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Why Fossil Fuel Companies Must Evolve or Die: An Interview with Carbon Tracker Founder Mark Campanale
To keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius and (hopefully) avoid the harshest consequences of climate change, up to three-quarters of known fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground. That's the thesis of the Carbon Tracker Initiative and its founder, Mark Campanale. If that sounds like a heavy lift for an oil-dependent world, he raises a compelling point: With collapsing margins and emerging competition from renewables, the fossil fuel industry has no choice but to evolve. Campanale elaborates on these views in this video interview.
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- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Three Reasons Impact Investors Aren’t Sweating Trump’s Climate Policies: An Interview with Nancy Pfund
This week, President Trump signed what's been called a "sweeping demolition of Obama-era policies on coal mining, fracking, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change." So why isn't Nancy Pfund, founder and managing partner of DBL Partners, worried? We discuss politics and the environment with the impact investing pioneer in this video interview.
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- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Dollar by Dollar or Goat by Goat: How Financial Health Translates Across Oceans
The Center for Financial Services Innovation, in partnership with the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explored how a U.S.-oriented financial health framework could translate into a developing world context. They discovered that the concept of financial health resonates just as strongly in lower-income countries as it does in the United States.
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- Uncategorized
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An Impact Investor Urges Caution on the ‘Energy Access Hype Cycle’
Ceniarth, an impact investor, has been actively engaged in the energy access sector since 2014. But now it's reducing its exposure to the venture-backed, solar home system segment of this market while shifting its strategy toward enterprises – for-profit, nonprofit and hybrid – that are finding the most capital-efficient ways to reach rural customers. Here, three principals in the firm candidly explain why they are reassessing their approach.
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- Energy, Environment, Investing
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Social Business Roundup: The Problem with Sachets, the Beauty of Rats and the Dark Side of Cross-Selling
Everyone seems to love the products in individually-sized sachets being sold at the BoP ... except for Mother Nature. Ethiopia's only too happy to roll out the welcome mat for some rats with amazing TB-sniffing skills. A questionable cross-selling strategy in South Africa harms a vulnerable population and raises uncomfortable questions about financial inclusion. It's all part of our weekly Social Business Roundup.
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- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Engineering Social Impact: Being a Hardware Entrepreneur is Hard … But Worth It
There's nothing fast or easy about hardware innovation. Hardware is, well, hard. But a growing number of stakeholders in the development space see the importance of hardware-led social ventures and the impact they make in emerging markets, and they'll be especially interested in ASME's upcoming Innovation Showcase, a competition with events in in India, Kenya and the United States.
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- Social Enterprise, Technology
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South Africa’s Energy Schizophrenia: Why Hasn’t the Country Achieved Affordable Power for the Poor?
There are vast extremes between the energy rich and poor in South Africa, despite the country's great potential to make energy universally available. A new report by Impact Amplifier examines the reasons behind the discrepancies and describes five energy access business models for low-income communities: biogas, solar home systems, mini/micro grids, solar kiosks and solar appliances.
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- Energy, Environment
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The Girl Effect: Accelerator Connects Girls in Poverty with Silicon Valley Innovators
What if girls destined for poverty in developing countries were connected with some of the best minds in Silicon Valley? They can be, thanks to the Girl Effect Accelerator, an initiative of the Nike Foundation and the Unreasonable Group. The program helped Annetty Chama go from having no job – and no hope of getting one – to becoming her family's primary bread-winner in Zambia.
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- Education
