Reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy access has been a challenge for rural communities in Africa. Although 18% of the world’s population live in Africa, less than 6% of global energy use is from Africa. 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity. Energy access for productive use can create value, … [continued]
Startup Genome launched its new report, Global Startup Ecosystem Report: Cleantech Edition, at CleanTech Forum San Francisco. Founder & CEO of Startup Genome, JF Gauthier, introduced the report, noting that it’s the world’s most comprehensive and widely read research on startups. The report analyzed 3 million startups and 280 entrepreneurial … [continued]
ClimateLaunchpad is a global green business ideas competition and part of the entrepreneurship offerings by EIT Climate-KIC (the EU’s main climate innovation initiative). Its mission is to unlock global cleantech potential and to accelerate innovations that address climate change. The 2020 Global Grand Final is currently underway.
“Investing in women is smart business and key to poverty alleviation at scale,” says Ajaita Shah, Founder and CEO of Frontier Markets, a rural marketing, sales, and service distribution company providing access to affordable and quality clean energy solutions and appliances to low-income households in India by building a network of rural entrepreneurs.
Solid cleantech ideas can arise anywhere around the world, and increasingly they are coming from talented entrepreneurs in countries, even those with economies that are focused on oil, like Nigeria, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan, where oil is literally pouring out of the soil. So how do these brave minds plan to succeed there, right in the middle of the fossil fuel universe?
ClimateLaunchpad is part of EIT Climate-KIC, the European Union’s leading program for climate innovation. This year marks the 5th edition of the ClimateLaunchpad competition. In the time since its inception, more than 4,000 ideas have been entered into this global competition.
Carbon offsets are one of the many tools available to us to reduce our impact on climate. CoolEffect offers third-party carbon offsets that do good for the planet and for people. Learn more about its new milestones.
Learn more about the Women Startup Challenge (co-hosted by Women Who Tech and Google) to support female entrepreneurs in the cleantech space.
After years of living in biopharma’s shadow, the cleantech sector is showing encouraging signs of life. New cleantech start-ups are popping up, and angel investors are again interested in investing in the promise of clean energy. According to the Propel(x) Survey of Angels, more than half reported that they are interested in the sector. That’s a far cry from the early 2000s, when cleantech was avoided by the investment community. Still, whether biopharma or cleantech, promising new ideas can take years to grow into viable offerings — not to mention large amounts of capital for conducting research, building infrastructure, and establishing distribution networks. That’s where cleantech could benefit by borrowing a few pages from the biopharma playbook.
The Cleantech Open has announced that it will expand into six countries: Armenia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey. It intends to support innovation in energy efficiency, renewable energy, waste to energy, and water efficiency in those six nations. The Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization … [continued]
