One of the more effective tools in the fight against poverty is renewable energy. Many of the world's poor live in rural areas not served by electricity or even telephone. Though we often think of renewable energy in terms of wind farms, biodiesel plants, or huge hydroelectric works, it is often simple, low cost energy technology that can provide connectivity, cooking fuel, and electricity for millions.
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Some of you may have seen my
diary about Kiva, a small non-profit providing peer-to-peer microcredit in Uganda. One of the reasons
Kiva started their operation in Uganda is the high internet connectivity rate there. Another California-based organization,
Inveneo, is furthering Ugandan connectivity by providing a low cost pedal and solar-powered PCs and communications systems. It provides remote villages access to computing, voice calling, e-mail and the Internet. Inoveo has begun installing the systems in a few villages in western Uganda where nothing resembling a telephone system has ever existed. Their software is all open-source and the web site provides info on building low powered rugged computers and a pedal powered generator.
Wouldn't it be cool if, once power and communication systems were in place, some of those rural Ugandan village kids could crank up their personal laptops and post a diary here. Well, that's not as far fetched as you may think. MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop, a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. The Laptop will be Linux-based, full-color, full-screen and will use innovative power, yes including wind-up. It will be rugged, WiFi enabled and have USB ports. MIT Media Lab hopes to start marketing the laptops in late 2006 or early 2007. Initial discussions have been held with China, Brazil, Thailand, and Egypt. They hope to manufacture 100 million $100 laptops!
Of course many villages around the world have needs that are even more basic than connectivity. Many need energy in the form of cooking fuel or lights. One program that does much to encourage small-scale sustainable energy in both third-world and developed countries is the London based Ashden Awards. The Ashston Awards "recognise that industrialized and developing countries alike urgently need to make more use of local sustainable energy to ensure a livable future." They offer up to three first prizes of £30,000, and second prizes of £10,000 for projects bringing renewable energy to communities in the developing world. This year also have a Schools Energy Award, with a first prize of £15,000, and a second prize of £5,000. Their web site lists and describes the past award winners in detail. Below are a few examples from their site. These are the sort of energy innovation that can changes lives in the third world.
In Nepal many hillsides are denuded from firewood collecting. This is bad not only for the environment but also for the economy. Nepal gets much of its income from foreign trekkers and tourists. Nepal's Biogas Sector Partnership is building small household biogas plants that are fueled by cow dung or even human waste. Meals can be cooked on smokeless stoves, making for cleaner kitchens, cleaner lungs, and no more long hours collecting firewood. Microcredit helps pay for the plants.
Even a single light can make a big difference. Almost half of India's population lives off the grid. Entrepreneur Harish Hande's SELCO company has installed 38,000 solar home systems across India, and become expert in finding ways to make solar affordable to even the very poor. A typical system consists of a 35-watt solar panel, four compact fluorescent lights, and a battery, for charging appliances like a TV, radio, tape player or a fan. The panel sits on the rooftop, or is attached to a freestanding pole. It charges the battery during the day, in order to provide at least four hours of light and power each evening. Sometimes containing cost resultss in some imaginative innovations, such as removing some bricks from interior walls so that a single lamp can light up to three rooms.
If you were a farmer in the n the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, you'd have to deal with elephants, hippos, and buffalo raiding your crops, not to mention the lack of water in the dry season. No wonder many farmers have turned to illegal game hunting to provide food for their families. Wildlife Conservation Society has been providing solar powered electric fences to protect both the wildlife and the crops.
Another Ashden Award has gone to IT Power India (ITPI) for upgrading traditional water-powered flour mills in the Himalayan foothills of India. The upgrading has greatly increased the output capacity of each mill, and thus the income of water-milling families. And they are cheaper to run than diesel mills.
Desperately poor Rwanda has many prisons which house the 120,000 genocide suspects currently awaiting trial. This presents two problems, waste disposal and cooking fuel. Kigali Institute of Science and Technology helped build biogas plants that have solved both. And the displaced soil is used to make prison gardens while the residue is treated to the point where it can be safely used as fertilizer on crops to feed the prisoners.
Ashden awards have also helped fund micro-hydropower projects on the slopes of Mount Kenya and in Pakistani Hindu Kush. They have given grants for micro-grids on Sagar Island in India, a water testing and solar pasteurization project for rural communities in Tanzania, as well as many other projects. Have a look at their site.
Developing clean sustainable energy is not only important for those of us who are quickly depleting the world's oil and natural gas. We will, after all, use up all the cheap oil before most of humanity gets any. From the ASHDEN Awards site:
As communities in the developing world face an increasingly difficult battle against deforestation, soil erosion and pollution, the case for renewable energy - especially in areas that have no electricity supplies - becomes ever stronger.
The Awards recognise that for such communities, renewable energy is not a green luxury: it's often their best hope of breaking out of poverty, giving their children an education, and improving their health and wellbeing. And, crucially, it can do so while reducing local environmental impacts and tackling climate change.
Reading some of these I feel humbled that so many can survive with so little. People can be happy to have even a few watts of power or the most basic communication infrastructure while we need broadband connected wifi enabled computers, huge refrigerators, furnaces and air conditioners and two cars in the driveway. We might learn something from them.
Cross posted on European Tribune.