Zachary Shahan, Director & Chief Editor at CleanTechnica, earlier this year interviewed all of the 2018 Zayed Future Energy Prize (ZFEP) winners, including the youngest of the winners, the high school winners:
Zachary Shahan, Director & Chief Editor here at CleanTechnica, recently congratulated and interviewed Joseph Kava of Google after they won the Large Corporation Award of the Zayed Future Energy Prize. Google won for its leadership in the green, sustainable, “circular economy,” as Joseph Kava put it. Kava is President of Data Centers at Google.
Zachary Shahan, Director & Chief Editor at CleanTechnica, recently interviewed Thomas Samuel, founder of Sunna Design, a 2018 Zayed Future Energy Prize (ZFEP) winner. Every prize is a sweet acknowledgment of leadership in sustainable development and deep humanitarian efforts. Sunna is a kind business that brings light to undeveloped countries. It brings not only streetlights but also “nano grids” where energy is nonexistent or scarce.
The interview is a fresh exchange between two young, inspired fathers who are successfully supporting sustainability goals in different ways.
Do you ever wonder what keeps environmentalists and humanitarians going? It is stories like the story of Laura Stachel & We Care Solar, and organization that provides light to medical facilities without electricity.
Zachary Shahan, Director & Chief Editor at CleanTechnica, interviewed Zayed Future Energy Prize (ZFEP) winner Harish Hande of the SELCO Foundation earlier this year in Abu Dhabi. SELCO Foundation was founded in 2010 as an open-source, nonprofit, public charitable trust. It is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka.
Zachary Shahan, director & chief editor here at CleanTechnica, earlier this year spoke to Katherine Lucey, CEO & Founder of Solar Sister, after the Zayed Future Energy Prize awards ceremony. He inquired, “What can you say about what inspired you to start Solar Sister? And has it grown as you expected or has it been different than you expected?”
The woman walks up to the door of the office with confidence and orders two new water filters and a single solar-powered lamp. The products were destined for a neighbor’s household after she saw the benefits they provided. The water in the Kupang neighborhood she lives in is chronically contaminated with silt and other particulates that the low-cost and easy-to-implement Nazava water filters remove time and time again.
BYD’s core competency is batteries, which blossomed as a result of founder, CEO, and Chairman Wang Chuanfu’s technical mastery and eye towards the future. He led BYD into cell phone batteries when cell phones made their entrance into the market (in the ’90s!) and then into laptop battery supply as businesses shifted from desktop computing to portable computing solutions.
I sat through another Zayed Future Energy Prize awards ceremony yesterday, and it again moved me to tears. No, it’s not normal for me to be moved to tears, but the deep, powerful, inspirational change that certain finalists communicated was too much for the emotional sensors behind my eyes.
The 2018 Zayed Future Energy Prize awards ceremony is tomorrow, January 15. I’m here in Abu Dhabi for the awards since I was on the Review Committee and will be moderating a panel discussion between some of this year’s and previous years’ winners later in the week. I will also be covering the awards ceremony, of course, covering the World Future Energy Summit, and presenting and moderating panels at The Mobility Conference. As we’ve done in previous years, I thought it would be fun to run a poll among our readers about who you think will win Zayed Future Energy Prize awards in this 10th edition of the prize.
