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19 Ecuadorian families lead clean energy model that finances conservation – EnviroNews
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In a context of growing pressure on global energy security, aggravated by extreme droughts and phenomena like El Niño that have affected electricity supply in Ecuador, Fundación Futuro presented HidroAguagrún on Monday, June 22, 2026, at the Climate Innovation Forum during London Climate Action Week.
This community solution, in an advanced implementation phase, proposes new answers to one of the most urgent challenges on the climate agenda: how to generate clean energy, strengthen territorial resilience, and finance conservation from the communities.
The response emerges from Intag, one of the most strategic ecological landscapes in Ecuador and Latin America. Located between the Chocó and the Tropical Andes – two of the planet’s most important biodiversity hotspots – this place harbors cloud forests and moorlands (páramos) that regulate more than 21 hydrological micro-watersheds, supply water to rural communities, and act as natural carbon sinks. In a context of climate crisis, this natural infrastructure is key to the country’s hydrological, energy, and ecological resilience.
Here, 19 families organised within the Río Aguagrún Association faced a decisive question for years: how to generate economic well-being for the community without compromising the forests and water that sustain their way of life. In a region historically marked by the pressure of extractive activities, the families opted to build an autonomous alternative capable of transforming watershed protection into a sustainable source of local development.
Beyond the energy infrastructure, HidroAguagrún represents a profound transformation in the relationship between the families and the micro-watershed that sustains their livelihoods. In one of the few countries in the world that recognises the rights of nature in its Constitution, this initiative turns that principle into everyday practice: those living around the river cease to see it solely as a source of resources and begin to recognize themselves as part of a living system upon which they depend and which must also be cared for.
With the plant’s operation, a new process of coexistence between community and nature opens up, where conserving no longer means just resisting, but regenerating, sustaining life, securing income, and building a future from a more balanced relationship with the environment.
From that vision, HidroAguagrún was born: an innovative financing model for conservation linked to the distributed generation of clean energy. Located in the Aguagrún river micro-watershed, the project leverages the landscape’s natural conditions (comparative advantages) – such as its flow, slope, and hydraulic pressure – to generate energy with a low environmental impact design, run-of-the-river, without damming, and with minimal alteration of the natural riverbed.
Based on that collective vision, the model evolved. It went from a 3-kilowatt pilot generator – which proved the practical viability of an alternative technology based on a conventional hydraulic pump operated in reverse to generate electricity on a small scale – to the construction of a 300 kW mini-hydroelectric plant. Its intake works are already 100% completed, pipeline installation is at 40%, and the powerhouse is in the initial execution phase.
In practice, HidroAguagrún converts conservation into an economic asset: in addition to providing clean energy to the national grid, 50% of the energy generation profits are allocated to a fund to finance conservation and local development through actions such as forest restoration, hydrological monitoring, and the protection of the micro-watershed that makes the resource possible.
Thus, the solution creates a virtuous circle where the river generates energy; energy generates income; and that income helps protect the ecosystem sustaining the solution. Beyond Intag, the model offers a concrete, replicable, and actionable path for other communities facing similar challenges of water security, extractive pressure, and energy vulnerability.
The true milestone here is that the logic of how conservation is financed has been changed,” affirms Carolina Proaño-Castro, Executive Director of Fundación Futuro.
“This is not an assistance pilot project, but a real solution, with technical rigor and financial sustainability, where families retain 90% of the shares and clean energy is converted into a tool to protect forests. HidroAguagrún demonstrates that a just energy transition can be profitable, scalable, and replicable, opening a concrete roadmap so that other communities can adapt this model in the face of the climate and energy crisis,” emphasises Proaño-Castro.
Community ownership as a new model for a just energy transition
HidroAguagrún redefines the standard of a just energy transition by shifting ownership, decision-making, and economic benefits toward the rural communities themselves. Unlike traditional models – where communities are usually limited to providing resources while external actors concentrate infrastructure and revenue – this model places the community as the owner, operator, and direct beneficiary of the energy produced.
The Río Aguagrún Association, the Toisán Corporation, and Fundación Futuro thus consolidate a shared governance ecosystem that turns energy into a concrete tool for territorial autonomy, conservation, and local development.
“In the face of the energy and climate crisis, rural communities cannot be spectators; they are part of the solution. HidroAguagrún demonstrates that when trust and long-term alliances exist, water can be converted into energy, and energy into conservation,” highlights Denis Laporta, spokesperson for HidroAguagrún Cía. Ltda., a company created by the Río Aguagrún Association, Toisán Corporation, and Fundación Futuro for the generation and sale of energy.
Beyond its social and environmental impact, HidroAguagrún was designed under a strict logic of economic and environmental sustainability. With a total investment close to $500,000 and an estimated internal rate of return of 19.5%, the model starts from a clear premise: small-scale hydroelectricity can offer a better cost-effectiveness ratio today than large centralised infrastructures.
Its low operational cost, participatory governance scheme, financial model, and a projected lifespan of at least 30 years strengthen its financial viability and replication potential.
But it’s most significant innovation lies in reinvestment: a portion of the annual revenue will feed a tripartite fund aimed at financing new community plants, turning each project into seed capital for the next.
This long-term alliance was born within the Chocó Andes Network – a collective committed to protecting 500,000 hectares in the Ecuadorian Andean Chocó – where the social and community fabric of the Toisán Corporation and the strategic vision of Fundación Futuro coincided in the co-design of sustainable financial mechanisms alongside the private sector.
The governance architecture also breaks with the conventional logic of energy infrastructure. Although Fundación Futuro, the Toisán Corporation, and international cooperation provided most of the initial capital and technical support, the community maintains 90% ownership of the asset. This design ensures that decision-making, economic benefits, and responsibility for conservation remain in the hands of those who inhabit and protect the landscape.
That community dimension is precisely what makes HidroAguagrún a distinct model within the global debate on energy transition: not only because it generates clean energy, but because it redistributes ownership, economic value, and decision-making capacity toward those who inhabit and protect the landscape. For Fundación Futuro, that combination of innovation, infrastructure, conservation, and local governance is what makes the project a solution with true replication potential.
“HidroAguagrún demonstrates that when communities, technical knowledge, and the private sector work together, it is possible to build real climate solutions that turn conservation into a sustainable and financially viable model,” affirms Carolina.
“Presenting this initiative at London Climate Action Week allows it to be shown that a just energy transition needs concrete, operational models with the capacity to be replicated in the face of a climate and energy crisis that is no longer in the future, but a present reality,” adds Proaño-Castro.
HidroAguagrún is part of a broader portfolio of climate solutions promoted by Fundación Futuro to strengthen the conservation of the Andean Chocó. During the Climate Innovation Forum, the organisation will also present NFTree, a climate financing mechanism with technological traceability to channel resources toward communities and forest owners; and Sonidos del Bosque, an initiative seeking to position the soundscape of the Ecuadorian cloud forest as a natural asset of global value.
From a community prototype to a replicable energy model
The project’s technological evolution combines local innovation with international-scale technical and financial standards. The initiative began years ago with a pilot generator of barely 3 kilowatts that lit the community soccer field and allowed the practical viability of a small-scale hydroelectric technology to be validated, based on a hydraulic pump operated in reverse to function as a turbine and generator.
But the evolution was not merely technical. The 19 founding families assumed the project’s shared risk from the beginning, contributing their own capital to form the association and organising community workdays (mingas) to advance the infrastructure’s construction. That combination of local knowledge, collective investment, and technical rigor allowed a pilot solution to be transformed into a Benefit and Collective Interest (BIC) Company, where the Río Aguagrún Association, the Toisán Corporation, and Fundación Futuro participate today.
With the civil intake works 100% completed, pipeline installation at 40%, and the powerhouse in the initial construction phase, the plant advances as a highly efficient and replicable model. To connect this community effort with international sustainability agreements, the project will accredit its production through International Renewable Energy Certificates (i-RECs), which allow the renewable origin of the generated energy to be certified.