CROWD-LENDING TO SOLAR ENERGY (we accept STEEM/SBD!)

I woke up this morning to find this message in my email inbox:

Nice, right? But what’s happening here?, you may wonder.

Last year I made a post about a project called “SPARASOL” (which can be roughly translated from Swedish as “solar savings”) which I have been running since 2014. What we do is open interest-free saving accounts in Swedish krona (SEK) for our members and then invest their savings plus the matching amount from our own capital into small-scale community-oriented solar energy projects in East Africa and Latin America.

In the past 4 years we have helped to fund 7 projects, having contributed about EUR 6,000 in loans:

Different ways to lend

We lend capital to project developers on the ground through our partner platforms, such as Kiva.org (where we give loans as part of the ‘Team Steem’) and TRINE (our Swedish partners currently available to EU residents only).

_{By the way, I really recommend that you check out “TEAM STEEM” on Kiva.org, where @stephen-somers is our team captain. Stephen blogs regularly about his activity on Kiva: https://steemit.com/teamaustralia/@stephen-somers/new-kiva-loan-vietnam-fish-farming}

The difference between those two platforms is that Kiva.org is available pretty much worldwide, where PayPal and credit cards are accepted, while TRINE is currently limited to the EU residents. Another important difference is that Kiva’s users don’t earn interest on their loans, while TRINE’s users receive 4%–6% annual interest on their loans.

At Sparasol we usually place smaller amounts of capital through Kiva and larger amounts through TRINE, although in some cases we do it vice-versa. It mostly depends on the projects currently available for funding and on the terms of the loan (we don’t like loan periods longer than 18 months). Of course, I personally encourage people to register on Kiva and/or TRINE and start lending to projects of their choice today. However:

• if you don’t like risk
• if one or both those platforms aren’t available in your country
• if you would like to invest your STEEM and/or SBD,

…then investing via Sparasol might be a better alternative for you.

The reason for people to lend via our own platform, Sparasol, is that we guarantee complete repayment of our members’ savings, thus completely eliminating the risk for them. In other words, there’s always some risk of losing a portion of the investment involved in lending via Kiva or TRINE, but not when people lend via Sparasol. On the other hand, we don’t offer our members interest, although they may still earn it indirectly, if Swedish krona appreciates in value against their original currency during the loan term.

And there’s another reason why people might choose to lend through Sparasol, which might be of particular interest to you, my fellow Steemians. Namely, we accept STEEM and SBD.

Lend your STEEM and SBD

As I explained in that earlier post, you can open a saving account at Sparasol and put some STEEM and/or SBD onto your account. We will then invest your money – along with a matching amount of our own capital – in a relevant project currently open for funding on Kiva.org or TRINE. You can withdraw your money whenever you like. Please note that your savings account’s currency is Swedish krona, SEK. Which means that if the price of STEEM/SBD has fallen since you made your investment, you will receive more STEEM/SBD than the nominal amount that you invested. And vice-versa: if the price has increased, your withdrawal will constitute a smaller amount of STEEM/SBD, but it will still be worth the same amount of SEK as when you made your investment.

If you have more questions about how this works or if you want to open an account at Sparasol today and fund it with your STEEM or SBD, please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you asap.

Disclaimer:

Aside from my work with Sparasol that I do to encourage more people to invest in solar energy in developing countries, I also save a portion of my personal wealth in projects on Kiva and TRINE. Each month I give a USD $25 loan on Kiva.org and in the past 9 years I have contributed USD $2,000 in funding to projects featured on Kiva. I also have a few thousand dollars invested via TRINE and I plan to increase that amount in the coming months.

An annual interest rate of 4%–6% is a much more attractive proposition than anything that a Swedish retail bank can offer me in exchange for keeping my savings with them.

And I am a huge believer in environmentally-friendly carbon-neutral clean energy solutions that generate positive results for the “triple P”: People, Planet and Profits.

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