2 days ago
With the right support, green solutions can thrive and power a better world
June 9 - In early 2000 I visited two schools on the outskirts of Nairobi as chair of a small charitable trust funding clean energy pilot projects. At the first school, four women hunched over cooking pots balanced on three-stone fires in a smoky kitchen with walls black from soot. They had been there since 4am,and were suffering from nasty coughs. The large amount of wood they used was also crippling the school financially.
At the second school, a single chef was proudly stirring a large pot on his clean, efficient stove. The kitchen was smoke-free, the school's fuel costs had been halved, and the cook's working life and health had been transformed.
That experience inspired me to set up the Ashden Awards, as a way to identify and support entrepreneurs who were helping clean technologies, such as efficient cookstoves and solar power, leapfrog fossil fuels, in the way mobile phones leapfrogged landlines across Africa.
Twenty-five years later, in January of this year, I was back near Nairobi, this time in a state-of-the-art factory owned by BURN, a 2015 Ashden Award winner.
When BURN won, it was five years old and had sold 62,000 cookstoves and employed 60 people. Today it employs 3,500, the majority youth and half of them women, and it sells five million stoves a year across sub-Saharan Africa.
BURN's products now include ethanol, LPG and electric induction stoves. Electric cooking is the cleanest option but it is expensive – a challenge BURN is addressing through pay-as-you-cook technology and which is subsidised via carbon credits.
BURN's stoves don't just save lives and improve health, they significantly cut fuel bills to households, businesses, schools and hospitals, as well as reduce deforestation and free women and girls from hours spent cooking or collecting firewood.
Over the past 25 years, Ashden has promoted more than 270 trailblazing organisations like BURN in the Global South and the UK.
Our support and introductions have helped winners secure over 50 million pounds in finance, allowing the majority to expand or see their work replicated.
An examplar solar company bringing electricity to communities that have none is SELCO, a 2005 Ashden Awards winner in India. In 2005, the company provided light from solar home systems to thousands of off-grid households. Today, they power all sorts of businesses – from solar-powered irrigation for farmers, sewing machines for tailors, and fridges for shopkeepers, to providing energy for hundreds of rural health clinics and hospitals, benefiting more than six million people. This trend is very representative of the sector, with SELCO one of its leaders.
But as I discovered on my January visit to Kenya to meet over a dozen past winners, nearly all have struggled to secure finance to expand. Even standouts like BURN and solar lighting company have survived only through sheer grit and determination. Others pivoted to serve wealthier customers; some sold out, and a few folded altogether.
These challenges aren't confined to the Global South. In the UK, our winners have included projects to boost energy inefficiency in households suffering fuel poverty, community-owned solar projects, and nature recovery schemes across the UK. But they and those they work with, such as many councils, community groups and early stage enterprises, face similar barriers. Like the international winners, they have been held back by weak policies and lack of finance.
As a result, we've sought to influence systemic change, using our inspiring winners as examples of best practice, through our programmes such as UK Towns and Cities; its work includes advising local and national government on how to increase energy efficiency retrofits in public buildings, and helping local renewable energy schemes to thrive.
Our Let's Go Zero programme, which supports thousands of UK schools, includes working with partners, such as the Green Finance Institute, to unlock new financing models for school retrofits. In Kenya our Power Up programme, largely driven by local alumni and other leaders in the sector, works with government to increase finance and implement policies needed to bring sustainable energy to all.
But there is a limit to what one charity can do. Again and again, the evidence is clear that the clean energy sector needs innovative, integrated finance to expand. Blending public, philanthropic and private capital is an important tool, as is working across government departments, and sectors of finance.
Clean-energy enterprises do far more than cut emissions; they create jobs, increase food security and farmers' incomes and enhance health and education facilities. Shouldn't this be reflected in the finance and policies that affect them?
Some promising models are emerging. In the Global South the clean cookstove fund, Spark+, blends concessional public and philanthropic finance with the commercial to scale clean cooking enterprises.
We can also learn from successful initiatives such as the GAVI programme, which has vaccinated 1 billion children, and for every $1 spent has saved $54 on health costs.
But finance alone isn't enough. We need political will and consistent policies that embed clean energy across departments and strategies. Especially at a time when major donors such as USAID are withdrawing, and UK aid is shifting away from international sustainable development, it's a critical time to think and act fast and outside the box.
My visit to BURN reminded me of what's possible when great social businesses get the support they deserve. The need has never been greater. Two billion people still lack access to clean cookstoves. Hundreds of millions remain without electricity. Without urgent action, we risk locking in inequality and missing our targets to address climate change and attain the Sustainable Development Goals. After 25 years, Ashden knows what works. We need leadership from funders, investors and policymakers willing to think ambitiously, act boldly and invest creatively to ensure a better future for all.
The 25th anniversary Ashden Awards winners will be announced on June 11, 2025.
