Rahimafrooz installs more than 200,000 solar systems in Bangladesh

Since Rahimafrooz won an Ashden Award in 2006 it has continued to design and install new solar systems at an impressive rate. We recently got an update from them detailing their latest milestones. It was jam-packed with firsts.

Rahimafrooz has now installed over 200,000 solar home systems. It has also installed Bangladesh’s first ever specially-designed flood irrigation system, its first water purification system, and its largest centralised off-grid solar system. The flood irrigation system will allow 42 farmers to irrigate 40 acres of land and enable them to grow crops three times during the year instead of once. The 8kWp solar panels use technology that tracks the sun to make best use of the eight hours of sunlight and will provide 800,000 litres of water per day.

The cyclonic storms of Sidr and Aila, accompanied by furious tidal surges in 2007 and 2009 left people in Morelganj facing a crisis – safe drinking water. Rahimafrooz has now installed a solar-powered water purification system to provide drinking water for more than 8,000 people. The system integrates solar panels, a solar water pump and a water purification unit. Rahimafrooz is keen to replicate the success of solar-powered water purification system in other areas of the country where arsenic and salinity contaminate supplies.

Rahimafrooz has also installed the largest off-grid solar centralised system in Barkal, Rangamati. The 10 kWp system provides lighting for the entire community living in Barkal.

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US criticises Bangladesh over removal of Yunus from Grameen Bank

The US Government has criticised Bangladesh over the removal of Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate and micro-finance pioneer (and an Ashden Advocate), from his position as managing director of Grameen Bank.

The Financial Times reports Robert Blake, US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, saying

"This is a country that is a doing a lot of things right ... And some of their actions with respect to Grameen Bank are out of step with that."

"We thought it was important as a friend to point that out."

Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, has known Yunus for decades and, in Blake's words, has a "long and personal relationship" with him.

The Wall Street Journal points to the source of the current problems as the moment in 2007 when Yunus, after winning the Nobel Prize in 2006, made a public bid to clean up corruption in Bangladesh politics which, it is said, angered the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Grameen Bank has more than eight million rural borrowers, who own 96.5% of the bank's share capital.

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Shidhulai's Rezwan interviewed on Al Jazeera

Following on from the recent post about "Easy Like Water", the film being made about Ashden Award winner Shidhulai, here's some more news. Shidhulai's founder, Mohammed Rezwan, has been interviewed by Riz Khan on Al Jazeera English. You can watch the interview in two parts here:

Part 1


Part 2

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Easy Like Water - Bangladesh

In 2007, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha won an Ashden Award for their work with boats using solar power to provide education, healthcare, lighting and other services to people in Bangladesh.

Now, the Sundance Institute is producing a film about them, called Easy Like Water. Here's a trailer they have released:


You can also watch the Ashden Awards film from 2007:

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Bangladesh – at the front line of climate change

Paul Rose, BBC presenter and expedition leader is a highly supportive Ashden Award ‘Advocate’ who helps raise awareness of the work of our winners. Paul has just returned from a trip to Bangladesh visiting sustainable development projects and witnessing at first hand the country’s vulnerability at the front line of climate change.
One of the highlights of the visit was spending a few days with Rezwan who runs an amazing project bringing solar energy to remote waterside communities with a fleet of boats. Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha was an Ashden Award winner in 2007, working in Chalanbeel, a region flooded in the monsoon season (when Paul was there!). The boats’ roofs are covered in solar panels that charge batteries for the solar systems they carry to local communities. They provide education for the local young people, particularly girls, training on agriculture, health advice, mobile phones and internet access.
In the evening, films are projected onto a sail to educate villagers. Some boats also act as mobile health clinics where women queue up to access services they cannot get elsewhere. As Rezwan explained to Paul, Bangladeshis will probably have to live on the water if climate change continues at the present rate as the whole country could be flooded. It’s essential that this approach to reducing the social and environmental vulnerability of communities is expanded.
Paul filed stories every day for the BBC news website which provide a fascinating and colourful insight into the communities he visited.

BBC online stories
Paul’s blog

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Financing domestic biogas plants

In October 2008 there was an international workshop on this topic, held in Bangkok and sponsored by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV).

Several past Ashden Award winners were at the workshop, including:

• Grameen Shakti
• SKG Sangha
• BSP Nepal
  

The proceedings, hosted by the HEDON website, are now available, click here to download them.

The conclusion notes that the provision of transparent and direct financial incentives to rural farmers is a key factor in the uptake of biogas plants in SNV projects, where the finance is only available for plants that meet the required quality standards. The provision of subsidies and/or credit specifically for biogas plants is needed because they don't offer a way of earning income, but instead offer the user a chance to reduce costs, so allowing them to afford to repay the money loaned.

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Grameen Shakti article in the FT

The Financial Times has published an article about Grameen Shakti and other sustainable energy companies. Grameen Shakti won Ashden Awards for their work in 2006 and 2008.
The article says:

Faroukh lives miles from the nearest mains power. His mobile, like the lights in his home and in his wife’s sewing workshop, are charged by solar electricity, courtesy of a small photovoltaic (PV) panel attached to the roof of his house. It was sold to him by Grameen Shakti (‘village energy’), an offshoot of the hugely successful Grameen Bank.

Thanks to a simple micro-credit system, even poor families like Faroukh’s can afford the panels. Savings on the smoky, unreliable kerosene lanterns easily cover the monthly repayments. The solar lamps mean Faroukh’s family can work into the evenings, more than doubling their income, while the phone plugs them into the wider economy in a way that would have been unimaginable ten years ago.

Grameen Shakti – winner of an outstanding achievement prize in the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy – has now installed nearly 200,000 solar home systems across Bangladesh, and confidently expects to hit one million by 2015. With over 30 million families marooned ‘off grid’ in Bangladesh alone, the potential for future growth is enormous.

read the rest of the article here

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Award winning stoves feature in DFID magazine

Two past Ashden Award winners feature in the Developments magazine, published by DFID:

A pioneering range of wood stoves and kilns in South India, which save at least 30% of fuel, have been crowned “2008 Energy Champion” at the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.
...
Many of South India’s small businesses rely on wood as their main source of fuel, which causes pollution and deforestation as well as uncomfortable and dangerous working conditions when boilers and stoves are badly-designed. Building on the track record of stove design at the renowned Indian Institute of Science, TIDE commercialises their designs to provide efficient tailor-made wood stoves and kilns cutting fuel by at least a third.
...
The Ashden Awards Outstanding Achievement gong went to Grameen Shakti of Bangladesh, an organisation which has made a big contribution to the spread of sustainable energy solutions. So far it has installed 160,000 solar home systems and is adding around 8,000 more each month. Since winning an Ashden Award in 2006 it has diversified into the provision of fuel-efficient stoves, which improve living conditions and save fuel. It also produces domestic biogas systems which bring clean, sustainable energy to thousands more.

The full story is available here, and further details on the two winners are at the following links:

• TIDE (Wood-saving stoves for small businesses in South India)
• Grameen Shakti (Improved domestic stoves in Bangladesh)
  

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