Climate Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

10Power was born from passion to reverse climate change while addressing social justice. We chose to launch in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the 7th poorest on the planet, because it has some of the lowest access to and highest cost of electricity in the world. Additionally, frequent air travel to Haiti, which much closer to the US than other geographies with high energy poverty (Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia), expends fewer CO2 emissions while pioneering a scalable business model. The goal when 10Power expands globally is replicable business processes that can be primarily locally run.

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Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Our work powerfully promotes economic diversity through local partnerships and mutual benefit. Engaging with partners and creating returns for all mitigates risks, enables the company to operate sensitively within cultural context, and creates cross-sector collaboration to simultaneously provide the pillars of our mission.

10Power is part of the UN Sustainable Energy Access for All Initiative. We are unique from other energy access providers in that we use a market-based approach to livelihood improvement through prosperity generation. 10Power provides renewable energy to targeted, high-impact commercial and industrial scale customers, promoting affordable access to critical goods and services, stimulating economic growth, mitigating carbon emissions, creating jobs and economic stability, which also leads to political stability. By providing our customers with more reliable electricity at a lower cost, we enable them to grow their operations, circulate more cash locally, better serve their customers, and create more employment opportunities, which in turn builds a middle class powered by clean energy. Each of our local partner installers employs between 20-50 crew members, and it is 10Power‚ goal to increase the number of green jobs they can provide, with a specific attention to gender diversity.

Gender Equality is a fundamental part of 10Power‚ DNA. In fact, 10Power is in the process of becoming a Public Benefit Corporation with gender empowerment policy written into our corporate bylaws.

Gender empowerment starts within 10Power to mirror what we value in our work with surrounding communities. We are committed to recruiting and hiring women teammates and are proud to have strong women‚ leadership at every level of the company: engineers, executives, managers, and interns.


We also have written gender empowerment into the Impact of Key Performance Indicators (KPI‚ ) we track for our partners and customers. By bringing attention to this metric, we encourage our customers to improve their % of women employees throughout our 5-10 year customer relationships.

Externally, our projects support women as well as the systems that promote empowerment.

With our recent award-winning UNICEF installation project, the largest solar install on any UNICEF worldwide, we launched a women‚ solar technician training program, in partnership with Haiti Tech and the Solar Electric Light Fund. We provided training to 15 Haitain women solar technicians, focusing on effective knowledge transfer as a critical tool for creating a self-sustaining solar industry in Haiti.


We know that women and children disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change in vulnerable communities. To reverse the deadly effects of climate change and create resilient, thriving communities, we must forge an alternative paradigm for development. 10Power is pioneering 4th World development, a concept explained by our Founder, Sandra Kwak, in a TEDx talk: bit.ly/4thWorld.

We have been recognized for our female leadership in Forbes Magazine:

Forbes: 60 Women-Led Startups That Are Shaking Up Tech Across The Globe:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/allysonkapin/2018/09/19/60-women-led-startups-who-are-shaking-up-tech-across-the-globe/#578acd3275da

Forbes: How A Woman Entrepreneur Relied On Persistence And A 'SheEO Loan' To Bring Solar Energy To Haiti: https://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2018/07/04/key-to-a-social-entrepreneurs-success-is-flexibility-and-collaboration/#3c8e49d34958

Website:

http://http://www.10pwr.com

Mission Statement:

10Power fosters regenerative international development through sustainable innovation, developing and financing renewable energy projects in markets lacking access to electricity. Energy is the backbone of advancing quality of life - from clean water to gender empowerment through education to technology, yet 1.2 billion people today lack access to electricity. Our vision is of a planet fueled by 100% renewables, providing low-cost, zero-emissions energy for 100% of humanity.

Ushering in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, 10Power sources best-of-breed technology and finance to create solar markets, focusing on livelihood improvement through prosperity generation. 10Power provides reliable, renewable electricity to commercial & industrial scale customers, creating jobs, economic stability, and subsequent political stability. Simultaneously realizing multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals,10Power is demonstrating that GHG emissions can be decoupled from the creation of prosperity by reducing reliance on fossil fuel combusting diesel generators and harnessing the power of the sun, places like Haiti can rapidly transform from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to leaders in sustainable development, creating models for the rest of the world to follow.

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