• SME Market Access Program
• SME Access to Finance
• Clean Energy Solutions
• Training and Facilitation
• Project Design and Strategy

Clean Energy Solutions

What We Do in Clean Energy

WHL Consulting has developed a clean energy program called TDB Energy Solutions known as TDBE. TDBE is an innovative approach to deploying clean energy solutions to SMEs in the accommodation sector by performing two critical services: 

1. providing relevant market intelligence on clean energy opportunities to a cluster of small tourism businesses and pairing that information with energy efficiency companies and clean energy suppliers
2. providing a unique financing tool to allow these businesses to pay for renovations and advanced energy services.

TDBE works with several key partners in the micro energy investment community to help create new business opportunities for energy enterprises in existing and frontier markets. These partners provide investment and strategic advisory to local energy companies that sell, distribute, install, and service applicable supply- and demand-side renewable energy technologies. Representative technologies are proven, cost-competitive, and provide an immediate positive impact to the businesses through energy savings. TDBE is uniquely suited to help advance clean energy deployment in these regions by working with whl.travel network operators and through high-level coordination with energy service provider aggregators and investor groups.

TDBE works specifically in the accommodation sector because it is a large sector in the developing world and hence has a large energy footprint. In some countries and remote regions of the world, we have found energy is up to 60% of total operating costs. A reduction in the energy consumption of SME accommodation providers would go a long way toward improving their bottom line as a business, while generating significant social and environmental positive externalities. Because most of the SME accommodations in the whl.travel network are small (less than 25 rooms) family owned enterprises providing direct employment opportunities for local communities at the base of the pyramid, the positive affects to the environment and social communities are truly local.

Market Intelligence

TDBE has created a Market Intelligence Program that identifies and connects local clean energy suppliers with WHL’s network of accommodation providers, which today numbers over 8,000 in over 100 countries in the developing world. TDBE leverages the WHL network, technology, and proprietary tools to create and disseminate tailored, energy-specific, demand-side market intelligence reports on thousands of SME hotels, ultimately bridging the gap between under informed local clean energy providers and the underserved "missing middle" of commercial enterprises in the tourism industry. Specifically, TDBE has developed a program that

1. identifies and partners with local, reputable, clean energy enterprises such as those investee companies sponsored by E+Co, a not-for-profit clean energy investment firm;
2. utilizes a proprietary Market Readiness Assessment tool to gather energy-specific, demand-side market intelligence information on WHL’s underserved SME hotel customer base;
3. creates reports detailing the energy and access-to-finance condition of the destination SME network;
4. produces new business opportunities through supply and demand imbalances

Access to Finance

One of the major obstacles to building a sustainable business for many SME accommodation providers in the developing world is access to finance. Most SMEs do not have access for for essential business activities such as market access tools/services and retrofits/renovations needed to reduce energy consumption, let alone capital investments to switch to distributed energy generation options. In order to facilitat the required transactions for either retrofits or for energy production replacement TDBE leverages WHLC’s, innovative new financing tool, the Tourism Development Bank (TDB)... hence the name TDB Energy Solutions!