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Cities Need To Transition To Circular Economies: Google Wants To Help
The company has made strides in making its own operations and buildings focus on reuse and recycling–now it wants to apply the lessons it has learned to urban environments.
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- Energy, Environment, Technology
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The 7 Trillion Dollar Question: Can Sustainable Financial Products Close the SDG Financing Gap?
Val Smith of Citi gives global context to what sound like the impossibly high costs of reaching the Sustainable Development Goals on clean energy and global warming, saying there is good news behind the daunting gap. The challenge is that current investment levels in development and climate-positive activity remain far below what is required – but current trends in innovative finance are heartening.
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- Energy, Environment, Investing
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Solar Lighting in Remote Rural Areas: Oversold or Truly Illuminating?
It's common wisdom that solar lighting can make a dent in serious problems plaguing the developing world. But the underwhelming social impact measured in a recent randomized controlled trial calls that belief into question. However, research conducted by Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, based on in-depth interviews with solar lighting users in Tanzania, found much more positive results. Thane Kreiner and Leslie Gray of Santa Clara University explore possible reasons for the disparate findings.
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- Energy, Social Enterprise
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$1.5 Billion Microgrid Market Opportunity Emerges in Kenya
A confluence of innovation, risk taking, and public and private effort has created a five-year, $1.5 billion microgrid market opportunity in Kenya, leading Germany’s TFE Consulting to dub the East African nation, “The World’s Microgrid Lab.”
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- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Powering Communities Through a Surprising Source of Renewable Energy: Human Waste
Around the world, a staggering 2.5 billion people lack access to decent toilets. That leads to far too many people getting sick from preventable diseases. Anne Healy and Erin Crossett of Development Innovation Ventures say the good news is that some enterprising companies are experimenting with ways to make human waste disposal profitable in the developing world.
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- Energy, Environment, Health Care, WASH
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OPINION: No matter what government says, coal is no longer India’s cheapest energy source
India now has nearly 200GW of coal. Further, the $4.6 billion estimate does not include other social costs (water pollution, deforestation, displacement, ash disposal etc.) To pass this off as an entire accounting of coal’s hidden costs is either shoddy or dishonest.
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- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
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People Are Cooking With Human Poo — and That’s a Good Thing
In Kenya, the future of sanitation may entail turning human waste into fuel.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Social Entrepreneurs, Ignore the Mantra of Focus at Your Own Peril
When SunFarmer went through Y Combinator in 2015, its founders heard a lot of startup wisdom, including the mantra of focus. But according to co-founder Andy Moon, the Nepal-based social enterprise ignored this advice – then struggled to sell multiple products to multiple customer segments simultaneously. Moon discusses what went wrong, and how his firm is regrouping.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise