The IDEAS Energy Innovation Contest, sponsored by GVEP International, the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), GTZ and the Korean Government has received 1,082 applications from Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Applications for the contest, which closed on May 17th, came from every Latin American country (988 applications) and from nine Caribbean countries (94 applications).

The Caribbean countries were Dominican Republic (30 applications), Jamaica (28), Haiti (19), Trinidad & Tobago (5), Barbados (4), St Lucia (3), St Vincent & The Grenadines (2), Suriname (2) and Bahamas (1).

According to the IDB website, “The flood and quality of ideas that poured in for the Energy Innovation Contest marked the enthusiasm and potential surrounding renewable energies, energy efficiency and energy access in both rural and urban areas of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The sponsor organizations assigned specialists to evaluate each proposal, on the assessment criteria of:

• Innovation of the proposal;
• Developmental impact (economic, social, environmental);
• Scalability, replicability and financial sustainability;
• Institutional capacity and quality of the applications;
• Implementation strategy;
• Projected risks

The evaluation team has selected a shortlist of about 250 applications for final evaluation.

The winners of the contest will be announced by the sponsors in September.

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