Category Archives: Companies

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Mega-million $ partnership to kickstart clean cookstove deployment in Nigeria

Posted on: February 24, 2011

Written by: Jean Kim Chaix

Categories: Africa, Carbon market, Carbon Offsets, Companies, Regions

Tagged: ,


Hi, folks, we received the following communication from Simon Bishop of Shell Foundation: Good morning Shell Foundation is pleased to announce today a new cross-sector partnership that aims to tackle Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) at scale in Nigeria. The partnership between ourselves, Envirofit International (a global clean cookstoves business) and C-Quest Capital (a US-base carbon finance business) aims to deliver two million improved cook-stoves to Nigerian households over the next seven years. It will do this by using carbon credits to make cookstoves more affordable in Nigeria. Clean cookstoves are the most viable solution to IAP – the toxic smoke that … Continue reading →

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Financing the clean cookstove revolution the green way

Posted on: February 22, 2011

Written by: Jean Kim Chaix

Categories: Carbon market, Carbon Offsets, Companies, Funding


Financing the large-scale deployment of clean cookstoves A Q&A with Evan Haigler of Impact Carbon In late September 2010, several dozen men and women from around the world crammed into a small room at the United Nation’s Foundation’s headquarters in midtown New York to discuss how to deliver 100 million cookstoves by 2020 to the homes of the 3 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean safe energy. The challenge had been laid down a few days earlier by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she announced the creation of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a $50 million … Continue reading →

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Are plants, trees, and forests the new oil fields?

Posted on: November 24, 2010

Written by: Jean Kim Chaix

Categories: Africa, Climate Change, Companies, Energy Poverty, Environment, Poverty, Renewables, Valuing Biomass

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Concern about a land grab in Africa for the production of industrial-scale, ethanol-producing crops may well be justified, which is why bird-dogging the “African agricultural green-rush” is everyone’s responsibility.

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Can the Gates-ian approach to treating infectious disease work to alleviate energy poverty?

Posted on: August 26, 2010

Written by: Jean Kim Chaix

Categories: Companies, Funding, Health, Human development, Policy, Poverty

Tagged: ,


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.

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