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Press Release: COVID-19 Intensifies the Urgency to Expand Sustainable Energy Solutions Worldwide
To meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets by 2030, countries must safeguard the gains already attained and accelerate efforts to achieve affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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What Will Last Mile Distribution Look Like in 2025? Six Predictions for an Emerging Sector
From water purifiers to solar lights, the impact-oriented products can’t further development goals if they can't make it to last mile customers. Emma Colenbrader and Charlie Miller of the Global Distributors Collective explain how the organization's 140 member distributors have defied tough odds to get 13 million products and counting into the hands of last mile households. They share a first-of-its-kind report that aims to better understand the markets for these products, the customers being reached – and the business models that can reach them.
- Categories
- Energy, Telecommunications, Transportation
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Unite Behind the Science: When it Comes to Cooking, it’s Time for ‘Clean’ to Mean Something
Nearly 3 billion people still live in homes where someone burns sticks, charcoal or dung to cook, devastating their health, their local environments and the climate. Yet thousands of projects have failed to deliver truly clean cooking to the masses, doing a disservice to customers and damaging the sector's credibility with funders. Eric Reynolds, CEO of the cookstove company Inyenyeri, argues that there's only one way to turn this around: "deliver dramatically improved outcomes, and be able to prove it." He outlines a straightforward way the industry can make that happen.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Q&A: Africa’s $40B Market for Cooking Fuel Is Being Cleaned Up
KOKO Networks is stepping into Africa’s $40 billion market for household cooking fuel with its non-polluting bioethanol cooking technology that undercuts the cost of using charcoal by as much as 40%, Greg Murray, chief executive and co-founder of the Nairobi-based company, told BloombergNEF in an interview.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Clean vs. ‘Clean Enough’: How the Clean Cooking Industry Can Overcome its Struggles to Scale
Access to clean cookstoves and fuels has only increased by 0.5% per year, well below all global development goals. To turn this trajectory around, Jessica Alderman at Envirofit International argues that the industry needs to resolve a high-stakes debate: Should it focus only on the cleanest solutions that have the greatest health and environmental impacts? Or should it fund and promote technologies that have lesser impacts - but that are more affordable and likelier to reach the people who need them most?
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Technology
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Smart Gas Cooking Seeks to Break African Cities’ Dirty Charcoal Habit
So far, efforts to introduce cleaner stoves that burn less fuel have been led mainly by aid agencies working in rural parts of Africa and Asia - and have had limited success. But a new push by businesses targeting urban areas aims to shift the dial.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: BBOXX Unveils New Initiative to Help Tackle the Global Clean Cooking Crisis
Mansoor Hamayun, CEO and Co-founder, BBOXX, said: “The BBOXX Cook initiative in Rwanda is an exciting step for us as a next generation utility. We are showing that our model works: the technology that we have used to provide access to clean, reliable and affordable electricity is being expanded to include clean cooking solutions and we have big ambitions to deliver other utilities and products in new markets.”
- Source
- Press Release
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Bringing Biogas to Billions: Why PAYGO Could be the Key to Scaling the Industry
Small scale biogas digesters (biodigesters) convert animal manure into biogas for clean cooking and high-quality organic fertilizer. The technology is hardly new – in fact, it's been around for 150 years. But for farmers to benefit on a mass scale, companies will need to lean on new technology and innovative business models, writes Ben Jeffreys, CEO of ATEC* Biodigesters International. That means learning the lessons of the off-grid solar industry and devising new pay-as-you-go models to enable the inclusion of low-income customers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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