Around 1.8 billion people across the globe have access to electricity but still cook with biomass. Load shedding, weak grids, affordability of electricity, accessibility of liquid petroleum gas (LPG), tradition, perceptions, and a lack of suitable cooking appliances all act as barriers to scaling up the use of electricity or gas for cooking – clean cooking. ERC in collaboration with Loughborough, intend to pilot the use of Electric Pressure Cookers in the villages that ERC is building mini-grids in. For more information on MECS, please click here.
The project aims to pilot Independent Power Producer (IPP) mini-grid technology in Lesotho,
and demonstrate that they can be a superior sustainable solution for rural energy access. The
successful mini-grid model that project partner Gram Oorja has applied in over 60 remote rural
communities in India will be adapted to create an innovative technology and business model
for Lesotho. The model combines a mini-grid with a set of tailored productivity-enhancing
technologies and services (water pumping, grain milling, entrepreneurship, etc.). Two
alternative versions of the innovative model will be tested by installing and monitoring the
performance of two mini-grids, one for compact rural community and the other for a more
widely dispersed community.
The TEA Learning Partnership aims to build the necessary human capital to achieve SDG 7 and increase access to affordable, clean and safe energy for all. The TEA-LP is supporting eight universities across Africa to develop new postgraduate curricula for the energy access sector. Partner universities are provided with both financial and technical support to develop their new courses and degree programmes.
The universities include:
Over and above the curriculum development, TEA has sponsored three students from the ERC, National University of Lesotho.
Master's Students from ERC spend a semester in Austria at Management Centre Innsbruck (MCI) attending a variety of courses related to energy. MCI IS renowned for its focus on entrepreneurship, combining business and science into an exquisitely unique concept. The students apply for admission into MCI and upon acceptance have to apply for a scholarship from Ernst Mach Grant (https://oead.at/en/to-austria/grants-and-scholarships/ernst-mach-grant/). This is a highly competitive scholarship with applicants from all over the world. Nonetheless, ERC is proud to send the second cohort of three of its second year MSc students studying at MCI under this scholarship. Moreover, ERC has welcomed two students from MCI to spend a semester. More information on MCI and what they offer can be found at https://www.mci.edu/en.
