World Challenge 09 is a competition organised by BBC... finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level
COMET-ME (Community, Energy and Technology in the Middle East) is an Israeli-Palestinian solar+wind energy project among the 12 finalists. All finalists are worthy of winning. I am humbled that COMET-ME received such honors. And I personally ask that you vote for it.
My personal connection: COMET-ME is an offshoot of The Villages Group - a direct-action Israeli humanitarian group which I (somewhat inadvertently) helped set up before coming here, and whose website I maintain. The Villages Group folks feel like proud parents: COMET-ME is two years old (here's the diary announcing the installation of its 1st pilot), and look how it's grown!
More on COMET-ME below.
In their own words (from COMET-ME's "background" page):
In the southern Hebron hills, in an area called Masafer Yatta, a small population of several thousand Palestinian farmers and shepherds live in shanty-like villages and in caves and tents. This is a very traditional population subsisting on non-mechanised agriculture and herding.
These people, often referred to as ‘cave-dwellers,’ have lived in the area continuously since the early nineteenth century (documentation dates back to 1830, and aerial photographs from decades ago confirm their presence there). The first Israeli settlements in the area came into being in the early eighties and although the local Palestinian inhabitants were initially employed in construction and other jobs in these settlements, over the years relations deteriorated as the state of Israel aggressively appropriated land for the expansion of its settlements and terrorized the local population.
Perhaps needless to say in this forum, but I'll say it so no one misses this: those Israeli settlers who arrived in the '80's, are not part of some "natural phenomenon of migration" (hence the propaganda term "natural growth" applied to settlements is an oxymoron). The settlements were installed there by the Israeli government, partly on land expropriated from private Palestinian owners (usually without compensation) and partly on public lands - a land designation which universally means that it should be reserved for the benefit and future growth of the local public (link to the Peace Now report, the best source on the issue with separate aerial photo documents for each settlement).
More from COMET-ME:
Geographically the region is on the edge of the desert, which affects its climate, fauna and flora. The region is dry (an annual rainfall of about 280mm, and even less in recent years) and there are no stable water sources which makes survival there, without water connection, a difficult task. There is limited seasonal agriculture and herding, both restricted by overgrazing and the difficulty of marketing the produce in the nearby town of Yatta.
Besides the friction between locals and settlers and the security forces brought in to guard the settlers, this continual reduction in available land has contributed to making locals even poorer.
Enter COMET-ME and other activists such as the Villages Group and Ezra Nawi who's now in the middle of a 30-day sentence for attempting to stop a home demolition in the region (disclaimer: Ezra is member in neither Villages Group nor COMET-ME, he's a Ta'ayush activist and somewhat of a one-man operation - but he is a close partner of VG and COMET-ME and carries out many joint activities with us).
A joint thinking process between the local community and the project activists defined four main needs the project tries to address:
Basic energy needs for the house
Basic energy services for the houses will provide night time illumination and basic provision for communication with the outside world. Children need light in order to study, and charging the cell phones often provides the only link to the outside world especially when families are in need of support or solidarity in response to actions of the settlers or the army. Electric lightning will also, In many cases, replace harmful and dangerous oil burning lamps. Diesel generators are not a feasible solution due to high running costs and the geographical isolation of both the communities and individual households within each community, both negating the option of centralised generators.
Improved livelihood through revenue-generating agricultural support
The ability to refrigerate and store the milk and dairy produce of the community will significantly increase the potential for generating revenue and reducing the cycle of deep poverty. Refrigerating perishable foods will reduce spending on foodstuff, allow for greater ability to plan and generally improve the quality of the diet in a region where the summer-time temperature can reach 50°C.
Cleaner and more accessible water
Because they are not connected to the water grid, local communities rely solely on cistern type water holes. The communities defined two urgent needs relating to the existing water system: the first is the gender specific burden of water pumping, an activity that can consume long and hard hours from the women in the house hold and the second is the quality of the drinking water. Another need that was raised was the provision of a washing machine, again, both a gender specific chore and water consuming activity.
Environmental sustainability
Providing systems that rely on renewable energy sources (that sometimes replace polluting oil burning lamps or diesel generators) protects a particularly vulnerable environment. Both the Indoor air quality and the carbon footprint of the communities will be significantly improved. The very existence of wind-and-solar systems will contribute to the realisation of basic human rights for the communities of the south of mount Hebron and significantly improve the quality of their lives.
Indeed, the COMET-ME concept is a multiple win.
- Locally, the Masafer-Yatta residents are empowered to continue staying on their lands and maintain their way of life. Moreover, now some of them are experienced alt-energy installers and maintainers - not a bad skill to acquire nowadays (see more below).
- Internationally, positive attention is drawn to the region. The decades-long project of ethnically cleansing the locals needs the dark of indifference and ignorance to succeed; sunlight is the only thing that can kill it at this point.
- Moving from metaphorical to physical sunlight: In inland and southern I-P during most of the year, incident sun energy is very close to its maximum surface-level achievable rate of about 1kW/m2. A back-of-the-envelope calculation I did a couple of years ago suggested that if both Israelis and Palestinians just placed enough solar cells on their roofs, they might not need fossil-generated electricity at all (even at Israelis' Western-level electricity consumption rates). Besides the CO2 emissions, Israel's power plants stringed mostly along the coast, are notorious air-pollution sources and an eyesore. Thus, any grassroots project to implement solar energy on the ground, helps bring the now-theoretical all-solar possibility closer to reality.
- As I wrote in a previous diary, the overarching fact of Occupied-Palestinians' life is their lack of control over most major parameters of living. Infrastructure is a big part of that: practically all of it is controlled by Israel. If Palestine can leap-frog the fossil-energy stage and become a self-sustaining solar+wind electricity nation, it is a huge step towards economic indepenedence.
- As an offshoot of the Villages Group, COMET-ME continues the tradition of building a different reality on the ground. We can and will continue arguing about what politicians should do, but we have little control over that. Villages Group, COMET-ME, Ezra Nawi and others are building true Israeli-Palestinian coexistence and collaboration on a personal level. The inequality of the power and wealth structure is acknowledged; however as written by COMET-ME above, the nature of the interpersonal relations and decision-making is one of mutual respect and equality.
Finally, some more technical details. Since their first pilot system in early 2008, COMET-ME have installed 26 family units and one community center. Here's an explanation of the difference between the two types from their website (which, being run by a more talented Assaf than myself, is much nicer than the Villages Group's):
Hybrid wind and solar electricity generating system
In engineering terms we build two types of systems: basic family system and bigger community utility centres.
The first are pure solar systems with a 0.5 to 1 kWh/day capacity and provide enough energy for several light bulbs, cell phone recharging (an absolute necessity in the region) and several hours of radio use. Each system includes the solar panel(s), an electricity box with a charge controller, deep cycle battery, small inverter, all the necessary electric safety equipment and, of course, the actual load: lights and an electricity plug. Family units all share a common design but very in size as some of the families are semi-nomadic and take the systems with them when they move.
The bigger utility centres are more complex, hybrid, wind and solar, or even diesel and solar, systems providing 4 to 10 kWh/day. We build the wind turbines ourselves based on a design by Hugh Pigott but slightly modified to our unique needs. The towers are sources locally to increase local spending and create local capacity. The loads are typically a very energy efficient refrigerator, several butter churns and many other applications such as computers, sewing machines and more.
Please vote for COMET-ME. Voting ends in a week. And/Or: Donate to COMET-ME online. Thanks you.