The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has released its 'Sustainable Livelihoods video library', an online video gallery showcasing the views of global business leaders about Sustainable Livelihoods and how they are actually implementing the approach in their companies. The easy-to-navigate site also features a variety of short video clips illustrating concrete examples of sustainable livelihoods businesses already undertaken, as well as links to several other resources, including WBCSD publications and links to CNBC's Business and Development video series. The video clips I viewed were all well put together and very informative. You could spend hours exploring this site.

A recent article (available here, PDF) in the journal Science tackles the problem of electrification in low-income households with analysis showcasing a robust technical solution that could be made available for US$25 fixed-cost, without subsidy. The technology, solar-powered white light emitting diodes (WLEDs) are more efficient than fuel-based lighting (biomass, kerosene, candles, etc) by a factor of 100. In addition, the article’s author, Evan Mills, estimates that fuel-based lighting accounts for annual worldwide energy consumption of 77 billion liters of fuel per year – an amount equivalent to US$38 billion per year or US$77 per household. Mills states: