Carbon finance, small scale solar and the developing world

For the past few months I've been working with Good Return an Australian non government organisation which works with microfinance partners across South East Asia. Microfinance is simply banking services tailored to the needs of the poor Which means savings, loans and insurance facilities for people who earn very small amounts, often at irregular intervals. As an example, the average annual loan size in some of the places I've just been to in Nepal was $530. In addition to the small loan size, the people might also be in a remote location, have little to no collateral, have no access to formal employment and have low literacy and numeracy skills. Which means no ordinary bank is going to serve them. Enter Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. In the Grameen Bank, Yunus formed groups of 20 or so women who joined together to take a loan from a microfinance institution. As an example, a woman might not have access to electricity, instead burning kerosene for lighting. She might decide to take a loan from her microfinance bank to buy a solar lantern - a small solar panel and light emitting diode light like one from Australia's own Barefoot Power.

'Fatal cycling accidents are mercifully rare, but they are affecting when they visit your doorstep'

It started as I sat out for lunch one Saturday afternoon and was disturbed by the sound of an air ambulance. I thought nothing of it as a red helicopter hovered above North London, presumably looking for somewhere to land, until I ventured to the supermarket about an hour later. The busy Holloway Road was closed in both directions. Blue lights flashed and a crowd had formed. At the checkout all the talk was about the awful thing that had happened outside the McDonalds. "They said he's dead." "Apparently the paramedic was sick when he got there". Another, month, another cyclist killed on London's streets. When you consider the booming popularity of cycling, fatal accidents are mercifully rare (about a dozen a year in London) but they are affecting when they visit your doorstep. I was editing the Independent's newspaper a day later, on Sunday, included in Monday's edition a "news in brief" about the accident. At that stage we only knew that a 25-year-old man had been run over by bus after apparently swerving to avoid an opening car door. I kept an eye on the story as local newspapers took up the case, eventually naming the victim as Sam Harding. He lived in Crouch End and, on that Saturday, was cycling across town to move in with girlfriend, Rachael, 27.

Engineers can build a low-carbon world if we let them

The engineering solutions to combat climate change already exist. Politicians must be brave enough to use them before it's too late One word sums up the attitude of engineers towards climate change: frustration. Political inertia following the high-profile failure of 2009's Copenhagen climate conference has coupled with a chorus of criticism from a vocal minority of climate-change sceptics. Add the current economic challenges and the picture looks bleak. Our planet is warming and we are doing woefully little to prevent it getting worse. Engineers know there is so much more that we could do. While the world's politicians have been locked in predominantly fruitless talks, engineers have been developing the technologies we need to bring down emissions and help create a more stable future. Wind, wave and solar power, zero-emissions transport, low-carbon buildings and energy-efficiency technologies have all been shown feasible. To be rolled out on a global scale, they are just waiting for the political will. Various models, such as the European Climate Foundation's Roadmap 2050, show that implementing these existing technologies would bring about an 85 per cent drop in carbon emissions by 2050. The idea that we need silver-bullet technologies to be developed before the green technology revolution can happen is a myth. The revolution is waiting to begin.