Worldwide, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.7 billion are still cooking on harmful and inefficient stoves1. Many live in remote rural village communities, and until they have access to energy services, little progress can be made to develop and improve their lives2. As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated, “energy …
[:en]On the stage of the Lighting a Billion Lives Convention in Delhi India, Smart Villages has announced Naturetech Infra as the winner of the Smart Villages Off-grid Energy Impact Competition for India. Applications from off-grid energy entrepreneurs across the nation were assessed on impact, level of project development, sustainability, innovation and replicability. Naturetech Infra was …
Professor AbuBakr S Bahaj is head of the Energy & Climate Change Division (ECCD) at the University of Southampton. He discusses an on-going project that is partnering with a village in Kenya to help them provide their own energy services and thereby invigorate their villages.
[:en] “Failure” – the word usually carries a negative connotation. But for entrepreneurs, policymakers, and NGOs working to provide energy access to people in the “last mile”, failure can actually provide important lessons. Is failure an important ingredient to success? In this webinar, we’ll gather experts who will talk openly about their experiences with failure …
[:en]Failure & off-grid energy access: Why failure matters to development[:] Read More »
[:en]Co-authored by a science journalist and an energy researcher, WGSI’s OpenAccess Energy Brief is an engaging overview of energy access issues that identifies challenges, knowledge gaps and opportunities. This version incorporates feedback collected by our advisory group who met in October 2015 to evaluate version 1 of the Brief and Summit goals. This version of …
Background/Rationale More than a billion people worldwide still lack access to basic electrical services. As policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics work to address a UN goal of sustainable energy for all by 2030, prominent technical solutions increasingly focus on decentralized connections to renewable, intermittent energy sources. Whether pico-solar lanterns, solar home systems, or larger solar, …
Frontier Energy Storage Technologies and Global Energy Challenges Read More »
Workshop on the energy and water nexus for remote off-grid communities: The Smart Villages Initiative and the Philippines Center for Water and Sanitation Throughout Southeast Asia, over 120 million people still live without access to electricity, with the majority of these people living in rural communities. This lack of energy has strong impacts on their …
[:en]Smart Villages is pleased to announce the launch of the second annual Smart Villages Energy Innovation Challenge. Building on last year’s success, this year’s competition challenges aspiring young East African entrepreneurs to come up with an idea for a social business powered by off-grid energy. Social businesses deliver positive social impacts to the end user …
The second annual East Africa Energy Innovation Challenge took place in summer 2016. With restructured selection criteria, 85 East African applicants applied to the programme by pitching their ideas for providing energy services to off-grid villages. Eight aspiring entrepreneurs developed their ideas over seven weeks with the Cambridge Development Initiative (https://cambridgedevelopment.wordpress.com/) in Dar es Salaam …
[:en] Register now The Lighting a Billion Lives CONVENTION 2016 is an international forum for universal energy access that brings together practitioners, funders, policy makers, government agencies, development initiatives and businesses to collaborate on developing pathways and measures towards scaling up energy access. CONVENTION 2016 is hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Smart …
[:en]The Smart Villages Initiative together with its local partner, Kopernik, held a workshop on Bunaken Island, Sulawesi in Indonesia, in November 2015 to discuss off-grid energy systems in remote island communities in Southeast Asia. The workshop focused on the barriers and circumstances of rural energy access that are unique to small island communities, drawing inspiration …
[:en] Far-flung islands in the South Pacific and treacherous terrain in the Himalayas: both pose enormous challenges for rural development and energy. In this webinar, we’ll gather experts who will tell stories about their experiences working in remote areas where energy access is limited or almost non-existent – and what they are doing to promote …
Webinar: Off the beaten path – rural energy & remoteness Read More »
The Smart Villages workshop in Myanmar forms part of our regional engagement in Southeast Asia. The workshop brought together key stakeholders engaged in the cookstove value chain in the region. In many developing countries, energy for cooking needs accounts for the largest share of total energy consumption and is normally met by using biomass as …
Sustainable Dissemination of Improved Cookstoves Workshop Read More »
[:en]The Smart Villages Initiative is pleased to announce three finalists in the Off-grid Energy Impact Competition for India. Energy entrepreneurs from across the nation entered this competition, designed to highlight cases where access to energy has acted as a catalyst for development in rural Indian villages. Entrepreneurs play a key role in increasing energy access …
Held as part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) is billed as the world’s foremost event dedicated to the advancement of renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean technology. The Smart Villages Initiative attended the four-day conference programme, which covered a range of key themes across clean energy. We …
A show of political will at World Future Energy Summit Read More »
More than half of the population in Southeast Asia continues to depend primarily on biomass as fuel in inefficient cookstoves to meet their cooking needs. The majority of those using biomass are based in rural areas. In view of this high level of dependence on biomass, various countries in the region have launched improved cookstove …
BR12: Sustainable dissemination of improved cookstoves: Lessons from Southeast Asia Read More »
While South American countries have made significant progress in energy access, tens of millions of people (more than 30 million, according to conservative estimates) do not have access, particularly in remote areas. From 24-26 January 2016, experts from across the region gathered to discuss the challenges and opportunities for energy access. The forum “Sustainable energy …
South American countries have made significant progress in energy access, but more than 30 million people (around 7% of the population) continue to live without electricity. While energy access levels are much higher than in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the communities remaining without electricity typically live in particularly remote locations, in the mountains or …
BR11: Off-grid energy in remote communities: Lessons from South America Read More »
The Smart Villages in South America Workshop aimed to facilitate the analysis and exchange between the public and private sectors and civil society, from first-hand experiences in the field of energy in rural off-grid communities. Topics for discussion include rural electrification; energy generation and distribution; the inclusion of renewable energy sources (RES) in the energy …
Access to safe and sustainable energy is of vital importance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), says Marcel Alers, global head of energy at the UN Development Programme (UNDP). “Energy provision is an essential element of sustainable development,” Alers tells SciDev.Net, referring to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which encompasses the 17 goals …
Why energy is a priority in sustainable development Read More »