SolarTrade

Call it a stock trading application, such as Robinhood but with far deeper socio-ecological-economic implications. A tool for anyone to make a cross border impact by empowering businesses in emerging markets, fight climate change and at the same time earn a very generous yield of up to 15% per year with very limited risks. You can even see your investment, generating green power, in action in real-time! What’s there not to like? The impact, renewable energy investment space has been outdated for a while. It is clumsy at best, not transparent, technology is poor, and worst of all it is principally reserved for wealthy individuals & institutions who are happy to pocket all the profits. You need some serious money to get started and good luck finding the right investment instruments that have the right scope (yes I’m looking at you green bonds. Used for all kinds of purposes other than sustainability), have an appealing yield, and can be liquidated. Everyone speaks about wanting to something about climate change and helping emerging markets but none one is given the tools to do it and even if they find a way to participate they end up poorly rewarded. So why the focus on electrifying South East Asia? 650M people are now living in South East Asia and the local economy is growing at a furious rate. Annual GDP growth rates of 5% are the standard and have resulted in an exponential demand for electricity over the last 10 years to power factories, BPO’s, resorts, malls, residential compounds, … To this day, however, there is still a general lack of appropriate infrastructure to absorb this additional demand (see a large number of diesel generators in Indonesia) and in some markets, monopolies are just keeping the price of electricity high (especially Philippines). Renewables have an incredible potential in Southeast Asia, the irradiation values are off the chart. With near-perfect geography & climate, solar power can thrive in these markets and provide a sustainable & highly profitable solution (without need for government subsidies. Unlike most European markets. A secret no one likes to share). Unfortunately, once you speak to a local business owner, you will understand that they just don’t have access to the kind of capital that is required to get started with a solar system. SolarTrade’s mission is to fill this exact financing gap with your help through an innovative crowd sale process. As such anyone in the world can participate in the electrification of emerging SEA markets, starting as low as $100. Through our platform, you can buy and lease out solar panels to entities that are looking for more affordable electricity while earning a very generous yield of up to 15% p.a. Over a 10 years’ period, the usual lease length, this means an IRR of easily 10%.. And even better, you can track the whole process in real-time on our digital platform. It’s with great enthusiasm that I’m writing these lines. Bringing an idea from an initial abstract concept to a live and tangible product is a rewarding feat by itself. We are now open for pre-registration and are performing our due diligence on a few projects. Hope to have you with us!