Sun, wind and fire

Community renewable initiatives are a vital ingredient in resolving our energy dilemmas. Roger East reports on an awards scheme that finds - and backs - inspiration in the UK as well as in the global South.

There can be few better ways of fuelling hope than finding out about people doing extraordinary things, and strengthening their capacity for the future. This year’s Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy brought that message home in some style.

Six projects made the shortlist for three £30,000 awards to initiatives in the developing world - using sustainable energy in an innovative way for, respectively, food security, enterprise and community welfare. The winners were:

  • The Energy Research and Training Centre in Eritrea, which has developed fuel-efficient and smokeless clay stoves so that wood and dung can be used to cook in the home with much less risk to sight and lungs. Because they need much less wood, the stoves also help reduce the pressure on Eritrea’s fast diminishing woods.
  • India’s Barefoot College project, which trains local people to become ‘barefoot engineers’, installing and maintaining solar power for their remote Himalayan villages. Thus far, the project has seen the solar electrification of 136 villages, and it is now set to expand to other areas.
  • The West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency project providing village electrification to Sagar Island in the Sundarbans. This uses a series of small photovoltaic power plants to provide all-solar electricity via ‘mini-grids’, each covering a few square kilometres. As well as providing lighting and power for radios and TVs, this ‘gridquality’ power can be used for heavier duty applications such as water pumping and running small-scale industrial equipment.

Runners-up included projects bringing solar power for radio and internet communications to remote rainforest health posts in the Peruvian Amazon; helping Nicaragua’s urban poor to run successful tortilla-making businesses using clean, fuel-efficient wood stoves; and bringing clean solar lighting to the street markets of Bhopal in India.

In a new departure for Ashden, there was also a UK award this year, reflecting the vital role that community renewables can play in meeting developed countries’ energy needs in a way that supports measures to combat climate change.

Shortlisted finalists Bioregional Development Group’s ‘Zed into the Mainstream’ project aims to take the learning from the BedZed eco-village in south London [GF40, London's Learning ], itself designed around a ‘total energy’ strategy, and write it large in the Thames Gateway in the form of a 5,000-inhabitant zero fossil energy and zero emission community. It’s part of a wider initiative aimed at rolling out zero fossil-fuel developments across the country, with a training programme for architects and engineers high on the list of priorities.

Also shortlisted were Sustainable Energy Action, which is tackling fuel poverty via the renewable route with its Solar for London project, installing solar water-heating systems in social housing.

The announcement of the UK winners, the wind farmers of Moel Maelogan in the Conwy valley, north Wales, was enthusiastically received at the awards ceremony (presented in partnership with Green Futures). The emotion of the moment even spilled out in song as the sizeable Welsh contingent gave voice to national pride, urged on by some informal conducting on the part of awards presenter Jonathan Dimbleby. The pride reflected the enthusiasm of the local community for a project that is seen as injecting muchneeded vigour into an area hard hit by the decline of the farming economy. The Cwmni Gwynt Teg (Fair Wind Company) collective, founded by three sheep farmers whose traditional way of life was in dire straits, now has plans to extend the successful small Moel Maelogan wind farm, opened this winter [GF39, Turbine Milestone ], with 11 more turbines. Winning local support, a hallmark of their approach, will also be important when it comes to take-up of the shares they’ll be offering to spread ownership in (and raise finance for) the collective.

31 July 2003

Roger East