Clean, Cheap Energy

While clean energy sources are gradually becoming more affordable, wind turbines and solar panels are still prohibitively expensive for much of the world’s poor. To fill the demand for cheap, alternative energy, a number of do-it-yourself innovations that cost next to nothing have popped up across the globe. They require little technical expertise to use, and could provide a lifeline for low-income households.

Take, for example, the “solar bottle bulb”—a plastic bottle filled with purified water and bleach that is used as a makeshift light bulb in the Philippines. Though the bulbs...

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