Rather than trying to sell energy products with high up-front costs, innovative businesses are selling energy services
A good starting point for a business is usually to target customers with money, and in places that are easy to reach. So it might not seem an obvious business opportunity to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world who currently lack access to grid electricity. Many of these people are very poor, living in remote areas with few roads or other infrastructure to connect them to the rest of the world.
But for-profit businesses are starting to do just this, and in increasingly creative ways, offering new hope of ending energy poverty, which stymies both human and economic development. Solar electric (photovoltaic) panels are the preferred technology for electricity generation, as you don’t need huge infrastructure solar can power something as small as an individual reading lamp.