Enduring energy

From solar power for India’s poor to wood-fired heating for UK schools, the Ashden Awards highlight some of the world’s most innovative energy schemes, reports Martin Wright.

Solar electricity is “expensive for the rich – but cheap for the poor”. On the surface, Harish Hande’s observation sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it’s one on which he has based a highly successful business. His company, SELCO, has supplied simple solar lighting to over 70,000 households and institutions across India. In doing so it has proved beyond doubt that clean, green electricity can be brought within reach of some of the poorest families in Asia. And, more to the point, at a price which works out cheaper than the only practical alternative: smoky kerosene lanterns.

The key lies in combining a network oflocal service agents with a micro-credit system to help customers over the barrier of capital costs.

Hande founded SELCO – which stands for Solar Electric Light Company – back in 1995. He’d become intrigued by small-scale solar’s potential for the rural poor while studying business in the States. Convinced that it madecommercial sense, he came home to India to put his theory to the test.

Ten years later, and there’s no doubt that Hande has pulled off a rare triple win: he runs a successful business; it saves households money and improves their health; and it replaces a fossil fuel with a renewable, climate- friendly one.

Its success earned Hande an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy back in 2005, and two years later, he won the first Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award. This reflected the fact that he’d nearly doubled solar sales during that time, as well as starting to extend his innovative finance and service model to other sectors, such as cooking stoves.

Founded in 2001, the Ashden Awards reward and celebrate the very best in small-scale, sustainable energy schemes in the UK and the developing world. Over the years, they’ve recognised everything from micro- hydro schemes in the Hindu Kush to biogas plants in Rwandan prisons.

The launch of the outstanding achievement prize marks a new phase for the Awards. Increasingly, the focus will be on supporting winners over the long term, helping them develop to their full potential by providing business, technical and communications advice.

In the words of Al Gore, Guest Speaker at the 2007 ceremony, the Awards “forcefully remind us how simple, practical and often inexpensive ideas can make a great difference.” And he added: “What impresses me most about these projects is they truly are becoming the change that is needed in the world.”

2007 Awards: International

Sustainable energy has the capacity to tackle two of the 21st century’s greatest challenges: climate change and poverty. And nowhere is this potential more striking than in the developing world– home to Ashden’s international winners. The successful projects included:

Biotech (India). Biogas produced by cattle slurry is a well-established technology inrural India. But it’s far from ideal for crowded cities, where few have their own livestock. Biotech’s answer is to design a system which runs on food waste. It produces gas for cooking, and in some cases, for lighting too – while its residue makes excellent fertiliser. To date, Biotech has sold over 12,000 household plants – and nearly 20 municipal ones, which use food waste from markets to power electricity generators.

Daxu (China). China’s heavy reliance oncoal is well known. But even most Chinese are unaware that there’s an alternative source of fuel literally lying around in the country’s fields: crop waste. The harvest residue of crops such as maize can makean excellent alternative, carbon-neutral fuel for household space and water heating. All you need is a stove designed to make the best use of it. The Daxu stove company has come up with just such a model. It costs around half as much to run as the coal- burning variety, so no surprise it’s proving a hit with farmers in particular, who have their own homegrown fuel source. In less than a year, over 30,000 have been sold.

Sunlabob (Laos). How do you deliver solar power to villagers who can never hope to find the capital cost – in a country where micro-credit is in its infancy? Answer: you rent them a service, rather than sell them stuff. That’s the strategy adopted by Sunlabob, a local company founded by German expat Andy Schroeter. So far, it has installed over 1,700 solar home systems, and is moving into solar powered water purification, too – providing remote villages with clean, safe water for the first time.

Zara Solar (Tanzania). Like SELCO, this is a commercial business which has succeeded in bringing solar light to the rural poor in remote areas, who live far from the electricity grid – in this case, in the Mwanza region of northern Tanzania. By buying in bulk, Zara is able to make solar home systems affordable – so much so that they can pay for themselves in two to threeyears at most, thanks to savings in fuel for kerosene lamps.

2007 Awards: UK

There’s a growing awareness that schemes which save or produce energy close to the point of use can yield huge benefits for developed countries such as Britain. They can generate jobs as well as heat and power, helpto ‘decarbonise’ the economy – and make our energy supply more resilient and secure. The 2007 UK winners included:

Cumbrian Energy Efficiency Advice Centre (Cumbria). Energy efficiency is the Cinderella of the sustainability sector – unglamorous, maybe, but deserving of a lot more attention. Simple but effective steps like insulating lofts and cavity walls can make a huge difference to people’s quality of life and their energy bills. CEEAC has helped transform over 10,000 cold, draughtyhomes into cosy, sustainable ones.

Ecotricity (Gloucestershire – see also 'Electric green').
Dale Vince is, by any definition, a maverick – it wasn’t so long ago that he lived in a caravan parked outside Stroud. But as mavericks go, he’s been highly successful. Ecotricity specialises in wind power. Thanks to its sensitive approach with local communities, it has achieved an impressive 90% success rate in planning applications. Many of thesefall into the ‘Merchant Wind’ category, where the turbine stands next to the business it’s supplying – so avoiding all the costs and power losses involved in grid transmission.

ENWORKS (Greater Manchester). Manysmall and medium-sized businesses know they could save energy – and money – but lack the time or resources to do so. ENWORKS has come up with a straightforward ‘online resource efficiency toolkit’, which helps companies cut a quick path through the sustainability maze. Around 1,000 businesses are benefiting from ENWORKS advice, achieving savings of £12 million a year from a one-off capital investment of just £5.5 million. Proof that, with the right advice, it pays to do the right thing.

Wood Energy Ltd (Devon). Burning wood instead of oil may sound like a step back for Britain – but it’s definitely a case of back to the future. The UK has ample reserves of wood supplies from tree surgery and forest management; supplies which are going, literally, to waste. And unlike coal, oil or gas, sustainably harvested wood is both carbon- neutral and renewable. Wood Energy Ltdhas supplied over 100 boilers to schoolsand companies across the country – and set up the UK’s first accredited training course in the subject to develop more capacity.

Woodheys Primary School (Cheshire – see 'The Three Rs of climate Change'). This is the second year in which the Ashden Awards have staged a specific category for schools – and it’s been a highly successful initiative. The energy and commitment shown by the children and their teachers is humbling. In the words of Ben, a Year Six pupil in Woodheys Energy Team: “You can’t just sit back and say ‘someone else will do it’. You have to do it. If we all try together, we can stop global warming.”

Ashden Awards is a Forum for the Future partner.

10 October 2007

Martin Wright

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