“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Crowdfunded Solar Investments for the Global South

TRINE’s crowdin­vest­ing model for fin­an­cing solar en­ergy solu­tions provides elec­tri­city to com­munit­ies that can­not bear the up­front costs them­selves, while de­liv­er­ing a fin­an­cial re­turn for in­vestors. With an investment minimum of only $25, the start-up makes it easy for even small-scale in­vestors to profit from con­trib­ut­ing to im­prove ac­cess to re­new­able en­ergy in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, in the pro­cess also im­prov­ing live­li­hoods, and mit­ig­at­ing CO2 emis­sions from sources such a ker­osene.

TRINE care­fully vets po­ten­tial pro­jects so it can of­fer sound in­vest­ment op­por­tun­it­ies to cus­tom­ers. Since its launch in 2015, the plat­form has helped fin­ance pro­jects for worth more than $150,000, de­liv­er­ing electricity to more than 35 000 people and re­du­cing CO2 emis­sions by 6,000 tons. The im­pact from a pi­lot in­vest­ment pro­ject saw 180% more girls go­ing to school and a 72% re­duced us­age of ker­osene.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
En­ergy poverty is a crit­ical is­sue for 1.2 bil­lion people in re­mote com­munit­ies around the world.1 Many solar en­ergy en­tre­pren­eurs in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are wait­ing to be able to scale their busi­ness with fair loans at reas­on­able in­terest rates. The solu­tion fills a fin­an­cing gap and demo­crat­izes fin­an­cing of solar en­ergy, of­fer­ing the po­ten­tial to re­place ker­osene and other harm­ful fuels.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
The com­pany am­bi­tiously es­tim­ates that with wide­spread ad­op­tion, the solu­tion can de­liver en­ergy ac­cess to 48 mil­lion people and save 3.7 mil­lion tons of CO2 emis­sions an­nu­ally by 2026.

SOCIAL
By fa­cil­it­at­ing in­stall­a­tion of solar en­ergy as an al­tern­at­ive to ker­osene, the plat­form helps re­duce the many deaths caused by in­ef­fi­cient use of solid fuels for cook­ing.

ECONOMIC
The grow­ing de­mand for im­pact in­vest­ment pro­jects has seen the solu­tion fully fin­ance pro­jects at re­cord-break­ing speed.