This is what Sun King has been able to deliver. By providing solar panels, handheld solar-powered lamps, batteries, and home systems that power lights and devices to communities in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, it says, it offers reliable renewable electricity to some 40 million people. Its pay-as-you-go business model allows households to spend as little as $0.15 per day.
Now, having acquired PayGo Energy in 2023, Sun King is expanding its product portfolio into clean cooking.
PayGo’s stoves run on liquefied petroleum gas, which produces less of the health-damaging and climate-warming pollution generated by charcoal, biomass, and similar fuels used to heat basic stoves in many homes. The household costs for the stoves and fuel are subsidized by carbon credits that the company earns for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, through a voluntary carbon offsets program.
Crucially, PayGo has earned high marks from academic experts for developing household cookstoves that reliably reduce indoor air pollution and climate emissions. Sun King says it’s also developing other cooking appliances, like pressure cookers, that could run on the renewable electricity it provides.
Key indicators
- Industry: Renewable energy
- Founded: 2008
- Headquarters: Nairobi, Kenya
- Notable fact: Sun King supplies solar products to more than 40 million people in 10 African and two Asian countries.
Potential for impact
Sun King’s whole range of product lines helps cut the emissions driving climate change.
For instance, it has already sold 23 million solar products to previous users of kerosene lamps, each of which can pump out around a ton of carbon dioxide a decade.
And by reducing the need to collect biomass to produce household light, heat, or fuel for cooking, the company can help reduce deforestation as well as the emissions that occur from burning plant matter.
Cooking with wood and charcoal is a major contributor to global warming, responsible for approximately 2% of worldwide carbon emissions. The particulate pollution it releases also kills millions of people annually.