Fruits of the Nile expands into drying berry fruits

Fruits of the Nile (FON) are expanding into drying berry fruits thanks to a grant of £148,000 awarded for this purpose through DFID's FRICH (Food Retail Industry Challenge) initiative. Each year, Fruits of the Nile produces and exports around 120 tonnes of high-quality dried banana and pineapple from its factory in Njeru. They are keen to diversify the range of products their farmers can produce to reduce risk in the marketplace so branching out into a new high-value product such as berry fruits is a positive step.



In 2009, the Ashden Awards, as part of its business support programme, funded a feasibility study exploring the options for diversifying FON’s products. The study’s findings identified specific fruit cultivars, production techniques and yields that FON will now produce in partnership with Garden Organic. In this new venture, the technology of choice for drying is solar, a technique which needs very little energy (or financial) inputs yet adds significant value to the product.



Already the production of strawberries, blueberries, cape gooseberries and raspberries is underway. Farmers have just planted about 10,000 seedlings. Longer term, the ambition is to target organic cultivation methods with the berries. However, the profusion of bugs and pests in Uganda at the moment is making this a challenge!

Since winning an Ashden Award in 2008, Fruits of the Nile, with help from the award prize-money, has continued to develop. They have installed rainwater harvesting, certified new farmers and set up eleven new working groups with individuals affected by HIV/AIDS. A solar PV supply has even been installed to run computers and lights in the packing factory, enabling work to continue during power cuts.



Not only are Fruits of the Nile showing determination in the face of a global recession, but they are reinforcing their commitment to sustainable energy use. Having a non-perishable product means they can freight their cargo using ships rather than planes. And, in the face of a continent halted by volcanic ash, this has proved to be a great option, saving the company from major disruptions in its recent deliveries!

For more information and news about all of our award-winners, please visit our website.

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Trees Water People are steaming ahead bringing improved cookstoves to families in Haiti and Honduras

Nearly half the world’s households, around three billion people worldwide, eat food cooked on traditional stoves and fires that kill around 1.6 million people a year -- most of them are children. Trees, Water & People (TWP) have been working hard in recent months to bring improved stoves to thousands affected by the recent earthquake in Haiti and to communities in Honduras.

TWP and Honduran NGO, ADHESA won an Ashden Award in 2005 for their work installing efficient stoves in Honduras. In the last 5 years, TWP and its local partners have continued to bring benefits to communities and ecosystems in Central America through their work installing efficient cookstoves and planting trees. To date, TWP has produced and distributed 35,000 improved Justa and Ecostoves to families in need and planted 3.5 million trees with local farmers in Central America.
In 2005, with the help of Ashden award prize money and USEPA (the United States Environmental Protection Agency), TWP built its first factory in Honduras. Since then, with funding from private foundations and individual donors, they have remodelled an old shoe factory into one for stoves. And production from the stove factory is steaming ahead! In the last 6 months, local partner NGO, AHDESA has produced and sold 5,000 stoves, with almost 2,700 sold in first quarter of this year. These have been for agencies and organisations such as the European Union, CARE and Rotary clubs.

The project has been careful to ensure social sustainability. ADHESA has been training local community leaders in Honduras to help deliver production and distribution in communities. In the last 3 months, 156 community leaders have been trained and about a third of these people now have the technical skills needed to construct and install Ecostoves.
In Haiti, since the earthquake, Trees, Water & People has been part of the effort to provide relief and continued development for the local people. It has already sent 430 stoves as part of an emergency aid effort and raised $28,000 for medical and emergency relief in Haiti. In the next seven years, Trees, Water & People hopes to help get 100,000 cookstoves into the country, where millions of people still depend on unhealthy open fires to cook food for their families.
Improved stoves have multiple positive benefits, they can drastically reduce the toxic effects of cookstoves on health, develop lives and mitigate climate change. For instance, each stove installed in Honduras saves families around one dollar per day and stops around 4 tonnes of C02 being emitted each year.

More information about the impacts and potential for cookstoves can be read in our recent report “Stoking up a cookstove revolution: the secret weapon against poverty and climate change” which draws on the work and experiences of our winners.

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A model for regional support? Enworks is improving business efficiency in the Northwest

Simon, our UK Programme Manager, recently attended a one-day conference in Manchester hosted by ENWORKS. ENWORKS, who won an award in 2007, is a leading environmental business support service based in the Northwest. It supports small and medium businesses (SMEs) to become more resource efficient, reducing their carbon impact and increasing their productivity.

The event ,"Obvious in Hindsight: A strategic insight into successful environmental business support", was designed to share a decade's worth of experience in delivering environmental business support and provide the opportunity for delegates to contribute to the debate on key issues. The Chair of our UK judging panel, Prof. Paul Ekins, and Todd Holden, ENWORKS' Director, were amongst those giving presentations throughout the day. These covered topics such as the challenge and potential of resource efficiency, the value of regions and linkages and the implications of ENWORKS' experience for government policy.

This event was also a great opportunity to showcase “ENWORKS in a Box”, an online tool developed with the help of the Ashden Award prize money to serve as a practical resource for businesses and support services. It is designed to share knowledge, the lessons learnt and to provide guidance for other organisations or partnerships that are looking to deliver environmental business support.

Organisations like these mark out the potential for regional business support services to help deliver large reductions in energy consumption with relatively little cost. ENWORKS has developed an incredibly successful model of business support, stimulating dramatic savings in carbon and reduced costs through efficiency measures, saving Northwest businesses millions of pounds each year. It supports around 1,000 businesses every year, helping them to achieve £100m in savings annually and regional reductions in CO2 emissions of 303,300 tonnes each year. The model they have developed has the potential to be adapted and replicated in other regions, bringing massive benefits to SMEs across the UK.


Find out more about our winners on our website.

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Zara Solar wins Lighting Rural Tanzania competition

Zara Solar Ltd won an Ashden award in 2007 for its work enabling people in rural Tanzania to access quality yet affordable solar PV systems. Last week they won a grant of up to $100,000.00 through the Lighting Rural Tanzania Competition for a project delivering solar lighting to school children.

More than 85% of Tanzania’s population lack access to the national grid. This means millions of school children depend primarily on polluting kerosene lamp for studying at night, leading to respiratory diseases and creating other hazards.

The Lighting Rural Tanzania Competition is a World Bank supported competitive grant program to support private enterprises in developing and delivering a wide array of modern lighting products for rural households and businesses. These small-scale projects must not only deliver results, but also have the potential to be expanded or replicated.

The winning project, to be implemented within 12 months, will use solar and LED technology to provide solar lighting to millions of school children. It will tackle many barriers to accessing solar energy by making reliable, affordable lights available to children for home study and by installing charging systems in schools.
By using a more innovative delivery model, Zara Solar expects to encourage a greater use of solar lighting within households, raise awareness in local communities and trigger greater demand for solar in rural areas.

Find out more about past award-winners on our website.

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Humble cookstoves reduce deadly toll of smoke

Today we released a report that shows the potential of improved stoves to benefit the lives of the world’s poorest and to mitigate climate change. Nearly half the world’s households, around three billion people worldwide, eat food cooked on traditional stoves and fires that kill around 1.6 million people a year - most of them children. The report says that a global programme to produce half a billion improved stoves could convert the world’s poor to safer cooking, save hundreds of thousands of young lives a year, and at the same time cut global greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of up to one billion tonnes of CO2 yearly.

The report, ‘Stoking up a cookstove revolution: the secret weapon against poverty and climate change’, gives many examples of stoves programmes across the developing world that provide affordable, robust ‘improved’ stoves that burn less fuel, cook faster and approximately halve harmful smoke emissions. Many use a chimney to remove smoke and gases from the kitchen, improving combustion.



“Efficient stoves are the most direct and affordable way to address climate change, but we need millions and millions of them,” says Dean Still, director of Aprovecho Research Center in Oregon, USA.

There are still hurdles to overcome, says the report. Each improved stove must be designed for local cooking practices and diets and studies show that cultural patterns sometimes prevent their easy acceptance and adoption. According to the Ashden Awards it is essential to use social marketing and education to introduce the stoves sensitively and ensure they are designed according to local cooks’ needs and preferences.

Many clean stoves are designed by social entrepreneurs for local manufacture, and non governmental organisations usually provide training to ensure they meet quality standards. Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh, for example, trains local technicians who build stoves in people’s homes, aiming to provide 10 million stoves in this way by 2015. Substantial investment and support is needed to reach the half billion people who need efficient stoves.



The report suggests that the carbon market can play a useful role in stove programme investment: “We calculate that improved cooking stoves can keep a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere for as little as $1 to $3 – an exceedingly good deal in a market where offsets can be sold for $20 to 30 a tonne,” says Fred Pearce, author of the report.

“We think the time has come for greater finance and political will to roll out stoves. Just as donors have grasped the value of rolling out bed-nets against malaria, we want to see improved stoves make a real impact on the poor. Better stoves improve health, save lives, help mitigate the effects of climate change while also saving money,” says Sarah Butler-Sloss founder director of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.

To download the report and for information on our winners, visit our website.

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Simon on financing local sustainable energy projects

Last month, our UK Support Manager, Simon, was invited to speak at “Financing Energy Efficiency/Renewables Projects”, an event held by the Islington Climate Change Partnership(ICCP). The ICCP is a partnership of organisations within Islington that have committed to tackle climate change through reducing their carbon emissions by 15% by 2010 or over three years.

This event was concerned with helping some of the smaller member organisations (SMEs, voluntary orgs, schools, etc.) source finance to help implement sustainable energy projects. Presentations were given by Paul Murphy, the Carbon Reduction Advisor for the ICCP, on Carbon Trust Loans, the E.ON Sustainable Energy Fund, the EDF Energy Green Fund and the Scottish Power Green Energy Trust. Monika Munzinger, from the Building Research Establishment (BRE), also presented on the Community Sustainable Energy Programme and the Phase 2 of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme.

Simon rounded the event off with a presentation sharing some of the learning and best practice from Ashden award-winners. He spoke about the benefits, opportunities and pitfalls of community owned assets, government feed-in tariffs, revolving funds and the value of well-managed partnerships between business, local authorities and community organisations.

With over a hundred winners across the UK and in the developing world, Simon was also able to draw on a wealth of lessons and examples to offer ideas for local enterprises in Islington. For instance, The Energy Agency in Ayrshire has used a community fund from the Hadyard Hill wind farm to promote energy efficiency very intensively in three local villages. This resulted in high take-up rates for major energy efficiency measures such as cavity wall and loft insulation, as well as specialised insulation and solar water-heating in some households. Energy supply companies are now funding the Energy Agency to replicate the work in other villages and deprived urban areas.

Another great example comes from Bioregional. As part of the wider One Planet Sutton initiative, Sutton Council has been working with Bioregional to transform the district of Hackbridge into a sustainable suburb. Simon also talked about the great work of some of our local authority winners, who, in partnership, have delivered really impressive area-based programmes, bringing energy efficiency to thousands of homes.

Overall, we think this event was a great example of commitment toward action at a local level. Attended by organisations and entrepreneurs committed to moving towards sustainable energy use, it reflects a greater need for sustained support and knowledge-sharing amongst individuals and communities striving in these areas.

More about Ashden award-winners can be found on our website.

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Jo sees installation of biogas plant at SKG

My last field visit was to see some biogas plants installed by our 2007 winner, SKG Sangha, with company secretary Kiran Kumar. The installations they wanted me to see were several hours drive out of Bangalore so we made a start in the afternoon. After a three hour drive we arrived in the town of Hassan to west of Bangalore where we stayed the night.

The following morning it was another two hours on the road to visit some farms. Although I have visited India several times as a tourist over the last few years, I have never had the opportunity to visit small villages deep in the countryside and it was fascinating. The countryside got more attractive the further we went, with flat land and rice paddies giving way to gentle hills where coffee, pepper and other spices are grown.

The village I visited is one where SKG has been very active – of 70 homes 40 have had biogas plants installed, with those which have been built more recently including a vermicomposting unit.


The really interesting thing about this visit was that we were able to see biogas plants at all stages of construction.











The mason I saw building this digester was obviously very skilled and worked really quickly. As always in India he had a big audience watching with interest as he, helped by members of the family who were having the plant, made rapid progress.

Once several courses of bricks had been laid they started sealing the outside with a very loose mortar.







Then the space around the digester is then back-filled with the excavated earth.


The unit for the vermicompost is where the slurry from the digester is turned into a rich compost by worms. This compost is used on the farmers’ own land with any surplus being sold and increasing income.




The biogas is piped from the unit into the house through the roof:


Ready to cook on.


Of course none of this would be possible without these:



You can find out more about this technology all of our winners by visiting our website.

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SELCO, bringing solar light to families and businesses in Bangalore

The second of Jo’s visits to award-winners in India, following the Building a sustainable energy future for India conference in February, was to SELCO:

“Following my long day driving round the countryside with TIDE I was pleased that the projects I went to visit the following day with SELCO were on the outskirts of Bangalore.

The first area we visited was just off the busy main road we’d driven along the day before. This settlement seemed quite densely populated but was clean and peaceful and, as I was visiting on a religious holiday, there was a very happy mood with beautiful designs on the ground outside many of the houses. Many of the people who live here are of low-caste and quite poor. Although there is mains electricity here it is unreliable and they have to pay for it. A local politician has paid for many of the homes to have solar home systems (SHS) installed by SELCO. These systems typically consist of a small solar PV panel plus battery and one or two CFL lights. The homes I visited generally had two rooms, one for living and a kitchen so these systems were adequate.


One household I visited was so pleased with their SHS that they had cut the wires to the mains electricity supply!

We then moved on to another village on the outskirts of Bangalore where the principal activity is raising silk-worms. The worms are housed in secure buildings with small windows to stop birds getting in and having a free lunch. This makes them very dim which is fine for the worms but difficult for the farmers when they go in to feed them the mulberry leaves which constitute their diet – something which has to be done every four hours. In the past they would use candles but these frequently fell onto the racks of silk-worms sending the whole lot up in smoke.

SELCO have supplied solar lamps to the businesses but adapted the usual systems sold so that the lamps supplied have a long lead. This enables the farmer to move around the racks of silk worms as he feeds them, casting a bright, safe, carbon-neutral light on their work.


I went up on the flat roof of one of the buildings and was struck as I looked around the village by how many of the roofs had solar panels on them. This is obviously a popular solution - SELCO have installed 80 systems here in the last three years”.


You can find out more about all of our winners by visiting our website.

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Jo visits TIDE in Bangalore

Jo, our Communications Manager, spent time in India at the beginning of February to run the first ever Ashden Awards international event – the two day conference ‘Building a Sustainable Energy Future for India’. After the conference (which you can read about here), Jo went south to Bangalore to visit some Ashden Award-winners and to find out more about what they are doing. Her first visit was to TIDE:

“TIDE won the Ashden Energy Champion Award in 2008. I had seen Svati Bhogle, the organisation's charismatic founder, in Delhi. She was going on to other engagements around Delhi so she arranged for her colleague Prabha, who is Head of the Women and Livelihoods team, to show me some of their work.


Prabha met me at my hotel in central Bangalore early in the morning and we set off to into the countryside to see some of the work they are doing with women entrepreneurs. It takes ages to get out of Bangalore, there is a lot of traffic and a lot of road works making for a very bumpy, dusty ride. After a couple of hours we’d left all the traffic behind and were bumping along equally dusty roads in the countryside district of Tumkar.


Our first visit was to see some greenhouses which have been built with funding from TIDE. At first I was puzzled – why would you need greenhouses in South India where it’s always warm? The reason soon became clear – if you grow vegetables in a greenhouse you can control pests and diseases and increase productivity – by up to 30% according to TIDE - through drip irrigation and temperature control.


The green houses are part of TIDE’s work to empower women. They are all run by women entrepreneurs with the support of their families. They provide the land and TIDE builds the greenhouse. The payback is an agreement by the women to give 15% of their earnings from the greenhouse produce to a local school. The school then uses this money to buy extra vegetables for the children – increasing their intake to 50gm per day. To date TIDE have installed six greenhouses in the district, benefitting 400 school-children and they have five more planned.
A highlight of the day was going to visit a couple of the schools who are benefitting from the scheme – and I even got to try some of their lunch!


We then went on to visit another of TIDE’s women entrepreneurs, Pushpa, who has been trained to sell energy-efficient light bulbs and solar lamps in her own and neighbouring villages. In the past locals had been sold poor quality energy efficient light bulbs which at 30 rupees each were relatively expensive but burnt out quickly. This means that Pushpa has to convince people that these bulbs are worth buying, that they are more efficient and will last longer. When I met her she had held her first meeting ten days previously and of 30 people present, ten had ordered solar torches and a couple had gone for small solar home systems, so she was feeling positive about the future.


Our last visit of the day was to another entrepreneur who has been travelling the district with a portable mould to make domestic stoves. These are modelled on the same lines as the stoves traditionally used in the area but are designed so that the smoke is extracted efficiently, reducing indoor air pollution and the associated health risks. I met Katyayini who is one of TIDE’s trainers, travelling around Karnataka training women to make and install these stoves.


Having the opportunity to meet these people and see what TIDE is doing with women entrepreneurs was fascinating. TIDE is making a huge difference to the lives of rural women and children through this work, as well as helping them to learn about and mitigate the impacts of climate change through rain-water harvesting for greenhouses and reduced wood-fuel usage in stoves.”

You can find out more about all of our winners by visiting our website.

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Mariana visits NEST's expanding solar business

Our International Programme Manager, Mariana, was recently able to make a visit to NEST in Hyderabad after attending the Sustainable Energy India conference :

“This was a great experience, it made a huge difference to actually see NEST in action; its offices, assembly room and the surrounding areas. In my time spent with NEST I was able to learn a lot about how it has progressed as an organisation in the last few years.


NEST, who won an award in 2005, is doing very well as a business. They have been growing in geographical reach and in the products they offer. They have recently come out with the Ashwarya WOW, which uses LED bulbs and lasts several more hours.


NEST would like to be growing at a faster pace, reaching more homes and individuals without access to electricity. Bharat Barki, Director of NEST, believes the market for solar lanterns is huge in India and is just now reaching a moment where it will really take off. One reason it has taken longer than expected to expand, however, is due to solar receiving a reputation for bad quality and maintenance: a certain number of programmes and projects go for cheaper options with less quality or do not set up a system for follow-up maintenance. NEST, however, has been working extensively in this area to provide a quality service and believes they offer one of the best products and on-going maintenance programmes. In fact, they have recently received an order for more than double the amount they have sold in the last 10 years! They believe they will have sold close to a million solar home systems in the next 12 months”.



You can find out more about all of our winners by visiting our website.

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Building a Sustainable Energy Future for India: Learning from our award-winners

Earlier this month (8th-9th February) the Ashden Awards co-hosted a 2-day conference in Delhi, ‘Building a Sustainable Energy Future for India’. Delivered in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), this event brought together stakeholders involved in the renewable energy sector in the region to explore the challenges and opportunities for Indian local sustainable energy projects.

With over 100 delegates from business, government, energy enterprises, financial institutions and NGOs, the event stimulated a diverse range of ideas and proposals. Indian Ashden award-winners, as successful examples of local sustainable energy enterprises, presented and participated substantially in discussion sessions. Key figures from the renewable energy sector, business, and government also took a lead including Sumant Sinha, CEO of Suzlon Energy; Suresh Prabhu, former Minister of Environment and currently Chairman of Council for Environment, Energy and Water; Mr K Subramanya, CEO of Tata BP Solar; Andrew Steer, Director General of Policy and Research at DFID; and Sir Richard Stagg, the British High Commissioner.

The sessions raised a variety of interesting discussion topics. Finding ways of scaling up, replicating and financing energy enterprises, the challenges of end user finance and policy recommendations for the Indian Government were recurrent themes.

You can find out more about this event by visiting the conference’s microsite and you can find out more about all of our winners by visiting our website.

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LESS CO2 - Ashden Awards workshop for schools

The ‘pupils’ in Owl classroom at Ashley school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey were a bit bigger than usual on Tuesday. The year fives who usually occupy the room had given up their desks for the morning so that heads, teachers and bursars from ten schools in Surrey could attend the second of the Ashden Awards ‘LESS CO2’ workshops on becoming more sustainable.

The schools are taking part in a pilot programme of workshops where Ashden Awards staff are joined by three winners of the Ashden Schools Award to share how they made their schools more energy efficient.

Eastchurch Primary, where the pupils closely monitor energy use.

Richard Dunne, head of Ashley School, Stephen Green Eco Coordinator from Ringmer Community College and Paula Owens former deputy head of Eastchurch primary all know how hard it can be to get schools and their communities on the path to energy saving – and to keep them there.

This was the second workshop and there was a real buzz in the room as school staff discussed the start they’d made on their journey to saving energy and cutting carbon. They had all carried out audits of their schools – from locating meters to assessing heating systems – and started weekly meter readings.

As well as guidance on the next steps to take, each participant received an electricity monitor which will enable them to see how much electricity they are using and monitor progress in reducing consumption over time.

Pupils at Ashley School examine graphs produced by their energy monitor.

Each of the Ashden award winners taking part are acting as ‘mentors’ for a group of three or four schools, available between workshops to answer questions and encourage them when things get difficult.

The next workshop will be in June when we will find out how much progress has been made.

Renewable energy generated at Ringmer Community College.

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The first round of judging is complete...

...and the UK and international shortlists have been decided.

In the last fortnight the two Ashden Awards judging panels have met to decide the UK and international shortlists. 152 initial expressions of interest have now been narrowed down to just 18 exemplars of local sustainable energy.
Experts in their fields, the judges drew on their experience and knowledge in technology, policy, business , development and communication to make their decisions. Over two lengthy days the judges debated and determined who would go through to the next round. Their discussions scrutinised balance sheets, explored social impacts and argued technical details. Dr. Anne Wheldon, our technical director, described this part of the judging process as “always really interesting and stimulating but also very difficult”.

The judges were impressed by the applicants this year. They were pleased that, on the international side, applicants came from across three continents (Africa, Asia and Latin America), whilst in the UK there were interesting new approaches to both renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The difficult decisions, however, were finally made with the help of secret ballots. Judges will be visiting the 18 shortlisted applicants over the next two months.

To find out more about our past award winners and the judges please visit our website: www.ashdenawards.org

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Free energy display meter for schools!

Great news for schools in England!

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and Partnerships for Schools (PfS) have started a scheme offering free energy display meters. The meters will:

• Display real-time electricity use.
• Store a history of electricity use.
• Link into the school computer network so everyone can access and use the data.
• Let you compare electricity use to different periods of time, to see if you have managed to reduce energy use.
• Allow you to set targets for reductions in electricity use for the school to aim for.

The meters are on a "first come, first served" basis, so be quick and register your interest on the website: www.energydisplaymeter.co.uk

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