Those who appreciate the responsibility and privilege they have been given by God should be prepared to embark on the path of responsibility for the world we live in and pledge accountability for its welfare to look after, protect and improve the quality of life for everyone.
The late president and founding father of
the United Arab Emirates
1918 – 2004
Named after the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Zayed Future Energy Prize was established in 2008 to recognise and reward those whose innovations help achieve the changes needed to secure a sustainable future for the planet and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants.
Through the prize winners,1 billion tonnes of CO2 have been saved, 540 million MWh have been produced through renewable energy, 709 million MWh saved through greater efficiency and 355 million kWh generated by solar lanterns.
For the 10th edition of the prize, these figures had grown to 2296 nominations and submissions from 112 countries worldwide. Over 307 million people worldwide have seen tangible improvements in their lives because of the prize winners through greater access to safe and renewable energy, cleaner drinking water, and increased energy efficiency.
tonnes of CO2
have been saved
MWh saved
MWh have been produced
through renewable energy
kWh generated by solar lanterns
The Zayed Future Energy Prize, which promotes innovation in cutting-edge technology in the field of clean energy and sustainability, also has a range of state-of-the-art communication platforms to ensure that the prize’s global community can share ideas, consider solutions, and keep abreast of the latest developments as they happen.
Launched in August 2014, Sustainnovate already has 85,000 users worldwide. These users are drawn from large corporations, small and medium enterprises, NPOs, academics, entrepreneurs and innovators. It includes sections on industry news and case studies as well as having a discussion board and blogs. Sustainnovate also has a stablemate dedicated to younger people – Ysustainnovate, which addresses global high schools and provides learning tools such as video and audio material and an “Ask the Expert” feature.
In addition, 93,500 Facebook users “like” the Zayed Future Energy Prize page and there are 184,000 regular followers on Twitter.
The Zayed Future Energy Prize, which promotes innovation in cutting-edge technology in the field of clean energy and sustainability, also has a range of state-of-the-art communication platforms to ensure that the prize’s global community can share ideas, consider solutions and keep abreast of the latest developments as they happen.
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Previous winners include Toyota, the world’s largest car manufacturing company, which launched its Prius hybrid vehicle in 1997, and Vestas, the world leader in wind turbine technology, striving to establish wind as a reliable and viable alternative to fossil fuels. In total, large corporations have succeeded in reducing CO2 emissions by over 950 million tonnes.
Far too many students across the developing world face a difficult choice; neglect their health or neglect their studies. Why? because the only light they have access to is a dangerous and unhealthy kerosene lamp. Now, ten million children have access to clean solar-powered light thanks to robust and sustainable innovations implemented by the prize-winning Small and Medium Enterprises. This is just one way that SME innovators are helping to improve the lives of others across the world.
The lives of millions of people and thousands of communities across the world are often shaped by the grassroots work of non-profit organisations (NPOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These organisations, not only empower hard-to-reach communities but also influence the sustainable actions of government, business and the general public. These organisations demonstrate their commitment to a sustainable future by helping to provide improved standards of living and quality of life, secure livelihoods, access to education and long-term independence through community-based facilities that give them the tools to create their own sustainability journey.
Those considered for the lifetime achievement award are remarkable individuals. Past winners have made a lasting impression on the planet and positively affected the lives of millions of people worldwide through their long-term vision and leadership in this field. To date, winners have included academics, scientists, business people and politicians – whose influence is set to last long into the future.
Since the launch of the Global High Schools category in 2012, as part of the UAE leadership's commitment to the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative, more than 2,000 students have been directly involved in the projects of award-winning schools and academies. Over 13,000 students in total have benefitted from these projects, as well as 339,000 people living in local communities. Almost 2.1 million kWh have been generated, solar panels with a capacity of 253 kW installed, and CO2 emissions cut by over 1600 tonnes.
Established in 1998, Google is one of the most famous American information technology corporations, with 75,606 employees and energy consumption greater than that of the entire city of San Francisco.
In pursuing the goal of greening its energy supply, Google established itself as the largest cumulative purchaser of renewable energy globally, through a combination of Power Purchase Agreements, direct purchasing of renewable electricity, and building renewable energy facilities onsite. It owns or has long-term offtake agreements for 2.6GW of clean energy—more than any other energy consumer.
Google uses innovative contract structures to bring new renewables online, including applying to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2010 for market-based rate authority. This agreement allowed Google to reap the benefits of PPAs without having to sell the power to the utility at the point of generation and then buy it back at the point of consumption. Many corporations have since applied this model.
Google has also been innovative in applying its expertise to create products and tools that benefit the clean energy sector. Nest, which was acquired by Google in 2014, is the most popular smart thermostat on the market and triggered a wave of imitators. The uptake of smart thermostats is opening up new possibilities in residential demand response, offering cheap flexibility to the grid.
In 2016, Google cut cooling energy usage at one of its data centres by 40% without installing new hardware. It achieved this reduction by using machine learning to optimize the operations of its existing system of controls and sensors.
Created in 2010, Sunna Design is a French company located in Bordeaux that designs and manufactures innovative off-grid solar street lighting solutions specifically suited for extreme climate conditions.
Sunna Design has installed over eight thousand solutions in over twenty countries, won eight international awards (including ones from MIT, Ernst & Young and La Tribune), and worked with prestigious partners (Saft, Schneider Electric and Thorn). The company has filed 14 patents for breakthrough innovations and continues to abide by its mission statement: to deliver best-inclass, reliable and sustainable off-grid public lighting solutions that are affordable for all, even in rural areas in emerging countries, in order to value and foster development.
Sunna’s patented breakthrough technology, an innovative and unique nickel-based battery, allows more than 4,000 charge discharge cycles, meaning it has a lifespan of ten years or more. In addition, these batteries are particularly resistant to thermal variations and can withstand temperatures ranging from -20°C to 70°C, making them the ideal choice for developing countries. This technology allows for reduced total cost of ownership and an enhanced positive environmental impact. Finally, these small batteries don’t need to be buried in the ground, or be put in a case, or be electrically connected to the light mast. They are simply integrated into the head and placed at the top of the mast.
To educate customers on quality and explain the value of Sunna’s heat-resistant battery system, Sunna created the Sunna University, an online platform with e-learning, training and marketing material available for Sunna’s partners.
The SELCO Foundation was registered in 2010, but started in 2008 as SELCO Innovation Labs—a hands-on working hub for finding tailored solutions for grass-root energy-driven problems. The Foundation specializes in creating solutions that are impossible to find, read or understand without first-hand experience of the rural field in which they arise. Moreover, the Foundation has a philosophy of sharing its innovations and learnings in order to help other organizations use energy access as a means of poverty relief.
The SELCO Foundation combines renewable energy technology and innovative financial models to serve off-grid communities in India and Africa and improve access to energy. The Foundation also works to alleviate poverty by providing financial products which are flexible around different earning profiles to increase market access to renewable energy. It provides technologies and implementing processes that improve energy efficiency and availability, such as shared lighting, mobile charging and refrigeration. The Foundation also delivers educational, literacy and healthcare programs to the community. As such, the Foundation has initiated a university program that encourages students to engage with sustainable issues and encourages innovative ideas and entrepreneurship.
The SELCO Foundation is active in rural and urban slum districts across 10 states in India and in four countries in Africa. By using philanthropic capital, it has implemented over a hundred projects based on its Integrated Energy Center or IEC model, which has directly impacted more than 100,000 people.
SELCO Foundation believes that there is a strong link between sustainable energy, development and poverty eradication. Over the last seven years, the Foundation has undertaken various interventions using renewable energies such as solar power. This has shown that poverty can be reduced, thus paving a path of sustainable development for the three billion poor people in the world.
Born in 1954 in Japan, Shuji Nakamura is a Professor of Materials, Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has dedicated his career to investigating and developing the potential of gallium nitride to produce blue LEDs, and, some years later, more powerful blue laser diodes.
He shares the Nobel Prize for developing blue LEDs with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano who worked at Nagoya University in Japan. Nakamura independently developed blue LEDs at Nichia Chemical Industries, a local company in Shikoku Island, Japan.
But it was not until the early to mid-1990s that Nakamura made the critical inventive step to produce a strong blue and green light, allowing red LEDs to be combined to produce any color of light including white. This invention has had, and will continue to have, a massive impact on global energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and clean energy access for some of the world’s poorest people.
LED lights consume far less energy and last far longer than conventional bulbs. They have the potential to vastly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as well as enable cheap solar-powered lights to transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people who have no access to grid electricity.
Shuji Nakamura has commercialized some of his inventions through Soraa, a company he cofounded in the US, providing white LED lamps based on violet LEDs and high-tech competition for the enormous manufacturers that dominate the lighting industry.
In 1995, he went on to develop the blue laser diode, which, because of its short wavelength, is able to store data much more densely than infrared and red laser diodes, quickly leading to the development of the Blu-ray disc. Nakamura’s research group at UCSB is now studying how to leverage blue lasers as the driving engine for a new generation of solid-state lighting.
The promise that has come with significant advances in women’s education in Morocco over the last two decades has yet to reach the country’s rural outskirts where young girls and women still face barriers to accessing grade school, high school and university. However, because of the persistence at the institutional level to transcend these barriers, more promise is on the horizon.
Built in 1973, the Aouda Saadia School is a girls’ school located in an underprivileged district of Marrakech. It includes a college, a high school and a boarding school—essential parts of the compound allowing the girls (who all come from farming families and modest means) to attend school when their homes are far away.
Since 2007, the school has been actively working on raising awareness, training students and implementing environmental actions through their student environmental club. The club’s latest project aims to make the school a model of sustainability by replacing electricity with solar energy throughout the school’s buildings.
It is meant to be carried out by students with the support of teachers and administrative staff, with short-, mid- and long-term goals being:
· Reduce electricity and water bills
· Enable students to develop their skills in project planning, organising and sharing tasks, seeking partners, communicating with different actors, and passing on the knowledge they acquire
· Enable two high schools specializing in technological training in Marrakech to benefit from field observation and practical work
· Raise awareness about sustainable development in schools, in the school’s neighbourhood, and in students’ communities, since most of these girls are future mothers, educators and homemakers
In the face of population growth, industry expansion, and the impacts of climate-change - including scarcity of fresh water and desertification, The Kingdom of Bahrain has made great strides to establish programmes, policies, and strategies to achieve sustainable development.
Cultivating sustainable mindsets begins with students. The Bahrain Bayan School, a K-12 non-profit bilingual school comprising 1,100 students, encourages its students to take on community outreach projects. The school educates students to be global citizens by structuring its curriculum to incorporate sustainable practices, such as vertical farming, rooftop solar or water flow regulations.
A pioneering hands-on student-developed sustainability education platform – Ecolab 360 – stands out. It functions to educate younger students on the use of renewable energy and the benefits of water conservation and food-waste recycling.
A first of its kind in the region, Ecolab 360 helps the larger community adapt sustainability measures into daily practice. Their efforts also effectively show others how micro, distributed solutions practiced in households and businesses can make a positive impact on sustainable development globally.
In Paraguay, one of South America’s poorest countries, almost 90% of the forest is gone. What remains is a protected area called Mbaracayú Natural Reserve; This small area is greatly threatened and inaccessible to local farmers. Furthermore, local communities see their boys go to cities to work; most of the girls remain, and they often get pregnant around the age of 15.
Established in 2009 and located inside the Reserve, the Mbaracayú Educational Center (CEM) is a boarding school for indigenous girls from ages 15 to 18. With a pedagogy that emphasizes learning while doing, the school offers a technical degree in environmental sciences and aims to empower girls to become forest protectors while helping their community develop.
The school faces a consistent lack of energy and hot water, and needs to strengthen community action to raise awareness about the sustainable use of natural resources in the area. In response, students and teachers came up with a three-fold project to create an alternative energy system, comprising:
· A Hybrid PV technology to supply electricity and hot water with innovative dual system technology
· The generation of light through gravity, with no need for the sun or batteries
· The production of biodiesel from the oil of a native tree locally known as kupa’y
By creating an educational kit made up of comics, a puppet show and an audio recording to share lessons learned, this outreach program impacted the lives of hundreds, increasing awareness of sustainability solutions among students, staff, parents and the broader community.
During the war for independence in Croatia (1991 to 1995), villages, school territories and agricultural lands were planted with land mines. It took years to deactivate most of the landmines, with financial setbacks and unfortunate incidents. The last demining activities took place in 2016.
Within this historical context, the Vladimir Nazor School, which counts 110 children ages 12 to 15 years, was reconstructed in 1997. It is located in the small village of Skabrnja, 15 km away from the Adriatic coast.
In spite of a Mediterranean climate, with approximately 2,550 hours of sun per year, the school’s biggest expenses are lighting and imported fuel for heating purposes. To cut those huge expenses, and to no longer rely on the electrical grid, students have started a project to build a new innovative solar PV-T system with the purpose of generating renewable energy.
In terms of sustainable mobility, students will integrate an electric mobile pick-up truck that will be connected to a PV-T solar system and will serve for the student’s cooperative, school’s kitchen and transport to Zadar.
By being directly involved in the project’s implementation, students will gain hands-on experience in sustainable energy generation which will in turn, open up better education prospects for them later in life, as well as make them active agents of change in their local communities.
Tuvalu is a group of nine small coral islands lying south of the Equator in the western Pacific Ocean, forming a chain over a distance of approximately 676 km between Hawaii and Australia. This remote “Polynesian Paradise” is one of the smallest nations in the world, and is on the front lines of climate change with the UN having included it on a list of places most threatened by rising sea levels.
Motufoua Secondary School (MSS) is the Tuvalu government’s only secondary school, with 236 students from different islands. It is a co-educational boarding school located on a difficult-to-reach island, Vaitapu.
The school has two key problems: power cuts that disrupt lessons, especially in technical workshops, due to the school’s unreliable generator, which is dependent on fuel availability and an inconsistent solar supply. And, expensive, unreliable power for the school kitchen.
Currently, the school is almost self-sufficient in terms of food because it has a vegetable garden, as well as a large piggery. And, recently, a student group has proposed a fixed-dome anaerobic digester that would produce lighting for the piggery and surrounds, and a water pump to clean the piggery and water vegetable garden. This sustainable energy solution would eliminate the school’s use of fossil fuel.
Monitoring and data collection on energy production, waste input, and so forth will be used as teaching material with student leaders also demonstrating the outcomes and impacts of the new installations to the whole school’s student body.
Nola Smart is part of a student group that proposed installing a wind turbine, rooftop solar PV panels and piezoelectric floor tiles at their school, Cashmere High School in Christchurch, New Zealand. Their goal wasn’t just clean energy, but also to promote awareness and education.
Students are inspired by the project, and the overall vision is that this will motivate them to entertain other innovative ideas for sustainable energy in their own lives and future careers.
The piezoelectric floor tiles, which generate electricity from the force applied by the footfall of students and teachers, don’t produce as much energy as solar, but “the educational impact is huge” and it is with this mind-set that students are challenged to sustain their passion in renewable energy.
The enthusiasm from students and teachers alike is clear, as they do regular check-ins using the school’s online dashboard to see in real time how much electricity the different renewable power components are generating.
Participating in the project has had a big impact on Nola, who is now studying urban planning and urban design at university and hopes to work with non-profit organisations focused on making cities around the world more sustainable. “I’ve been shown through this project that implementing new ideas can lead to unexpected outcomes that can really change your future.”
“All you need to do is start the conversation about sustainability. The support out there for a more sustainable society is overwhelming.”
When Ibu Bekti first learned about the Kopernik Wonder Women programme, she was already a passionate, widely respected and highly effective advocate for the empowerment of Indonesian women and children.
It was no surprise, then, that the Kopernik programme resonated with her. The Wonder Women initiative trains Indonesian women to become micro entrepreneurs by selling simple solar lanterns, water filters and clean cookstoves in their communities.
“I saw how these technologies could be an enabling factor for women to become independent – to be able to save money and energy, and to live a healthier life,” she says. With access to safe drinking water still limited on Flores Island, and electricity equally unreliable, water filters and solar lamps “are extremely useful for us.”
To date, she’s responsible for the distribution of more than 300 clean energy technologies to small communities on Flores Island, Indonesia.
Her commitment to improving lives and her entrepreneurial spirit led her to use these technologies to help small farmers who often carry a lot of debt, in part because they spend valuable cash to buy kerosene for lighting.
Her solution was to trade Kopernik solar lamps for the farmers’ produce. This then created another opportunity, and she and a partner launched a café in 2016 that not only uses the produce but also educates customers on healthy eating.
Having worked with thousands of low-income women since the 1980s, Ibu Bekti is leveraging the Kopernik Wonder Women programme to continue empowering women, support communities and care for the planet.
Passive-cooling wind towers (Barajeel in Arabic) have been part of local architecture in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for generations, and one school in the country is pioneering a modern take on the technology that could dramatically lower the cost of air conditioning.
The Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bangladesh Islamia School is leveraging its Zayed Future Energy Prize award to put itself on the front lines of a cutting-edge cooling innovation that could make it the first passive-cooling school in the UAE.
The school installed a 12kW rooftop solar PV system to generate some of its own electricity, but it’s the wind tower project that seeks to dramatically reduce electricity demand for air conditioning in the first place.
The project will bring the traditional wind tower into the 21st century, “aiming to develop a leading alternative to energy-intensive mechanical air-conditioning systems,” says Dr Ben Richard Hughes, the project leader and a director at Free Running Buildings, the company designing and innovating the technology in partnership with the school.
Students are playing a critical role in the project that will install 24 FREECOOL wind towers at the school. Firstly, they were key in bringing the out-of-the-box idea from concept to reality and are now providing crucial feedback during the pilot and subsequent implementation phases of the project.
Dr Hughes noted that the Zayed Future Energy Prize award not only inspired the students to imagine a better future; it also demonstrated a confidence in the technology that has “given the project team the ability to design improved innovations in development of the system, emboldening them to pursue more creative solutions to problems encountered.”
When the students from Belvedere College in Dublin, Ireland came to Abu Dhabi for the Zayed Future Energy Prize awards ceremony, their project proposal sought to use sustainable urban agriculture as a learning tool.
After meeting other Prize winners, they were inspired to think bigger. Now, their goal is urban farming that will rely almost entirely on inputs from natural resources, renewable power and waste streams available on the school grounds.
Sonnen, a Small and Medium Enterprise from Germany, was one of the winners. Since then, the company has provided valuable input, consulting and site visits, and has given Belvedere one of its storage batteries.
A conversation that began with 2016 Global High Schools winner Schüler-Forschungs-Zentrum Südwürttemberg (SFZ) of Germany continues today. SFZ’s project included student-built wind and hydro power generating facilities, and an online system to monitor the power plants.
Working together, Belvedere and SFZ sought and received a European Union Erasmus grant to support cooperation between the two schools.
Their collaboration includes connecting the two schools’ renewable power projects via SFZ’s online system, developing project-based-learning curriculums based on their projects, and setting up an online platform for students from the two schools to exchange experiences and ideas.
Looking at how much has been achieved in a short amount of time, Tobias Beck of SFZ sees these initiatives as “fertilizer for new student ideas and projects … and a model of sustainable behaviour in school education.”
Simon O’Donell of Belvedere adds, “It’s this kind of collaboration and sharing of sustainability visions among peers that will nurture the innovation that is essential to a sustainable future.”
When students of the non-profit Starehe Girls’ Centre & School outside Nairobi, Kenya pressed their principal to allow them to apply for the Zayed Future Energy Prize, Sister Jane Soita initially rebuffed them, recalling that she said: “‘How can we, as a small school, beat all the schools in Africa?’ They said ‘Sister, let us try’, and still I said ‘No.’ Finally, I gave in and said, ‘Yes’.”
The result? The group of 10 students – who became the school’s “solar pioneers” – prepared an application, submitted it and won. Today a 25kW solar PV array funded by the Prize, along with solar water heaters installed in the school kitchens and 10 solar street lights have cut the school’s electricity bill in half.
With these savings, Sister Jane was able to educate 10 additional girls at the boarding school, which educates academically gifted girls who come from financially poor families across the country.
Nora Magwere, a renewable energy business partner to the solar pioneers, says that as a result of the project, “Many of them want to be engineers, and as a woman in this industry, I am very encouraged. These students are my heroes.”
Their work continues in other ways, as they coach younger students to take up their new “Cool Green Campaign”, an effort to spread the word about renewable energy to other schools in the region.
Speaking of the pioneers, who are soon off to university, Sister Jane says: “I’m so impressed. I’m so happy for them. I’ve come to believe that poverty is not a hindrance to success. These girls have brains. Everything they put their hands on, they win.”
The wind turbine and solar PV panels generating electricity at the Waterford Kamhlaba School in Swaziland, and the school’s bio digester, which produces cooking fuel from waste, are having a huge impact at the school and beyond – in ways you might not expect.
Implemented after the school won a Zayed Future Energy Prize Global High Schools award, the sustainability projects themselves provided an opportunity for students to “learn by doing,” says Aya El Alami, a member of the student team on the project.
The group not only identified school energy needs, but also designed solutions, and installed and tested the equipment, giving them early experience in project management, resource optimization and supplier management.
Beyond the school walls, the project serves as a model for the wider community as it continues to “trigger a considerable chain reaction” in Swaziland, encouraging people to become more sustainable at home and work.
Further afield, the success of the projects inspired the 17-school United World Colleges association, of which Waterford Kamhlaba is a member, to commit to making their school campuses carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon negative by 2050.
For Aya, the project solidified her passion for renewable energy. After graduating high school, she spent a year working at the climate-focused non-profit Germanwatch, and is now in university at Sciences Po – Paris, studying climate policy.
“Working on the Zayed Future Energy Prize project with a team of talented students enabled me to expand my entrepreneurial orientation and my interest in the field of sustainable development, convincing me of my goal to have a leadership position in the field of climate finance and politics.”
Joyce Mhango is a solar electrical technician from rural Malawi who can assemble, install, maintain and repair solar PV home systems. She’s also a widow, a grandmother and a mother of six that is helping to bring electricity to her community.
This work is crucial, since only 1% of rural communities in Malawi are connected to the national grid, forcing children living in villages to study and read by candlelight or with a kerosene lamp, if available, and compelling the workday to end at sunset.
Joyce is part of a first-of-its-kind programme established by the Zayed Solar Academy to provide an all-women’s programme to train rural solar electrical engineers through hands-on learning for women of all ages and education levels.
It’s a new model designed to serve people just like Joyce who live in the most rural communities, and often are the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach, poorest, least mobile and least educated.
The programme also provides business training, so the women are prepared to run their own businesses selling and installing solar equipment.
Since winning the Zayed Future Energy Prize in the Global High Schools category in 2014, the Zayed Solar Academy has grown into a technical college, developed the first solar curriculum for Malawi, and won European Union funding to develop solar training centres in six institutions around Malawi. Future plans include developing the Zayed Solar Research and Training Centre for Rural Electrification for Africa, a think tank and research centre.
Once upon a time, Joyce supported her family by selling bananas and used clothes. Today, she’s not only earning a better income, but she’s also helping to bring the transformative power of solar energy to her entire community.
Adan Musa, Principal of the SOS HG Sheikh Secondary School in Somaliland, is saddened when he recalls his childhood – a time when lions and other wild animals roamed the vast forest that covered much of the country. Today, the forest is entirely gone.
Charcoal production and a heavy reliance on livestock, especially goats, have left just ten per cent of the original forest cover.
SOS Sheikh, nicknamed “the Eton of Somaliland”, is pioneering ways to combat the problem. The school recently installed a biogas plant that uses waste food from its kitchen, and local manure, to produce biogas for cooking in the kitchen.
Combined with the installation of a 30kW solar array, the school has succeeded in reducing its fuel costs from its diesel generator and gas stoves by 50 per cent.
But more importantly, the 2016 Zayed Future Energy Prize winner is acting as a beacon of education and community outreach.
Hassan, a student at the school, is part of the Energy Management Club. He and his friends train other schools on how to become energy champions. “We learned so much from winning the prize… I think we have a responsibility to share that knowledge.”
Many of SOS Sheikh’s pupils will end up in leadership roles, whether in government or business, and will carry with them a resolve developed during their learning at SOS Sheikh that Somaliland must transition towards a sustainable future.
Winning the Zayed Future Energy Prize was the first and vital step on that journey.
The village of Chipendeke is a world away from Zimbabwe’s power plants and the national electricity grid they supply. However, right by Chipendeke’s backyard is a natural energy source that local citizens have tapped to bring electricity to this community of about 100 thatched-roof homes. Within this context, harnessing the waters of the Wengezi Chitora River, took a full year of gruelling effort by Noah Senga Senga and 12 other hardy volunteers, who worked up to 18-hour days to build a micro-hydroelectric plant.
Working with UK-based non-profit organisation and Zayed Future Energy Prize winner Practical Action, Noah and his team built the plant, based on a community ownership model. Practical Action provided the technical expertise and the hydroelectric plant equipment. The impact on the community has been dramatic, bringing a long list of benefits, says Noah, the secretary of the power plant.
“With electricity, farmers can power workshops to repair damaged tools and can power grinding mills, which vastly increases their productivity.
“It’s possible now to use refrigerators to store vaccines and drugs, hence reducing the distance travelled to the national grid-electrified health centres. Lighting at the health centre makes it possible to have [lighted] 24-hour maternity delivery services.” Previously it was done by candlelight.
“Our schools have retained experienced teachers, hence an improvement in pass rates.
”Local shop owners have electricity for refrigerating their products, much to the joy of their customers, who have boosted purchases. These shops have derived extra business through television shows and cell phone charging.
Summing up, Noah says, “I feel very happy and proud because we are seeing our creation working, and we are showing people our success story.”
The Tanzania Green School Network comprises three secondary schools in the Kilimanjaro region—Makomu, Kirya and Kileo—and aims to be a local knowledge centre for practical environmental education.
The Network does this by engaging the neighbouring community through outreach initiatives with students, parents, and village and ward leaders to promote the use of efficient alternative energy sources, reduce deforestation, help monitor and combat the effects of climate change, and promote sustainability.
Winning the Zayed Future Energy Prize in the Global High Schools Category, Africa, in 2013 has since allowed the Network’s schools to operate in the evening for the first time, thanks to an 8-kW solar PV system that supports the increased energy requirements. The Network has also benefitted from the introduction of energy-efficient cooking stoves and a biogas digester system at the Makomu School, significantly reducing energy costs.
Over 30 students participated in the installation and deployment of the new technologies, from conception to execution, making student involvement the cornerstone of this journey and more than 1000 students are benefitting from the project.
Liter of Light started teaching people how to make homemade solar lanterns in the Philippines in 2011, and since winning the prize in 2015, it has extended its operations to communities as far away as Malaysia, Kenya and Colombia, lighting not only homes but public places too. Tens of thousands of households and shops in the Philippines benefit from these solar lanterns which save their owners US$10 a month on average in electricity bills while reducing carbon emissions.
Since winning the prize in 2015, Liter of Light has expanded its reach to over 15 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, and now aims to light up one million lives with Liter of Light technology by 2017.
M-KOPA Solar is a Kenyan company supplying solar energy appliances. Today, they sell 2,500 systems a week through a network of over 500 retailers. Within two years of its founding, M-KOPA had connected over 100,000 homes to affordable and clean solar power in a region where 20 million people live in communities with no access to grid electricity; many of whom were previously dependent on expensive and unhealthy paraffin for lighting and cooking. The company has set an ambitious target to have one million homes using its equipment for heating, cooking, lighting, radios and charging telephones by the year 2018 and it is expanding its operations to neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania.
Felix Ogutu, a student from rural Kenya, and his family, have seen many benefits from signing up to M-KOPA’s ground-breaking scheme. The light that M-KOPA provides has ensured Felix does not have to study in the dark and that his family are able to fetch water for their home even when the night draws in. Felix now has round-the-clock access to the Internet and has used this to participate in a bachelor’s course in IT developing apps.
Dr. Ashok Gadgil, the Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, won the lifetime achievement award in 2012 for his part in the development of the “Berkeley-Darfur” fuel efficient cooking stoves, bringing health, safety and environmental benefits.
Many people have to use inefficient rudimentary stoves, damaging the environment and the health of millions displaced by the conflict in Darfur. The Berkeley-Darfur stove is a metal construction which reduces the amount of firewood needed by more than half. A total of 45,000 units were distributed to women in refugee camps, who had previously had to walk seven hours a day, three to five times a week to gather fuel, running the risk of physical assault.
As well as over a quarter of a million people having cleaner stoves, 100 million households are benefitting from efficient lighting in 30 developing countries and one million people have access to safe drinking water thanks to the pioneering work of Dr. Gadgil and his team.
Nomadic village head Angchuk, took part in the project pilot in 2013 whereby each home in his community received a Plug and Play Orb Energy manufactured solar system. In the first 12 months of the pilot, Angchuk reported that the effect of switching to solar had provided multiple benefits for the 15 families in the village, with dramatic improvements in terms of health. This included the complete eradication of the persistent chronic bronchial cough that each family suffered from as a result of inhaling kerosene smoke and fumes, as well as virtually unlimited light. The independent non-profit Alta Solar Project conducted the programme in remote villages in Ladakh, India with the aim of replacing polluting and health damaging kerosene lamps with solar lighting from Orb Energy.
Photo credit: Altar Solar Project - Orb Energy, India
Subsistence farmer, Ananda Mohanto from Kandasar, India, struggled to irrigate his field with clean water to protect his crops and support his family. His life and prospects were dramatically changed by the KB treadle pump made by International Development Enterprises India (IDEI), which provided an innovative and affordable solution to his problem. A US$336 loan secured a pump and he immediately began to reap the benefits with irrigation no longer an issue, and he and his wife were able to cultivate green beans and eggplants. This also yielded a steady profit from selling vegetables in the local market with which Ananda purchased a new kiln for the family. After repaying the loan, he was also able to purchase many essential items for his family, from schoolbooks for the children to a bicycle.
Without access to a clean and reliable water source, Ananda was unable to support his family. He felt hopeless.
Then he discovered KB treadle pumps from IDEI.
An IDEI representative visited Ananda and explained to him how the pump operates.
Ananda was full of excitement on the day he received the pump. Was this the solution to his problems?
Finally, Ananda is able to irrigate his fields regularly. He and his wife can now cultivate green beans and eggplants, yielding healthy returns.
The pump has changed Ananda’s life. At last, he and his wife have hope again.
Off Grid Electric provides solar power services to off-the-grid customers, offering end-to-end solutions that overcome the typical barriers to solar adoption in frontier markets.
The SME establishes direct lifetime relationships with their customers and offers a ten-year solar leasing model with free ongoing service. They also allow customers to upgrade their systems without having to buy a new product.
Because their solar home systems are cheaper than the kerosene or diesel alternatives, they are able to provide access to clean electricity for over 50,000 people. This allows a household to save, after installation, up to $15.50 per month on lighting and mobile phone charging bills, and reduces carbon emissions by 140 kg of CO2 and 1.45 kg of black carbon per household per year.
As the winner of the 2016 Zayed Future Energy Prize – SME, Off Grid Electric expanded its reach. They now serve populations in Tanzania and Rwanda, and are working to further expand. Their partnership with the government of Tanzania means they will soon be able to reach one million homes and help create 15,000 jobs locally.
In Malawi, which is one of the least electrified countries in the world with less than 1% of the rural population connected to the national grid, 2014 Global High Schools category (Africa) winner the Nkhata Bay School Authority, which operates the Maula and Sanga Community Secondary Day Schools, launched its 2.5 hectare Zayed Solar Academy and Zayed Energy and Ecology Centre in July 2014.
The centres focus on training rural solar engineers, making solar equipment accessible to all, and demonstrating how solar lighting can save on household costs versus kerosene, which has severe human health and environmental pollution consequences.
Learning and multimedia resources for the two schools is also provided, including a library, an e-learning centre and science labs. In addition to the solar installation course, the centre delivers practical classes in bricklaying, carpentry and welding, using the ongoing construction of the centre as an opportunity to provide on-the-job training.
Kopernik delivers sustainable energy technologies to “last-mile” communities, thereby helping to reduce poverty. The organisation has reached over 370,000 people and distributed over 90,000 units of clean energy technologies across 26 countries. Since it was founded, Kopernik has learned how to promote clean energy products to “base of the pyramid” markets by building trust and commitment and overcoming financial barriers.
Kopernik’s Wonder Women initiative provides access to clean energy technologies for people in remote villages in Indonesia. By training women to become micro-social entrepreneurs through the sale of clean energy products, the project helped empower more than 550 women, thus connecting 85,000 people to clean energy technologies.
Winning the prize in January 2016 allowed Kopernik to expand its technology distribution programme to five new locations in Indonesia, making clean energy technologies available to more people. Kopernik also expanded their reach by providing access to agricultural processing tools for smallholder farmers who do not have the technology to add value to their produce.
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