Radha’s Message for September 2014
As many of you know, the month of September can be chalk full of events, many New York based, and this September proved no different. The Alliance and the issue of cleaner and more efficient cookstoves and fuels were an active part of discussions at the UN Climate Summit, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Post-2015 working group meetings and many, many other related side events. We were pleased to see so many Alliance partners either featured in or as contributors to the discussions that were taking place all week. The Alliance and Deutsche Bank also hosted an investor roundtable to begin the discussions of how to structure an appropriate financial instrument(s) to further mobilize another $100m into the sector by 2017. This was an initial meeting of several banks, investors, and development finance institutions and we will have a couple more discussions to refine the instruments prior to the Cookstoves Future Summit in November. There was also no shortage of press coverage on our issue from the Washington Post, MSNBC, in depth interviews with the Financial Times, and over three dozen bloggers assemble for the +Social Good Summit.
We are also pleased to give all our partners a preview of the 2013 Results Report in this newsletter. The report itself will be released in early October. There has been tremendous activity in our sector, which I am sure is no surprise to you, and has resulted in a 75% increase over cookstoves and fuels reported as distributed in 2012. We also see a clear increase in the percentage of cleaner fuels being used. We know that growth might be slower in clean fuels in these early years of our efforts, while we prepare the groundwork for the expansion of capacity and distribution of cleaner fuels to peri-urban and rural areas. I invite you to read that report when it comes out, as it is an expanded version of what we have done in prior years, and captures both the statistics on the sector, profiles the increasing role of cleaner fuels and provides snap shot of activities in each of our focus countries as well as trends in our sector.
I find these results and the rapid growth exciting and inspirational as we continue our collective efforts toward our adoption goal of 100m by the year 2020!
Warm regards,
Radha