Energy
Position: Senior Researcher, BoP Energy Sector Analysis, Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) Location: Chennai, India Organization: The Centre for Development Finance of the IFMR is a development economics research and action centre. It was formally established in February 2006 with a mission to support development finance - the conversion of finance into development. We primarily focus on sustainable models for financing infrastructure and services, as these are essential inputs into any vision of equitable development. Description: The senior researcher will be responsible for research and related activities analyzing the Base of the Pyramid energy sector in India. The senior researcher would be expected to undertake a comprehensive study to quantify BoP energy needs and existing uses, conduct stakeholder and expert interviews, conduct focus groups, and perform a competitive analysis of emerging and established off-grid and household energy technologies in order to develop a strategy and series of projects for improving access to clean, sustainable energy at the BoP. For more information, see the full job description. To apply, send a cover letter, writing sample, and resume to shaanti.kapila@ifmr.ac.in.
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It was sunny, and tempting to sit outside at the University of San Diego to enjoy the weather. Inside, however, a group of global practitioners and scholars - organized by Patricia Marquez of USD and Carlos Rufin of Sussex University and Babson College - were discussing the role of utilities at the Base of the Pyramid. (See 'attachments' at the end of this post, where I have uploaded the meeting's full agenda as a PDF.) Utilities provide basic services - telecommunications, water, power - that are essential to people's lives and increase their productivity. But a decade ago, many utilities in emerging markets were failing—service to low-income communities was poor, and many of their customers simply didn't pay or acquired the service informally. The picture that emerged in San Diego, however, was more optimistic. A number of utility companies have engaged BoP communities and increased their willingness to pay, in return for investment that improved service quality. Codensa, a power utility in Columbia with 400,000 non-paying customers (out of a total of 2 million), reduced non-paying customers dramatically. Manuel Bueno has an excellent analysis of the Codensa case in his post, " The Codensa Case: Electricity and Related Services for the BOP in Colombia," from December, 2007. And mobile phone companies improved service and access to service dramatically compared to legacy fixed-line telecom companies (sometimes another branch of the same company). (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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It is impossible to argue against the need for reliable energy at the BoP. Energy drives every facet of society, from nourishment to communication. According to the UNDP, at least 1.2 billion people suffer from energy poverty, which has profound impact on health, education, and livelihoods. Increasingly, people are calling for the new energy models in developing nations to be "sustainable" and drawn from "clean" and renewable sources. The accepted belief is that if we can get developing nations on a path of adopting clean technologies, they can completely leapfrog the dirty, self-perpetuating system we have created in the west. However, there are barriers to establishing renewable energy projects at the BoP, on both the supply and demand side. One recently-launched for-profit social enterprise that hopes to revolutionize financing in this field is MicroEnergy Credits Corporation (MEC), and I had the wonderful pleasure of conversing with its founders, April Allderdice and James Dailey, last week. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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A new paper posted in our resources section gives a specific regional example of the potential benefits of biofuels for the BoP (this adds to our previous discussions on the subject here, here and here). The paper - by Kathleen Robbins of the GreenMicrofinance Group - tells the story of a small NGO, aided by GreenMicrofinance and an enlightened multinational company, that is piloting an environmentally sound and economically sustainable approach to biofuels. The key element is a jatropha nursery that is incubating young plants and teaching a group of Haitian farmers how to grow them. The oil squeezed from the plant will be burned in lamps and cookstoves and the remaining seedcake used as fertilizer. As supplies grow, a small refinery will be built to process the plant oil into biodiesel-and the local mobile company is willing to buy it to fuel the diesel generators on their cell towers. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue.)
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Speaker Name / Title:
Kathleen Robbins, Director of Clean Energy
Organization:
GreenMicrofinance Group
Description:
The paper, by Kathleen Robbins of the GreenMicrofinance Group tells the story of a small Haitian NGO, that is piloting an environmentally sound and economically sustainable approach to biofuels. The key element is a jatropha nursery that is incubating young plants and teaching a group of Haitian farmers how to grow them.
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Saurabh Lall is a Research Assistant with the New Ventures project.A quick Friday point of interest from the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference that took place at the Convention Center here in DC earlier this month. The WIREC tradeshow showcased the latest developments in renewable energy technology, some of which have proven extremely successful in developing countries. While the main panels focused largely on the financing and management of large urban renewable energy projects, there were several fascinating side events that discussed innovative, low cost renewable energy issues for the base of the pyramid. In particular, an event organized by the Stockholm Environment Institute, featuring experts from UNEP, China, Brazil and Ghana, examined how different actors in developed and developing countries can respond to environmental and socio-economic concerns about the impacts of rapid expansion in Biofuels production and trade. During this discussion, Gail Karlsson from ENERGIA, the International Network on Gender and Sustainability presented a paper "Engaging Women in Small-scale Production of Biofuels for Rural Energy", an interesting case study of how the collection of bofuels resources was creating an important income generating opportunity for women in developing countries. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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Guest blogger Apoorva Shah, a recent graduate of Rice University, is currently a Wagoner Scholar working with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public to research the influence of social entrepreneurship on public policy. Currently in São Paulo, Brazil, he wrote this post from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Moses Lee's recent post on scaling BoP ventures raised the important and complex issue of defining "scale" in cross-sector approaches to development. What happens when "increasing business transactions that positively impact the lives of the poor" means that BoP businesses begin to enter the realm of government? For example, many businesses work in fields traditionally relegated to the public sector - public health, education, environmental protection, electrification, etc. To scale, should the BoP venture work with government or proceed without it, and what are the subsequent consequences? In Sri Lanka, Ashoka Fellow Lalith Seneviratne works with a network of local entrepreneurs to provide small-scale biomass gasification systems to rural villages inaccessible to the national electricity grid. The systems are fueled by the fast-growing Gliricidia wood, which is endemic to Sri Lanka and can be easily grown by villagers. Because the process of entering the national grid was slow and bureaucratic, local private actors such as Seneviratne decided to act independently to provide an environmentally friendly source of energy to rural citizens. Yet in the past five years, the government electricity grid has expanded by 13% to reach 80% of the country's population, and according to Seneviratne, only about 5% of Sri Lankans will ultimately remain off the national grid. So how should Mr. Seneviratne define scale for his venture? He has two options: (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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March 18, 2008 - 09:00,
Wired
Engineers Without Borders Bring Tech to Villages Without Power
A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.
After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery that can power simple devices like LED lights."They're replacing kerosene lamps, if anything at all," said Matt McLean, a mechanical engineer by day and leader of the wind-turbine project by night. "The biggest driver is just keeping the cost way down. We're shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we're in that range."T
he effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the developing world. An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and many of them are forced to light their homes with kerosene. Using one of these lamps is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, says the World Bank, and the lamps present a significant fire risk. That's why many startup companies, such as d.Light, are trying to bring cheaper LED lights to homes, but they still need a solution for producing power locally.
That's where organizations like Engineers Without Borders come in. Founded in 2002 by Bernard Amadie, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, it has grown to more than 10,000 members in over 250 chapters. According to Cathy Leslie, the executive director of the U.S. organization, 340 projects are underway.
March 18, 2008 - 20:45,
WIRED
Engineers Without Borders Bring Tech to Villages Without Power
A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer. The turbine is undergoing its final tweaks. Next Sunday, the prototype will undergo its next-to-last build before Fleming and another volunteer head down to the Guatemalan manufacturing facility, XelaTeco, with the building plans in hand. The engineering team had to make their design simple enough that it could be assembled from cheap and widely available components. As a result, their plans call for building the turbine out of hard plastic (or canvas) bolted on to a steel-tube structure. The rotor, which creates mechanical energy from the movement of the blades, runs into an alternator (actually a cheap DC motor running in reverse), which converts the mechanical energy into electricity.
So what does it take to supply millions of households in emerging economies with clean renewable energy? We often talk about finance, new models, willing entrepreneurs. Kenneth Westrick, CEO of energy consulting group 3Tier says it's information. Really? Hard to believe this at a time when the development agenda is about doing, not thinking, and action over words. But in our conversation, Ken contended that what the renewable energy sector really needs right now to successfully tap BoP markets is a map. In particular, the online map that 3Tier launched on Monday - this technology will utilize the most recent available research to show in any given 5 km space anywhere in the world the viability of wind and solar energy based on how much sun or wind that area is exposed to on a regular basis. (This post continues past the break. Click 'Read more to continue.)
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Last week, I discussed the rift the Tata Nano has exposed between environmentalist and poverty-alleviation focused professionals, academics and activists - a car that at once represents aspirations of new material wealth for millions of BoP consumers and a potentially enormous source of new CO2 emissions. But there is another story worth telling here - far away from the Nano controversy, out in the rural Yunnan province of southwestern China, there is Hao Zheng Yi. Transportation issues may not be the first thing on peoples' minds here since, as I've reported previously, one fifth of China's rural population lacks access to electricity. Without reliable energy infrastructure, 80% of people in these regions rely on biomass for heating and cooking, burning wood and straw in ovens as a primary energy source. The negative implications of this practice blur the line between environmental and social concerns, touching on issues of deforestation as well as health problems arising from the indoor air pollution generated by smoke. What if, Hao Zheng Yi thought, there were a technology that could address this full range of problems and be affordable enough to reach scale in a BoP market? (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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The launch of the Tata Nano, the ridiculously low-priced car that could open a floodgate of new drivers in India and elsewhere, is undoubtedly one of the milestone innovations marking the early years of the 21st century. This is not just because of the unprecedented feat of technological and design innovation it represents but because of the huge rift it exposes in the public debate over the linkages between two crucial concepts, poverty and environment. Will the Nano be a leap forward in quality of life standards for the BoP? Will it be an environmental train wreck of snarling traffic, suffocating levels of air pollution and unsustainable resource use? These questions have made the Nano so much more than a car - it has become a symbol for the collective tension over two trends that will define global growth for the foreseeable future: the impact of unmitigated environmental risks and the steady ascent of millions of people into the global middle class. And so the story of the Nano begins with a simple car design and ends with a mess of contradictory statistics and competing ideas over what poverty is and how it relates to the well-being of the natural environment. I hardly need to go too in-depth on these narratives* as a simple Google search reveals the sheer number of them colliding and intermingling in the NGO/development space. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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Submitted by Rob Katz on February 15, 2008 - 15:31.
Guest blogger Bill Kramer is principal of The Global Challenge Network, LLC, an executive education and training company. From 2001 through mid-2007, he worked on pro-poor business strategies with WRI. Previously, Bill founded a non-profit focusing on the relationship of knowledge to economic development and enjoyed a long career in the private sector, founding a dozen companies, most of which were in the book business.
By Bill Kramer
This week's Economist magazine has a story, which also appeared in The New York Times last Sunday, about a new "energy harvester" invented by Max Donelan of Simon Fraser University. The new device uses the knee's walking motion to drive gears, which in turn drive a small generator. The 13 watts of power won't run a machine shop, but it will recharge phones and other small devices, such as small task lights. As the Economist article points out, this is adding to the growing list of BoP-useful energy producing products -- Rory Stear's crank devices (which are growing in power, utility and application) and LED lighting. (For more on LED lighting, see the Light Up The World Foundation.) Given the scarcity of power in much of the developing world, and the destructiveness (and expense) of providing light and power, every new advance is important. Bio-mechanical energy harvesting is too new a technology to have spawned a set of business notions that would take it to scale, but I can think of a few worth keeping an eye on. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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Reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and, therefore, global warming – will require a suite of solutions. The scope of traditional conservation efforts is limited, since most of the world is adopting developed-world lifestyles and consumption habits as their incomes rise. Experts and politicians cite technological advances as a primary source of long-term reductions, but they also realize that technology alone cannot solve the problem overnight. In light of these challenges, much of the world has adopted market-based cap-and-trade systems to control greenhouse gas emissions. I have been thinking a lot about these systems, and have asked myself the following question: what can a cap-and-trade system, especially one that provides incentives for financing projects in the developing world, do to help the BoP, who are most vulnerable to climate change? This may not be a new question, but it is one that deserves ongoing attention. One provision of the Kyoto Protocol has been established to clearly address the BoP – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM allows developed countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying poor nations to develop clean energy projects or to create carbon sinks that cut global emissions. Emerging markets are seeing an influx of investment from these offset payments. According to Scientific American, the market for clean development mechanism credits accounts for about $4.4 billion annually. In theory, this investment should lead to job creation and opportunities for the BoP to develop clean wind, hydropower and biomass projects from India to Brazil. Despite the influx of capital, a Reuters article posted on NextBillion in August 2007 highlights an unfortunate reality: CDM financing is not going where it is supposed to go: (This post continues past the break. Click "Read More" to continue.)
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Submitted by Rob Katz on February 8, 2008 - 12:07.
Position: Director of Sales and Product Management – Clean Cook Stoves India Location: Based in Fort Collins, Colorado (approximately 40% of job will be international travel) Organization: Envirofit International was established to develop well-engineered technology solutions to improve the human condition on a global scale, with a primary emphasis on applications in the developing world. Envirofit's goal is to develop and distribute well-engineered energy products for low-income markets that traditionally have been overlooked. Position Description: Envirofit is seeking a full time Director of Sales and Product Management to help design, develop, and distribute products that address major environmental problems in the developing world. Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, Envirofit is currently developing a portfolio of clean biomass cook-stoves. The stove business goals are to design, develop and distribute 5+ million stoves in the next 5 years to countries on 3 continents (Asia, Africa and Latin America). (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)
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