A fish farm from a village in Bangladesh

About Us

Emergence BioEnergy Inc. (EBI) is a Lexington, MA-based company which seeks to use local resources to create distributed energy production systems in low income countries. EBI was founded by Iqbal Quadir, who was the visionary and catalyst behind GrameenPhone, the largest cell phone provider in Bangladesh and the first to provide universal access.

EBI adopts Quadir’s strategic approach towards development based on identifying global technology trends that can be capitalized for the benefit of low-income countries. In addition, the approach favors technology that disperses economic and social gains throughout a country, as opposed to those that may concentrate these gains in the hands of the few.

Technologies designed and manufactured focused on smaller economies tend to lack economies of scale. On the other hand, the vast majority of the world’s R&D dollars are spent on solutions to problems in larger, more developed economies. By adapting developed-world technologies to poor countries, these global resources can be brought to bear on their problems, including poverty. 

EBI believes that micro-CHP technology, manufactured for consumer markets of the developed world, can be adapted to establish mini-power-plants providing distributed power in low-income countries.