Up Energy Group, Inc.

Mission

UpEnergy fights poverty, improves health, and protects forests by making clean energy technologies available to people in the developing world. We finance, develop, and support distribution channels for products like high efficiency cookstoves, water purification technologies, and solar lights. To reach the most people with these technologies, we leverage the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and The Gold Standard to finance large scale projects.

Organization Type Private Industry

Contact Information

Primary Contact
 Nicole Ballin
 Secondary Contact

Address 182 Second Streeet, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA
94105
United States 		Website
Phone
Fax
Calling/Fax Instructions

Our Focus

Primary Initiatives, Target Populations, and Scope of Work:

UpEnergy is active in more than 7 countries and is scaling to sell millions of stoves in the developing world.

Fuels/Technologies: Biomass
 Sectors of Experience: Behavior Change
Carbon Finance
Energy
Environment
Rural Development
 Countries of Operation: El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Liberia
Rwanda
Uganda

Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas

Social/Cultural barriers to using traditional fuels and stoves:

We use social marketing techniques, including focus groups and price auctions to select products, understand willingness and ability to pay and market products. Additionally, women are the primary users of cookstoves in the home but they are seldom the financial head of the household and therefore are not the purchase decision makers. We have found that empowering women to raise the issues of IAP and the importance of switching to more efficient cooking methods is an important part of adoption.

Market development for improved cooking technologies:

By leveraging carbon finance, we sell stoves at attractive prices and market those stoves to middle and lower income households. In Uganda, our efforts are focused on rural areas and increasing awareness of the use of high efficiency wood burning stoves versus three-stone fires or other traditional stoves.

Technology standardization for cooking, heating and ventilation:

UpEnergy is technology agnostic. We choose which technologies to implement based on the cultural fit of the design, the reliability of the supply chain, and price point. Stove technologies must also meet basic thresholds for inclusion in our carbon projects related to thermal efficiency and durability.

Indoor air pollution exposure and health monitoring:

All of our monitoring is carbon finance compliant to facilitate this revenue source.

Relevant Publications or Studies

None noted

Our Contribution to the Partnership

We intend to take part in PCIA events, including a scheduled webinar in which our Managing Director will be presenting.