JUCCCE Brings Energy Technology to China

The Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE)

JUCCCE is a non-profit organization focused on helping China accelerate 30 years of world experience and development in energy into 10 years. JUCCCE advisors makeup a network of multi-disciplinary leaders in energy efficiency and clean energy supply within China and the US.

"The heart of an NGO, the mind of a venture capitalist."

"The JUCCCE approach is strategic yet tactical. Our advisors have identified a roadmap of programs that will deliver near-term results with greatest impact, including green buildings, an efficient industrial sector, smart transportation, cleaner coal and renewable energy. Our programs focus on accelerating information flow within a rapidly changing market, creating models for more energy efficient physical systems, and expanding opportunities for commercialization, technology transfer, sales and implementation of products locally."

"The name JUCCCE, pronounced "juice", stands for:

• 聚思 (Jù Sī) "A Coalition of Thinkers"
• Cooperation
• Cleaner fuel
• Inspiring people to make a change
• Juicing up the energy markets
• Accelerating us into a better future"

JUCCCE's three approaches are:

• Accelerating information
• Integrated urban design
• On-line one-stop marketplace of energy solutions for China

In this video Peggy Liu, JUCCCE Chairperson, explains its goals and approach.



JUCCCE wants you to contact them at volunteer@juccce.com if you are interested in volunteering to help. In particular they are looking for

• English to Chinese website/document translation
• HTML coding & editing
• Videography editing

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$200 Million Earth Fund Targets For-Profit Ventures In Developing World

Targeting market-based solutions for environmental challenges

"The Global Environmental Facility and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, are launching today the Earth Fund, a new partnership open to the private sector, foundations, and other partners that will support innovative and market-based solutions for the most pressing environmental challenges in developing countries."

"The GEF and IFC will designate $50 million and $10 million to the fund, respectively. The fund has already attracted several partners and is expected to grow to $200 million through additional contributions from private sector companies, foundations, NGOs, and other development agencies."

"To maximize its impact, the fund will use a wide array of financial instruments, including grants, soft loans, and equity participation, as well as inducement prizes that reward environmental innovation in such areas as second generation biofuels, water treatment, or clean energies." (See IFC press release for more.)

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tags: for-profit, ventures, entrepreneurship, developing world, developing countries, environment, funding

Examples of Profit/Benefit Companies

Slideshow of 10 for-profit companies with social goals from FastCompany.com.

I thought BetterWorld Books was interesting.

Slideshow of 45 winners of FAST COMPANY/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards.

Some of the companies that might be instructive models for those interested in development are:

• KickStart, develops and markets new low-cost technologies in Africa to enable local entrepreneurs to establish highly profitable new small businesses
• Room to Read, building libraries in the developing world
• the Scojo Foundation, to reduce poverty and generate opportunity through the sale of affordable eyeglasses
• TransFair USA, a third-party certifier of Fair Trade products

Social Capitalism

Social entrepreneurs learn to tap capital markets

"Change the world. Make some money. Raise more money, and make more change. It's an appealing prospect. Nonprofits were born because for-profits weren't addressing some market failures--pollution, poverty, illiteracy. Profit won't cure those ills, but it's becoming a bigger part of more solutions. Perhaps it's dawning on us that the cost of capital for changing the world should be lower. Perhaps the capital markets will cut the world a break."

Good article from FastCompany.com here about progress in applying for-profit models to financing and operating social-benefit businesses.

Harish Hande's SELCO-India project for rural electrification

Read the article and view the video of an interview with Harish Hande, who won Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007. From livemint.com. Excerpts:

The next logical step was to set up Selco and to see how sustainable energy like solar can be diffused/ disbursed to rural areas in a way that allowed people to pay and maintain it. A sustainable venture, both in terms of social and commercial returns, it was set up in 1994-95 it rested on three tenets: poor people can afford sustainable technologies; poor can maintain sustainable technologies; and the poor can support the running of a commercial venture profitably.

We have forged partnerships with nine regional rural banks, commercial banks, NGOs and rural farmer cooperatives to develop financial solutions. With a force of 78 deeply committed technicians our management holds its fort, even against the cruelest odds. Employee commitment has been the single most reason why we are still around.

Acumen Fund

With a proven record of success since its inception in 2001, the Acumen Fund has recently been attracting more and more large donors such as the 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation' and 'Google.org.' Such providers of philanthropic capital have approached the not-for-profit fund with millions of dollars in support of Acumen's mission-to use entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problem of global poverty. Through the application of a rigorous framework derived from the venture capital industry, this social venture capital fund has emerged as a leader in its domain. The current $27million portfolio under Acumen's management spans five countries (South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, India, and Pakistan) and fours sectors (health, housing, water, and energy).

The rest of this article from The Monroe Street Journal of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business is here. Acumen Fund homepage here.

Social Entrepreneurs in India

Here is an interesting article from Business Line India about social entrepreneurs building for-profit ventures serving the bottom of the pyramid. It mentions a number of organizations working to stimulate such ventures.

One Laptop Per Child News

There is cute slideshow of children using the OLPC laptop in a Nigerian primary school here, along with a BBC news item and a bunch of features about the laptop and its introduction.

I want one. Anyone interested in donating an XO to Development Entrepreneur News go here and order. For only $399 plus shipping you will make me happy, and also donate an XO to a school in the developing world. Wouldn't that be nice?

The One Laptop Per Child project hasn't been as successful so far as originally projected, partly because of a scramble by commercial computer makers to get similar machines into the market (as noted in this recent WSJ article). In particular Intel has created its own Classmate computer for the developing world (the XO uses AMD chips) and is promoting it aggressively. As one Nigerian consultant quoted in the WSJ piece said, "It's a no-brainer you go with Microsoft." (A version of Windows runs on the Classmate.)

Company founder Nicholas Negroponte professes to be philosophic about it: "From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million" laptops made by competitors "in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success," he said in a recent interview. "My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It's in the education business."

Philippine Entreprener Does Well While Doing Good

Salay Handmade Paper Industry Inc.

Mrs. Loreta Capistrano-Rafisura, President of Salay Handmade Paper, has used the principals of fair trade to provide employment to hundreds of people in the town of Salay, Misamis Oriental.

This item tells the 20-year history of this cooperative enterprise. Started with 6,000 Philippine pesos, it now employs 250 and its founder has become a leading spokeswoman for fair-trade entrepreneurial ventures.

Salay Handmade Paper is a member of IFAT, and credits its success to its links to developed-country distributors of fair-trade products. Although their initial production was marketed locally, in 2006, almost 50 percent of SHAPII’s market is in Europe, 30 percent in North America, 8 percent in Japan and 6 percent in other countries.

Free On-Line Textbooks for Developing World

Professors to distribute wiki textbooks free

This story describes the "Global Text Project" (details here).

This is a voluntary/philanthropic project so far, but the article reveals how slowly it is progressing. Could there be a venture opportunity here? The professors' approach is very different from a true entrepreneurial approach.

With the wiki editing feature, the texts could be written by authors in the developing world, at minimal cost, if top editors could be enlisted. Could it be monetized to cover the cost of those editors and writers, in stead of relying on donations and potential corporate logo placement?

Social VC Event, Palo Alto

Doing Well While Doing Good: Can Venture Capital Impact Social Good?

This is the title of a meeting being held in Palo Alto, California, on 29 November.

More information is available here.

Students from UNC B-School Collaborate to Commercialize Rural Water Technologies

Faculty and students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are setting out to discover whether applying business principles to public health problems can result in solutions that will save lives in developing countries with limited access to safe drinking water, according to this UNC press release.

"We know that biosand and ceramic filters and other household water treatment technologies make an enormous difference in the health of people who don’t have access to clean drinking water," Professor Mark Sobsey said. "We have the technologies, but now it’s a matter of finding ways to get these technologies into communities and households, and have people adopt and use them effectively and sustainably. This project has the potential to save many millions of lives."

Read more in the press release and in this article from the Daily Tar Heel.

WB Head Reassures Developing Countries

In an attempt to calm the fears of developing countries that climate policy could marginalise traditional development policy, World Bank president Robert Zoellick has called for the integration of both, he told Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.

See Forbes.com article.

Seattle Entrepreneur Deploys Cellphones Against Poverty

Like so many others who found their fortune with Microsoft, Peter Bladin left the company and embarked on a second career to try to make the world a better place. Few people understand how information enriches the world better than Seattle's technology pioneers. Bladin, a Swedish native who spent 10 years at Microsoft, founded the Grameen Technology Center in 2001 and oversees its work developing mobile phones, software and other technology to support efforts to eliminate poverty.

Read article at The Seattle Times.

Electronic Business Registries Stimulate Entrepreneurship

In a study of global entrepreneurship, Raffi Amit and Mauro Guillen, both Wharton management professors, have found that a simple, if smart, bureaucratic initiative mattered critically in determining a country's level of entrepreneurship. Specifically, countries that created electronic business registries saw far higher levels of new business formation than those with traditional paper ones. Even the announcement that a country planned to establish an online log led to a jump in business registrations.

See article at knowledge@wharton.

Entrepreneurship development centre launched

Entrepreneurship was the way to eradicate poverty and hunger from the country, said Shri Pravir Kumar, Joint Secretary of Ministry of MSME. Shri K.R. Arya, Executive Director of National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development stated that the scheme of entrepreneurship development centre is aimed at promotion of entrepreneurship and skill development through establishment of a large network of entrepreneurship development centers in public private partnership. More in article from Organizer.