Over the last four years, innovations supported by the Ayrton Fund have helped create and supported 210,000 sustainable long-term jobs in the clean energy market primarily across Sub-Saharan Africa, alongside impacts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and increasingly through local businesses.
Behind that headline figure are real people, skills and livelihoods that underpin the transition to a low-carbon economy and wider systems change. The Ayrton Fund Green Jobs Insights Study explores how clean energy innovation is creating and supporting jobs across emerging markets, and the systems needed to measure this impact effectively. Alongside the report, our short films showcase how this translates on the ground, with stories from BURN Manufacturing in Kenya and InspiraFarms bringing these impacts to life.
Burn Kenya
Summary
BURN Manufacturing is helping drive Kenya’s transition to clean cooking by providing efficient, affordable alternatives to traditional stoves, helping reduce indoor air pollution, lower fuel costs and cutting carbon emissions for households.
Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) is a research and innovation programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) that seeks to accelerate the uptake of clean and modern cooking practices in Africa, South Asia, and the Indo Pacific. It develops research on modern energy cooking services (including on socio-economic and technical innovations in the sector), it funds pilots to scale-up new clean cooking technologies and business models in developing countries, it conducts policy research to inform and influence countries and key stakeholders to adopt principles around MECS in their own strategies and planning, and it funds World Bank-led global tracking tools around modern energy cooking. MECS leads the ‘Modern Cooking’ Ayrton Challenge.
Low-Energy Inclusive Appliances (LEIA) is a research and innovation programme focused on improving the efficiency, performance, and availability of electrical appliances and solar powered technologies suited to off-grid and weak-grid settings, while lowering their cost for consumers including in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Indo-Pacific. This includes appliances that deliver critical energy services such as refrigeration, cooling and communications (e.g., fridges, fans, TVs, solar water pumps) and technological innovations in areas such as advanced refrigeration, agricultural processing, electric cooking, brushless DC electric motors, interoperability, compatibility, and connectivity. LEIA leads the ‘Energy Efficiency’ Ayrton Challenge and co-leads the ‘Sustainable Cooling For All’ Ayrton Challenge, along with supporting on the ‘Modern Cooking’ Ayrton Challenge. The programme is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) via the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform.
Enabling African Cities for Transformative Energy Access (ENACT)
ENACT is part of the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform and is creating an enabling environment for implementation of market-led energy access solutions for people in urban informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa through public-private partnerships. It is doing this through:
– Public sector capacity building in urban energy data collection and planning;
– Designing, piloting and testing energy access implementation models led by the private sector; and
– Knowledge dissemination for scale-up and replication in urban areas across sub-Saharan Africa.
The Accelerate-to-Demonstrate (A2D) facility is part of the wider Clean Energy Innovation Facility (CEIF) funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) , and also aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean energy technologies in developing countries with a focus on critical minerals, clean hydrogen and cross-cutting themes such smart energy and industrial decarbonisation.
The International Energy Storage Challenge, led by the Faraday Institution, accelerates the delivery of disruptive battery technologies to provide reliable and sustainable energy in developing and emerging economies with on-grid, significant off-grid, and weak grid populations. This is delivered through a research and development programme to reduce the cost and improve the performance of battery energy storage systems (BESS) technologies for use in developing country contexts. This Challenge is led by the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform
Clean Energy Innovation Facility (CEIF) is a programme funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) that aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean energy technologies in developing countries in key themes. The existing CEIF 1.0 programme under the platform focuses on industrial decarbonisation, sustainable cooling, smart energy, and energy storage.
Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) is a research platform funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) which is helping countries in the Global South to take a path of low carbon development while simultaneously unlocking profitable investment in green infrastructure. The platform is also helping to open up new markets and supporting delivery of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CCG develops evidence and global public goods to help countries develop and implement economic strategies, plans, and policies to attract investment into low-carbon growth opportunities across multiple sectors. Much of its work is currently focused on grid-scale energy and clean transport. CCG builds partnerships in key countries (including Zambia, Kenya, India, Lao, Vietnam and Ghana), supporting them with a consortium of world-class UK and international researchers to build the evidence, tools and decision support frameworks needed to leverage a shift to clean investments.
Market Mechanisms for the Communities Living in Extreme Poverty
Market Mechanisms for Communities Living in Extreme Poverty (MM-EP) is a research project that aims to fill an information gap by understanding who and where those who live extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 per day) are, and what their energy needs and challenges are. The project will review market-based mechanisms (e.g. PAYGo/hire purchase business models) that currently operate in the energy access sector and understand which mechanisms best serve communities living in extreme poverty. The overarching objective is to provide high quality research to support future decision making. MM-EP is led by Practical Action and supported by the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform.
