Persistent Energy Partners

Persistent Energy Partners invests in and partners with businesses to provide cleaner energy to households in Africa.

Impact and Profit:

Our goal is to generate sustainable impact and profit by investing in and partnering with businesses that provide cleaner energy to the more than 100 million sub-Saharan African households living off the electricity grid.

Sector Focus:

We currently manage over 50 investments in three sectors:

– Solar: We manage investments in solar leasing, retail and installation companies
– LPG: We are invested in bulk and retail distributors of liquified petroleum gas as a substitute for cooking with wood and charcoal
– Clean cook stoves: We provide carbon finance services to and investments in manufacturers and distributors of cleaner cook stoves

Our sector focus strategy is to build sectors rather than assemble a broad portfolio of investments.

Our primary focus is on the fast growing solar sector. We believe that the solar sector has the potential to scale rapidly to improve the lives of many of sub-Saharan Africa’s over 100 million households living without access to electricity. Investing in and developing those scalable businesses to propel rapid sector growth is the core of our strategy.

Persistent Energy Partners will continue to maintain a presence in the LPG and cleaner cook stove sectors even though we expect slower growth than the solar sector. PEP’s current LPG and cleaner cook stove investments are highly impactful. Moreover, we continue to seek new opportunities to increase investments in those markets that will provide practical engines for sustainable growth.

More than an Investor

Our experience at E+Co taught us that successful impact investing requires hands on management. This is especially true if the objective is to build sectors rather than a portfolio of disparate companies. As a result, PEP is not only intimately involved in the businesses it invests in, but it seeks to be a sector expert in the business, technical, financial and legal/regulatory aspects of the development of that sector. Sector expertise enables us to build relationship with a broad group participants in the sector, including producers, suppliers, government officials and competitors. Currently, PEP is bringing this focus to bear on the solar sector. This aspect of our strategy will help us enable our companies to accelerate their development and de-risk the growth of entire sectors.

Geographic Focus

Persistent Energy Partners operates of offices in Accra, Ghana; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; and New York, USA. Our geographic investment focus is on East and West Africa.

Our Legacy
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In November 2012 E+Co, a pioneer impact investor that had invested in clean and renewable energy businesses in emerging markets worldwide for eighteen years, was restructured to create Persistent Energy Partners (PEP). The restructuring enabled E+Co’s creditors to maximize the value of their investments while enabling E+Co’s legacy of clean energy investing to continue through PEP.

Following completion of the E+Co restructuring, E+Co’s management team moved from E+Co to PEP. As E+Co’s successor, PEP has assumed responsibility for managing E+Co’s investments in Africa. Building on E+Co’s portfolio of 50 investments and over a decade of African clean energy investing, PEP began in late 2012 to make new investments focused on the providing cleaner energy to sub-Saharan African households.

Our Team
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Persistent Energy Partners is led by a management team with deep experience in private equity, corporate finance and international entrepreneurship. Our team includes highly skilled investment professionals on-the-ground in our field offices who work closely with our portfolio companies.