There is something incredibly powerful about working alongside innovators and entrepreneurs who are on the brink of deploying products and technologies with the potential to solve longstanding development problems.  As USAID and our partners prepare to kick off the LAUNCH: Energy Forum this Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, we are eagerly awaiting that exact opportunity.

The LAUNCH experience is challenging and affirming all at once.  For many of us, it is a singular reminder of why we chose to work in international development or on global environmental sustainability issues: to do our own small part in solving humanity’s most critical problems.  In joining together to form LAUNCH, USAID, NASA, the U.S. Department of State, and Nike, Inc. declared our intention to work together toward that very goal.

As anyone who travels or works regularly in the developing world knows, access to clean, sustainable, and affordable sources of energy is one of the 21st century’s largest development challenges.  Even basic levels of access to power can make a substantial impact on the challenges faced by off-grid communities.  With basic access to energy, school children can study at home at night, health clinics can refrigerate vaccines, and consumers can charge the household appliances and devices that make daily life more productive and convenient.  Through LAUNCH, we will showcase and support over the next six months some of the most promising technologies and programs that take on important parts of this energy access challenge.  LAUNCH has convened a truly impressive group of energy innovators.  They include, for example:

  • A micro/mini-grid solution for underserved communities that utilizes modular battery storage technology, energy management intelligence, and a pre-payment model (“Gram Power”);
  • An economical fuel cell for developing country markets that allows battery charging in cooking pits or fires, offering an affordable way for off-grid consumers to charge cell phones and power household lighting (“Point Source Power”);
  • A rural refrigeration system for commercial cold-storage applications in off-grid and partially electrified areas of developing countries (“Promethean Power Systems”).

You can see the full list of the LAUNCH: Energy innovators and descriptions of their innovations.

We are equally excited about the bright and diverse group of people who have joined the LAUNCH Council, which will advise the innovators.  During the Forum, the innovators will engage in three days of collaboration with the Council, a world-class group representing the business, investment, international development, policy, engineering, science, communications, and sustainability sectors.  We have assembled the Council to give individualized advice to the innovators and to form a network that can help accelerate their progress in the coming months. Check out profiles of the LAUNCH Council members.

We know this weekend will be an invigorating experience for our partners, the innovators, and the Council members alike.  We look forward to both the intensive collaboration this weekend and to the subsequent work through our “LAUNCH Accelerator” of helping advance some of the world’s most promising energy innovations.

Please follow the LAUNCH: Energy Forum this Friday and Saturday (November 11 and 12) and participate right along with us.  Portions of the Forum will be viewable live from www.launch.org, where you can also learn more about LAUNCH.