2024 Applications Now Closed!
Are you passionate about making a difference? Does the intersection of climate change and energy access in Kenya fire you up? If so, the greenLabs Renewable Energy Innovation Challenge is your opportunity to bring your groundbreaking idea to Life!
The Renewable Energy Innovation Challenge, is a dynamic hackathon-style competition designed to engage and inspire young aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs, in addressing the confluence of two of the most pressing global issues of our time: climate change, and energy access in Kenya. As we stand on the precipice of a sustainable energy revolution, this competition seeks to harness the creativity, ingenuity, and passion of the next generation of leaders to drive meaningful change in the energy sector. The young people will be challenged to leverage design solutions to local problems that are facing local communities, but with the potential to scale.
Winners of the innovation challenge will be awarded with the following prizes alongside a sponsorship to participate in a 9 month incubation program
Overall Winner
1st Runner Up
2nd Runner Up
Crowd favorite
Up to 9.3M households in Kenya still lack access to reliable and clean energy sources, hindering economic development, healthcare, education, and overall quality of life. To truly revolutionize Kenya’s energy landscape, we call upon participants to develop innovative solutions that harness the country’s abundant natural resources, overcome infrastructure limitations, create economic opportunities, and improve the quality of life for all its citizens regardless of where they are located.
We challenge you to leverage emerging technologies, data, and innovative models, to design groundbreaking solutions that address any or a combination of the following areas: (Click on the area to expand for more info)
Design renewable solutions that seamlessly integrate into Kenya’s national grid, and efficiently distribute energy, ensuring reliable and consistent power supply to homes, businesses, and industries.
Develop scalable and affordable off-grid renewable energy solutions that extend electricity to underserved and remote areas, serving households, schools, healthcare facilities, and businesses to enhance the quality of life, education, and economic opportunities for Kenyan communities. The solutions should consider the unique geographical and environmental conditions of the region you choose to serve.
Design energy storage solutions and distribution networks that efficiently store excess energy generated during peak production periods, for use during low production time, ensuring energy availability around the clock.
Create sustainable solutions powered by renewable energy for transportation, cooking, heating, cooling, or product materials & manufacturing, amongst others, which reduce carbon emissions and promote eco-friendly options for Kenyan urban or rural dwellers.
Design innovative business models that leverage renewable energy products/applications, to foster the growth of micro-businesses in Kenya. These projects should contribute to the country’s energy transition and drive economic development (especially job creation).
Propose solutions for sustainable and environmentally friendly infrastructure development in Kenya, emphasizing the use of renewable energy sources for building lighting & temperature control, water supply, transportation, and/or waste management.
To be a successful applicant to participate in the renewal energy innovation challenge you will be required to meet the below requirements
Age
You are invited to apply if you are a youth between
20yrs – 25yrs
Location
Required to attend final Demo Day in person at the University of Nairobi
Time
Commitment to participate in a 9 month incubation program
Internet
Access to a reliable internet connection to attend virtual sessions
To successfully participate in the renewal energy innovation challenge participants were required to attend an info session & complete the mini course
Attend a virtual info session, a forum hosted on zoom by the greenLabs team intended to provide participants with more details on how to participate in the innovation challenge.
Complete our green foundations Energy Systems Basics micro course. An introduction to the fundamentals of energy and the landscape of energy in Kenya. Click here to access
Application Closed watch out for when we announce the next innovation challenge.
It is an engaging 3 week process of thinking, dreaming, creating and refining solutions to negative climate change effects using renewable energy.
If you are below 20 years, we advise that you wait and join our future Innovation Challenges because we have an annual call to innovators. If you are above 25 years we advise that you go ahead and register your interest so that we add you to our mailing list for our future programs for your age group.
Yes, you can form groups of up to three people to tackle one solution. However each participant will be required to individually apply for the challenge.
No, there is no fee to join. All you need is your fresh idea and your desire to put in your all to see it come to life.
The Innovation Challenge will be hybrid in nature. The three weeks of building and refining your idea or prototype will be conducted virtually. The final demo day will be in-person in Nairobi. The winners will then proceed to join the greenLabs incubator which is also hybrid in nature with several in-person sessions. One would need to be able to make it for all the in-person sessions.