Thursday Dec 05, 2024
Thursday Dec 05, 2024
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Bangladesh – Solar panels on roofs in an off-grid rural village. Households share and sell excess power to each other through a solar energy peer exchange system by Solshare. Solshare won the Ashden Award for Financial Innovation for Energy Access in 2020. For the 2022 awards, Ashden is calling for applications from low carbon innovators that can show significant improvements in green jobs and skills – Solshare
Sudipta Ghosh (right) and colleague Sudhir Kulkarni from Bharatiya Vikas Trust, India, receive the Ashden Award for Energy Access Skills from President Alvarado of Costa Rica at COP26 in Glasgow. This year, Ashden is calling for applications from other impactful organisations and will award the winners around the time of COP27 – Andy Aitchison/Ashden
Climate solutions charity Ashden is calling on climate trailblazers in Asia to apply for three international awards which will accelerate innovative climate solutions in the public, private and community sectors.
This year’s categories include: Energy Access Skills which will recognise the work of organisations training and upskilling workers to install clean energy systems; Energising Agriculture, which will seek out organisations doing exemplary work in decarbonising farming; and Energising Refugee Livelihoods which will award organisations creating economic opportunities for refugees through access to clean energy, or boosting skills and training in this area.
Entries close on 15 March 2022, with the winners announced in October. Entry is free and winners will receive a grant of up to £ 25,000, while all finalists will enjoy publicity and networking opportunities – including connections to investors, funders and the media.
Entrants will be judged by expert panels on their ability to cut emissions, as well as their contribution to a fairer world. Award criteria will reward innovation that reduces inequality and transfers power to marginalised people.
Ashden CEO Harriet Lamb said: “This year Ashden will accelerate the frontline innovators delivering new green jobs and livelihoods or training people in low carbon projects. The Ashden Awards boost the most exciting innovators, but also highlight the big changes needed to drive progress across society.
“New green jobs are a glittering prize in the transition to zero carbon societies – a chance to put cash in people’s pockets while powering small businesses in off-grid villages, and creating new green jobs from the largest cities to small rural communities.
“We have had some outstanding Ashden Award winners from Asia in the past and really look forward to this year’s applicants.”
About one billion people worldwide go without reliable electricity, and three times that many cook on polluting stoves and fires. Investment in training is urgently needed to unlock universal access to clean, affordable energy, Ashden point out.
The task of widening energy access could create 4.5 million energy sector jobs worldwide by 2030 according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, with five times as many jobs potentially created in communities receiving clean and modern energy for the first time.
Ninety per cent of people living in refugee camps worldwide have no regular access to electricity, and with 500 million smallholder farmers in the world, accessible, low-cost clean energy could transform millions of lives. “The impact of the transition will stretch far beyond new jobs; everyone’s work will be affected by the huge changes ahead. So now it’s time for all of us to build a new world of work, one that tackles injustice and supports people left behind by today’s economies,” said Ms Lamb.
“We urge all climate innovators to look at the application criteria and see if their initiative could be boosted by an Ashden Award.”
The 2022 Ashden Award international categories:
Applications are also open to climate pioneers from Africa and Latin America.
Three other Awards will be awarded to organisations in the UK on Energy Innovation, Skills in Low Carbon Sectors and Greening Work.
The Ashden Awards have run annually since 2001. Receiving an Ashden Award helps organisations expand their operations and impact. Winners in recent years include Solshare, enablers of house-to-house renewable energy trading in rural Bangladesh. Solshare went on to be named as a finalist in the Earthshot Prize in 2021 and to win the Zayed Sustainability Prize this year, along with S4S Technologies in India, another past Ashden Award Winner.
Two of last year’s nine Ashden Award winners were from India and one runner up from Pakistan – GeoAircon. The winners included Mahila Housing Trust which supports poor women in India’s cities to take up practical and affordable home cooling solutions. And Bharatiya Vikas Trust (BVT), which trains bank workers, with a focus on women, to offer loans for sustainable energy.
Sudipta Ghosh, Principal Consultant at BVT, said: “The Ashden Award has brought BVT more visibility and helped us in building new partnerships across banks, government departments and funding partners.
This has helped in broadening the impact of the work we are doing. It has also instilled a sense of pride amongst the employees by acknowledging their hard work of many years.”
President Carlos Alvarado of Costa Rica, keynote speaker at the 2021 Ashden Awards at COP26 in Glasgow, said: “It is a great message that Ashden and the Award winners can provide. We need global solutions in terms of commitments, finance and targets, because it’s true we need to keep the 1.5 degrees target. But in order to get that - implementation has to be done locally, respecting women, indigenous communities, working together with them, empowering them so solutions come from people, not the other way around... If we get to share that kind of message, I think we will add even more hope to the world.”
