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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
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Building Markets, Building Cohesion: Lessons from Last-Mile Deliveries
In 2016, Myanmar was a nation emerging from decades of conflict and isolation. Kopernik, the UNDP and Mercy Corps responded with a pilot program that utilized technology distribution as an avenue to strengthen social cohesion in the country's remote rural communities. Tomohiro Hamakawa and Vanesha Manuturi of Kopernik share development lessons learned from the program — lessons with the potential to benefit other emerging market communities making a comeback from histories of conflict.
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Press release: African Development Bank, Nordic Development Fund and Partners launch Off-Grid Energy Access Fund with US$58 million
The Off-Grid Energy Access Fund (OGEF) had its first close on Thursday, 2 August 2018 with committed capital of US$ 58 million from the African Development Bank, the Nordic Development Fund, the Global Environment Facility, Calvert Impact Capital and All On.
- Source
- Press release
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Oil’s Surge Clouds Clean-Air Quest in Emerging Economies
The nations are embracing such supplies once again as crude’s recovery exacerbates economic pain and boosts inflation, threatening to undermine efforts made during oil’s slump to curb pollution.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Power Play: Can Energy Access Entrepreneurs Survive the Relentless March of Grid Electricity in India?
Despite the dubious claims from the Modi administration that India has electrified every village in the country, the march to extend grid infrastructure continues unabated. So where does that leave energy access enterprises? Ananth Aravamudan, Renewable Energy lead at Villgro, explores how these firms can find creative new ways to stay relevant.
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- Energy, Entrepreneurship
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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, Entrepreneurship, Environment
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A Mini-Grid Milestone: Can the Industry’s First Trade Association Help Electrify Rural Africa?
In April, the mini-grid industry got its first-ever trade association, as the Africa Mini-grid Developers Association (AMDA) launched with chapters in Kenya and Tanzania – and ambitious goals for expansion across the continent. Though AMDA's membership currently includes about a dozen companies providing 11,000 connections, it aspires to represent 90 percent of the mini-grid sector by the end of 2021. In a Q&A with Scott Anderson, AMDA co-founder Jessica Stephens discusses its plans to transform the mini-grid industry from a feel-good alternative to a power player in the energy sector.
- Categories
- Energy
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Microgrids an Important Piece of the Puzzle for Energy Access in Frontier Markets
Microgrids are becoming important part of the frontier power markets for distributed energy systems. Advances in technology such as energy storage along with rising diesel prices, and favorable government policies have enabled an environment to support the economics of small-scale clean energy systems according to the second quarter Frontier Power Market Outlook report by BNEF.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
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