rising levels of black carbon and CO2 in our atmosphere. Domestic wood fuel also tends to be gathered unsustainably, which is contributing to the rapid deforestation of parts of the developing world where access to clean energy is inadequate, especially in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Tell us more about "African Clean Energy".
The vision of African Clean Energy (ACE) is a world where clean energy and connectivity is for everyone. ACE is a family business. It was co-founded by Ruben Walker (CEO) and his father Stephen Walker in 2011. Judith Walker (COO), Ruben’s sister, joined the company soon after. Prior to ACE, Stephen Walker spent 15 years setting up and running factories in Asia and Africa for Philips where he witnessed first-hand how inefficient energy access can negatively impact people’s lives. ACE made it their mission to eliminate the worst forms of poverty on a platform of clean energy and smartphone technology. They do this by directly distributing their flagship product, the ACE 1 to customers in remote areas in the developing world, thereby granting some of the poorest households access to clean energy, as well as ACE 1 maintenance services and financial support.
How does the product ACE 1 work.
The ACE 1 represents a complete solution for essential energy. Its solar-biomass hybrid integration makes it a disruptor in the clean energy sector as it addresses the need for both thermal and electric energy. There is a misconception that when households in the developing world obtain access to electricity (through solar home systems, for example), they become energy connected. In reality, 95+% of the kWh consumed by this demographic are thermal (for cooking and heating), and due to cost or capacity, these needs remain unaddressed by electricity. The ACE 1 is distributed with a solar panel which facilitates customers to charge their phones or plug in the lamp attachment, thereby reducing the money spent on candles and kerosene as well as high phone charging costs. It is these savings on energy expenses which make the ACE 1, a high-end product, affordable to households living on $2/ day on a 10-month microloan.
The ACE 1 has been designed to be smoke-free, thereby mitigating the health risks associated with open-fire cooking. It also burns any solid dry biomass fuel (including animal waste, small sticks and crop residue) and does so far more efficiently than a traditional open-fire cookstove. This reduces the amount of fuel consumed when cooking as well as the over-reliance on carbon-emitting fuels. Estimations show that every ACE 1 unit averts 2.5tn CO2 emissions per year, and customers reduce their consumption by 3-3.5kg of wood fuel per day. The ACE 1 also brings significant economic benefits, as data shows that customers reduce their energy expenses by 83% on average. To date, ACE has successfully sold over 60,000 cookstoves to households previously lacking access to affordable clean energy.
ACE is currently in the process of launching their next-generation ACE 1 with smart capabilities. The ACE 1 will now be sold as part of the ACE Connect Package which includes a second-use Samsung smartphone with a pre-installed ACE Connect app. The updated technology will allow ACE to implement a Pay-As-You-Go style payment plan for its customers. This will act as a risk-mitigator, enabling them to extend credit for the ACE 1 to even more remote households. For ACE, it will enable the company to collect data to gather more precise measurements of their impact and their contribution to SDG 7, among other Sustainable Development Goals.
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