Pump primers

From greenhouses in Ladakh to green homes in England, the Ashden Awards celebrate the world’s leading breakthroughs in sustainable energy.

It’s March in Bihar, in the heart of the dry season. The last trickles of rain are many weeks past, and the monsoon is still months away. But the fields are full of green – a profusion of well-watered crops: wheat, tomatoes, onions, coriander, garlic, mustard and more besides.

They’re green because they’ve been meticulously irrigated – an achievement that would have been unthinkable for poor farmers just a decade or so ago. Reliant on monsoon rains alone, most struggled to survive on just one harvest a year. Now, thanks to the development of a simple treadle pump attached to a tubewell, they’re able to grow crops almost all year round. That means more income – and more security too.

“We used to have to go to the city and work as day labourers for months on end to make ends meet,” says treadle pump owner Pratap Singh. “Now we can stay here on our own land the whole time: we eat better, we earn twice as much money, and the children don’t miss out on school.”

The treadle pump was developed by a local NGO, International Development Enterprises-India (IDEI). Working closely with the farmers, IDEI technicians designed the simple bamboo structure, which allows the user to work the pump with minimum effort by ‘walking’ on the treadles – a little like a gentle workout on a step machine [above right].

The installed cost, including tubewell, is around $30-$40 – easily affordable via credit advanced against the next, pump-enabled, harvest. Although developed by an NGO, the technology is being rolled out on a largely commercial basis – creating thousands of jobs in the process for distributors, retailers, trainers and installers. Over three-quarters of a million have now been sold across 15 Indian states. IDEI are on track to reach two million in 2010, backed by an imaginative publicity campaign taking Bollywood-style films (featuring genuine Bollywood megastars) into remote villages.

Its extraordinary achievements were recognised at a ceremony in London in June, when the Prince of Wales presented IDEI’s founder, Amitabha Sadangi, with an Award for Outstanding Achievement.

IDEI joined six other international winners, all of whom received cash prizes worth up to £40,000 each, along with a package of expert support on technology, business development and communications. This year’s Energy Champion Award went to a groundbreaking joint project by Oregon-based Aprovecho, the world’s leading research group on fuel-efficient stoves, and family firm Shenzhou Stove Manufacturing (SSM) of China. Together they have developed a simple, affordable and highly efficient cooking stove. Mass produced by SSM, this is being sold in large numbers in India and elsewhere, bringing clean, low-carbon cooking within reach of tens of thousands of poor families.

Other international winners included:

GERES, for its simple solar greenhouses which enable Ladakhi villagers high in the Himalayas to enjoy fresh vegetables throughout the winter
ECAMI, a Nicaraguan enterprise using solar power to provide vital services such as water pumping, vaccine refrigeration and mobile recharging to rural communities
Kampala Jellitone Supplies, for producing fuel briquettes from crop waste, providing a vital alternative to firewood, and so curbing deforestation
Saran Renewable Energy, for its innovative use of locally sourced biomass power to provide clean electricity to Indian businesses plagued by power outages
Solar Energy Foundation, for providing solar home systems to villagers for as little as 75 pence per month.

Bringing green energy back home: Ashden winners in the UK

Three UK awards recognise sustainable energy’s potential to transform lives in developed countries.

This year’s first prize in the Business Award went to Geothermal International of Coventry, for installing over 800 ground source heat pumps, providing both heating and cooling to commercial buildings with minimal use of fossil fuels – saving 25,000 tonnes of carbon per year. Sustainable architects Architype took second prize.

Kirklees Council in Huddersfield won first prize in the Local Authority Award for insulating over 115,000 homes in its ‘Warm Zone’ scheme – helping householders save money and make their homes more comfortable, while dramatically shrinking the council’s carbon footprint. Devon County Council took second prize for its success in persuading local enterprises to ‘go renewable’.

Giving period houses an energy-saving makeover – and throwing them open to the public so the lessons can be dispersed across the community – won the Sustainable Energy Academy first prize in the Charity Award. Second prize went to the Marches Energy Agency, for helping galvanise communities in central England to take up low-carbon lifestyles.

When a school decides to tackle its energy issues, it has the potential to green not just its buildings, but its pupils, their families and the surrounding community, too. The two institutions to win the 2009 Schools Award have made great strides towards reaching that potential.

After Ashley Primary’s Headteacher Richard Dunne saw climate change at first hand on a visit to Antarctica, he was fired up with the need to make a difference back home. Pupils and teachers alike have responded with enthusiasm, helping monitor and reduce energy consumption, and integrate climate change into lessons from Art to English to Maths. The school has also installed a biomass boiler along with solar electricity and water heating.

Edinburgh’s Currie Community High School is proof that, contrary to the views of some sceptics, teenagers can be motivated to take environmental action. Currie’s students take the lead in tracking energy use, and make pledges to cut consumption at home, too.

Full details of all this year’s winners, including downloadable short films, are available at: www.ashdenawards.org. Applications are now open for the 2010 awards – see website for details. – Martin Wright

Scaling it up
Low-carbon, community-scale generation could provide almost a fifth of UK energy demand – if it gets the right support.

But it needs Government to commit to “a long-term strategy, offering predictable funding flows” if it is to come close to fulfilling its potential. That’s one of the main conclusions of a study commissioned by Ashden Awards from the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Its report, From practice to policy, distils the experience and insights of some of the UK’s leading practitioners in the field – those who have won Ashden Awards for their work in renewables and energy efficiency.

They identified a number of barriers to their work, and proposed specific solutions to overcome them. Here are some of the key issues highlighted:

Barrier: funding
The ‘stop-start’ nature of policies like the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (the obligation on energy suppliers to provide funding for carbon-saving measures in households) means there are periods of inactivity after utilities have hit targets
Solutions:
• Regionally allocated funding
• Continuous funding mechanism rather than a ‘bidding’ process
• A carefully calculated feed-in tariff for small-scale electricity generation, accompanied by capital grants and government-guaranteed loans

Barrier: planning permission
A significant problem for larger-scale sustainable electricity and heat projects
Solutions:
• National policy involving both large energy companies and local authorities, to help embed targets at the local level
• Enhanced training on sustainable energy for planning officers

Barrier: skills
Recruiting the technical skills for a project can be problematic
Solution: Develop ‘local sustainable energy’ as a career

Barrier: householder engagement
Lack of interest makes it hard to reduce emissions in the housing sector
Solution: regulation which compels action on energy efficiency and renewables, following the example of condensing boilers – compulsory in all new installations.

The Ashden Awards will publish a larger research-based report in early 2010. It hopes to act as a vital “conduit” between Award winners and policymakers, to help close the gap between the Government’s aspirations on local sustainable energy – and its delivery. – Hannah Bullock

www.ashdenawards.org/reports

The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy is a Forum for the Future Partner.

8 July 2009

Martin Wright

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