What’s it like to live a life without energy? For many of us, it’s hard to imagine when electricity is the undercurrent of nearly every aspect of our lives. Yet it’s is a reality for more than one billion people around the world who lack access to energy.
That’s why, more than a decade ago, we set out on a journey to bring clean energy to the nearly 1.6 billion people living off the grid. We believed clean, affordable light and energy was the best way to solve energy poverty, help mitigate climate change and release an extraordinary amount of human potential. We had never invested in energy, but we saw the potential in using patient capital to find and support intrepid entrepreneurs who could tackle this problem in a way that works for the poor.
Today, Acumen has invested $22.1 million in 20 energy companies that have impacted the lives of an 81 million people. That is 81 million people–four people for each dollar we have invested–who are living safer, happier lives.
But at Acumen, we’re trying to make a real dent in poverty, so just counting dollars invested or reaching a large number of people isn’t enough. While we know the people we have impacted no longer have to live in the dark after the sun goes down or use toxic, expensive and dangerous kerosene lanterns for their daily needs, we wanted to understand how our companies were actually changing the lives of low-income customers.
So, over the last year, we spoke with more than 5,500 of our low-income customers across 11 countries using Lean Data, our customer-centric, technology-based approach to impact measurement. The result is our Energy Impact Report, a comprehensive look at the impact of our 10 years of investing in off-grid energy.
The insights we’ve uncovered, leveraging the voice of the customer, have helped identify what matters most to long underserved populations, allowing us to establish impact indicators aligned with the issues and priorities important to them. From this customer data, we have created pioneering benchmarks that distinguish between high- and low-impact business models to ensure our investments are as impactful as possible.
But that’s not all. What’s perhaps most exciting is that this data not only provides the energy sector with the very first benchmarks for impact performance but we believe it has the potential to set a new standard for impact investors everywhere.
Our hope is that this work will lead investors to direct more capital toward the highest-impact businesses and look at both social and financial results when rating their own performance, so ultimately we can build a faster path to creating solutions that will make the most difference in the lives of the poor.
