energy

This post was submitted by Preethi Sundararaman, an Ashoka Summer Associate working with the FEC Healthcare for All team.

Javier Fernández-Han and Ashok Gadgil, 2003 and 2009 / Photos: Berkeley Lab News Center

One of the young inventors we met this morning was sixteen-year-old Javier Fernández-Han, who was both the winner and the youngest entrant of Youth Venture's Invent Your World challenge last year.

I sat with Javier and his wonderfully supportive dad Peter at the pre-conference dinner on Wednesday and again this evening. Not only is he already an extremely talented inventor; he's also among the very best at articulating and explaining his ideas, regardless of age. Javier's invention, dubbed the VERSATILE system, uses algae to treat waste and produce oil, oxygen, and food for humans and livestock. It's also completely greenhouse-gas neutral, even though it has a stove. In Javier's words, "Algae is nature's Swiss Army knife. It gets rid of many things we don’t want and produces many things that we need."

Some inventions and technologies can change the world but in reality are too expensive for the average "Bottom of the Pyramid" consumer. 

This is the story of British Petroleum (BP) and how they decreased the cost of their clean lamps by partnering with an Ashoka Fellow--"British Petroleum wanted to enter the Indian rural market to sell liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), but faced several challenges to make it affordable and to develop appropriate distribution channels. They then started to work on a hybrid appliance integrating LPG and a biomass burner. When C.K. Prahalad began advising them on their distribution strategy, self-help groups were identified as an opportunity to build alternative distribution channels, and BP then contacted me" says Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Muthu Velayutham.

Read the full article of Muthu's partnership with BP by clicking here.

Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Joseph Adelegan (Nigeria) is developing a commercially viable product that converts cow excrement into cooking gas.  The biodigester product, named "Cows to Kilowatts," offers farmers access to cheap energy while reducing river and groundwater contamination.  Take a look at his interview on CNN:

You are out in the field and all of a sudden your phone loses battery power--what to do? A) Panic. B) Bike back to your village. C) Charge your phone with your bike. If you want to answer C) check out how to make a cellphone charger powered by your bike.