Sustainable Business Models for MFIs to Deliver Renewable Energy

The Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation's (NWTF) success story on achieving scale and sustainability for their solar program focuses on two aspects: demand generation through marketing and education by dedicated program officers, and product support (technical support, inventory management, returns, distribution) through partners and suppliers. NWTF’s dedicated team of solar officers orient MFI clients on the benefits of using solar, provide basic troubleshooting when needed, and contribute to portfolio growth by adding more loans.

How Renewables Can Optimize Water-Energy-Food Tradeoffs in the Mekong Basin

Through deepening solar, wind, and biomass contributions to power mixes in the countries of the Mekong Basin and rethinking how hydropower and cross-border power trade are positioned to meet regional power demand needs, it is possible to achieve a low impact, low carbon, and low cost energy transition AND conserve the Mighty Mekong's natural resource base. This presentation demonstrated decision making tools and policy pathways for system-scale energy planning and tradeoff analyses at the basin-wide scope that should be used to deliver this transition. Mr.

Wei-Nee Chen

Dr. Wei-Nee Chen was appointed as Chief Corporate Officer of SEDA on 1st October 2011. She was the Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SEDA from 2nd August 2018 until 8th January 2019. Dr. Wei-nee Chen holds a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, a Master of Business Administration from Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, and a Doctor of Business Administration from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Venkat Rajaraman

Venkat is the Founder and CEO of Cygni and an Advisory Committee member of National Center for Photovoltaic Research and Education (NCPRE), India. He has over 20 years of experience in Product Design and Engineering Management. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Solarsis and Su-Kam Power Systems, a leading power back-up and RE solution provider from India. Earlier to moving to renewable energy space, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Portal Player, a company that was acquired by NVIDIA Corp in Jan 2007. He worked at Sun Microsystems, USA.

Samarkand Solar Power Plant Project: Central Asia’s First Solar Power Plant

In the Republic of Uzbekistan, increasing demand and aging thermal power plants contribute to growing energy deficiencies while solar energy has been overlooked. Backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), it now aims to become a regional hub for solar energy as it is set to build one of the largest solar power plants in the world.

Read about ADB’s other energy projects in Knowledge and Power: Lessons from ADB Energy Projects.