Maurits Groen
'The leapfrog (solar) energy revolution in off-grid areas: how to end energy poverty and empower safe sustainable development?'
Date: 11 April 2018
Modorator: professor Miro Zeman
The fossil energy era is necessarily coming to an end. So how to supply the energy need in developing countries? And how to do so in a way that includes especially also the people living ‘at the Bottom of the Pyramid’?
Maurits Groen is a serial sustainability entrepreneur. The companies he established include www.mgmc.nl ; www.dothebrightthing.com ; www.waka-waka.com ; www.greenem.nl ; www.milieubende.nl; www.wakawakafoundation.org ; www.biogolf.com ; www.kipster.nl.
He has been ranked as the most sustainable person in the Netherlands at Trouw in 2015. He has been leading the sustainability programmes of companies, governmental bodies and NGO's. He is also a writer and publisher, producer, director, editor and presentation of radio and television documentary programmes.
The company WakaWaka he founded aims at making superb and sustainable essential products available and affordable for people at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The first product is the super efficient solar LED lamp WakaWaka, and its follow-up WakaWaka Power, "the elegant, efficient and most compact portable power station in the world", enabling users not only to have ample light at night, but also to charge their cell phone, wireless radio, tablet, MP3 player on sunlight. In its first four years of existence Wakawaka has distributed solar light in 54 countries has added over 300.000.000 extra 'light hours' for making home work etc.
