Friday, February 28, 2014: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Luminous have reportedly announced that the organisations will together form a network of Energy Enterprises (EEs) under Lighting a Billion Lives (LaBL), to light rural homes.
Under the initiative of “Lighting a Billion Lives”(LaBL) campaign, started in 2008 by TERI, initiated about 100,000 solar lanterns, which are already in use and benefiting nearly 1.3 million lives across India. TERI and Luminous will focus on the quality concerns related to energy access technologies. TERI will help in design and innovation of products based on user feedback. The organisations will work for the development of new channels and innovative mechanism to reach the last mile user. While, Luminous will provide the clean energy technology (lighting), its marketing and other related services for the promotion of clean energy technologies in different parts of India.
The campaign promotes small and micro enterprises with a focus on energy via a network of EEs that is set-up across 16 states in India and 2500 ‘green jobs’ have been created through this rural entrepreneurship. There are 100 energy enterprises, which indirectly facilitate the solar market in rural areas have provided an additional help to about 1.7 million people.
Manish Pant, the managing director of Luminous Power Technologies said, “In order to expedite the outreach and sustainability of the “Lighting a Billion Lives” program, TERI intends to broaden the technological options, specifically for lighting applications, for the end users by incorporating the product options being offered by Luminous. It has agreed to engage Luminous to supply its products and services to the grass root entrepreneurs, located in different parts of India,” in a IndiaEducationDiary report.
I.H. Rehman, the director of the Social Transformation at TERI said, “We at TERI are very happy to partner with Luminous as this would help in bringing customised need-based solar lightning products to the last mile end user in rural areas.”
