India’s Blackout Lesson: Coal Failed, Solar Delivered
Of all the headlines around India’s historic blackout none summed up the truth more than the Onion: ”300 million without electricity after restoration of the power grid.” In fact, when asking Indian colleagues about the blackout most acknowledged it as simply par for the course. That’s because India’s over reliance on a centralized grid powered [...]
Energy Access Practitioners Seek $500 Million from World Bank at Rio +20
20 of the world’s leading off-grid clean energy entrepreneurs sent a letter today to World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick requesting $500 million in financial commitments to help them deliver on the world’s energy access goals. The group’s letter was backed by a letter of support from the CEOS of more than 25 leading civil [...]
What India Can Learn From Africa
Guest Post by Konrad App of Stima Systems Both India and Africa are experiencing an affordable-energy crisis in rural areas, however there are two significant differences in the African market that are giving rise to energy solutions not yet seen in India. First, unlike India, an overwhelming majority of the African population lives at the very [...]
Eight19 and The Un Grid
The off grid market continues to expand and attract innovative new business and financial models aimed at delivering energy access for the poor. One of the most recent, Eight19 Ltd., made a splash with an article in The Economist explaining their pay-as-you-go “energy escalator” business model (seen in the graphic above). We sat down with [...]
The World Bank, Rio+20, and Energy Access
The issue of energy access is going to be front and center at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) in June. Delivering electricity is a key aspect of achieving this lofty goal. The problem is our current approach – investing in large scale centralized fossil fuel power plants and stringing power lines [...]
Helping Social Enterprises Scale Energy Access
Santosh, a local daycare worker, mother and wife living in a rural village needs a solar light that can replace her polluting kerosene lantern. She, like half the world’s population relies on cooking and lighting practices that kill over 2 million people annually. What Santosh needs is a product solution that can avoid these needless [...]
India’s Coal Crisis Hits Deep Freeze
What began as a social crisis borne of forced evictions, loss of livelihoods, and brutal police repression has quickly evolved into a financial one. In a series of excellent posts (part one here, part two here) my colleague Carl Pope has laid out the economic basis of the problem India now faces. The reality of [...]