Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Odyssey was founded by two female former mini-grid developers with the goal of exponentially increasing energy access by scaling DERs. Our thesis was that if we build an end-to-end data platform for to enabling project aggregation across market stakeholders, more projects could get built. We have already seen Odyssey‚ mission take shape with Odyssey's traction in the market: 500 organizations, with over 1,500 mini-grid projects seeking more than $775M in investment on our platform. Additionally, Odyssey has become an instrumental tool enabling large-scale financing of distributed energy projects. We have $236M of funding available on the platform across 7 financing windows, including the World Bank's Nigeria Electrification Program (NEP), the largest rural electrification program to date.

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

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Odyssey was founded by two women, is a majority female-owned company, with a majority female board. We are a globally diverse team with 40% of the team originating from countries besides the US (Burundi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Japan). That ethos of diversity and empowering communities previously marginalized underpins much of what Odyssey does. 
Our work is dedicated towards bringing energy access and the resulting economic development to rural communities in emerging markets. Far too often, donor projects are built in these communities, but they do not have the technologies necessary to collect critical data on how the projects perform, whether or not the community is received reliable power, who is impacted, and how access to electricity is driving economic development. In addition, lack of data analysis at the outset of a project means that projects are often over- or under-sized for a community. The results are stranded assets that stop operating and do not maximize the funding that went into them. 
Odyssey gives the private sector, governments, financiers, and donors the tools so that they need to develop financially sustainable, reliable solar projects in energy-poor regions of the world. In addition, we enable operators and financiers to track the electricity quality that is being delivered on an ongoing basis so that these communities can truly thrive. We make it possible to combine data sources ‚ in-field surveys, smart meters, etc. ‚ to measure and continually expand impact, on a country-wide or regional level. We can easily measure, for example, the number of women-owned businesses that have been granted access to power, and how much power consumption these businesses are using (extrapolating to what types of appliances they are running in their shops, etc.) Research by Acumen and IFC has shown that energy access has especially strong economic results for women; by enabling the development and financing of energy access projects at a large scale, our platform directly expands economic opportunities among rural populations, with a particular impact on women. 
Furthermore, we have been excited to see an uptick in the number of local businesses who rely on our platform to plan and develop solar projects. While international companies have long dominated the market, as they have greater resources and access to the technologies necessary to scale operations, our platform provides all organization access to best-practice tools and finance. Since launching Odyssey, the number of Africa-based solar developers on the platform has rapidly increased.

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