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From Energy Access to Economic Empowerment: Workable Models for Financing a Just Transition in Emerging Markets
Today 2.1 billion people live without clean cooking fuels and technologies, and over 660 million people lack electricity access. Yet as Anthony Osijo at Bboxx points out, as global conversations largely focus on decarbonizing energy resources to combat climate change, these millions of households still cannot access essential products and services the rest of the world takes for granted. He argues that emerging markets can't simply be left in the dark because their kerosene lamps and diesel generators aren’t environmentally viable, especially if they lack access to suitable alternatives. He explores ways to finance and deliver a just climate transition — while also eradicating energy poverty.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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COP30 Summit in Brazil: What to Know About the UN Climate Conference?
Delegates from around the world are expected to disagree over how to tackle climate change and who should pay.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology, WASH
- Region
- Global
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Convincing Customers to Buy What’s Best for Them: How Lessons from Clean Cooking Can Increase the Adoption of ‘Merit Goods’
Despite their clear benefits, “merit goods” — products or practices that improve both individual and societal welfare — often struggle to achieve widespread adoption. As Jean-Louis Racine at the Clean Cooking Alliance explains, even when these products and behavior changes offer solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges, traditional marketing approaches often fail to build significant consumer demand for them. He examines the clean cooking sector’s experience in selling cookstoves and fuels to emerging markets customers, highlighting effective strategies that can accelerate consumer uptake of these and other merit goods.
- Categories
- Energy
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BII Agrees $75 Million Financing for Asia-Focused Renewables Firm Blueleaf Energy
The company is developing solar and wind projects in the fast-expanding Indian market, and plans to expand its operations across Asia.
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Turning Failure into Fuel: An Emerging Learning Platform Aims to Bring the Hidden Challenges in Humanitarian Energy to Light
The humanitarian energy sector is eager to learn from success. But according to clean cooking and energy access researchers Nazifa Rafa, Tash Perros, Iwona Bisaga and Ronan Ferguson, its failures are usually buried in reports or quietly brushed aside, and there's often a disconnect between what’s documented in impact reports and what practitioners experience on the ground. They argue that this dynamic is unsustainable in a sector with high risks, urgent needs and shrinking funding. In response, they share an emerging solution: the Humanitarian Energy Learning Platform, a centralized, inter-donor learning system designed to highlight what’s going wrong in humanitarian energy access, and how practitioners can systematically learn from it.
- Categories
- Energy
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EDFI ElectriFI Injects Further $1 Million into Uganda’s GOGO Electric
Funding will help expand battery-swap infrastructure for electric motorcycles.
- Categories
- Energy, Transportation
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- e-mobility, infrastructure
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One Clean Cooking Project Could Generate Rwf 27 Billion From Carbon Credits
The project primarily targeted low-income households, providing them with modern, energy-efficient cook stoves that use less charcoal and firewood.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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To Change the World, Change Your Economics: How Degrowth Can Shrink Overconsumption in the Global North While Allowing the Global South to Grow
The global economy largely operates under a neoclassical economic structure, which emphasizes a reliance on markets, a deference to the private sector and a focus on constant growth. But according to Matt Orsagh and Steve Rocco at the Arketa Institute, this structure has a fatal flaw: It operates on a planet with finite resources and limited places to put our waste, but assumes that economic growth can go on forever. They argue that the world needs a new form of economics that reflects our environmental realities, one focused on "degrowth" — i.e., an effort to equitably downscale production and consumption in the Global North, without putting undue restrictions on the development of the Global South. They explore what this change might mean for the world's economy, the investing community — and countries in the Global North and South.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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