Energy Champion

Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE), India

Svati Bhogle

Wood-saving stoves for small businesses in South India

Many small businesses in India rely on wood and other biomass as their primary source of energy. TIDE has developed and adapted energy-efficient woodstoves and kilns for specific industries, including arecanut processing, silk reeling, textile dyeing, ayurvedic medicine production and food preparation. Over 10,500 stoves have been sold by TIDE and the entrepreneurs it has trained: these stoves save about 43,000 tonnes/year biomass, provide a cleaner, cooler environment for users, and often lead to significant time savings. TIDE is developing a range of stoves for large-scale cooking, and working with larger production centres in order to bring the stoves to more customers.

Aryavart Gramin bank, India

NK Joshi

Bank helps customers to buy solar home systems

The Aryavart Gramin bank in Uttar Pradesh used solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to back-up the unreliable grid power for some of its branches, and recognised the potential of PV for its many off-grid customers. The bank set up a bulk supply and installation agreement with TATA-BP for PV solar-home-systems, and provides loans for its customers with a good credit record to purchase the systems. To date 10,100 loans have been approved and 8,000 solar-home-systems installed. Local entrepreneurs are paid by the bank to service and maintain systems. The Aryavart Gramin bank has a target of 25,000 solar-home-systems this year, and is promoting the idea of its SHS loan scheme to other rural banks.

Cooperativa Regional de Eletrificação Rural do Alto Uruguai Ltda (CRERAL), Brazil

João Alderi do Prado

Cooperative uses mini hydro to increase electricity supply on local grid

CRERAL is a co-operative which supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the south of Brazil. To increase capacity and improve reliability, it has built and now operates two mini-hydro plants (0.72 and 1.0 MW capacity) which produce about 5.5 GWh/year electricity or 25% of its overall demand. The run-of-the river hydro schemes do not need large reservoirs, and therefore have minimal environmental impact. The loans which CRERAL needed to finance the plants are paid back by electricity sales and carbon credits. CRERAL is planning and developing more mini-hydro plants which will meet all its current electricity demand.

Fruits of the Nile, Uganda

Angello Ndyaguma

Award funded by The John Ellerman Foundation

Solar drying business links rural farmers with export markets

Fruits of the Nile is a Ugandan business which produced and exports about 120 tonnes/year of high-quality dried banana and pineapple from its factory in Njeru. The fresh fruit is prepared and dried in simple solar driers by 120 producer groups in rural areas: these groups buy fruit from over 800 farmers and employ about 500 labourers. Fruits of the Nile currently operates to FairTrade standards and, through rigorous training, monitoring and quality control, is converting the whole supply chain to organic production. It is hoped that organic certification will expand the export markets for Fruits of the Nile, since all in the supply chain and the business are keen to increase production.

Gaia Association, Ethiopia

Milkyas Debebe

Award funded by the Waterloo Foundation

Clean, safe ethanol stoves for refugee homes

Refugees in Ethiopia, as in many countries, rely on fuelwood for cooking. Women who spend long hours collecting fuelwood outside refugee camps are frequently attacked, and there is extensive deforestation. The Gaia Association has provided ethanol-fuelled stoves to 1,780 refugee families, enabling clean, comfortable cooking and preventing wood use. The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a sugar by-product which previously caused pollution. The Gaia Association is starting to supply stoves and ethanol for other refugee camps and also for new housing developments in Addis Ababa, and a local factory is producing the stoves. Stoves are also being introduced in Addis Ababa, and local manufacture has started.

Kisangani Smith Group, Tanzania

Reuben Mtitu and John Mtitu

Award funded by ClimateCare

Blacksmiths develop wood-saving stoves

To complement its work in training blacksmiths and in reforestation, the Kisangani Smith Group has developed two types of efficient biomass stove which can be hand-made by local smiths. One stove replaces the widespread use of charcoal in towns: it burns sawdust (readily available as a waste in the Njombe region of Tanzania) or agricultural residues. The other stove is an improved wood-burner, targeted at rural areas. Over 3,500 stoves have been sold by the Kisangani Smith Group and its trainees. The group plans to promote the stoves more widely, in Njombe and elsewhere, whilst expanding its training programme.

Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP), China

Luo Xinlian and Wang Wei

Bringing affordable, high-quality solar lighting to rural China

The Rural Energy Development Project has boosted the use of photovoltaic (PV) solar-home systems in off-grid areas in western China. This has been achieved through support to the industry to improve the quality of PV modules and other components; technical and management assistance to local installation companies; and subsidies to sales. Since 2001 the REDP has enabled sales of over 402360,000 systems, which improve quality of life through better light, communications and entertainment. Sales now continue without subsidies, because the benefits of PV are widely known, and the systems are reliable and accessible.

2008 Outstanding Achievement Award

Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh

Dipal Barua

Rapidly growing solar installer provides clean cooking as well

Grameen Shakti won a first prize Ashden Award in 2006 for providing photovoltaic (PV) solar-home-systems through affordable loans to 65,000 households in Bangladesh. Its work has expanded rapidly and diversified. With 2,000 staff now operating from 400 local offices, a total of 150,000 solar-home-systems have been installed. In the past two years Grameen Shakti has also sold 14,000 cheap, efficient cooking stoves and 3,000 biogas plants. Trained technicians, mostly women, manufacture components in 20 technology centres, and install and service systems. Some of these technicians have become independent entrepreneurs. Grameen Shakti aims to have provided a million solar-home-systems, 10 million improved stoves, and half a million biogas plants by 2015.