SET Award 2026’s Quality Energy Access & SDG-7 Innovators
The category’s profile is unlike any other in the SET100 List. Africa accounts for 43% of applications (the highest share across all categories) alongside Asia-Pacific and the Middle East each at 14%. Only 50% of companies target large corporates, the lowest rate in the SET100, while 79% target small businesses and 64% serve individual customers directly. Service and maintenance revenue models appear at 29%, reflecting that these companies do not just sell products but sustain them. Revenue grew 3.5 times in a single year, the fastest multiplier in the entire SET100, demonstrating that affordability-driven innovation scales rapidly once market fit is found.
Hybrid and software solutions each account for 43% of the category, with hardware at just 14% which reflects the pay-as-you-go model’s dominance. Physical products require mobile payment infrastructure, remote diagnostics, and cloud monitoring to function sustainably in last-mile environments. The most acute challenge is private funding at 6.1 out of 10, the highest pain score of any category, revealing persistent investor hesitancy toward emerging market deployment despite strong unit economics. Landing first clients, by contrast, ranks as the lowest challenge at 2.9, confirming that demand is validated. The constraint is capital, not customers.
Two innovation clusters define the category. The first is integrated energy access platforms: solar home systems with lease-to-own financing delivered through local partner networks, AI-powered biodigesters converting organic waste into cooking gas, and blockchain-based community energy platforms enabling peer-to-peer sharing and democratic governance. The second is productive use applications that extend impact beyond basic lighting: solar-powered cooling hubs cutting post-harvest losses, biomass pellet systems replacing charcoal at lower cost, and solar cargo bikes combining mobility with agricultural logistics. Running through both is a workforce development thread, addressing the installer shortage that is quietly constraining the clean energy transition globally.
Winner: BioMassters – Cooking Without Cutting Down Trees
Charcoal kills in two directions. It drives deforestation at scale (Rwanda has lost substantial forest cover to fuelwood demand) and it fills kitchens with toxic smoke that causes severe respiratory disease, particularly in women and children who spend the most time near the stove. LPG is cleaner but prohibitively expensive and entirely imported. BioMassters, founded in Rwanda in 2020, has built a third option that is local, affordable, and demonstrably better.
The company manufactures biomass pellets from waste wood and agricultural residues at Rwanda’s largest pellet factory, then distributes them alongside its Iryacu stove — Africa’s first locally made Tier-4 gasifier stove, engineered in Rwanda for Rwandan conditions. Pellets cost up to 50% less than charcoal, are made from materials that would otherwise be discarded, and reduce carbon emissions by 90% versus conventional cooking fuels. The business model is circular: BioMassters sources waste streams locally, manufactures locally, and distributes through a retail and institutional network that includes households, restaurants, and schools.
The company is already profitable, a rare and significant signal in a sector where unit economics often remain elusive. It is also a model for the wider region: a fully integrated, locally rooted clean cooking system that does not depend on imports, subsidies, or the goodwill of foreign investors to function.
Acecore – Smart Solar, Locally Made
Nigeria has abundant sunshine and a chronic electricity crisis. The national grid delivers power for an average of seven hours a day in many areas, and diesel generator costs have tripled following fuel subsidy removal. The market for alternatives is enormous and demonstrably ready. What it has lacked is a locally manufactured, intelligent option designed for its specific conditions.
Acecore, founded in the United States with manufacturing operations in Nigeria, has built exactly that. The Acecore Powercell is an all-in-one smart solar battery system produced locally, reducing costs, strengthening supply chains, and creating skilled jobs in the clean-tech value chain. What distinguishes it from the crowded field of imported solar home systems is the AI-powered Powercore App: real-time energy monitoring, remote diagnostics, predictive maintenance, and consumption optimisation delivered to the user’s phone. The system serves middle-income households, SMEs, schools, clinics, and agricultural enterprises, with productive-use applications including solar irrigation and cold storage on the roadmap.
Local manufacturing is not just a cost decision. It is a strategic one. Imported components create supply chain exposure, limit serviceability, and export value that could stay in-country. Acecore’s indigenisation of both hardware and software positions it as a genuinely different kind of energy company — one building durable capacity rather than selling imported boxes. In a continent where energy access and economic development are inseparable, that distinction matters.
Imagine Powertree – Solar Where There Are No Rooftops
Rooftop solar has a fundamental constraint: it requires rooftops. In dense urban environments wwith apartment towers, historic city centres, crowded commercial districts, usable roof area is scarce, shared, or structurally unsuitable. Imagine Powertree, based in Gujarat, India, has built a product family that bypasses this constraint entirely.
The company’s Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) and Urban Photovoltaic (UPV) solutions — Solar Trees, Solar Tiles, Solar Facades, and Solar Gazebos — integrate solar generation directly into the built environment, functioning as both architecture and energy infrastructure simultaneously. A Solar Tree occupies a small footprint, installs rapidly, and serves as an urban amenity while generating power. Solar Tiles replace conventional building materials with photovoltaic equivalents. Solar Facades turn building exteriors into generation surfaces. Recognised among India’s top ten solar start-ups by the International Solar Alliance, Imagine Powertree is expanding into African markets and offers its Solar Tree installations on a Solar-Tree-as-a-Service subscription model, lowering the upfront barrier for public sector and corporate clients. For cities pursuing net-zero targets without viable rooftop areas, it is a solution that did not previously exist.
More Innovators Expanding Energy Access
Integrated Energy Access Platforms
- MPower Ventures (Switzerland) operates across five Sub-Saharan African countries with a vertically integrated B2B2C model combining solar hardware, flexible lease-to-own financing via a proprietary fintech platform, and local partner distribution — having reduced over 15,000 tonnes of CO₂e and reached more than 60,000 people
- D-Olivette Labs (Nigeria) develops AI-powered biodigesters, including the Bio-360™ system, that convert over 30 types of organic waste into clean cooking gas, electricity, and fertilizer — tripling the output of conventional biodigesters through IoT sensors, patented enzymes, and predictive AI
- Uwana Energy (Nigeria/USA) operates UwanaConnect, an online marketplace connecting Nigerian households and businesses with vetted solar installers, financing options, and clean energy products — addressing both sides of a boom in demand triggered by fuel subsidy removal and rising electricity tariffs
- METER Solutions (Hungary) has deployed a live 90-household pilot in rural Hungary using its decent.ec platform, a blockchain-based decentralized energy community system enabling real-time load management, demand response, and on-chain governance for citizen-owned renewable energy networks
- HexErgy (Italy) provides a four-module blockchain platform that reduces by 75% the time required to design, establish, manage, and promote Renewable Energy Communities, serving energy engineers, municipalities, and ESCOs across Italy and internationally
- SmartEye (Jordan) delivers AI-powered Energy Management Systems for off-grid and weak-grid environments, with a proven track record including restored 24/7 electricity in refugee camps and a 47% reduction in energy consumption for humanitarian and government clients
- DEER Nigeria (Nigeria) provides a hybrid energy technology platform combining digital management of solar systems, LPG, and energy auditing to optimise consumption — delivering dependable, on-demand power for businesses and communities without reliable grid connections
Productive Use and Clean Fuels
- ClimaVault Africa (Uganda) combines solar-powered IoT cooling hubs with MunaFresh®, a plant-based edible coating, to extend the shelf life of perishable produce from 2 to 21 days — reducing post-harvest losses for smallholder farmers and market traders across East Africa
- Re Earth Industries (India) converts agricultural residues including soybean husk, mustard stalks, and sesame shells into high-density biomass pellets that replace coal in industrial boilers, with IoT-based carbon tracking unlocking additional value through carbon credits — already profitable and expanding across two Indian states
- Greatlakes Feeds (Kenya) produces eco-friendly fish feeds from locally sourced raw materials on the shores of Lake Victoria, powered by off-grid solar energy, while transitioning women out of exploitative supply chain relationships and into fish farming as independent producers
Workforce Development
- Greenworkx (UK) addresses the skilled labour shortage constraining the clean energy transition through a combined talent pipeline and digital learning platform, having built a community of over 10,000 aspiring green workers and trained more than 500 in accredited retrofit qualifications — with a stated mission to place 10 million people in green jobs within a decade
The picture that emerges from the SET100’s Quality Energy Access & SDG-7 category is of a sector that has solved the technology question and is now solving the harder ones: how to finance assets for customers with no credit history, how to service equipment in areas without supply chains, how to build institutions that sustain access rather than just deliver it once. The funding environment remains hostile, and the teams are lean almost by necessity. But the demand is validated, the models are working, and the revenue growth speaks for itself. The energy transition reaches its full potential only if it reaches everyone. These are the companies making that possible.
