Friday round-up

Hillary Clinton to announce the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

New natural low-density insulation from award-winners Second Nature

British windfarms deliver record output

Now 64 Superhomes across the UK - up from 25 when SEA won its award

Watch video of Architype's bid to Technology Strategy Board for ecological community buildings

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Stoves can help save the planet

Svati Bhogle, Managing Director, Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE), India

So far India’s media coverage on Copenhagen is all about dissent, discontent and dissonance when it should be about collective resolve and action on climate change.

Copenhagen is about reducing emissions globally but it is also about equitable and efficient use of energy. We require more sustainable use of energy as opposed to today’s abuse in the developed world and misuse in the developing world.

Two billion people - mostly in the developing world – still depend on traditional fuels like wood and charcoal for their cooking and heating. Each day they consume something like 1.2 million tons of biomass for cooking. With fuel efficient stoves these families can cut their energy use in half. They can also avoid the terrible toll of black smoke from inefficient stoves that literally choke the lives of so many women and children.

My organisation, TIDE helps some of the eight million small businesses in South India by providing improved woodstoves and kilns that burn biomass more efficiently and save at least 30 percent of fuel. We're saving well over 40,000 tonnes of wood each year and giving more than 150,000 workers a better, healthier and safer environment to work in as a result.

So let’s hope the leaders at Copenhagen will get behind simple and affordable solutions like these and steer away from the gloom and doom that can paralyze people from acting. We have the opportunity to make life cleaner, healthier and better for billions in the developing world – and at the same time improve our chances of tackling climate change.

Read more Voices on Copenhagen

TIDE received the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy’s “Energy Champion” award in 2008. TIDE develops woodstoves and kilns for small businesses across Southern India to burn biomass fuel more efficiently.

View the Ashden Awards video of TIDE:

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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.
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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.
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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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