About Powering Agriculture
Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development supports the development and deployment of clean energy innovations that increase agriculture productivity and stimulate low carbon economic growth in the agriculture sector of developing countries to help end extreme poverty and extreme hunger.
Leasing models for baby clothes, pedestrian and bike-friendly streets in a bustling Indian city, and solar-charging hearing aids are just some of the innovations shortlisted for the 2015 Sustainia Award.
What are the coolest sustainability innovations we’ve seen this year? Think tank Sustainia this week revealed the 10 contenders for the award, which honours groundbreaking sustainability solutions from all over the world.
The Finalists
- Buildings finalist: Archiblox (Australia) - energy-positive prefabricated houses.
- Food finalist: SunCulture (US) - solar-powered drip irrigation for smallholders.
- Fashion finalist: Vigga.us (Denmark) - leasing organic kids-wear.
- Transportation finalist: Corporation of Chennai, Institute for Transportation & Development Policy and Chennai City Connect Foundation (India) - designing streets for walking and biking.
- IT finalist: Mapdwell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) - 3D solar potential mapping tool.
- Education finalist: Seoul Metropolitan Government (South Korea) - citizen engagement for voluntary behaviour change.
- Energy finalist: Mobisol (Germany) - micro-financed off-grid solar power.
- Health finalist: Solar Ear (Brazil) - solar-powered hearing aids with open source design.
- Cities finalist: City of Johannesburg (South Africa) - green bonds finance city climate action.
- Resources finalist: Plastic Bank (Canada) - turning plastic waste into a currency.
Winners to Be Announced at COP21
Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger will lead Sustainia’s Award Committee, comprising a judging panel of sustainability heavyweights.
There’s also a people’s choice award. Voting is open now for the public’s favourite innovation. The winner will receive the Sustainia Community Award.
Both winners will be announced during COP21 in Paris, at the Sustainia Award Ceremony on 6 December, 2015. World Climate Ltd will join in hosting the event, which will bring together innovators and performers from around the world to celebrate solutions for a sustainable tomorrow.
With the newly ratified Sustainable Development Goals and the negotiations for a binding new climate agreement at COP21, these 10 sustainability solutions show how we can shift talk into action today. The innovations are already available, and will become even more important as the world is increasingly defined by climate change – no matter the outcome of COP21.
SunCulture's founders, Charles Nichols and Samir Ibrahim, started SunCulture by borrowing money from friends and family. Now their irrigation are changing farmers' lives. Find out more about their business, vision and philosophy in this Q&A with How We Made It in Africa.
SunCulture is one of this year's Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative (AAI) grant winners! Working with Microsoft, SunCulture plans to build a digital platform for farmers that will provide data on crops that's been collected from connected sensors and cameras in the field.
While SunCulture’s ‘Pay-As-You-Grow’ model has succeeded in making their technology accessible to most farmers, its success depends on farmers being able to generate a steady income from the sales of their produce.
