Provision of clean and affordable energy services and systems presents a major opportunity to enhance quality of life for off-grid communities and individuals in the developing world. AE4H was established in 2015 by the University of Waterloo and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in order to harness sectoral knowledge and innovation capacity in order to accelerate clean, low-cost solutions to energy poverty.
This 2.5 day workshop on "Accelerating Energy Access Solutions" was held at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. It brought together a collection of leading thinkers and innovators from the AE4H consortium to share ideas, synthesize key areas of inquiry and scope future collaboration.
Keynote Speaker(s): Dan Kammen, Founding Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Gottschalk, CEO of Mobisol Group, Berlin, Germany.
Key Themes
Participants worked to identify specific challenges that are both highly desirable (meeting them would create major positive impact) and feasible (they can be reasonably overcome by some group of participants and/or external partners). It is intended that these challenges will emerge from two thematic content areas: technological innovation and capacity building.
Two additional process-oriented themes were discussed in order to develop best practices for addressing the challenges. They are: working in the field with local partners and running a successful research to impact lab.
This event was funded by partners at the University of Waterloo, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Waterloo Global Science Initiative.