Innovation

The innovation that Trine has created, is an impact investing platform that enables people to both be socially good and receive a return on their investment. They start different campaigns which investors can pick from. When a campaign is fully funded, they provide a loan to their partners in Africa which then purchase and distributes the solar panels to vendors. The vendors sell the solar panels to the end-customer that pay them off on a monthly basis. When they have received the full payment, the partners pay trine an interest on the loan, which is then shared with the investors.

Encouraging investment from both individuals as well as big corporations promotes awareness of the issues presented as well as an efficient way of battling them whilst providing a profitable form of investing alternative to the standard procedures. The solution that Trine offers contributes to many of the UN SDGs and through partnerships increases the well-being by affordable and clean energy.

Inspiration

Sam Manaberi, the founder of Trine got inspired originally from the triple bottom line. He discovered how affordable and sustainable solar energy is and decided that he wanted to exploit that opportunity. When he had the planet and profit part, he only needed to find a way to connect to the social aspect, people. That is when he thought of energy poverty. Today there is about 1.2 billion people living without access to electricity and he wanted to change that. Hanna Lindqvist also pointed out that one of their visions today is that “everyone should have access to clean energy”

Hanna Lindquist says in the interview that: “getting our first 100 transactions was a great feeling and it motivated us to keep going”. This inspired the whole team and they have today collected over 3.8 million euros from investors.

Overall impact

Energy poverty affects over 1 billion people and hinders development in many emerging countries. By letting people in poor countries, who usually don’t have access to electricity get access to clean energy, Trine has an enormous impact on people's lives and our planet by making clean solar energy affordable for people and communities. In a both social and environmentally friendly way, Trine is contributing to cleaner energy sources and a healthier planet.

Short term effects are primarily that the families that get access to clean solar energy can save money instead of continuously pay for costly fuels, it enables them to cook food at all times throughout the day and have lighting in their households.

Trine is not only contributing to a cleaner and more affordable energy source, but also improving people's' living standards in the long term, by making it possible to use electricity when cooking, refrigerators for storing food and creating new employment opportunities in communities. In addition to this, their work is also improving education for young people, by making it possible for them to do their homework in the evening, but also enable them to get access to additional services in the future within technology, to be able to use modern ways of communicating abroad. All these positive impacts will have a huge important role in the development of emerging countries.

Business benefit

Positively, impact investing regarding solar energy systems in Africa is still a relatively new phenomena. Moreover, as people are becoming more environmentally and financially aware, investing into something socially beneficial while earning a profit is of greater interest to those acquainted with the opportunity.

Trine takes their profit out of the interest gained from their provided loans to partners which are then shared with the investors.

Due to the emerging market that Trine operates in and their innovative product, they are able to get a lot of publicity in different channels such as podcasts related to business and environment. This benefits them by reaching new possible investors as well as potential employees with the same vision as Trine. As an example, one of our group members heard about them in a podcast which lead to us choosing them in this Aim2Flourish story. This would most likely not have happened if it was not a viable innovation that they had created.

Social and environmental benefit

As mentioned before, their innovation benefits both the society and environment by offering African communities clean energy. The clean energy then creates many possibilities as well as decreasing the CO2 emissions. Access to electricity creates jobs that result in higher employment rates and an overall improvement of life quality for the people living in the communities. As Trine likes to put it themselves, “electricity changes everything”.

In addition, Trine benefits the society in African countries by working with local partners that are the key drivers in developing the economy in those emerging countries. Which, as a result, can further flourish as a nation in all aspects, economically, environmentally and socially.

Interview

Hanna Lindquist, Communications Manager