Gaia Association won an Ashden Award in 2008 for their work with cookstoves burning bioethanol made from waste products. The stoves are often used in refugee camps.
Milkyas Debebe, their Managing Director, was at Copenhagen, where he was able to meet with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles:
As you know, Prime Minister Meles has been in the forefront of negotiations at COP15 and we have been very grateful for his efforts. He is championing, on behalf of Africa and the Global South, exactly the right things to make improved stoves and clean liquid fuels available in Africa.
Below is a recent film made about the work of Gaia Association:
He is asking for more technical and financial assistance for Africa to enable Africa to quickly reduce its Global Warming Commitment. Very possibly residential fires for cooking and agricultural fires for land clearing and preparation are the two largest producers of GHG, with deforestation being the other major contributor. The production of black carbon aerosols that reach the atmosphere and travel great distances may quite possibly be even more harmful that the production of GHG. Residential cooking fires and charcoal production and use may in fact contribute to 18% to 25% of black carbon in the atmosphere and this black carbon may have a higher GWC than other sources of black carbon production because of when and where this black carbon is produced. The alcohol stoves essentially reduce this black carbon to zero. Thus a million ethanol stoves in Africa could make a significant reduction in black carbon pollution from Africa, and this could have a swift and immediate impact on Africa's contribution to the problem.
Prime Minister Meles has charted out a carbon neutral strategy for Ethiopia, already a country that has one of the lowest carbon footprints in Africa (at least before black carbon is considered. He laid out Ethiopia's strategy in this way:
Ethiopia shall:
1. Produce all of its power from clean or renewable sources, principally hydro, wind, geothermal and solar.
2. Use liquid biofuels to reduce its dependence on petroleum fuels. It shall fuel blend, and is already doing so, and it will use biofuels for cooking.
3. Afforest or re-forest Ethiopia and reclaim the land with appropriately chosen grasses, bushy plants and trees. The Prime Minister highlighted the MERET program as one successful example.
After the Side Event in which the above photo was taken concluded, and which the Prime Minister chaired (having just come from a negotiating session), Milkyas Debebe was able to speak to him directly about the ethanol stove project. The Prime Minister clearly stated his full support for the project and indicated that it was intrinsic to the nation's strategy.
To paraphrase, he said to all at the side event: 'With or without an agreement at COP15, and with or without proper support from the more developed nations, we will do what is necessary in Ethiopia to reduce or eliminate our impact on global warming.'
This was very inspiring indeed.
And the 2008 Ashden Award film on their work:
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Gaia Association at Copenhagen
Friday, 12 December 2008
Ashden Awards at COP14 in Poznan, Poland
With all of the important but rather abstract climate policy discussions that are going on in Poznan this week for the UNFCCC climate change conference (COP14), you’ll be happy to hear that delegates will have the chance to see some real sustainable energy technologies, thanks to the Ashden Awards!
We were invited by the Polish Ministry of the Environment to display models of Ashden Award winning technologies, alongside information about how the technologies have been applied by our winners. These exhibits have included improved cooking stoves (GERES, Kisangani Smith Group, Gaia Association and Aprovecho Research Centre), a ram pump (AID Foundation), a solar home system (Grameen Shakti) and a treadle pump (International Development Enterprises India).
I went out to set them up and they are sitting happily next to hydrogen cars and other futuristic hi-tech gadgets – hopefully as a reminder that these programmes are already delivering social, economic and environmental benefits for millions of people – and need to be rolled out to many more millions. Photos to follow...
Ben Dixon
Monday, 1 September 2008
Visiting Ashden Award winners in East Africa
Ben Dixon, programme manager on the Ashden Awards team, has just returned from a trip around East Africa, working with past Ashden Award winners. Here's a report on his trip.
I’m just back from East Africa, having spent almost three weeks working with Ashden Award winners in Ethiopia and Tanzania. It is always inspiring to see the amazing social, environmental and economic benefits that Ashden Awards winners are delivering in the communities where they work – and this trip was no exception.
I started off in Addis Ababa, where I was able to attend a workshop that the Gaia Association (2008 winners) had organised to celebrate winning their Ashden Awards with all of the partners that have supported their work. This workshop had impressive high-level attendance from the Ethiopian government, including three government ministers and the head of the government’s Environmental Protection Agency. All were very supportive of Gaia’s plans to work with their private sector partner (Makobu Enterprises) on scaling up their manufacture and supply of ethanol stoves for urban areas, and providing ethanol stoves for more refugee camps in the north of the country (partnering with the UNHCR). It was also great to meet some of their customers in Addis, who are very happy with their stoves. We are working to connect Gaia with sources of support as they build their business plan and identify the finance they will need to achieve their scale-up goals.
Next was Tanzania, where we have three winning projects (and one winner who has relocated from Rwanda).
Zara Solar (2007 winner), based in Mwanza in the north-west of the country, are one of Tanzania’s leading suppliers of solar products. I was able to visit the villages and institutions where Zara has installed solar systems, and see some of the ways in which solar electricity is transforming their customers’ lives. Lighting of course (replacing dirty and expensive kerosene lamps), mobile phone charging, fridges, satellite TV, and even a piano synthesiser! Zara is working on two new strategic projects: developing new products for Lake Victoria’s fishermen, who use polluting kerosene lamps to attract fish to their nets, and working with local credit agencies that can provide loans to help their customers overcome the barrier of the upfront costs of purchasing a solar system (which will pay for itself in reduced fuel costs).
Mwanza Rural Housing and Food Security Project (MRHP) (2006 winner) are also based in Mwanza. They are an NGO providing housing, agricultural, and energy services to rural communities around Mwanza. They won an Ashden Award for their sustainable brick-making programme, training local entrepreneurs to fire bricks using agricultural waste (rice husks) rather than firewood. It is amazing to see the transformational effect this programme has had in the region – everywhere we travelled there were smoking brick kilns fuelled by rice husks, and rice farmers are now selling rice husks to brick makers (they used to pay people to take them away). We discussed MRHP’s plans for the future, which include expansion of their brick programme and commercialisation of a programme to provide energy saving stoves for rural and urban people. We will be providing support in the form of a professional volunteer organised through the Scottish charity Challenges Worldwide.
Kisangani Smith Group (KSG), are based in Njombe in the south-west of Tanzania. This group of blacksmiths won a 2008 Ashden Award for the design and production of a cooking stove that runs on sawdust – a waste product from the local timber industry. We spent some time looking at their plans for scale-up of their stoves business, and then travelled out of the city to the village of Mkiyu, where KSG have a training workshop for local youths. They have plans for a micro-hydro project to supply electricity to the workshop, the village, and a local secondary school – we visited the proposed site and also were lucky to see two neighbouring micro-hydro projects (one working, one under construction). It is truly eye-opening to see the engineering that is used to build these projects in remote areas, and to see the impact of bringing electricity to places where development is so constrained by the absence of energy for lighting houses and schools and carrying out income-generating activities such as agricultural processing.
Finally, a special mention to Ainea Kimaro, who won an Ashden Award for his biogas programme in prisons in Rwanda (he was working at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, Ashden Award winner in 2005). Now living in Tanzania, we met and I heard all about his biogas plans for Tanzania – exciting and top secret for now, so watch this space!
Ben Dixon
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Video of Ashden Awards Imperial College seminar 2008
On 18 June 2008 the Ashden Awards and Imperial College held a seminar where the 2008 Awards finalists presented their work. The video of the event is now available to view online, as shown below. If you would like to view the slides separately, PDF files can be downloaded here.
Welcome and introduction to the day:
- Professor Sir Peter Knight, Principal of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College
Session 1: Stoves for cooking and industry
Chair: Dr Keith Pullen, Reader at City University and founder of Developing Technologies.
Session 2: Sustainable energy building local enterprise
Chair: Dr Keith Pullen, Reader at City University and founder of Developing Technologies.
Session 3: Solar PV and beyond
Chair: Dr Jeremy Woods, Lecturer in Bioenergy, Imperial College
Session 4: Local authorities and schools
Chair: Dr Anne Wheldon, Technical Director, the Ashden Awards
Session 5: Businesses and charities
Chair: Dr Anne Wheldon, Technical Director, the Ashden Awards
Friday, 20 June 2008
Global green energy awards – winners announced
The world has a new Energy Champion. Tonight, at an Awards ceremony presided over by Nobel laureate Dr Wangari Maathai, it was announced that the title ‘Energy Champion’ and a prize of £40,000 has been won by Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE). Six other international schemes were awarded £20,000 each by the UK-based Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, to promote replication and expansion of sustainable energy projects.
Many of South India’s small businesses rely on wood as their main source of fuel which causes pollution and deforestation not to mention uncomfortable and dangerous working conditions when boilers and stoves are badly-designed. Building on the excellent track record of stove design at the renowned Indian Institute of Science, TIDE commercialises their designs to provide efficient tailor-made woodstoves and kilns which save at least 30 percent of fuel. To date 110,000 workers enjoy better conditions thanks to the 10,000 products they have supplied, saving around 43,000 tonnes of wood each year. TIDE is developing a range of stoves for large-scale cooking, and working with larger production centres in order to bring the stoves to more customers.
This year’s Outstanding Achievement Award went to Grameen Shakti of Bangladesh. The organisation has made a significant contribution to the spread of sustainable energy solutions – to date it has installed 160,000 solar home systems and is adding around 8,000 new systems 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; and domestic biogas systems which bring clean sustainable energy to thousands more.
Sarah Butler-Sloss, founder and chair of the Ashden Awards said:
“This year’s inspirational winners show how sustainable energy technologies can bring benefits to businesses and the environment, whilst also dramatically improving people’s lives. They show how these technologies can be mainstreamed and scaled-up. They show us the future.”
Accepting the Ashden Award on behalf of TIDE, Svati Bhogle said:
“The Ashden Award is not just an acknowledgement of past success; it is the acceptance of a responsibility and gives us the motivation to venture into uncharted terrain, to first break new ground and then develop it into a beaten track.
“There is a serious energy crisis in rural India, but access to energy and its efficient use, accompanied by well-conceived and well-implemented enabling mechanisms, has the potential to transform rural areas,” Ms Bhogle added.
Dr Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace laureate, said:
“We are here tonight to celebrate these wonderful energy pioneers, who are responding to the needs of their communities. They have decided to take action in the face of huge challenges, displaying not just patience and persistence, but a sense of urgency and determination. We salute these sustainability champions and the Ashden Awards, who help to make their work better known so that they can continue to inspire others.”
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, Patron of The Ashden Awards, personally congratulated the winners at a separate meeting. A Clarence House spokesperson said:
"The Prince of Wales was deeply encouraged to learn of the solutions demonstrated by the Ashden Awards that can reduce our dependency on a carbon economy. His Royal Highness was particularly impressed by the local sustainable energy initiatives recognised and promoted by the Awards, which not only meet the needs of communities, but tackle climate change and further sustainable development."
The other winners were from Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania and Uganda.
Four UK Ashden Awards were also made, for pioneering approaches to sustainable energy use across the UK by schools, local government, businesses, and voluntary organisations.
The international winners are:
Brazil, Cooperativa Regional de Eletrificação Rural do Alto Uruguai Ltda (CRERAL)
Cooperative uses mini hydro to increase electricity supply on local grid
Tired of regular power cuts, members of CRERAL, a regional electrification co-operative, decided to invest in two small, local hydro-electric plants instead of buying all their electricity from large hydro and fossil-fuelled plants elsewhere. CRERAL is a co-operative which supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the south of Brazil.
China, Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP)
Bringing affordable, high-quality solar lighting to rural China
Since 2001, REDP has enabled sales of over 402,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar-home systems to yak and other herding communities in remote areas of western China. Most previously relied on kerosene, butter lamps and candles for light. Around 1.6 million people, many of whom live in tents for at least part of the year and previously had little access to electricity, now have an improved quality of life through better light, communications and entertainment.
Ethiopia, Gaia Association
Clean, safe ethanol stoves for refugee homes
17,000 people live in the Kebribeyah refugee camp, having fled conflict in bordering Somalia, and they rely on fuelwood for cooking. The Gaia Association has provided ethanol-fuelled stoves to 1,780 refugee families, enabling clean, comfortable cooking and preventing wood use. Women no longer have to spend long hours collecting fuelwood outside refugee camps, where they were frequently attacked, and there is extensive deforestation. The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a sugar by-product which previously caused pollution.
India, Aryavart Gramin Bank
Bank helps customers to buy solar home systems
The Aryavart Gramin Bank in Uttar Pradesh used solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to back-up the unreliable grid power for some of its branches, and recognised the potential of PV for its many off-grid customers. The bank set up a bulk supply and installation agreement with TATA-BP for PV solar-home-systems, and provides loans for its customers with a good credit record to purchase the systems. To date 20,000 loans have been approved and 10,000 solar-home-systems installed.
Tanzania, Kisangani Smith Group
Blacksmiths develop wood-saving stoves
To complement its work in training blacksmiths and in reforestation, the Kisangani Smith Group, run by volunteers, has developed two types of efficient biomass stove which can be hand-made by local smiths. One stove replaces the widespread use of charcoal in towns: it burns sawdust (readily available as a waste in the Njombe region of Tanzania) or agricultural residues. The other stove is an improved wood-burner, targeted at rural areas. Over 3,500 stoves have been sold by the Kisangani Smith Group and its trainees.
Uganda, Fruits of the Nile
Solar drying business links rural farmers with export markets
Fruits of the Nile, a local company in southern Uganda, is helping small farmers harness the power of the sun to dry and export fruit that is surplus to local demand. Fruits of the Nile produces and exports about 120 tonnes/year of high-quality dried banana and pineapple from its factory in Njeru. The fresh fruit is prepared and dried in simple solar driers by 120 producer groups in rural areas: these groups buy fruit from over 800 farmers and employ about 500 labourers. Fruits of the Nile currently operates to fair trade standards and, through rigorous training, monitoring and quality control, is converting the whole supply chain to organic production.
Go to the Ashden Awards website for more details
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