Envirofit was created to unite top-tier clean energy research with consumer driven product design to bring sustainable and scalable market-based solutions to emerging markets. Envirofit was formed in 2003 as a spinoff company out of Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory to develop well-engineered technology solutions to solve global energy and health challenges. Envirofit began by producing and selling direct injection retrofit kits for two-stroke motorcycle engines in the Philippines – a project that won the Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2008.
Envirofit turned its attention to clean cookstoves, partnering with Shell Foundation’s Breathing Space Program to prove the market for the development of a scalable clean cookstove solution. This partnership aims to achieve significant, verifiable, long-term reductions in global indoor air pollution by combining an economically-sustainable enterprise approach with market-driven research, product development, and expertise working in emerging markets. Developing their first commercial clean cookstove model, Envirofit began its pilot program in India in 2008. After an exponential increase in sales in the first two years Envirofit began to scale the model in 2010. To meet the demands of consumers in different markets, Envirofit combined the global knowledge of cooking cultures from field-based research with innovative clean cooking technologies to design new products using advanced computational tools, rigorous performance testing.
