The business need to navigate rapid change at scale is nowhere more pressing than in the global energy industry. This year’s World Energy Scenarios report, published by the World Energy Council in collaboration with Accenture Strategy and the Paul Scherrer Institute, drives this point home.

From solar bottle lights to hybrid solar microgrids, Eco-Business explores the tech innovations from Southeast Asia that could bring about a clean energy future for the climate-vulnerable region.

As recently as six years ago, the 400 households in Ban Wang Won Chonprathan in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, went dark at sundown, as the village was not connected to the grid. These households are located on land in Nong Ta Tam subdistrict owned by the Treasury Department and overseen by the Thanarat Infantry Camp, where electricity poles or grids installed to provide electricity to households are not permitted.

Scientists have estimated the emissions intensity of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants from a major electricity distributor and highlighted key consequences - essential information for policymakers shaping decisions to reduce electricity system emissions.

Sandra Rey, 29, was participating in a student design competition with the theme “biology” and got to watching videos on YouTube of bioluminescent sea creatures when she thought there must be a way to replicate that natural technology.

Australia will miss its 2030 Paris targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions even with a carbon tax exceeding $100 a tonne that would push up electricity prices by another 75 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund.

By converting natural resources into sustainable electricity, renewable energy technology is opening the door toward a cleaner and healthier environment. The global renewable energy market is expected to exceed $1.5 trillion by the year of 2025.

For much of the past century, a divide has separated Eastern and Western Europe. This trend has persisted to today’s march towards renewable energy, with a “coal curtain” taking the place of the notorious Iron Curtain from year’s past.

Coal is still a dominant fuel in the rapidly growing economies of Southeast Asia even amid a general global move toward cleaner energy sources, data from several recent reports show.

In Australia, renewable energy is growing at a per capita rate ten times faster than the world average. Between 2018 and 2020, Australia will install more than 16 gigawatts of wind and solar, an average rate of 220 watts per person per year.

Latin American countries have set a collective target of 70 percent renewable energy use by 2030, more than double what the European Union is planning, Colombia's energy minister said, ahead of her country's October renewables tender.

As effective as solar panels are, one of their major downsides is that they only produce power during the day, so excess energy needs to be stored for use overnight. But now, engineers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a prototype device that works almost the opposite way, harvesting energy from the cold night sky to passively power an LED.