Why Off-Grid Energy Matters 2026

Customers who report a challenge with their product or service also report significantly lower impact across quality of life, safety, health and energy spending, regardless of sub-sector. Our first two editions show that customer experience shapes impact. The 2026 data go further: access on its own does not create impact, and whether it does depends on ease of use. Funders should ask investees for challenge and resolution rates alongside sales numbers, and treat them as an impact risk, not only an operational one.

E-Mobility, as a sub-sector, has high productive use (a product that can unlock income generation), but masks weak product experience and shallow depth of impact. The sub-sector has an average Net Promoter Score of -7, a challenge rate of 61%, and only 15% of customers report any significant gains in income. This is the clearest example in our data of how customer experience influences impact. Productive use products that are unreliable create limited impact — and have real potential for improvement. Investors in this sector would be wise to ensure that use of funds is allocated not just to growth objectives, but also to shaping product experience. Resources for reliability, servicing networks, and battery and charging infrastructure will do more for impact than a number of new units sold without that infrastructure in place.

Compared with roughly half or more of customers in other sub-sectors, only around a quarter of Clean Cooking customers stop using their prior fuels. Yet one in two customers report significant improvements in safety, quality of life, and health. The sector also records the highest Net Promoter Score (63) and the lowest challenge rate (23%). This nuances our 2024 finding that small products drive big outcomes: even partial shifts to cleaner fuels deliver them. For many households, clean fuels complement rather than replace other fuels, with choices shaped by fuel availability and affordability. Measuring Clean Cooking on fuel replacement alone understates its value and undervalues the health, safety, and quality of life benefits, especially for women, who report the largest gains.

Even in the highest productive use sub-sectors: E-Mobility (87% customers report their off-grid energy product generates income), and Off-Grid Appliances (77%), only 15% to 34% of customers report a ‘very much’ increased income. Our earlier editions found that the impact gains of productive use of energy are real but still emerging; the 2026 data confirm that there’s a persistent gap between potential and realised gains in income.

In Off-Grid Appliances, customers who use their product for income generation are twice as likely to describe repayments as a heavy burden (11% versus 5%). The 11% is well above the 4% we saw across our 2025 Microfinance Index, a sector where repayment risk is the central consumer protection concern. This group also reports lower quality of life gains (49% versus 57%), but higher climate resilience (35% versus 23%). Where income falls short of expectations, the repayments remain. Earlier editions treated productive use as a straightforward good. Our 2026 data suggest that productive use offerings are a higher risk, higher reward proposition. The differentiator is how repayment stress is managed. These businesses need to focus on affordability assessments, flexible repayment terms, and proactive communication of contract terms.

Customers describe the value of energy in everyday terms: better light, greater safety, less stress, easier household tasks and more connection with family. For many households, these outcomes matter as much as any larger gain, and deserve to be measured directly.

The spread of company performance in this report is wide. On the same metrics, some companies reach far more first-time, low-income, and women customers than others in the same sub-sector and market, and convert that reach into impact. This echoes a central finding of our 2024 edition, where locally-owned and women-led enterprises stood out as impact all-stars: more inclusive, better rated, and higher impact on average. Funders can raise the impact of their portfolio by backing the inclusive, well-run organisations our benchmarks surface, and by closing the financing gap for locally-owned and women-led companies.