Grameen Shakti – Powering Bangladesh’s Rural Poor with Renewable Energy

Another division of the esteemed Grameen family, Grameen Shakti(GS) began in 1996 and is now the most successful rural renewable energy company in the world. Grameen Shakti installs about 7,000 solar home systems (SHS) per month. The collaboration of renewable technology and micro-credit enables those without electricity to cross over the ‘power line’ of social inequality. The electricity allows the residents to work longer and earn more money. Currently 90 million people (60%) of Bangladesh are without access to electricity. Nearly 2 million people enjoy a better quality of life and also use energy to generate an income because of Grameen Shakti.

Grameen Shakti uses other programs including Wind, Biogas, Organic Fertilizer, and Cooking Stoves, creating green jobs in the process, and a lot of them, how many you ask? Right now GS has trained almost 2,600 technicians and 98,000 of its customers to be SHS installers, and by 2015, GS plans to have created 100,000 women entrepreneurs from its Grameen Technology Center (GTC) program. Dr. Dipal C. Barua understands that rural women suffer the most under these circumstances, and champions for them in his programs.

Dr. Barua has been a part of the Grameen family since 1976, he is not only the Managing Director for Grameen Shakti, he is also the Deputy Managing Director of the Grameen Bank. Dr. Barua also recently recieved the Zayed Future Energy Prize from the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi.

In rural Bangladesh, cooking is the biggest demand for energy. The Biogas and Impoved Cooking Stoves Programs benefit women and children the most by preventing indoor air pollution they are exposed to from kerosene lamps and wood for cooking. GS has begun to create an Improved Cook Stoves (ICS) business. These stoves are outside and would employ local youth as technicians and manufacturers.
The benefits of these renewable and sustainable innovations are not just visible in the people; they are also seen in the environment. The organic fertilizers are helping to reduce the chemicals and damaged soil from previous over use. The advantages from solar and wind are a better alternative than the deforesting resulting from wood being the previous primary energy source.

A Sunny New Market for Clean Power: The Caribbean

Note: Low-tech Applications such as solar hot water batch heater have huge market in the Caribbean.

Written by Jennifer Kho

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Posted July 21st, 2009 at 9:00 pm in Big Green,clean power

Last year’s oil spike feels like a distant memory, but to remind you, oil prices surpassed $147 per barrel last July, with gasoline prices above $4 per gallon. But if you think that was bad, feel lucky you weren’t living in the Caribbean at the time.

Yes, I said “lucky.” Because while living in the Caribbean islands may have plenty of other perks, the islanders suffer more than Americans when oil prices skyrocket. After all, the United States gets only 2 percent of its electricity from petroleum, with most of its electricity coming from coal and natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, a whopping 92 percent of the electricity in the Caribbean comes from oil, said Babul Patel, a senior consultant for energy software and consulting firm Nexant Inc., at the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco last week.

As a result, the region suffered “a major shock” last year, which sparked interest in renewable energy in the last six to eight months, and caused the region to realize “reliance on only one [energy source] is not a viable option,” Patel said. That awareness has led to research initiatives, as well as initiatives to develop certification programs for solar-water-heater manufacturers, establish a renewable-energy center and create renewable-energy policies.

Solar power in the region has a strong potential for agricultural applications, such as for crop dryers and water pumps for irrigation, as well as in some industrial applications. The islands also have plenty of hydro, geothermal and wind resources, and geothermal resources are particularly plentiful on Nevis, Saba and Dominica; Dominica and the southern islands have the most hydro potential, while most of the islands have good wind and solar resources.

But renewables face some barriers to reaching the Caribbean market, not least of which is cost. And the islands’ remote isolation doesn’t help. Large hydro and geothermal projects are cost-effective because they can produce large amounts of electricity cheaply, but don’t work out as economically on a smaller scale, Patel said. Meanwhile, individual islands don’t use enough electricity to justify larger projects, and aren’t able to export it at this point. Exporting electricity would require extensive – and expensive – undersea power cables, as well as power-sharing agreements among the islands.

In addition, most of the islands are small, meaning that little land is available for wind and solar farms, Patel said, calling large utility-scale solar projects “unfeasible.” And offshore wind is unlikely to be allowed because of tourism and fishing concerns, he added.

Wind’s intermittency is another concern. Because the wind doesn’t always blow when it’s needed, increased wind capacity wouldn’t decrease the amount of diesel capacity the islands would need to keep on hand for calm times, Patel said. That reliance on diesel is what the islands hope to avoid by diversifying into renewables in the first place.

Finally, hurricanes could complicate matters. Patel said that wind-turbine and solar-panels in the area need to be designed to be more robust against hurricanes, and this could help make renewable-energy projects more viable in the region.

Better policies also could boost renewables. While some islands have set goals, and a few – including Martinique and Barbados – have solar incentives, most are sorely lacking in programs that could attract private investment, Patel said. He recommended that the islands divert some investments from petroleum-based energy and partner with utilities if they want to meet their energy-security goals.

Caribbean leaders might consider looking at some of Hawaii’s initiatives. While some the conditions are clearly different, Hawaii — like the Caribbean — gets much of its electricity from oil, and the state has become one of the most aggressive pursuers of renewable energy, setting a goal of reaching 40 percent of its power from renewables by 2030.

The Vatican Goes Solar

vaticanOnly a few days after Roman Catholic Easter, the tradition’s faith leaders announced a plan to care for God’s Creation by harvesting energy from sunlight. Solar photovoltaic (PV) power exists in a small scale all over the world, from arrays less than 1 kW to a couple dozen MW. But the Holy See just announced that they intend to build what would today be the world’s biggest solar PV system at 100 MW.

Exporting Green Power

An installation of this size is estimated to provide all the power needs of the small nation-state and even allow them to export electricity to their neighbors in Italy. The Vatican already has a sizable solar installation that powers the 6,300 seat dome where weekly mass is held. That system was made possible by a donation of $1.5 million of panels from German solar producer, Solarworld. This time around, Italy’s supportive renewable energy policy (a generous feed-in tariff) helped to make the project economical.

The 100 MW solar farm is slated to be built ground-mounted on 740 acres that the Vatican owns north of Rome. Such a large installation is equal to almost half the size of Italy’s whole solar market in 2008. Initial cost estimates run as low as $450 million which, if realized, would be a leap forward in solar cost reduction to below $5 per watt including installation costs (making the source much more competitive with new fossil fuel-fired power plants).

It Doesn’t Stop with PV

The Vatican also plans to utilize solar thermal systems to heat and cool the staff cafeteria. And they are looking into projects to process their waste and even their horses waste into usable energy as well.

Will Other Religious Institutions Lead as Well?

Caring for God’s Creation is a value spoken by practitioners across the world’s faiths. I hope these visible efforts by the Vatican help to inspire similar progress in the Sustainable Energy Transition at churches, mosques, and synagogues — and in the homes and schools of their practitioners. Thank you for your leadership on environmental stewardship, Pope Benedict XVI.