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Why Health Benefits Could Drive Customer Value for Solar Lighting and Clean Cookstoves
Solar lighting and improved cookstoves have multiple benefits. But according to a new FINCA International survey of end-users in Uganda, the benefits customers value most involve the products' perceived contributions to a cleaner, healthier household. Scott Graham and Anahit Tevosyan at FINCA explore how highlighting these benefits can help product manufacturers and distributors – and the donors and investors who support them – to strengthen the uptake and usage of off-grid products.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Stupid Stoves: Why Rebranding Won’t Solve the Clean Cooking Alliance’s Problems
In her recent interview with NextBillion, Clean Cooking Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans described the organization's ambitious new vision. But her words didn't sit well with Warm Heart Worldwide founder Michael Shafer, who raises a pointed question: After nearly 10 years of massive investment, hype and exposure, he asks, "Where is the Clean Cooking Alliance now? Getting rebranded and starting over!" Shafer argues that the Alliance's current efforts fail to address the major issues that have hampered it from the start – and proposes a different way forward – in this provocative post.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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When Will Clean Cooking Hit the Gas? An Interview with New Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans
In March 2018, Dymphna van der Lans was appointed CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an industry group representing businesses, investors and NGOs. The organization has since rebranded as the Clean Cooking Alliance and has set a new goal: to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030. In this video interview with NextBillion editors, we ask van der Lans about how the alliance is helping to reach those goals – as well as the criticism it has faced about the sector's social impact.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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How to Build an Impact Industry: Four Strategies from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Almost 3 billion people worldwide cook with materials that are inefficient, unsustainable and polluting. Since 2010, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has sought to make clean stoves and fuels commonplace across the developing world, by building an industry that could deliver this vision. Colm Fay and Ted London at the William Davidson Institute share insights from the Alliance's efforts to catalyze this new industry, breaking down four key stages of acceleration and their lessons for other impact-based accelerators.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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The Switchback Solution: Is ‘Pay and Cook’ a Game Changer in the Movement to Popularize Cleaner Cooking Fuels?
For years, countless entrepreneurs have been trying to enable low-income people in emerging markets to move from traditional fuels to clean cooking fuels. But they've struggled with the same problem: customers’ tendency to switch back to traditional fuels when it comes time to buy refills for their clean cooking fuel tanks. Emmy Wasirwa at WANA Energy Solutions discusses his company's innovative solution to this challenge.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise
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Oikocredit invests $1.2 million in Inyenyeri Company to support clean cooking solutions
Inyenyeri’s fuel and stove solution cuts smoke and toxic fumes by more than 90% compared to traditional cooking methods.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press release: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Names Dymphna van der Lans as Chief Executive Officer
Dymphna brings more than 25 years of experience managing and leading global development, energy, and climate initiatives in the nonprofit and private sectors. In her most recent role, she led international corporate engagement with the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate & Energy team. Previously, she worked with the Clinton Foundation as CEO of the Clinton Climate Initiative and has also served as the senior director for public policy programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
- Categories
- Environment
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Can these ‘stovers’ finally crack the clean cooking problem?
When used with its wood fuel pellets, Inyenyeri cookstoves reduce emissions by 98 to 99 percent compared to wood or charcoal stoves, the company says, making their stoves Tier 4, the highest performing tier for indoor emissions as defined by the World Health Organization. Inyenyeri follows the “razorblade model,” a business model in which one item is sold at a low price, or even at a loss, because the profits come from the complementary products.
- Categories
- Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- clean cooking
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