“Women-led enterprises boast greater impact and female reach, and lower customer over-indebtedness rates and challenge rates.”
The world’s most comprehensive impact assessment of off-grid energy has just launched!
Why Off-Grid Energy Matters 2024 is a four-year impact report from 60 Decibels, based on the experiences of 79,000 off-grid energy customers. Gathered via 450+ data collection projects across 30+ countries, the report offers key insights about what it means to access modern off-grid energy products, including the impact on access, behaviors, and quality of life.
The takeaways are clear:
- The off-grid energy sector is making a huge difference for populations around the globe.
- Over half of all customers experience a transformative effect, with the quality of their and their families’ lives improving significantly as a result of this access.
- For nine in ten overall, lives have improved.
In 2023 alone, 62,000 people undertook more economic activity as a result of clean energy access, and eight million dollars of additional income was generated using clean energy products distributed by Solar Sister.
Solar Sister reaches unserved populations, with more than 4.7 million people being provided with clean energy access, $700 million in savings generated in last-mile communities, and a mitigation of 1.6 million metric tonnes of CO2e.
Solar Sister entrepreneurs illuminate homes through a powerful model: women empowering women. This approach, built on mutual understanding and shared experiences, drives change. Women understand the specific needs of the home, families, and communities.
“The emphasis on women empowering other women further strengthens customer relationships, loyalty, and satisfaction, contributing to the company’s effectiveness.” (Report page 49)
“Locally-owned organizations have higher impact, female reach, poverty reach, ease of use, and satisfaction rates than their peers.“
Key Findings in the report:
- Locally-owned and/or female-led organizations have higher impact, female reach, poverty reach, ease of use, and satisfaction rates than their peers.
- More than half of customers say that their lives, and the lives of their families, improved significantly thanks to access to an energy product or service.
- One in five energy customers use their energy access to support or start a business and/or wider income-earning activity.
- The impact is greater, and satisfaction is higher for rural customers, who are three times more likely to live in poverty than their urban peers.
- Despite sometimes costing as little as $5, lanterns have the biggest impact, with almost two-thirds of lantern users reporting a significant change to their well-being.
- Three-quarters of clean cooking customers have witnessed reductions in their spending on cooking fuel.
- Topping the productive usage charts are solar water pumps and off-grid refrigerators – solar water pumps are used most often for irrigation of agricultural land, and off-grid refrigerators are often used in bars, restaurants, kiosks, and shops to cool drinks and food.
- Mini-grids have the best Income Inclusivity Rate (IRR) across the sub-sectors, with a rate of 0.96. This means that their customers’ likelihood of living in poverty is almost even with the national poverty rate in the countries where the mini-grids are situated.
- Women are slightly more likely to be first-time users.
- The penetration of customers beneath global poverty thresholds has increased overall from 37% in 2020 to 41% in 2024.
- Three-quarters of customers bought their energy products using some form of payment plan or loan.
This report builds upon the first edition in 2020 to collect more than 2.5 million unique data points over the past 3 years. It includes a larger number of companies, a wider variety of energy products and services, new social performance indicators, and broader market insights. Much of the data is new, reflecting off-grid energy consumers’ constantly changing social dynamics and experiences. The report provides a deep, bottom-up analysis of data to share key insights about what it means to own a modern off-grid energy product: the impact on access, behaviors, and quality of life.