SELCO gets the message across in New York

Sarah Butler-Sloss, founder director of the Ashden Awards, arrived in New York yesterday to participate in events surrounding the UN General Assembly and the Millenium Development Goals Summit. The first event Sarah attended celebrated the work of Ashden award-winner SELCO (pic). Sarah sent this short report back from last night's event in New York.

The SELCO event was excellent. SELCO is 15 years old now and is being hailed as an exemplary organisation for delivering clean energy to the poor. The event was hosted at the CitiBank Foundation offices and supported by the Lemelson Foundation, E+Co and the UN Foundation.

At the Clinton Global Initiative today, the UN Foundation is launching the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves which aims to end energy poverty by 2030. [See Clinton calls Cookstoves "a crosscutting issue".] As a senior member of the UN Foundation said, "We cannot achieve our Millenium Development Goals without providing access to modern forms of energy to the poor, it is essential for alleviating poverty."

The UN Foundation is very keen to promote the solutions - such as SELCO's - that bring clean reliable energy to the poor. The phrase 'energy access for the poor' seems to be on everyone's lips here.

One of the people at the SELCO event was the Indian Minister, Deepak Gupta, who was at our Ashden Awards conference in India, and who is in charge of India's Ministry for New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). He remembered the Ashden Awards event and was proudly telling us that next year they will electrify 500 new villages through decentralised power and renewable energies.

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Off-grid renewables workshop and Ashden India Collective launches in Delhi

Our recent event in Delhi combined a workshop 'Scaling up off-grid renewables' and the launch of the Ashden Awards India Collective. Jointly hosted by the Ashden Awards and DFID, the workshop 'Scaling up off-grid renewables' drew together policy makers, financial institutions, NGOs and donor organisations to explore new initiatives to stimulate renewable energy in India. It was also attended by the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), who plan to work with the Ashden Indian Collective on policy work in the coming year.

In the morning, the session kicked off with a welcome by Mariana Mazon, our International Programme Manager and Philip Douglas, First Secretary of the British High Commission and DFID. The first session was a presentation by NERA Economic Consulting on a fund, supported by DFID and MNRE, for providing financial incentive to scale up pro-poor renewable development. This was followed by a session that looked at the experiences challenges and success of collective members with Hemant Lamba of Aurore Energy speaking about electricity generation and Svati Bhogle, TIDE, presenting on heat generation. This session ended with a presentation by MNRE on their programmes for incentivising the use of off grid renewable energy by Gauri Singh, Joint Secretary at MNRE. The following discussion picked up on the lessons learned to date from business and policy experience and areas where the Ashden India Collective could add most value. It was a welcomed and fresh opportunity to have a cross section of sectors debate and share experience on pro-poor renewables in India.

In the afternoon, past Ashden award-winners came together to formally launch the Ashden India Collective. They met to look at strategy for the next year. Led by a core group and managed by a coordinator, the collective will focus their work in the coming year on building a solid policy programme for widespread decentralised renewable energy in India. The idea of an Ashden India Collective developed after the conference last February 'Building a Sustainable Energy Future for India' hosted by the Ashden Awards, the Confederation of Indian Industries and the Department for International Development

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