GreenMicrofinance Response to Haiti Relief Clean Cook Stoves - Water Filtration Systems - Solar Lighting
On January 12, Haiti experienced a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, devastating this impoverished island nation. GreenMicrofinance Team is responding NOW! We have set up a pipeline in Haiti to distribute much needed relief supplies – water, cook stoves, and solar lights. Please support our efforts to assist Haitians!
All donations for Green Haiti will be received through our non-profit, 501(c)(3).
www.greenmicrofinance.org
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Our friends at GVEP, the Global Village Energy Partnership, have published an extensive series of papers, edited by Allesandra Moscadelli, that explore why adoption of Improved Cookstoves, with so many benefits - lower fuel use = lower cost, less smoke inhalation, lower emissions, lessened deforestation - have been slow to catch on.
To read the whole paper, you'll need to sign on to their site, or click here.
La Mosquitia, one of the last remaining tropical forest areas left in Central America, is the most impoverished region in Honduras. Local communities, including the indigenous Miskito (or Mosquitia) people, have struggled to keep alive their distinctive cultural heritage while dealing with the threats of environmental and economic uncertainty.
Through a carbon-neutral biofuel initiative, the MOPAWI (from Mosquitia Pawisa) seek to generate equitable social development through sustainable microenterprise utilizing palm oil that is used for a variety of purposes. This approach will provide financial, social, and environmental returns in order to:
Increase local employment while decreasing out-migration;
Lower the cost of production and with lower agricultural labor;
Reduce waste and increase product yield; and,
Decrease emissions and deforestation.
“The beauty of this enterprise,” says David Hircock, Senior Advisor for Estée Lauder, “is the multidimensional, entrepreneurial approach. Many elements of this approach can bring much-needed cash into the economy and also negate the need for cash. For example, the indigenous community may not need to purchase diesel. Additionally, the enterprise incorporates important elements affecting local security issues, such as food, water, land and economics. Perhaps most importantly, this enterprise could show that the Mosquitia people are integral to the sustainable development of the area and local economy of Puerto Lempira, whereas at the moment they are so often marginalized. Now they can have a much-needed voice.”
Biochar: Ancient Wisdom Gives Clue to A Brighter Future
by Francesca Rheannon Could a centuries-old technology help solve climate change, soil depletion, water scarcity, fossil fuel dependence and poverty? Biochar advocates say, "yes!"
With prospects dimming for a binding climate change agreementat the upcoming talks in Copenhagen, we all need some good news on climate change. So when I was listening to the radio the other day, half-snoozing in bed, my ears perked up when I heard about an ancient technology being revived as a possible big gun to tackle climate change. When the reporter said that the technology could also take a big bite out of world hunger and possibly provide carbon negative, clean, renewable fuels for transportation and heating/cooling, I leaped up in astonishment. Was I dreaming or is the Murphy's Law of global warming finally coming to an end?
It's too early to break out the bubbly, but a burgeoning movement of scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers are touting the benefits of biochar, the product of burning plant wastes and other biomass at low temperatures without oxygen. They say it may be able to significantly lower the amount of carbon dioxide we keep adding to the atmosphere every year. That's not a solution to fossil-fuel induced climate change, but it could buy us critical time to get the whole toolkit of solutions -- clean technology, increased efficiency, and other energy-saving practices -- on board and widespread.
When I heard that a symposium on biochar was taking place at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst this past weekend, I jumped at the chance to find out more. The large conference hall was packed with attendees and presenters from around the world, from soil scientists like Johannes Lehmann, who co-wrote the "biochar bible" to entrepreneurs like Jim Fournier ofBiochar Engineering, who is building light industrial biochar furnaces in Colorado (more on this, below).
Biochar could make the world's deserts bloom -- without using enormous quantities of water for irrigation. That's because biochar is the "coral reef of soil": it provides a lattice that can store large amounts of nutrients, water and beneficial organisms to help plants grow. On poor and marginal land, it can supercharge fertility. Some test plots have boosted crop yields by almost 900%, as you can see in this video clip.
And it's not just for deserts. Cape Codders Peter Hirst and Bob Wells demonstrated their "Mobile Adam Retort" at the conference's field day, held at the New England Small Farm Institute. They've been taking in chippings and other waste from landscapers (who are only too happy to give it away for free) and turning it into a high quality soil amendment mixed with compost to sell to farms and gardeners. You can make biochar out of animal wastes, too. That could cut down on the smells and pollution from factory farms.
The beauty of the technology is its scalability. From tiny units to help you make your houseplants grow all the way up to municipal and factory-sized units that can furnish energy for heating and electricity, biochar production provides opportunities for entrepreneurship in poor rural communities and developed nations alike. Already, some of Jim Fournier's units have been sold to municipal landfills excited about turning their waste into a product they can sell to the public while cutting down on the space they need to store waste and providing heat to their buildings. He's also developing a mobile unit that can be trucked to forests out West being devastated by the pine bark beetle. All those dead trees will put carbon into the atmosphere as they decay. But processing the dead wood into biochar and turning some back into the soil will regenerate the forests and get them soaking up carbon once again.
Carbon negative fertilizer is just one product. Other companies, like Dynamotive Energy are working on creating clean, renewable liquid fuels from biochar. From fertilizer to fuels, biochar can provide opportunities for sustainability investors -- but investors in other biofuels, like corn ethanol, may find stiff competition in the market as the biochar market evolves.
Policy makers are taking note. Senator Harry Reid introduced the "Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvesting and Restoration (WECHAR) Act of 2009" in September, along with cosponsors Max Baucus and John Tester of Montana, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Tom Udall of New Mexico. The bill would give loan guarantees for biochar technology, support biochar landscape restoration projects on public land, and fund research on biochar technology and economics. And COP-15 has approved several side events about biochar, including one to be hosted by the International Biochar Institute, which hosted last weekend's conference.
So, while the news on the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks could be brighter, I'm seeing a glimmer of light on the horizon.
Above: Stephen Lewendo, a Harvard engineer from Tanzania, working with the locals to vet the technology.
Start-UP companies around the world are looking at Africa — where 74 percent of the population lives without electricity — as a test market for new, off-the-grid lighting technologiesMany of these efforts involve wind or solar power. But one group in Cambridge, Mass., is working to develop fuel cells made from the bacteria that occur in soil or waste.
“You can just literally make energy from dirt,” said Aviva Presser, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “And there’s a lot of dirt in Africa.”
Ms. Presser is one of the founders of Lebone Solutions, which is being financed by a $200,000 World Bank grant and private investments. Lebone’s idea is a microbial fuel cell, a battery that makes a small amount of energy out of materials like manure, graphite cloth and soil, which are common to African households.
But Lebone — which means “light stick” in the Sotho language — does not just want to make the batteries and sell them to African consumers. The group hopes that eventually, as the technology becomes more refined, each household will be able to build a battery at a one-time cost of no more than $15.
“Africans are very, very creative,” said Hugo Van Vuuren, a Lebone founder. “It’s very entrepreneurial, just not in the way we traditionally define entrepreneurial.”
Mr. Van Vuuren, who is from Pretoria, South Africa, and who graduated from Harvard last year with a degree in economics, likened the simplicity of the battery to “the potato experiment that most of us did in high school class,” a two-step reaction that produces a simple charge.
But the bacteria in a microbial fuel cell produce electrons while doing what they naturally are supposed to do: metabolize organic waste, like dead leaves or grass or compost, for energy. The electrons then stick to an electrode, like a piece of graphite, and the chemical reaction that follows creates a small charge sufficient to power a small lamp or cellphone.
“It can be made by people with minimal training,” Ms. Presser said. “It doesn’t take a massive investment.”
The founders of the Lebone team were classmates at Harvard, and looking at sustainable lighting technologies for Africa was their class project. Last summer, they took the technology to Leguruki, a village in Tanzania, to see how the batteries work in households. For three hours each night, six families used batteries made of manure, graphite cloth and buckets, and a copper wire to conduct the current to a circuit board.
While in Leguruki, Mr. Van Vuuren said, the group learned as much about the people who used the batteries as the batteries themselves.
“People walk an hour or more a day to the local high schools to get their phones charged for two or three days,” he said, noting that the phones were sources of light as well as communication devices. The batteries are also used to power radios, Mr. Van Vuuren said, as important a medium of communication in Africa as the cellphone.
“Ideally, they would like to have a refrigerator,” Mr. Van Vuuren said. “But right now, their key need is a cellphone.”
Mr. Van Vuuren and several of his fellow Lebone researchers know the challenges of Africa personally, which he credits for the group’s commitment to focusing on Africa first.
“We are a group of Africans that have had the privilege of a first-rate education,” he said. “There are very few people who have insights into both. We lived through it.”
The group is expanding the refined prototypes into Namibia, where, over the next two years, it will examine how more easily available materials, like chicken wire, will create electricity. Mr. Van Vuuren said his group wanted to test the microbial cell batteries in African settings before bringing them to the American market.
Eventually, Lebone wants to create a new business model for energy distribution in Africa, helping to funnel fuel cells and other technologies tested in Africa to distributors there, rather than reducing developed technologies to meet African needs.
“If you work within those constraints, you can create something that works in the developed and developing world,” Mr. Van Vuuren said. “There’s no reason that people need to A: starve, or B: can’t read at night.”
November 11 After Hours Seminar: Financing Clean Energy for the Bottom of the Pyramid: A Comparison of Approaches in India and Prospects for Replication
This 36th seminar in the Microfinance Learning and Innovations After Hours Seminar Series is being co-sponsored by the Society for International Development (SID) Development Finance Working Group and Urban Working Group. Join speakers Ella Delio of World Resources International, Elizabeth Israel of Green Microfinance, Mathew Chandy of CHF International, and moderator Amanda O’Neil of the Development Finance Working Group and IRG. The event takes place at The QED Group in Washington, DC, at 4:00 p.m. EST, and simultaneously as a webinar to enable remote participation.
Andy Lubershane's cartoon strips are really fun and make great points.
On this one, though - we think he meant to say, "Give women sustainable energy and they will prosper - and then they can afford to educate their daughters, and population rates in the developing world will drop."
This report summarizes key themes and “lessons learned” from the “Microfinance and Climate Change: Can MFIs Promote Environmental Sustainability?”Speaker’s Corner, held November 18-20, 2008. Nearly 200 participants from over 40 countries participated in this discussion hosted by GreenMicrofinance, allowing participants to connect and learn about each other's activities.
William Kamkwamba, raised in a village in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries. He dropped out of school at age 14 due to famine - his family was forced to choose between food or school for their son. He poured through books at a local mini-library, and - inspired by a picture of a windmill - set to work fabricating one from salvaged objects. A new book chronicles his story. Now 22, he is featured on none other than Jon Stewart - check him out!
Solar Pumps operate anywhere there is Sun ray. It will not run when there is rain but there is no need of pumping water when it rains.
OFF GRID refers to a power system that generates electricity such as power from a Solar PV array. The electricity produced is stored in Batteries for later use and the energy system isn't connected to the utility Power Grid. In the Developing World, where there is abundant sunlight and a large rural population without the proper infrastructure to develop an electrical grid, PV is very attractive option because of its modular features, its ability to generate electricity at the actual point of use, its low maintenance requirements and its non-polluting technologies. PV is also important to rural health clinics in developing countries. These clinics require electricity for lighting, vaccine refrigeration and water pumping and purification. PV has proven to be a reliable system for these isolated clinics. Even If you live in urban areas where grid is serving only a part of your requirement or facing power disruption and power outage then it is a good option to install OFF GRID solar power system to fulfill your power requirement when needed.
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In the Developing World, where there is abundant sunlight and a large rural population without the proper infrastructure to develop an electrical grid, PV is very attractive option because of its modular features, its ability to generate electricity at the actual point of use, its low maintenance requirements and its non-polluting technologies. PV is also important to rural health clinics in developing countries. These clinics require electricity for lighting, vaccine refrigeration and water pumping and purification. PV has proven to be a reliable system for these isolated clinics. Even If you live in urban areas where grid is serving only a part of your requirement or facing power disruption and power outage then it is a good option to install OFF GRID solar power system to fulfill your power requirement when needed. 
Summary Report by Betsy Teutsch
Grass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn (4414)
Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities (2060)