Off-Grid Renewable Energy

Off-Grid Renewable Energy to Create Social Value and Community Development
The green energy revolution is an opportunity to design energy solutions that provide significant additional benefits to communities worldwide. The challenge is to design projects that enable households and businesses to use clean energy to advance a number of sustainable development goals, from improved health, education, economic development, food security, and wellbeing to reduced inequality, pollution, and corruption.

With the support of GCSO, research teams at Arizona State University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are collaborating with companies and non-profits around the globe—including Nepal, the Philippines, Uganda, and Bolivia—to upgrade their capacity to design green energy initiatives with outsized social impact. At the center of the project, participating partners will learn new ways to comprehensively integrate social value creation into the design, construction, and operation of renewable energy projects.

In one year of GCSO funding, this project will scale in three phases:

• Phase 1: Work with implementation partners in Nepal, Philippines, Bolivia, and Uganda, to design, implement, and evaluate current and future projects
• Phase 2: Identify and recruit implementation partners in additional geographic locations
• Phase 3: Create online training and capacity building programs for individuals and organizations that want to bring these ideas to their communities.

GCSO Participants:
Arizona State University (ASU)

1. Clark Miller, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, ASU
2. Saurabh Biswas, School of Sustainability, ASU

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

1. Witold-Roger Poganietz, Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, KIT
2. Davi Francois, Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, KIT

Implementing Partners:

• Sunbridge Solar Nepal
• Solar Solutions Philippines
• EnVenture Uganda
• Practical Action Bolivia