Impact case study database

Cross’s research has had impact on the business practices of renewable energy organisations, the development of new standards for sustainability in the off-grid solar industry, and the design of new solar powered lighting and charging systems.

Impact on business practices of renewable energy organisations in the UK and India

The research changed how renewable energy organisations engage with global challenges of energy access and electronic waste from solar equipment. In 2014, Cross’s work encouraged Scene Consulting Ltd., a renewable energy consultancy, to translate these findings into a non-profit, solar repair business: “Cross was fundamental in bringing to our attention the problems of breakdown and lack of maintenance services in the off-grid solar sector” (5.1). In collaboration with Cross, Scene Consulting Ltd developed ‘Urjaa Samadhan’, an open source SMS-based mobile reporting platform for solar technology failures. In regions where Cross’s research had revealed insufficient service networks and haphazard repair practices, this platform enabled people with broken devices to connect with people who could fix them.

In 2015, the mobile platform was runner up ‘Social Impact Technology of the Year’ in the UK’s annual Business Green Technology Awards (5.2). In 2016, Urjaa Samadhan was registered as a private limited company in India, co-funded by the Scottish Government and private investment, with Cross as a co-director. By 2017, the company had established a local repair service centre and, through the use of its mobile platform, it extended the working life of 500 solar home systems and solar lanterns, increasing access to clean energy for ~2,000 people in Koraput, one of India’s most underdeveloped regions (5.3).

In 2018, Scene integrated the lessons learned from Urjaa Samadhan, i.e. SMS software architecture and business principles, to launch a new company (Connected Energy), which was entirely focused on energy access in low and middle-income countries. Urjaa Samadhan became their implementing partner for the first commercial trial in India of a new product, which allows any solar company to roll out pay-as-you-go mobile payment systems by installing a simple charge controller within their solar home systems (5.3).

Impact on sustainable design standards across the off-grid solar industry

Since 2014, Cross has worked in collaboration with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a leading research and advocacy organisation, to develop an online tool which addresses the issue of unsustainable solar design. This ‘Off-Grid Solar Scorecard’ allows users to dismantle, analyse and rate solar powered lighting devices based on their reparability and recyclability. It was launched in 2016, has since then evaluated over 80 products and was endorsed by the largest distributors of brand name solar powered lighting systems in Africa (SolarAir/SunnyMoney, whose work has impacted 11 million lives) and India (FrontierMarkets, whose work has impacted 3.5 million lives) as improving their ability of product selection (5.4). In 2017, the World Bank’s Lighting Global programme whose quality assurance system has impacted 180 million people’s lives across Africa, Asia and the Pacific region, used the Scorecard to describe minimum criteria for good practice in the field of eco-design (5.5).

In 2018, Azuri Technologies, a leading UK commercial provider, which has sold over 150,000 off-grid solar systems in Sub Saharan Africa, invited Cross to use the Scorecard to undertake a corporate sustainability review. As a result of Cross’s review, Azuri made modifications to design and packaging of its flagship solar product and introduced, for the first time, a sustainability policy (5.6, 5.7). In June 2019, an industry body, the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA), used the Scorecard to describe best practices for sustainable design in a 2019 E-waste Briefing to more than 150 members worldwide (5.8).

The fundamental impact of Cross’s research on awareness, debate and practices in this sector was summarised by a senior executive of Scene Consulting Ltd as follows: “E-waste in the off-grid solar sector was something I had never thought about 5 years ago, But Jamie and his team had already been thinking about it as a future issue. It’s a very good example where academia is at its best: The rest of the sector are picking up on e-waste as an issue just now, in 2018, 2019, so a lot of groundwork, of evidence around it is already in place because of the work of Jamie and his team” (5.1).

Impact on the design of new solar-powered lighting and charging technologies

The research informed the design of a new solar-powered device that set out to accelerate access to basic levels of solar powered lighting without increasing electronic waste flows in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. Between 2017 and 2018, Cross worked with design agencies to develop a solar-powered lighting and charging device built around sustainable design principals. The resulting product, Solar What?!, can be built using recycled plastics and ethically-sourced electronic components, it can be repaired with non-specialist tools and is compatible with a range of second-hand solar photovoltaic modules and mobile phone batteries. The design is open source. In January 2019, the UK Charity SolarAid piloted 25 devices with schoolchildren and their families in Zambia (5.9).

At the same time, the National Museums of Scotland acquired the first SolarWhat?! prototype for their permanent technology collection as an example of an innovation designed in Scotland to address global challenges of energy access and electronic/plastic waste (5.10). Most recently, GOGLA included SolarWhat?! as an exemplar of sustainable design for repairability and compatibility in their E-waste Toolkit (5.8), and it won the prestigious global iF Product Design Award (5.11).