HomeBiogas Clean Cooking Solutions

HomeBiogas tackles one of humanity's biggest challenges: providing carbon free clean cooking to the more than 3 billion people who are exposed to life-threatening toxic air pollutants on a daily basis. We have developed and commercialized a disruptive household biogas system that has made it easy, safe and affordable for families to transition to clean fuels - improving livelihoods while helping to fight climate change. Backed by field trials and extensive scientific research, the innovative system converts families’ organic waste (kitchen, animal, and human waste) into free and clean energy (approximately 6.2kWh/day, equivalent to 3 hours of cooking) as well as organic liquid fertilizer. HomeBiogas systems have been a life-changing catalyst in developing countries, where 4.3 million people die every year due to indoor smoke inhalation from cooking on open fire, access to electricity is sparse and there is a lack of waste management services. 

Clean cooking is not a luxury; more than 600 million people in Africa are living in energy poverty. More than 80% of households in sub-Saharan Africa rely on charcoal or wood for daily cooking needs. Many of those underserved, women in particular, spend hours each day collecting firewood for cooking. Left with no other option, they use charcoal and wood-burning fire to cook, which are cripplingly expensive. Businesses and farms spend even more. More problematically, these solutions pour dangerous pollution into homes and endanger health all while exacerbating climate change. The project will address the urgent need to reduce the use of charcoal and wood for cooking in off-grid communities by developing biogas alternatives and bringing these to scale. The project will bring biogas technology to off-grid homes, and eventually businesses. These systems will quickly accelerate local access to clean cooking at an affordable cost. It will also improve the health and quality of life of local people and therefore improve community productivity and vitality. 

The direct beneficiaries will include: (1) local communities involved in the charcoal and alternative energy value chains (specifically as it relates to clean cooking), specifically women, youth, and other underserved groups through increased income, improved health (improved air quality) and increased human capacity through renewable energy implementation; (2) provincial and local governments and CSO’s through increased capacity through renewable energy implementation; (3) local businesses through reduced energy costs, organic fertilizer for growing crops, lower energy maintenance requirements, and increased capacity through renewable energy implementation.

HomeBiogas’ main technological innovation is commercializing household biogas systems that are extremely affordable while still meeting the top three wish list of any rural households in Africa - easy to install and use, converting home waste to biogas in a completely safe process, and hours of hours of smoke-free cooking gas. Backed by field trials and extensive scientific research, the innovative system converts families’ organic waste (kitchen, animal, and human waste) into free and clean energy (approximately 6.2kWh/day, equivalent to 3 hours of cooking) as well as organic liquid fertilizer. 

The system was built and designed with a safety engineer and passed a rigorous HAZID (Hazard Identification) audit.
 The product holds a CE certification.
The system is built from 3 core elements:
1) A welded inner liner specially designed with the manufacturer to hold the gas and the digested materials
 2) An outer liner specially designed for strength, stability and UV resistance; 3) The injection moldings including the system's piping, inlet and outlet.
 

HomeBiogas 2.0 is made of high-quality UV protected Polyethylene and Polypropylene. All the materials can be recycled, for each part we have quality control plan and process. Feeding rates and digester health can be controlled by:
1) Educating the customer about the correct amounts of waste to feed the system. 
2) The system was developed through many years of field research and is designed to hold and properly digest all organic waste of a family / small farm. If the system is not used, the excess gas will be automatically released into the atmosphere by our specially designed pressure-release mechanism. The generated biogas is filtered by a special-purpose activated carbon filter to remove any unpleasant odors and toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
Concerning the smart valve, we plan to build a simple and cheap device on a first stage to be able to open or close remotely the gas depending on payments. On some devices, we will have a flow meter to collect consumption data. 
Later on, we plan to integrate a pressure sensor to the digester's biogas chamber to remotely monitor the health of every digester. The major part of monitoring the health of the systems will be done by our agents in the field who will visit the customers regularly and be trained to check the health and good usage of the systems.

HomeBiogas main innovation is by developing and commercializing a household biogas systems that are both extremely affordable and safe while still meeting the top three wishlist of any rural households in Africa - easy to install and use, converting home waste to biogas, and hours of hours of smoke-free cooking gas.

The HomeBiogas system gives families a sustainable, clean, and free source of gas for cooking. The fertilizer produced by the system gives an ongoing supply of nutrient-rich fertilizer, which subverts the need to purchase industrially produced fertilizer. Every HomeBiogas system can reduce the food waste of a family by two kilograms each day. The system puts animal manure to productive use, extracting the nutrients and fertilization power of the manure while extracting its potential energy and preventing improperly managed manure from exuding methane into the atmosphere. 

This innovation allows families to participate in the circular economy, but more importantly it allows households in developing countries to leapfrog the infrastructure gap in access to cooking gas to enjoy for the first time from a clean and safe solution. 

Based on HomeBiogas innovation, we produced the HomeBiogas system, a unique appliance that transforms organic waste into biogas and fertilizer. It can be shipped directly to your doorstep in a small box, and assembled in less than one hour. Every day, it can be fed with food waste and manure. The system operates completely

we have developed a line of products that utilize our technology:

HOMEBIOGAS TG1 and HOMOBIOGAS 2.0 is currently commercialized household biogas system for families’ organic waste. The system converts this waste into clean energy (approximately 6.2kWh/day, equivalent to 3 hours of cooking) as well as organic liquid fertilizer. The system was built and designed with a safety engineer and passed a rigorous HAZID (Hazard Identification) audit. It holds a CE certification and is currently installed worldwide in 46 countries. The system is built from 3 core elements: 1) A welded inner liner specially designed with the manufacturer to hold the gas and the digested materials 2) An outer liner specially designed for strength, stability and UV resistance; 3) The injection moldings including the system's piping, inlet and outlet.

We are currently in the process to developing two more products that we believe has a huge potential: a large system that will address the needs of public facilities that serve a large number of people (hotels, school, hospital, etc.) and a bio-toilet which will provide for the same time a sanitary solution that treat human waste and turns it into clean energy. 

HomeBiogas has already proven initial market traction for the past 18 months. We have sold over 3000 units ($750,000 in revenues) of our first generation system so far and to achieve worldwide recognition of our market leading position in the household biogas market. Thanks to its simple and innovative technology, an affordable price to the end user ($250) we are on track to deploy more than 7,000 systems by the end of this year in 46 countries. 

At the time of this application we have sold around 3000 household systems. Taking an average of 5 people in an household it translates to 15,000 people. In 12 months we would have sold around 7500 systems of which about 20% will be of our now developed industrial system. Assuming 200 people per public facilities (hotels, schools, hospitals) that would translate to a total of 330,000 people within 12 months. 

In five years we plan to sell 200,000 systems impacting more than 2,000,000 people each year.  

The market for clean cooking fuel is growing quickly, supporting high expectations for the growth of our business. As mentioned, we plan to sell 200,000 in five years and reach profitability upon reaching the 100,000 systems sold milestone.  

We are currently in the process of reducing production costs of our biogas system to bring down costs through two avenues (1) continuous redesigning of our current systems and (2) partnering with a large manufacturing facility to initiate a mass production phase. With this lower-cost system, we see a greater value proposition to off-grid clients. 

We are also working to develop a microfinancing mechanism for our system, which will further make our system more accessible and affordable to populations that are currently cooking with charcoal or firewood. 

 
HomeBiogas is a technology company first and foremost. We plan to rigorously invest in R&D and develop both the underlying innovation as well our product line. We are already close to finish development of a large, industrial system that will meet the needs of public facilities. In addition, we are planning to introduce the first affordable bio-toilet that will help rural families a human waste solution and clean cooking gas at the same time. Finally, to unlock the last mile microfnacning capabilities we plan to develop a metering and locking technology that will allow for a pay-as-you-go model.
 

HomeBiogas operates in some of the most challenging markets in the world. There are several core barriers that are objective and external. From predictiable and enabling regulatory enviournment, to lack of financial infrastructure (i.e. liquidity, convertibility, FX, etc.). 

The main challenge for the company in the near future is increase the affordability and accessibility of the system to reach further markets of people most in need of the HomeBiogas solution. 

In addition, being highly innovative we will need to overcome awareness challenges and market education both on our B2B partners level as well as end costumer level.

Five years from now we will probably see higher level of competition from both local and international players.

External barriers - develop new approaches to financing that include on blended instruments (conssetional funding from impact or donor fudners that derisk the company to allow commercial financeires to participate).

Low awareness-> Higher level of marketing spending and the piloting an in country own operations to run in parallel of our trade partners. We also building a strong distribution network that will make HomeBiogas readily available in various regions and countries. In parallel, we are continually working on improving the quality of the product while lowering the price while at the same time making the most relevant product for our customers.

Lack of funding -> HomeBiogas is backed by some of the industry leading investors (Engie, ClosedLoop, etc). The shareholders commitment to the company’s growth has been proven and remains strong. 

Competition -> HomeBiogas sees its self as a technology company first. We devote sigfnicant resources to our R&D efforts and will come up with new technolgy and products that will keep us ahead of the innovator curve. 

N/A

We have 30 full-time employees

Our founders and C level team is comprised from world leaders when it comes to developing such technology and operational expertise:

Oshik Efrati, HBG CEO and founder, is an entrepreneur who is a very focused and task oriented leader of people. He combines multi-disciplinary technology know-how and product management skills with people skills. Prior to HBG he was the Product Line Manager at SourceOutdoors (www.souceoutdoor.com), where he introduced and developed a product line which grew to be 50% of that company’s income. 

Education: B. Sc. in Marine sciences, Ruppin Academic Center School of Marine Science, Israel.

Yair Lanzer is HBG Chief Operating Officer. He is a business savvy operator and organizer who combine management skills with business, sales and organizational skills. Previously, he was CEO at Lenopark, a $20 million private international B2C company manufacturing and selling consumer products.

Education: B. A. Business Administration; Ruppin Academic Center, Israel.

Yair Teller is HBG Chief Scientist and founder, a visionary entrepreneur, committed to the cause of sustainability and fully motivated to help the poorer, underserved communities of the developing world. Yair became actively involved in sustainability, biogas and social change 9 years ago, during his stay in Mexico. Since then, he has become an internationally recognized evangelist, leader and authority on small biogas systems and in-situ recycling. 

Education: B. Sc. in Marine Sciences, Ruppin Academic Centre School of Marine Sciences, Israel.

HomeBiogas partners can be breakdown to three main categories:

1. Commercial / Trade partners - we distribute our products through proven players in their respective local markets. For example, in Rwanda we have partners with an solar home system company that sells electricity to off-grid households. In Kenya we have partnered with the largest agribusiness equipment distributor to target small to medium farms.

2. Market builders / enablers - given our core markets are developing nations, we are working with leading UN agencies, World Bank and other NGOs that are tasked with supporting the country social and economic development. 

3. Financing partners - similarly to the previous point, the lack of existing infrastructure requires us to think out side of the box when it comes to finance our operations. That is why we are working with untraditional investors to develop financial instruments that would fit our unique needs. 

Our business relies at the moment on B2B efforts. HomeBiogas finances and manufactures the systems and then sells it to our commercial partners that serve as distributors in country. HomeBiogas provides also training, after sale services and warranties. 

Our costumers profiles are as follows:

Off-grid households - these are families that lack access to any type of gas connection and that rely on chorchaol / wood burning for their cooking solutions. 

Small and Medium Business - these can be farms that can convert their animal waste to gas or community schools that need solution for their lunch making needs. 

Larger enterprises - hotels, hospitals, government facilities that serve a large number of people and can reduce costs significantly by switching to our solution. 

HomeBiogas is backed by some of the leading circular economy investors, mostly the French Utility Engie through its corporate venture capital arm and ClosedLoop Partners which is a NYC-based venture capital that is funded by the largest consumer goods companies (Coca-Cola, Walmart, Amazon, P&G, J&J, etc.). They both have invested in our last funding round and serve on our BoD. 

We plan to reach profitability upon selling around 100,000 systems. 

The Solve award presents all three benefits we are looking when applying to such programs:

1. Reputable recognition - MIT Solve has become in the past few years as one of the leading competitions with a rigorous selection process that only the best solutions win it. 

2. Extended network - MIT Solve partners and network will be highly beneficial for us in expending our operations. 

3. Grant funding - benefit from non-dilutive capital which is always critical to an early stage company such as ours. 

N/A

Our near future efforts is to expand our distributors network. 

N/A

HomeBiogas is a fast-growing company which operates in a very challenging environment where awareness and adaptation to renewable energy methods and clean cooking is low. Our success in other markets similar to sub-Saharan Africa has proven that the technology is needed and has adaptability, and that the business model is justified and affordable. The prize would be additional in accelerating our early-stage steps expansion within sub-Saharan with a specific focus on rural areas as well as pilot new go-to-market approach. Successfully deploying clean cooking systems as a pilot in partnership with the region’s leading rural agriculture company will demonstrate the project’s viability ahead of a commercial launch, while crowding in additional investors.

While the prize will enable the launch of the project, it is expected to be implemented with a reduced scope if the prize is not provided. The funding will allow for HomeBiogas to deploy a critical mass of systems (>600) in some of sub-Saharan Africa’s most underserved regions. With this prize, a local partner will be able to fine-tune the payment terms that are specifically tailored to sub-Saharan Africa market conditions, de facto proving the project bankable and de-risking preconceived notions. The prize will also help pilot a commercialized version of HomeBiogas TG6 and disseminate the product to appropriate businesses and farms.

N/A

N/A