Harish Hande, the co-founder of SELCO Solar Light Pty. Ltd has been named one of the five individuals and one organisation to win the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award. Established in 1957, this award is Asia’s highest honor and is widely regarded as the region’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

A demonstration home showing the latest in renewable energy and energy efficient solutions is being officially opened this week by IDEAAS, a Brazilian NGO and longtime REEEP partner who seeks to spread renewable energy solutions and encourage social entrepreneurship.

The World Bank estimates that by 2015, half of the world’s new building construction will take place in China.  The nation’s eleventh five-year plan (2005-2010) aims for a 50% reduction in building energy consumption, and related new policy measures include energy efficiency (EE) standards and labeling for buildings.  But there is still a strong need for capacity-building in energy efficiency-oriented design and technology for the design and construction professionals who make new development happen on the ground.

Lighting Africa, an initiative of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank aims to transform the lives of 2.5 million people by 2012 by developing a commercially viable platform for the development of low-cost off-grid lighting. It aims to reach 250 million people by 2030.

Thanks to a REEEP project, cash-poor Pacific island villagers who often have no access to banking systems are able to trade cassava, dalo, bananas and other crops as payments for an LED solar lighting system to replace kerosene lanterns. This also leads to a considerable savings in fuel costs: in the Solomon Islands, kerosene will cost a typical household the equivalent of about €0.63 per day, while the value of the crops traded for solar LED amounts to less than half that, at €0.28 per day.