Energizer
Shazia Khan, center, visits with residents in a village in southern Pakistan. Khan’s company, EcoEnergyFinance, has begun selling affordable solar lanterns to a country where 55 million people lack access to electricity and most of the population relies on dung, wood, kerosene, or battery-operated flashlights for energy. An environmentally trained social entrepreneur who formerly consulted with the World Bank on energy issues, Kahn is expanding the distribution of the lanterns, adding cell phone charging stations, solar fans, and home systems, and exploring the feasibility of financing micro-grids. “My heart was just not in the brilliant theoretical work and huge power projects being done at the Bank,” Khan says. “I wanted to do something on the ground.”