Africa is rapidly upgrading its digital television infrastructure. This isn’t just about enabling more people to watch their favorite shows – it’s a big move that will help spur economic development through an improved mobile and internet communication infrastructure.  As covered previously on Cleanleap, analysis shows that improved internet connectivity in Africa could lead to a $300 billion contribution to GDP by 2025.

The good news is the improved deployment of cold chain technologies will dramatically decrease food waste in emerging economies. The bad news cold chains will increase emissions due to the refrigeration process - leading to greater climate change. New technologies are being developed to make cold chains more efficient - absolutely critical as they rapidly increase around the world.

At the bottom of our oceans and buried deep beneath permafrost surrounding the arctic circle is a vast store of methane – a natural gas produced by the anaerobic decomposition of millions of years of organic matter. Estimates vary but even conservative figures suggest there may be over a thousand gigatonnes of methane precariously stored as ice crystals under high pressure and low temperature. 

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) have released a report A tank of cold: cleantech leapfrog to a more food secure world. The key message from the report is that about a quarter of food wastage in developing countries could be eliminated with better refrigeration equipment. The report describes a new way of creating a cold chain system in emerging economies. This system can be built from the ground up as there is little existing instrastruce and the ability to harness renewable energy. Creating the opportunity to cleanleap over existing more polluting systems. 

EY (Ernst & Young), in collaboration with the Clean Energy Business Council and Middle East Solar Industry Association, recently launched the fourth edition of the Cleantech Survey Report Middle East and North Africa. A survey of leading industry executives which gauges the recent rate of development of cleantech in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and also provides predictions for the future.

WWF International recently launched a report Crossing the Divide: How to Close the Emissions Abyss to coincide with discussions by UN climate negotiators, focusing on emissions reductions in the pre-2020 period. The report highlights the ‘gigatonne gap’ of emissions reductions needed to meet 2020 commitments. In the report, national contacts in various developed and developing countries provide an analysis of the current situation on energy and climate change, and then provide ways their governments could do more to close the emissions gap

Huge increases in energy demand and the quest to find low-emission energy to avoid damaging the climate has changed everything.  It’s taken a while but it looks like a global transformation in energy is fully underway in the form of a roll out of solar energy.  20 years ago the problem for solar was whether the technology would work at all.  10 years ago it looked like the cost might be insurmountable.   For the solar singularity to happen there are really only two major issues and they are being resolved now.    

Our mission is very big but straightforward: we want to help create more Cleanleaps - particularly in the emerging economies of Asia and Africa. The way we’ll do this is by sharing knowledge online from some of the world's most important companies, NGOs, governments, universities and interested citizens in clean technology.

The tyranny of distance is a term from an Australian history book that refers to the vast geographic gulf that separates humanity.  It’s ironic that although the Internet brings us all together in some ways, we feel even more keenly the physical gaps that separate us from each other.   

Since we often think of the move to clean energy as a “race”, I thought a fun way to do it would be to have the two best distance running countries in the world – Ethiopia and Kenya – square off against each other.    Lets see how they are going when it comes to the clean energy race.