DBL Partners and ZOLA Electric Announce Nigeria Expansion at Global Climate Action Summit

MEDIA RELEASE

San Fran­cisco, CA (Sep­tem­ber 11, 2018) — DBL Part­ners and its port­fo­lio com­pany ZOLA Elec­tric (“ZOLA”), for­merly Off Grid Elec­tric, today announced a Global Cli­mate Action Sum­mit pledge to expand energy access in Nige­ria through PAYGo Solar and dis­place the neg­a­tive cli­mate and health effects of fossil-​​fuel pow­ered gen­er­a­tors. In Q4, 2018, ZOLA Elec­tric will expand its PAYGo dis­trib­uted solar energy model and launch an afford­able renew­able energy alter­na­tive avail­able to Nige­ri­ans. ZOLA’s tar­get is to deliver clean energy access to 1 mil­lion house­holds and busi­nesses in Nige­ria over the next three years. This ambi­tious expan­sion is focused on deliv­er­ing Global Cli­mate Action Sum­mit goals of energy access and dri­ving the tran­si­tion to clean renew­able energy.

“Our objec­tive, and expec­ta­tion, at ZOLA is to dis­place fos­sil fuel gen­er­a­tion through cost, con­ve­nience and car­bon emis­sion supe­ri­or­ity” said Bill Leni­han, Co-​​CEO at ZOLA Electric.

“A major com­po­nent of address­ing global cli­mate change is the imper­a­tive to tran­si­tion the con­ti­nent with the fastest grow­ing pop­u­la­tion — Africa — to clean energy, and we are excited for ZOLA Elec­tric to bring its com­pre­hen­sive PAYGo solar approach to Nige­ria” said Nancy Pfund, Man­ag­ing Part­ner and Founder, DBL Partners.

Nige­ria is a rapidly expand­ing eco­nomic pow­er­house, with pop­u­la­tion growth tipped to sur­pass the United States by 2050. It is Africa’s largest econ­omy and its biggest oil pro­ducer. Despite this, the Niger­ian elec­tri­cal grid is unable to meet its cit­i­zens’ basic energy demands. Power from the grid is unre­li­able and expen­sive and this has dri­ven more than 100 mil­lion Nige­ri­ans to rely on diesel gen­er­a­tors to power their basic energy needs in their homes or apart­ments.^[1] While diesel gen­er­a­tors pro­vide energy auton­omy and reli­a­bil­ity, they are highly-​​polluting and expen­sive to run. Esti­mates of cli­mate impact cal­cu­late that diesel gen­er­a­tors in Nige­ria pro­duce about 29 mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 each year^[2] — the emis­sions equiv­a­lent of roughly 6.3 mil­lion pas­sen­ger vehi­cles.^[3] Ambi­ent air pol­lu­tion from diesel gen­er­a­tors                                                                                                             

Press Con­tacts: 

Will Dwyer | ZOLA Elec­tric: william.​dwyer@​zolaelectric.​com

Mark Perutz |  DBL Part­ners: mark@​dblpartners.​vc

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^[1] Fer­rero, V. Devel­op­ing Clean Energy in Nige­ria: Data-​​Centric Solu­tions for a Solar-​​Hybrid Com­pany (2018) at https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/16583/Ferrero%202018.pdf

^[2] https://​www​.cgdev​.org/​b​l​o​g​/​h​o​w​-​c​a​n​-​n​i​g​e​r​i​a​-​c​u​t​-​c​o​2​-​e​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​s​-​6​3​-​b​u​i​l​d​-​m​o​r​e​-​p​o​w​e​r​-​p​l​a​nts

^[3] https://​www​.epa​.gov/​g​r​e​e​n​v​e​h​i​c​l​e​s​/​g​r​e​e​n​h​o​u​s​e​-​g​a​s​-​e​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​s​-​t​y​p​i​c​a​l​-​p​a​s​s​e​n​g​e​r​-​v​e​h​i​cle