In this article on www.mrcleantech.com, William Brent muses on low-cost (sometimes even low tech) solutions that can play an outsized role in making life more green/efficient … among the lowest-income populations on the planet.

Cost effective solutions of this type are hugely important for ensuring that people in developing countries achieve the economic growth that is their right without following the wasteful, polluting, energy-intensive path charted by wealthy industrialized nations.

However, Brent’s article raises an important point likely to appear again and again on this page: In these countries, to what degree are “bottom up” solutions employed by individuals or small groups of them (e.g. green buildings and everything that goes into them) going to change the course … compared with structural, systemic change at the infrastructure level (”top down”) that can, in one fell swoop, impact the energy footprint of thousands or millions?