Several links about energy innovation in the developing world hit the old inbox recently, and all are worth a look. Hit the extended entry to learn more about the Global Village Energy Partnership, the Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative, and what's happening with renewable energy in India.
The Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP) is a collaborative effort between the World Bank, UN Development Program, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and others to support the cleanest, most efficient methods of meeting rural energy needs in the developing world. GVEP sponsors conferences, produces working papers, underwrites research projects -- it's a pretty standard NGO -- but also has a growing "Knowledge Exchange" to:
...enhance knowledge sharing among those working on the delivery of modern energy services to scale up existing efforts.The Exchange is a vast database that provides information, contributed by both GVEP partner organizations and the GVEP Technical Secretariat on relevant events, project profiles and other activities related to modern energy service delivery. For instance, you may seek examples of solar projects in Bangladesh to determine how to proceed with your own development. In addition to the links to project profiles this Exchange will provide you with a number of ways of locating this information.
The Knowledge Center has hundreds of documents across a wide spectrum of sectors, technologies and regions.
The UN Environment Program Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (UNEP SEFI) is an organization intended to help financiers "conceive and manage investments in the complex and rapidly changing marketplace for clean energy technologies." It's a knowledge resource, with a focus on assisting public-private partnerships and using information as a way of minimizing perceived risk. Most of their tools are designed to bring investment specialists up to speed on the opportunities in the clean energy world, as well as helping them understand what they need to take into account when performing due diligence. SEFI may not be the most exciting sustainability organization around, but the work they do is extremely valuable.
Finally, Renewable Energy Access pulls together news on recent renewable energy developments in India. Many of the stories note various committees and policy initiatives, but buried in the list are some useful indicators of change: 100,000 biogas plants amounting to 140 MW capacity were installed last year for rural electrification; solar is making some headway, with 16,500 solar photovoltaic lighting systems and 150,000 square meters of collector area for solar heating installed last year; and a gigawatt of wind power capacity came online over the last year, bringing India's total to 3.5 GW (not bad for a country with no Class 3+ wind areas!).
The newly-installed wind systems include a 2MW turbine at Chettikulam, Tamil Nadu, which is said to be the largest single wind turbine in Asia.
(GVEP and SEFI via Ken Novak)