Climate Impact Partners and Ecofiltro win Energy Globe Award

Climate Impact Partners and Ecofiltro have won the National Energy Globe Award for their Water Filtration and Cookstoves Project in Guatemala.

In Guatemala, more than half the rural population lacks access to clean water. Families decontaminate water by boiling it over wood-fueled fires, a carbon-intensive process that produces harmful smoky emissions and contributes to deforestation.

The Ecofiltro project uses an innovative ceramic water filter which is manufactured locally, eliminates the need to boil water, improves health through reduced stomach illness and indoor air pollution, and saves around USD 210 a year in firewood. To date the project has helped 175,000 families across Guatemala by providing them with safe water, reducing household emissions and saving money. It reduces 200,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and is estimated to save around 2,000 trees a day.

The project uses carbon finance to ensure a sustainable revenue stream. This carbon funding enables the cost of the filters to be subsidized and has supported the expansion of the project with a larger manufacturing site. The reduced deforestation carbon reductions are measured and independently verified to a Gold Standard methodology. Climate Impact Partners manages the process to develop, monitor and verify the carbon asset on behalf of Ecofiltro, which founded the project and oversees its implementation and expansion.

“We are honored to receive the Energy Globe Award which highlights the impacts of our Gold Standard project alongside our project partners Ecofiltro,” said Eddy Melendez, Nature-Based Solutions Technical Manager, Climate Impact Partners. “This project demonstrates how carbon finance can be used to scale an environmental project that has a big community impact.”

“We are very excited about this achievement,” said Philip Wilson, Founder and Executive Director of Ecofiltro. “It’s an honor to have great partners such as Climate Impact Partners. Thanks to the work we have done together, Ecofiltro has been recognized by the Energy Globe Award. Having won this award reminds us of our commitment to society and how proud we should be for the triple impact we generate.”

With more than 180 participating countries, the Energy Globe Award is one of the world’s most important environmental awards. Projects from all over the globe are submitted, ranging from small and simple initiatives to large scale high-end ones. The national winners of the Energy Globe Award are published in cooperation with UNIDO and have one thing in common: all of them have understood that the environment is protected by action not words.

About Ecofiltro

Ecofiltro started more than 20 years ago and functioned as a non-profit organization for most of its history. Philip Wilson, our executive director, concluded that the problem of access to clean water could not be effectively solved with the reliance on donations that existed when he started as director. He decided to turn Ecofiltro into an impact company, a “social business”, that would focus on a hybrid approach to the problem in which sales of filters in urban areas would serve to reduce the price of filters for families in rural areas. The company has a well-defined mission: to benefit 1 million Guatemalan families by 2026. Today, Ecofiltro has distributed over 700,000 filters throughout Guatemalan territory.

Learn more at www.ecofiltro.com.gt