Results tagged “energy poverty” from Bob Freling's Solar Blog
I’ve just returned from the COP15 talks in Copenhagen. One of the events I attended was a CNN/YouTube–sponsored debate that featured the following panelists: Yvo de Boer, Exec. Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, NY Times Op-Ed columnist and Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas Friedman, actor/environmentalist Daryl Hannah, and Bjorn Lomborg, Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
Mr. Lomborg, an environmental skeptic, says he believes in the concept of anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change, but unlike the vast majority of people and organizations who attended COP15, he doesn’t think that cutting carbon emissions is the best approach to dealing with the problem. Instead, he argues, we should invest our time and money helping those who are most vulnerable to the adverse affects of global warming.
In an article (“Time for a Smarter Approach to Global Warming”) that appeared in the Dec 15, 2009 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lomborg states that “money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/AIDs prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.”
While I appreciate Mr. Lomborg’s concern for the poor—and yes, it is true that the world’s poorest citizens will, in fact, suffer the greatest from climate change even though they are least responsible for causing it—I do not agree with his reductionist way of thinking. It’s the same old false dichotomy of “the economy versus the environment” argument, repackaged in a different form and for a different audience.
According to Mr. Lomborg, people who are dying of AIDS or malaria, or who are worrying about how they’re going to get their next meal, could care less about global warming. That may well be true, but dealing with their individual plights while ignoring the causes simply perpetuates and compounds their problems. He fails to recognize that unless the rural poor gain access to modern energy services, they will have little hope of ever dealing effectively with the host of ills and injustices that plague their lives.
This point was certainly not lost on Tom Friedman who, sitting right next to Bjorn Lomborg at the CNN/YouTube debate in Copenhagen, astutely countered Mr. Lomborg’s specious argument with the following remarks:
…every problem Bjorn referred to is an energy problem. The school that has no light, that’s an energy problem. A clinic in a remote part of Africa that doesn’t have the capacity to refrigerate medicines, that’s an energy problem. These are all energy problems, and if we, the developed countries, take the lead in driving down the cost of distributed energy, we are solving both problems (climate and poverty).
Watch:
Needless to say, I concur with Tom Friedman, and I am also pleased that I had an opportunity to contribute to his thinking on the subject of energy poverty, a topic to which he devotes a full chapter in his book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. I am grateful to Mr. Friedman for having quoted me in his book, and more importantly, for having articulated to a global audience the indispensable role that modern energy must play in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Thanks to Hot, Flat, and Crowded, people around the world are now familiar with the concept of energy poverty.
Had I had the opportunity to interject in yesterday’s CNN/YouTube debate, I would have described to Mr. Lomborg my recent trip to northern Benin, where I witnessed a dramatic improvement in food security thanks to solar power and its ability to pump water for drip irrigation. Or, I might have cited the example of Dr. Paul Farmer whose organization Partners In Health is now using solar as the primary source of power for its rural health centers in Rwanda, Lesotho and Haiti — where tens of thousands of poor patients are being treated for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Or, perhaps I would have mentioned Zwelenqaba High School in rural South Africa, where students are now able to gain computer skills and access information via the Internet thanks to a solar-powered computer lab that was installed last year.
These are perfect examples of how investing in clean, renewable energy for the developing world can not only help mitigate against climate change but also improve the health, education and economic security of some of the poorest people on earth.
At the CNN/YouTube debate in Copenhagen, and again in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lomborg calls for an increase in R&D in the cleantech space as the best way to counter global warming. While I agree that basic research is important, the fact is, a number of renewable energy solutions, including solar and wind, have already benefited over the past couple of decades from dramatic reductions in cost and improvements in efficiency. Solar cells are now being produced for under $1.00 per watt, and new breakthroughs are being announced on a regular basis. Interestingly, the innovations are being driven by business opportunity as much as anything.
Even without further technological breakthroughs, however, solar energy today represents the least-cost option for generating electric power in parts of the world that are not connected to a conventional utility grid.
We don’t need to wait any longer before we help those most vulnerable to the impact of climate change by enabling them to adopt clean energy solutions in their own lives and communities.
It’s time for a smarter—and more holistic—approach to combating climate change. Let’s turn to the sun to help people and the planet.
2008 was an extraordinary year of accomplishment and transition for SELF. The projects you’ll find described in our annual report have taken our work to new levels:
- In Benin, West Africa, our Solar Market Gardens – solar-powered drip irrigation systems – have vastly improved villagers’ nutrition and income;
- Building on our collaboration with the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, SELF has begun solar-electrifying clinics across Rwanda and Lesotho through our Solar Health Care Partnership with Partners In Health, the organization co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer; and
- In the Eastern Cape, South Africa, our Solar Rural Schools Project – installing and powering computer labs, Internet access and learning software – is bringing the world to one of its remotest corners
Our focus is on our projects. Download our annual report and learn more about SELF. Find out how we:- Installed more than 32 kilowatts (kW) of solar electric systems in 5 health clinics and 3 schools;
- Impacted more than 55,000 people in Rwanda, Lesotho, Benin and South Africa;
- Bridged the digital divide for over 3,000 students and their families in the remote Eastern Cape province of South Africa;
- Continued monitoring and evaluating the success of our multi-phase solar drip irrigation project in Benin; added training and introduction of new seed varieties;
- Began design and installation of solar electric systems for 5 additional health centers in Rwanda to be completed in January 2009;
- Completed assessments and site planning for the electrification of 10 health clinics in Haiti, 6 clinics in Rwanda and 1 clinic in Burundi; and
- Began preparations for the “whole village” electrification of two villages in Benin; this phase will supply power for drinking water wells, home and street lighting, schools, health clinics, and microenterprise centers.
On the verge of our 20th anniversary, we are now poised to harness the rising tide of awareness and fight two of the greatest challenges of the century: climate change and energy poverty.Will you join us once again?
But what does the phrase really mean? After all, people talk about human rights; they talk about social and economic rights; and some folks – like Dr. Paul Farmer, famed “physician to the poor” and co-founder of Partners In Health, – even talk about health as a human right.
But “energy” as human right? Now that’s a new one!
It’s precisely because this notion of “energy as a human right” may strike many as being a bit odd or abstruse that I’ve decided the time has finally come for me to sit down and start this blog as a way to educate as many people as I can about a subject I care deeply about and which has huge implications for the future sustainability of the planet.
I’m talking about the fact that some two billion people—almost a third of humanity—still live without access to electricity. Located mostly in rural villages in the developing world, these people are forced to retreat each evening into homes that are illuminated, if at all, by the dim light of candles or smoky, polluting kerosene lanterns.
The problem is especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where in many countries as much as 80-90% of the population is without power. If you look at satellite image of the earth at night, Africa appears, literally, as a “dark continent”.
This is an issue in which I have been personally involved for the past 15 years, ever since I first got involved with SELF.
At the time, I was living and working in Taiwan. I had read about China’s first “solar village”, a tiny hamlet in the hard-scrabble mountains of Gansu Province. I wrote to SELF and requested to visit Gansu, and perhaps write a story about how solar energy had impacted the lives of those poor farmers who had been living in darkness for centuries.
One thing led to the next, and before I knew it, I was hired to spend two months in Gansu, overseeing the solar household lighting initiative that had been launched by SELF, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the W. Alton Jones Foundation.
There, in this isolated, dirt poor corner of China, I got to observe families turn on a light bulb for the very first time in their lives.
The following passage is an excerpt of a letter from a farmer who had just installed a solar home system:
As the fixtures were about to be plugged in, we waited breathlessly. In a flash, the lights came on, and as they did, an old man from the village rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and exclaimed, “I have long heard that city folks do not need oil to generate light, but in all my seventy years, this is the first time to actually see such a phenomenon with my own eyes. What a beautiful sight to behold!”
Over the course of the next decade and a half, in my work with the SELF, I have witnessed, in village after village, the heavy toll that “energy poverty” exacts on the health, education, and livelihoods of people who do not have access to electricity.
I have also been fortunate enough to see and document the numerous benefits that even modest amounts of electricity, generated by the sun, can deliver to previously unelectrified households and communities.
The purpose of this blog is twofold: first, to inform and educate the general public about energy poverty and its deep relevance to virtually every aspect of sustainable development; and second, to chronicle the many examples of how solar energy has been, and continues to be, harnessed for improvements in the health, education, and economic well-being of rural villagers who have, for far too long, been deprived of what should be a sine qua non of civilized life in the 21st century.
