Keeling Curve

Primary Project Category:

Project Summary / Description:

UpEnergy was founded by a group of cookstove and carbon finance professionals who wanted to build a profitable distribution channel for these products in Uganda. Co-founders offer significant expertise in cookstove distribution and social marketing, having helped to build large scale distribution programs prior to founding UpEnergy, in Ghana, Mali, Uganda and Tanzania that have collectively sold over 1 million stoves since these programs launched in 2006. In Uganda Specifically, the team has sold over 170,000 stoves in the past seven years with its sales growing at a compounded rate of 74%!

Regions of Operations:

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

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

The organization trains and empowers its staff and distribution chain partners. Particular attention is given to helping the female salespeople overcome the various obstacles they face during the distribution of energy products, mainly through experience sharing and workshops.

Some of our gender-sensitive sales and fieldwork techniques involve:
1. Ensuring an appropriate composition of sales teams (in terms of the number of men and women members, ability to speak local languages, familiarity with basic gender analysis and local cultural norms, and training in gender-sensitive data collection techniques)
2. Preparing the teams for sales and fieldwork (introducing gender approaches as a priority, and training the team in basic concepts, data collection tools, and gender-sensitive fieldwork techniques)
3. Making use of local contact persons and opinion leaders (both men and women) and relevant government and development institutions
4. Ensuring that all relevant stakeholders are interviewed, including male and female members of groups and households during carbon monitoring and field data collection.
5. Conducting women groups sales meetings at convenient times.

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Mission Statement:

UpEnergy is a for-profit social enterprise, incorporated in 2011, that fights poverty, improves health, and protects forests by making clean energy technologies available to more people in the developing world through carbon-financed distribution channels. UpEnergy works with technology manufacturers and local partners to deliver high quality products such as efficient cookstoves, water purification technologies, and solar lights to poorly served households at affordable prices.

UpEnergy primarily targets underserved households in the middle quartiles of the income gradient. The company achieves extensive market penetration by engaging in direct sales to end users via UpEnergy‚ local SmartHome sales team and by developing strong partnerships with local retailers, community organizations, NGOs, and governments.