Solar-powered cold storage

Overview

This solar-powered cold storage solution provides a Pay as you go Cooling-as-a-Service model, enabling smallholder farmers, fishers, and vendors to store perishables affordably and extend shelf life, drastically curbing post-harvest losses.

Such solutions replace inefficient diesel cooling, reduceing post-harvest losses and supporting vast community of farmers. In doing so, it contributes to efficient value chains for cooperatives, MSMEs, and retailers while ensuring traceability from non-forest sites.

The Challenge

Lack of reliable cold storage and energy access forces reliance on informal methods or costly diesel systems, driving 30-50% post-harvest losses, income erosion for smallholders, and indirect pressure on land expansion in the Congo Basin.

Women and rural communities additionally face limited access to resilient infrastructure, exacerbating food waste, emissions from spoilage/transport, and unsustainable sourcing practices.

Canopy Trust Involvement – Technical Assistance

Canopy Trust support consists of a focused Deforestation Impact Assessment to evaluate and verify how this specific value chain affects forest areas and measure its potential to help prevent deforestation beyond current baselines.

Our Target Impact

The value chain contributes to deforestation-free agricultural dynamics by cutting waste, enabling sustainable land use, easing pressure on forests through reduced slash-and-burn expansion, and replacing diesel with solar energy—all while creating green jobs and supporting women-led operations in rural regions of the Republic of Congo.