MEC Blog

Feb 25

MEC is Buckminster Fuller Challenge Semi-finalist

Each year a distinguished jury at Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards a $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. MEC is excited to learn that we have been selected as a semi-finalist for 2010 based on our innovative approach to accelerating clean energy adoption in developing countries. The finalist will be announced in June 2010. More coverage at Facebook page for the Challenge.

Posted by James Dailey on February 25, 2010 at 12:25 pm Comments Off

Jan 20

Making a Difference for Yurt Owners in Mongolia

Yurtcozy’s new peer-to-peer carbon website, http://yurtcozy.org, is already helping families in Mongolia cut their fossil fuel use and live more comfortably at the same time. This week’s blog showcases three new Yurtcozy eco-entrepreneurs, who have improved their daily quality of life as a result of your carbon purchases.

Dashdavaa Myangan is a grandmother living with her son, who has lived in the city for the past 24 years. As fuel prices have increased over the last several years, she noticed that her fuel expenses had grown dramatically in the cold Mongolian winters. For this reason, she made the decision to buy an insulated yurt blanket.

Since purchasing the blanket, Dashdavaa has reported that her fuel expenses have greatly decreased, helping her to save her additional income in the winter months. In fact, she has liked the new ger insulation so much that she has recommended it to her friends.

Sosor Sosor Zundui is a grandmother that takes care of her two grandsons while they attend the local high school. She is retired and spends the bulk of her time leading the local elder’s Union in her community. She first found out about energy efficient products at a local community event where she decided to purchase an insulated yurt blanket and energy efficient stove for the benefit of the environment and to help her save fuel.

As a community leader she has recommended the eco products to the community elders and local administration to help promote the benefits gained by both the purchaser and environment. In her opinion, one of the easiest ways to decrease air pollution is through the spread of eco products.

Munkhjargal(2) Munkhjargal Dari is a mother of two daughters, one in kindergarten and one in elementary school. She had heard much about energy efficient products, and decided to take out a loan for a six-layer energy efficient yurt blanket. She liked the cleanness and warmth of the blanket and the smaller design and savings of the stove. After installing both products, she has experienced real fuel savings. By her calculation, she used to use 1 bag of fuel per day, but is now using two bags of fuel for every 3 days. Both she and her daughters have appreciated the ease at which they have stayed warmer this winter due to the use of their new eco products.

Please go to http://yurtcozy.org to help create more of these success stories! Spread the word: let your friends know how they can help too, and please don’t forget to become a fan of Yurtcozy on Facebook.

Yurtcozy is a brand owned by Microenergy Credits Corporation and licensed to Better World Credits, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Posted by April on January 20, 2010 at 7:27 pm Comments Off

Dec 11

Introducing a new way to help reduce climate change

yurtcozy People like you and me now have a new way to help reduce climate change – by helping families and small businesses in places like Mongolia and India get access to clean energy.

The way it works is quite simple. You or I log into the website and purchase a “carbon credit”-denominated in tons of CO2 emissions avoided. Those funds then enable microentrepreneurs to take a loan for a clean energy investment. The microentrepreneur pays back the loan in small installments—often less than what they previously paid for the dirty energy source. And the clean energy investment reduces pollution, helping to mitigate climate change.

In Mongolia, for example, low income people live in yurts, called gers. By purchasing an insulating “blanket” they can reduce by half the amount of coal they need to burn to stay warm in the winter. This creates a carbon emissions reduction—and it makes their home warmer and more economical. When you buy a carbon credit from a yurt dweller in Mongolia, those funds are used by the microfinance institution –a bank called XacBank–for education campaigns so that more ger owners can learn about the benefits of energy efficient blankets and the financing program that makes them affordable.

The website is called http://yurtcozy.org, and it will be announced at Copenhagen on December 17th.

Yurtcozy helps microentrepreneurs switch to clean energy. As in microfinance they take a loan to improve their quality of life and escape poverty. In this case the cost savings come from reduced expenditures on kerosene, coal, and wood. The products they purchase include solar lighting systems, improved stoves and biogas digesters.

When you purchase a carbon offset on the Yurtcozy site, you know who you are helping. In fact, you can see a map with the GPS location of each microentrepreneur who has purchased a clean energy system.

How does this relate to the cap and trade debate? The mechanism builds on the same principles of the Kyoto Protocol, and leverages partnerships with some of the original architects of the carbon markets including the non-profit, Environmental Defense and the carbon trading firm, EcoSecurities. Yurtcozy is different because it allows people to connect as individuals. Because the clean energy investors are all individual microentrepreneurs, you know exactly who you have helped and how.

Rather than establishing emissions caps, Yurtcozy relies on individuals and teams to set their targets for how much climate change they will reduce.

Posted by April on December 11, 2009 at 4:51 am Comments Off

Dec 09

MicroEnergy Credits to attend Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Dec 16-17th

To meet with MicroEnergy Credits in Copenhagen email info@microenergycredits.com.

Posted by April on December 9, 2009 at 5:15 pm Comments Off

Dec 09

MicroEnergy Credits launches partnership with HSBC India and Spandana

MEC launched a partnership with HSBC in India and Spandana, a leading microfinance institution, to bring the benefits of the carbon markets to microentrepreneurs so they can adopt a clean energy path as they improve their quality of life. Several hundred microfinance clients attended the event on December 7th in Nagpur, as well as April Allderdice, CEO of MEC, Pamaja Reddy the CEO of Spandana and Naina Lal Kadwai, Country Head, HSBC India.

HSBC along with Spandana and MEC has embarked on a project to provide clean energy alternatives to clients of Spandana, a Hyderabad based microfinance institution MFI. MicroEnergy Credits is a US Based social enterprise and has worked with several MFIs globally to help them launch and scale clean energy programs. A grant from HSBC will enable Spandana to receive technical assistance from MicroEnergy Credits to develop and roll out a clean energy product portfolio suited to the needs of its clients. MEC will in turn link Spandana’s microfinance clients to the global carbon credit markets and enable them to trade carbon credits earned by adopting clean energy.

Speaking on the occasion, Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC India said “We believe that this innovative approach will offer clean energy through renewable resources, helping to green the Indian economy. Early findings of a survey conducted in the Bhandara region are encouraging; these indicate a high response rate among rural women to accept new technologies for use of renewable energy resources. We see great potential to scale up this initiative, thereby creating greater impact across India.”

“I’m proud to partner with HSBC and Spandana in their effort to enable the microenterprise sector in India join the global effort to stop climate change and also bring the benefit from the carbon markets to micro entrepreneurs” said April Allderdice, CEO of MicroEnergy Credits Corp.

Ms. Padmaja Reddy, Founder, Spandana said “Through this partnership, we are able to offer affordable and environmentally-friendly lighting technologies to our clients. At Spandana, we are committed to enhancing the overall quality of our clients’ lives, and the solar torch light loan is one of many products that we consider to be essential and with the potential to improve the lives of our clients. The learning’s from this pilot have been useful for us as we explore the possibility of making available a wider range of financial and non-financial products and services to our clients.”

The project aims to impact around 1 million households. By the end of the Project Spandana staff will have the capacity to manage an energy product portfolio that is scalable on a sustainable basis. This will have the impact of making credit for clean energy access available to Spandana’s growing client base. Households that adopt these products will reduce dangers to health and burdens on women for biomass fuel collection, allowing them to pursue additional income-generating activity.

Posted by April on December 9, 2009 at 5:09 pm Comments Off

Dec 08

MEC Latest Stats

MEC has helped nine financial institutions, reaching over 6 million entrepreneurs globally, get access to carbon funding for clean energy programs.

MEC is currently working in Uganda, India, Sri Lanka, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mongolia. MEC’s partners include respected financial institutions such as Finca Uganda, Spandana, the Aryavart Gramin Bank, Prathama Bank and XacBank.

Financial institutions working with MEC have succeeded in offering their clients improved clean energy services such as solar lighting, and efficient cooking technologies.

Posted by April on December 8, 2009 at 7:40 pm Comments Off

Nov 30

MEC licensing SMS web technology

MicroEnery Credits’ technology was on display recently at the Tropical Disease conference in Washington DC on November 20th. We licensed our unique SMS intelligent gateway to a major Health Systems organization as part of an effort to track anti-Malaria medicines administered in Malawi. Because our “last mile technology” solves a common problem for operational programs in developing countries, MEC is able to leverage its investments in SMS-Web integration. SMS, or text messaging, can be used where there is no internet connection to interact with a web application.

Posted by James Dailey on November 30, 2009 at 9:37 am Comments Off

Oct 11

MicroEnergy Credits Presents at ForoMic Microfinance Conference Arequipa

MEC presents at the Peru ForoMic Microfinance Conference

Posted by April on October 11, 2009 at 8:33 am Comments Off

Jul 22

MEC Co-Founder speaks at One Just World Forum in Adelaide Australia

Posted by April on July 22, 2009 at 1:24 pm 1 Comments

Jun 11

Latin America and Caribbean MicroCredit Summit

Plenary Session of the MicroCredit Summit

MEC presents at the Microcredit Summit in Cartagena with Muhammad Yunus and others.

On June 10th over 60 participants crowded in a small room in Cartagena Colombia for an intimate conversation with a Nobel Peace Prize winner about microfinance and the environment.

Microfinance and the environment had been a panel session topic at each of the past three Microcredit Summits, thanks to the leadership of the non-profit organization Green Microfinance. The attendance at this session of the Latin America and Caribbean Regional MicroCredit Summit reflected a growing momentum and interest in the environment among the microfinance community.

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus chaired the panel—lending his endorsement to the notion that microfinance does have a relationship to the environment. In fact he made the point that microfinance is merely the reason we are all together, but that protecting the environment must be a key factor in any endeavor.

That Muhammad Yunus is a strong environmental advocate comes as no surprise to me; I met him when I moved to Bangladesh in 1996 to help the Grameen Bank start its renewable energy enterprise, Grameen Shakti. For over a decade the Grameen Bank has made significant investments in bringing affordable clean energy technologies to its clients including solar home systems, biogas digesters, and efficient stoves.

Bill Yager of Green Microfinance kicked off the panel with a presentation that explained in clear terms and moving visuals the severity of the global environmental crisis, as well as concrete examples of green technologies that are affordable solutions.

Gabriel Solorzano, from Banex, Nicaragua, followed with a challenging presentation, that used humor to shake the participants out of complacency, and ask real questions about unforeseen consequences of loans which are approved every day. For example, what is the chemical content of the pesticides used by a farmer with a microloan? How safe are the scaffoldings used by a small construction SME? He also shared an important regional initiative to establish environmental standards for microfinance banks.

April Allderdice followed up with an introduction to the MicroEnergy Credits’ Microfinance Carbon Program, which allows Microfinance Banks to receive revenues from the carbon markets when they lend for clean energy.

The audience was enthusiastic with questions ranging from the technical: “can you use jatropha biodiesel engines for agricultural coops?”, to market-oriented: “what clean energy options exist for urban markets.”

An overarching theme of the questions was a focus on the tactical rather than philosophical—the audience at this MicroCredit Summit seems poised to take action, and now they want to know how.

Posted by April on June 11, 2009 at 4:59 pm Comments Off