African Clean Energy is a B Corp-certified enterprise which produces and distributes solar-biomass hybrid energy systems in developing countries. The company was founded in Lesotho, where it manufactures the ACE One Energy System. The company's headquarters are in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. History African Clean Energy (ACE) is a family-owned business, founded in 2011 by Ruben Walker and his father, Stephen Walker. Ruben Walker studied environmental engineering in Australia. Prior to founding ACE, Ruben owned a bamboo flooring company, as a sustainable alternative to wood. The ACE One was developed in 2014 with support from crowdfunding and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. As of 2017, the company is active in Lesotho, Cambodia and Uganda.Stephen Walker, an expert in manufacturing, helped set up ACE's factories in Lesotho and Cambodia. The company expects to open a third factory in Uganda in 2020. The biomass cooking sector More than 3 billion people cook using solid biomass fuels like wood, crop waste, coal and animal dung. There are also 1.2 billion people without access to electricity, who currently rely on dangerous fuels like kerosene for lighting. The World Health Organization estimates that 4.3 million people die prematurely every year from illnesses attributable to household air pollution from burning solid fuels. These include lung cancer, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary disease and childhood pneumonia. Exposure to indoor smoke is particularly high amongst women and girls, who are typically responsible for cooking. The responsibility of sourcing fuel for cooking and heating also predominantly falls on women, who spend hours each day collecting firewood for their homes, cutting short their potential to study or do other things. The ACE One Energy System was designed to address these issues, while still being compatible with widely available biomass fuels, such as sticks, animal waste and agricultural waste. It is capable of burning any type of solid biomass smokelessly, and provides electricity for households that do not have access to the grid. The product Functionality The ACE One has an integrated lithium-ion ferrophosphate battery which powers a small fan. The fan draws oxygen into the burning chamber of the device, intensifying the fire inside. This causes the biomass to gasify, ensuring complete combustion and creating a smokeless flame. The battery will power the fan for 20 hours, and can be charged using the included 10W solar panel. The latest ACE One includes a microprocessor and is sold with a second-use Samsung