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The Awards were founded in 2001 by the Ashden Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT). Since then the Trust has helped more than 80 innovative projects develop their work.  

These are some of the 2008 Ashden Award winners.

Global Action Plan - Winner of the Charity and Community award.
Global Action Plan is a charity which works with businesses and other organisations to bring energy efficiency to the workplace and beyond.  It helps organisations reduce energy consumption and waste production through behavioural change. Since 1997 it has trained and motivated 1,200 people in 69 organisations as 'Environment Champions', indirectly influencing over 86,000 employees.

Kensa - Winner of the Business award
Kensa Engineering in Cornwall designs, manufactures, and tests heat pump systems for installation throughout the UK. Most are small-scale ground-source heat pumps (up to 32 kW), which are supplied in kit form so that they can be installed by non-specialist plumbers and builders. To date over 1,000 systems with a total capacity of over 16 MW have been sold, providing about 26 GWh/year of heat and saving 3,600 tonnes/year CO2.

Leeds City Council - Winner of the Local Authority award
Leeds City Council is the second largest Local Authority in the UK. Its Fuelsavers programme developed a strategy which has improved the energy efficiency of housing by over 21% since 1996. It currently helps 25,000 households per year, providing major insulation installations, improved heating and glazing upgrades. A new programme is providing home energy assessment visits to 32,000 homes. Ringmer Community College, East Sussex

Ringmer Community College - Winner of the first prize in UK schools category
Ringmer Community College is a secondary school with 800 pupils.  It demonstrates a pupil-led commitment to managing energy. 200 have chosen to be Eco-Reps and monitor energy use; help with the manual control of the ageing heating system; and 'name and shame' departments which waste energy. They have been involved in the design of a new 6th form building, and give presentations about their work.

Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) - Winner of the International Energy Champion award.
Many small businesses in India rely on wood and other biomass as their primary source of energy. TIDE has developed and adapted energy-efficient woodstoves and kilns for specific industries, including arecanut processing, silk reeling, textile dyeing, ayurvedic medicine production and food preparation. Over 10,500 stoves have been sold by TIDE and the entrepreneurs it has trained.

Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh - Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Achievement award
Grameen Shakti won a first prize Ashden Award in 2006 for providing photovoltaic (PV) solar-home-systems through affordable loans to 65,000 households in Bangladesh.

Its work has expanded rapidly and diversified. With 2,000 staff now operating from 400 local offices, a total of 150,000 solar-home-systems have been installed. In the past two years Grameen Shakti has also sold 14,000 cheap, efficient cooking stoves and 3,000 biogas plants. Grameen Shakti aims to have provided a million solar-home-systems, 10 million improved stoves, and half a million biogas plants by 2015.