Energy and Oil

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Sustainable Energy

Sun queens: Barefoot College women turn on the lights in off-grid villages

Solar Sister entrepreneurs earn commissions for the sale of solar energy products to people who need them. Photo: <a href="http://www.solarsister.org/">Solar Sister</a>

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Sustainable Energy

Solar Sister: Lighting up livelihoods from one sister to another

A recent CNN article explains how one group in east Africa aims to help women create economic opportunities and eradicate energy poverty at the same time through commission-based sales of solar products

A new IIED report spells out the need for clean-energy projects to measure success based on metrics to which local stakeholders have agreed. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/16901703@N06/4290071780/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Groundreporter (Flickr)</a>

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Sustainable Energy

How to measure clean-energy success

How will we figure out whether our antipoverty project succeeded? A new report recommends getting guidance from its beneficiaries.

Declaring victories would be so easy if only we didn't have to prove they were real. A new report has advice on how to do so.

SELCO Technician installing solar panels. Credit: SELCO

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Sustainable Energy

SELCO: A shining star in market-driven social enterprise

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor

In India, one iconoclastic solar company employs deep knowledge of the ways communities use energy to overthrow the traditional means of bringing power to the people.

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The history of climate change negotiations in 83 seconds

Traditional cooking fire in Myanmar. Photo: B. Manser for Mercy Corps.

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Sustainable Energy

Clean cookstoves in Mozambique lure big investors

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor .

Mera Gao Power: Men installing solar panels

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Sustainable Energy

To feed its growth, India weighs coal subsidies against solar ones

Could decentralized, solar energy be the solution to India’s power poverty?

Maendeleo installing solar panels on Uganda's libraries. Photo: EIFL

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Sustainable Energy

Solar panels meet Android tablets in Uganda, and farmers win

Basking on the equator, Uganda catches plenty of rays. A library database and solar power project is using them to connect rural farmers.

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Mobile, solar schools literally bring power to the powerless

Beep beep! For some students, hopping on the school bus is hopping into the classroom. Four communities are using solar-powered mobile classrooms to overcome inaccessibility to the power grid.

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From Chitradurga, India: A magical, solar-powered school

A dearth of energy resources and skilled teachers in rural India means students lack access to modern computer technology. A traveling, e-learning school bus powered by the sun might roll its way to a better rural education solution.

Rainforest advocates in Indonesia. One thinker claims the modern environmental movement has played little role in staving off the catastrophes it predicted in the 1970s. Photo <a href="http://flic.kr/p/aaj1bD">Rainforest Action Network (Flickr)</a>

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Sustainable Energy

Don't panic, environmentalists: A richer world can be a better one

Forty years ago, a shocking report tagged economic growth as the catalyst for environmental collapse. Now, a new article claims the world's responses to that forecast failed to make things better.

The SolarKiosk in an Ethipoian village provides electricity, products, and commerce for the community. Photo: <a href="http://www.solarkiosk.eu/?p=373"> SolarKiosk</a>

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SolarKiosk rolls self-powered electricity stores into Ethiopia

A mobile, modular kiosk is bringing solar power and products to off-the-grid communities in Ethiopia, and creating a business hub in the process.

In Uganda, dairy farmers are on the hunt for affordable energy sources. One might be their own cows. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/59367690@N00/4157487541/">Neiljs (flickr)</a>

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A dung-powered milk chiller could power profit at small dairies

Warm milk spoils—and millions of the world's energy-poor rural farmers have no way to keep it cool.

If only the bovine digestive system also produced some sort of vast and seemingly endless flow of energy-rich sludge.

SWEETLab director Evan Thomas shows an example of the remote sensors developed in his lab. Photo: Evan Thomas/Portland State University

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How a Portland lab uses remote sensors to measure how aid projects work

Sensors on latrines, cook stoves and water filters help monitor aid projects, and a carbon credit financing scheme generates revenue to scale-up of future projects.

The ReadySet charging kit includes a velo bicycle generator as well as a solar panel. Photo: Fenix.

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‘Trickle-up innovation’: A solar charger for the poor helps the rich, and vice versa

A pair of entrepreneurs who set out to design a solar charger for electricity-starved Ugandans has unexpectedly created a product popular with American consumers.