Recent Posts
Subscribe to stay involved.Now it gets interesting: Indian Govt & X Prize announced global competition for best clean-burning cookstove!
August 31st, 2010
X PRIZE, Govt. of India, and the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) Announce Partnership to Create Global Competition to Develop Clean-Burning Cookstove.
Initiative would combat the serious problem of indoor air pollution, which kills more than one million people each year
Read more or leave a comment.The missing MDG goal: energy poverty alleviation
August 30th, 2010
First the good news: Jeffrey Sachs Charts the Way Forward for MDGs Ahead of UN Summit World-renowned economist calls on leaders to arrive at the New York meeting next month “with the agreed plans, partnerships, and financing to accelerate our progress.” Professor Jeffrey Sachs has outlined eight “major gaps” which need to be overcome if [...]
Read more or leave a comment.Can the Gates-ian approach to treating infectious disease work to alleviate energy poverty?
August 26th, 2010
It occurs to us that Mr. Bill Gates’ description above of how the market treats (or not) infectious diseases could easily apply to energy poverty and the 3 billion people who depend on biomass as their primary fuel. For one, the socio-economics of the victims are similar. Second, there is no natural market for clean cookstoves.
So, could a Gates-ian approach to combating infectious disease work for poverty alleviation? Maybe, but there are major, maybe irreconcilable differences, between the two.
Read more or leave a comment.Tanzania: Charcoal-making in five easy pieces
August 24th, 2010
We published last month an interview with Dennis Tessier of ARTI-TZ, a Tanzania-based non-profit working to promote the manufacturing and marketing of briquettes made from the char produced in improved charcoal kilns. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Tanzania’s forests are disappearing at a whopping rate of 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 [...]
Read more or leave a comment.Why the market alone cannot solve the clean cookstove gap
August 19th, 2010
Can it be that the emphasis on finding market-based solutions to energy poverty alleviation and the large-scale deployment of improved cookstoves is just not practical? “Probably,” say a group of researchers investigating the pressures placed on grass-roots NGOs to adopt market-based approaches to solving household energy and health issues in the developing world.
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