HN Explorer

Kiva for Solar – Invest in solar in the Global South and get repaid (renewables.org)

21 points by yepnopemaybe ↗ HN
Founded by one of the creators of Kiva.org, Renewables.org is the highest impact-per-dollar investment of any kind.

Our analysis shows that investing with Renewables.org creates 5x the carbon impact of US solar investing and is 48% more effective than voluntary carbon offsets.

Renewables.org — the online solar investing non-profit.

8 comments

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yepnopemaybe
Hey, I am cofounder and CEO of Renewables.org — Lassor Feasley.

Renewables.org works with a network of Global South solar developers who have a large pipeline of unfunded solar projects. Using a Kiva like interface, you can join our site and help get these projects off the ground for as little as $25 dollars.

When you invest on Renewables.org, you start earning monthly repayments — which continue for five years. These repayments are paid out of the revenue earned by solar projects already in our portfolio as they generate and sell power to the grid.

As with Kiva.org — you don't make a financial return on Renewables, but you do create a carbon impact we believe is far greater than virtually any other investment or carbon offset product, dollar for dollar.

JustLurking2022
Glad to hear it's a non-profit but do you publish executive compensation?

Particularly given these are loans to businesses, it sounds like lots of people are making a profit from these projects, but not the people actually putting up the money to fund them. It's a shame that this isn't an actual investment opportunity, as it seems like an interesting space.

jsdeveloper
how do the invested money help the south, can you please elaborate. Investor gets his money back, people get solar cell , you guys get paid, bur how all this works without any lose to any party. please explain your model in detail.
yepnopemaybe
Renewables.org is an environmental non-profit, so the first order effect of what we do is prevent carbon emissions by helping to accelerate solar development in the Global South.

Incidentally, there are great second order benefits to building solar like jobs created, a more reliable power grid, and more resilient economic development.

We barrow money from our investors on our site and lend it to regional solar developers who finance commercial solar. We return principal to our investors at a 0% rate of interest and charge the developer a reasonable rate of interest which is used to fund growth and product development.

Since we are a non-profit, we could not lend out money for free since that would be a private for-profit entity benefiting from our non-profit status.

Thanks for the question, happy to share more.

silisili
Not sure I'd advertise it that way, as Kiva has burned me at a rate higher than advertised. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
yepnopemaybe
We are somewhat different in how we are structured — for one your counterparty on Renewables.org will be solar developers who are likely more credit-worthy than the individual borrowers you lend to on Kiva.