How ATEC Global Uses IoT Cookstoves and Carbon Credits to Tackle Clean Cooking at Scale
- yanabijoor
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
What is the problem?
An estimated four billion people do not have access to clean cooking technologies, resulting in about four million deaths per year, mostly women and children, and costing the world economy $2.4 trillion annually. About one-third of the world still cooks with firewood, charcoal, or other dirty fuels, which emit 1 gigaton of CO2 per year – more than the entire world's aviation industry.
This is a unique problem that results in the deaths of millions, keeping women trapped in unpaid labor because of the daily burdens of collecting firewood and maintaining the fire. It also causes deforestation and contributes to global warming, yet this problem remains underfunded relative to other climate change issues.
What is the solution?
ATEC Global is a social enterprise founded in Cambodia and now based in Castlemaine, Australia, that develops IoT-enabled electric induction cookstoves and biodigesters for impoverished homes in Asia and Africa.
The technology has been designed for consumers who need help the most: an electromagnetic induction stove (eCook) for grid-connected homes and a biodigester that converts farm waste into cooking gas for unconnected homes. Sensors embedded in each stove monitor usage and emissions.
ATEC Global was founded in Cambodia in 2016. It launched the world’s first PAYG-enabled cookstove in 2018 and then the world’s first IoT-enabled smart stove in 2020.
What is the business model?
ATEC offers its stoves on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model, allowing families to use them for an average of $5 per month. The installed sensors measure every gram of emissions the stove avoids and convert them into carbon credits, verified by data. ATEC sells carbon credits to its corporate decarbonization partners, including ENGIE, the KliK Foundation, myclimate, and Livelihoods Funds. Revenue from these credits subsidizes the family's monthly use costs, turning a poor family's cooking into a climate asset that pays for itself.
Regarding capital, ATEC completed its $3.75M Series A financing in July 2024. The round was co-led by SEEAA, an affiliate of Schneider Electric Energy Access Asia, and Spark+ Africa Fund, with additional institutional investments from DRW, Save the Children Global Ventures, Kibo Investments, and iDE Ventures. ATEC has also completed a $15.5M USD Series B financing led by Lightrock and TRIREC, but the Series A was the inflection point for its global scaling and falls firmly in the $2-10M category. Grant financing from the Gates Foundation, GSMA, Cambodia Climate Change Alliance, and Danida, along with debt crowdfunding through Kiva, have been sources of patient capital.
Why is it innovative?
While other carbon projects may rely on estimates and inferences, the ATEC data infrastructure, based entirely on IoT data, provides accurate, up-to-date information on energy use and emissions saved by each house. As voluntary carbon markets have been criticized for the emergence of fake carbon credits, ATEC’s per-house telemetry is among the best ways to address that criticism.
Clean cooking solutions usually fail because those who need the cleanest stoves cannot afford them. The key to ATEC is that carbon savings can provide value, be properly verified, and subsidize the stove for the user.
What is its impact?
So far, ATEC has provided over 25,000 clean cooking devices in the Global South. In the GSMA collaboration alone, they added 4,754 eCook customers during the grant period ending in September 2023, bringing the total to over 6,000. They also reduced 1,705 tonnes of carbon emissions during the grant period and entered into a purchase agreement with the renewable energy company ENGIE to buy 11.5 million tonnes of carbon credits.
With the Series B funding, there will be a much larger effort to roll out up to 200,000 IoT cookstoves over the next three years in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malawi, and Nepal, potentially changing the lives of one million people.
What needs to improve?
There is no shortage of failed attempts in the clean cook space, where products either failed to gain adoption (households revert to traditional energy sources once subsidies end) or produced low-quality carbon credits. The proposition that combining an IoT-based solution with PAYG pricing overcomes both obstacles is reasonable; however, it remains to be seen whether it can succeed at this scale.
ATEC currently has most of its success stories in Cambodia and Bangladesh, while Malawi and Nepal are entirely new markets for it, each with different levels of grid reliability and customer financial behavior. Models that have worked successfully in Southeast Asia may not translate directly to success in Sub-Saharan Africa.
For their story to be affordable, it must sell credible carbon credits. If the voluntary carbon market shrinks further or buyers' willingness to pay declines, ATEC's business model will become increasingly difficult to sustain.
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