Early stages of economic development are often associated with damage to the environment caused, among other activities, by increasing use of polluting energy sources. The so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve concept argues that a country can afford more advanced, cleaner technologies only after having achieved a sufficiently high stage of development. This, however, need not be the case if such technologies already exist in other countries. The task is to identify how to achieve sustainable development, in particular, by introducing clean energy sources into local communities.

In this pilot project we explored the opportunities for a bottom-up approach to the solution of the problem of clean energy provision to local communities in developing countries. To construct a comprehensive framework combining the development of new technologies, application of a novel legal and ethical framework in combination with economic analysis, and investigation of the direct effect of the pollution reduction achieved by using the new technology on population health, we bring together academics and business experts in solar energy, economics, health, law and ethics