2008 Ashden Awards honour projects in India, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Bangladesh

A pioneering project that produces efficient fuel-saving woodstoves and kilns for small industries in South India using designs developed by the Indian Institute of Science has won top prize in the 2008 Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) works in Karnataka and Kerala to cut pollution and deforestation and improve health and working conditions for workers in the many small South India industries that use wood as their main fuel, and plans expansion to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Using grants from a variety of sources, TIDE co-operates with the Institute’s Centre for Sustainable Technologies to commercialize its designs for fuel-saving stoves and kilns tailor-made for specific small industries. To date 110,000 workers enjoy better conditions thanks to the 10,000 products TIDE has supplied, saving around 43,000 tonnes of wood each year. Grant funders have included the India-Canada Environment Facility, The Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, the Science and Society Division of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, ETC Foundation Netherlands and the UNDP-GEF small grants programme.

“There is a serious energy crisis in rural India, but access to energy and its efficient use, accompanied by well-conceived and well-implemented enabling mechanisms, has the potential to transform rural areas,” said Svati Bhogle (centre of photograph)  in accepting the award on TIDE’s behalf. Ashden Awards chair Sarah Butler-Sloss noted that the scheme has huge potential to expand to thousands more small industries.

TIDE was one of six international sustainable energy projects honoured by the annual Ashden Awards, which this year were presented by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya (pictured at the left). The Ashden Awards, a UK-based charity, works to increase the use of local sustainable energy worldwide by finding, rewarding and publicizing the work of leading sustainable energy programmes working across the developing world and in the UK. The other winners were:

 

  • Cooperativa Regional de Eletrificação Rural do Alto Uruguai Ltda (CRERAL) invested in two small, local hydro-electric plants to supply reliable power via a local grid to its 6,300 mainly rural customers in the south of Brazil;

     

  • Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP) has, since 2001, enabled sales of more than 402,000 photovoltaic solar home systems to approximately 1.6 million yak and other partly-nomadic herders in remote areas of western China who previously used kerosene, butter lamps and candles for light;

     

  • Ethiopia’s Gaia Association provided ethanol-fuelled stoves to 1,780 families living in the Kebribeyah refugee camp, providing both clean wood-free cooking and protecting women who no longer must forage for wood.. The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a sugar by-product which previously caused pollution;

     

  • Aryavart Gramin Bank in the poor Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which introduced solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to back-up the unreliable grid power for some of its branches, recognised the potential for its many off-grid customers. Through a bulk supply and installation agreement with TATA-BP, the bank has made loans to 20,000 customers and 10,000 PV solar-home-systems have been installed;

     

  • Tanzania’s Kisangani Smith Group’s volunteers have developed two kinds of efficient biomass stoves that can be hand-made by local blacksmiths. One burns agricultural residues or sawdust, which is readily available in Tanzania’s Njombe region, replacing widespread use of charcoal; the other is an improved wood-burning stove targeted for rural areas. More than 3,500 stoves have been sold by the group and its trainees, complementing its work in training blacksmiths and in reforestation;

     

  • Fruits of the Nile, a local company in southern Uganda, is helping small farmers use solar power to dry and export surplus pineapple and bananas, using simple solar driers operated by 120 rural producer groups who buy fruit from over 800 farmers and employ about 500 labourers. Fruits of the Nile exports about 120 tonnes/year from its Njeru factory, using fair trade standards, and is converting the whole supply chain to organic production.

 

This story was prepared from information on the Ashden Awards website; the photographs, of Ms. Wangari and Ms. Bhogle at the June 19, 2008 awards ceremony in London, and of the Kisangani Smith Group in Tanzania, also come from the website.

 

For other stories about efficient woodburning stoves, see:

Tanzanian blacksmiths pass on skills, creating jobs and saving forests

Fuel-efficient traditional stove saves wood in Eritrea

New stove burns crop waste, transforms rural life in China


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