By Sarah Butler-Sloss, Ashden Founder Director

While the rising urban middle classes in India’s big cities increasingly take their mod cons for granted, some 400 million Indians have never used electric light bulbs in their homes – let alone had the power to charge their mobile phones, listen to the radio or watch TV.

Guest blog by Georgy Davis, Malawi Program Manager, Community Energy Scotland

Community Energy Scotland (CES) is Scotland’s only national charity dedicated to helping communities develop their own renewable energy projects. We’ve helped over 1,000 community groups, and built up a wealth of experience during our ten year existence.

Until recently, that work was limited to Scotland. But in 2009, we started investigating how community energy could be put into practice in the developing world. We initially proposed a community energy development programme in Malawi – where 93% of the population do not have access to electricity.