CREEC attended the 4th International Off-Grid Lighting Conference and Exhibition. The premier global event for the rapidly growing off-grid solar lighting and household electrification sector, was held in Dubai, UAE from October 26th to 29th 2015.Co-hosted by the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) and the World Bank Group through its Lighting Global initiative, #IOGLC2015 convened more than 500 conference participants across 23 different sessions, bringing together policy-makers, investors, bilateral and multilateral donors, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, international organizations, end-user groups, academics, and others.

Koen Peters, GOGLA Executive Director addresses the guests.

In subsequent sessions, the broad ranging conference focused on the specific themes currently at play in the solar off-grid industry. This included unlocking finance for the industry, supply chain development, market channel innovations, product developments, quality assurance and product innovation; intellectual property rights concerns, policy and regulation to enable sustained market growth, sustainability, and measurement of the impacts of off-grid lighting. The conference also incorporated an additional, extensive day of topical side events individually organized by conference participants and kindly sponsored by the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea. A parallel trade exhibition assembled over 40 exhibitors, expertly placed to present their products and business/organizational plans to the large number of conference attendees.

In addition, since CREEC has a testing laboratory for solar products, this was a very good opportunity to network and meet the various players in the sector, and hold discussions on matters pertaining the industry. It was also good to find ways to forge ahead with the various researches going on in the different areas and sync the various efforts.