We’re excited to announce ATEC Global as the next venture backed by our Impact Investment Fund.

We are thrilled to be joining Schneider Electric Energy Access Asia & Spark+Africa by investing in this world leading, Australian headquartered, company that is delivering impact in South-East Asia and Africa.

It’s a shocking fact that cooking on open fires kills 4 million people a year from smoke related illnesses – almost three times global deaths by traffic accidents. Open fire cooking also produces more CO2 emissions than the entire global airline industry – contributing to climate change and deforestation.

ATEC Global is a leader in deploying technology to accelerate the decarbonisation of cooking. ATEC Global’s technology helps reduce carbon emissions but also has significant health benefits for children. These include reduced dyspnea (shortness of breath), childhood pneumonia, lung cancer, and low birthweight. Clean cooking particularly benefits women and girls who lose around 13 hours per week cooking with biomass and breathe in the harmful smoke it generates.

ATEC Global’s clean cooking solution provides low-income households with electric stoves. These ‘smart stoves’ incorporate Internet of Things (IoT) technology to track each stove’s usage data. Stove-usage data from each household can be used to generate digitally verified carbon credits, which are sold to cover costs and produce a financial return for households and ATEC Global.

Save the Children is excited to be designing clean cooking projects with ATEC Global to ensure low-income households and communities can participate in reducing CO2 emissions, while improving their health outcomes, and generating income.

This investment represents the eleventh investment from Fund I.