ENGIE, Energy Web Access to Electrify Sub-Saharan Africa with DeFi 

ENGIE Energy Access and Energy Web have inked a partnership deal aimed at electrifying Sub-Saharan Africa with green solar energy. The team plans to create what it calls decentralized finance (DeFi) crowdfunding platform that will enable investors to provide microloans that will support renewable energy deployment, according to a press release on June 17, 2021.

Bringing Clean Energy to Africa with DeFi

According to research findings by the International Energy Agency (IEA), as of 2019, an estimated 580 million people living in South Saharan Africa are without any form of electricity, representing three-quarters of the global population without power.

Now, ENGIE and Energy Web are aiming to tackle the electricity shortage problem in Africa through decentralized finance, to provide residents in the region with an abundance of clean energy in the form of solar home systems (SHSs) and green energy mini-grids.

For starters, the team says it will integrate the Energy Web software tech stack with ENGIE’s platform, before moving on to launch the crowdfunding platform that will enable investors to stake their Energy Web Tokens (EWT), the native altcoin of Energy Web Chain, for the deployment of solar power infrastructure to homes in the region.

Accelerating Renewable Energy Deployment 

Stefan Zelazny, Head of Software and IT at ENGIE Energy Access, who previously functioned as the CIO at ENGIE Mobisol said:

“We believe this can accelerate much-needed clean energy deployment throughout the region by connecting impact-oriented investors with unbanked rural customers. Combining the technology that remotely connects and controls our Solar-Home-Systems with the Energy Web Chain will result in the first smart asset-backed NFT where asset use can be controlled via the chain.”

The initiative aims to provide a win-win scenario for all parties: EWT stakers will enjoy a fixed interest rate on their staked tokens, ENGIE and Energie Web will have access to capital from the global crypto markets to deploy clean energy, while residents will enjoy cheap renewable electricity.

Just like every other profitable venture, the team has made it clear that the project is not without risks. However, the Energy Web Community Fund will back the first phase of the project, to mitigate the risk for all parties.

In the second phase of the project, the team says it would give a unique decentralized identifier (DID) to each of the homes having its solar installations, to make it easier for credits to be directly added to the solar appliances of users.

In related news, BTCManager informed earlier in March 2021, that automobile manufacturer, Volkswagen now uses Energy Web’s blockchain solution for renewable energy storage.

At press time, the price of EWT is hovering around $7.29, with a market cap of $218.89 million, as seen on CoinMarkeCap.