The 2023 Ashden Award for

Powering Futures in Clean Energy

What is the Powering Futures in Clean Energy award?

Building the workforce to energise the Global South

Award prize: £25,000

 Supported by: LinkedIn

Clean energy can bring change across communities – including the creation of 25 million new jobs worldwide by the end of the decade. But marginalised and excluded groups, such as women, young people and those with little money, often lack the skills and opportunities to join the clean energy workforce. 

The Ashden Award for Energy Access Skills will boost organisations bringing skills to marginalised people in low-income countries. These skills might be in engineering or manufacturing, but could also be in sales, business leadership, or any other part the clean energy sector. 

As well as focusing on excluded groups, the winner will be pioneering an innovative approach and tackling the transition from training to paid employment.   

The 2023 Powering Futures in Clean Energy award

Finalists

Burasolutions Solar Academy in Nigeria boosts skills and pathways to work for women and marginalised people, with support for innovation and entrepreneurship..

ACRA supports marginalised women in rural Senegal to launch solar-powered businesses, with training and access to products and finance.

Shortlist

We Care Solar is giving women the technical training and skills to install life-saving solar energy, powering Sierra Leone’s off-grid rural health centres.

Kenya’s WISEe empowers women in the renewable energy sector, including engineers, technicians, educators, students and entrepreneurs. It provides training, hands-on skills, mentorship and networking opportunities.

Key 2023 Award dates

applications open

18 January2023

Applications Closed

8 March 2023

Shortlist
announced

April2023

Finalists announced

September2023

Winners announced at award ceremony

Autumn2023

Meet past Powering Futures in Clean Energy winners

Previous Skills Powering Energy Access award winners provide excellent examples of replicable models bringing clean energy to communities, creating jobs and skills. 

2022 Energy Access Skills Award winner

This energy company has been bringing affordable solar power to the country’s off-grid, rural areas. It offers a month-by-month training programme in the marginalised communities in which it operates.

2021 Energy Access Skills Award winner

The organisation upskills bank staff and managers, giving them the knowledge and confidence to lend to renewable energy enterprises. This innovative approach closes a ‘finance gap’ limiting the spread of clean energy as a means of making a living.

Join the 2023 Ashden Awards ceremony

Tuesday 14 November 2023

Held in London and streamed online

This November, journey with us – from Liverpool to Kenya, Brecon to Peru – to meet the grassroots innovators transforming the way we work to upskill communities, supporting those most in need and protecting our planet

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