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Competition Heats Up in Kenya’s Off-Grid, Mobile Pay-Go Solar Market
Home to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Kenya is a hive of activity and a magnet for sustainable development-minded off-grid solar and energy storage startups. Having raised $40 million of capital over the course of the last four months of 2016, d.light announced that an average 800 Kenyan households a day are signing up for its D30 Pay-Go solar home system.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy
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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.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Solar provider and telco team up to offer affordable smartphone in Rwanda
Mobisol, a German provider of smart high quality solar solutions, and MTN, Rwanda’s leading mobile telecommunications company, have joined hands to offer customers a high performance Tecno smart phone to be purchased on an attractive and affordable instalment payment scheme.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How Loan Guarantees Are Unlocking Private Capital for Clean Energy and Sustainable Agriculture
MCE Social Capital, a nonprofit impact investing firm, believes leveraging loan guarantees can unlock private sector capital for the more than 2 billion people who lack access to formal financial services. Over the past couple of years, MCE has expanded its focus to clean energy and sustainable agriculture in an effort to promote macroeconomic stability and a healthy planet.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Investing
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Heeding the Voice of the Planet: Why CSR Isn’t Enough
Academic and author Stuart Hart writes that we have inadvertently put most of our chips on continuous improvement inside of current fossil fuel-based businesses and have largely forgotten about the critical importance of disruption, innovation and transformational change to corporate sustainability. How do we move business from the folly of competing for corporate sustainability ratings to actually making a difference? It starts with providing the right incentives, Hart says.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Technology
- Tags
- renewable energy
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Europe Pledges €300 Million For 19 African Renewable Energy Projects
The European Commission has pledged €300 million in an effort to leverage further investments amounting to €4.8 billion for the development of 19 new renewable energy projects in Africa, as part of its role in the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy
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Social Business Roundup: A Defiant Asset Manager, Salty Doorknobs and Who Has it Worse?
This week in social business, the world's third-largest asset manager is pressuring companies to add more women to their boards; a Nobel Prize winner's ponderings on inequality within nations might make you rethink life in America; and salt earns a chance to be a hero – for a change.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing
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A Tale of Two Islands: Solar Helps Indian Resort Shine
The author, Simmi Sareen, visited an island chain in the Indian Ocean. One island, Kadmat, has a solar plant that provides all the comforts travelers have come to expect. Another, Thinnakara, runs on undependable diesel power. Solar is the key that has enabled Kadmat's tourism-based economy to hum, Sareen says, and Thinnakara's could, too, if it would transition from diesel.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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