30/04/2026
Behind the scenes- meet the founder of (B)Energy
(B)energy founder Katrin Puetz joined the Invest In African Energy Forum in Paris last week where she joined an unusual panel discussion. It was not about , not even about cooking . This time the focus was on risk perception in Africa and for us this raises a broader question about how risk is defined.
Discussions tend to focus on macro-level risks such as foreign exchange, regulation, or political stability. While these are important, there is also a structural dimension of risk at the level of household demand and local private sector that is less frequently addressed.
Over the past decades, we have watched significant funding injected into the cleancooking sector, largely through and mechanisms. While these approaches have enabled deployment, they have not resulted in sustainable, scalable market structures. And the reason why we at (B)energy have NOT used these funds to subsidize our own technology is because we DON‘T want to be part of market distortion and outcompeting our local competitors. This is a decision we took before we even started 15 years ago. Either we can work without aid or we won’t work at all. People who can’t afford a biogas system or any other cooking solution cannot be helped with a free or subsidized cook stove. The stove is not their problem.
With the experience we have gained in the sector, we see it as our responsibility to use this knowledge for the success of the entire sector and for solving the actual problem, rather than pushing our own product under all circumstances.
The opportunity to speak in front of an audience like the one in Paris is a great honour and was one more step in changing the mindset about clean cooking.
It is not a charity case! Clean cooking creates value that the world urgently needs. To make this exchange possible we are building the infrastructure. Stay tuned for more about .
