Shell and GravityLight Illuminate Off-Grid Regions in Kenya

While access to electricity does not yet span the globe, the force of gravity is universal. The GravityLight Foundation has taken advantage of Newtonian physics to create a cost-effective light source that runs on gravity. Simply by lifting a weight and letting it descend, GravityLight can provide light and transform impoverished homes.

In 2015, GravityLight’s inventive engineering earned it the Shell Springboard Award, a grant of nearly $200,000 used to fund innovative businesses with low carbon footprints. Together, Shell and the GravityLight Foundation have successfully put GravityLights into production and introduced them to 50 communities in Kenya.

Kenya, which has one of the largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, has expended considerable effort to create an impressive power sector. In just four years, Kenya has increased the amount of households with access to electricity from 25 percent to 46 percent. Kenyan companies such as KenGen are working to utilize renewable energy sources, and geothermal energy looks promising.

A capacity of approximately 2,295 MW is available on Kenya’s power grid. However, off the grid, in remote areas of the country, only 11.5 MW are currently available. The Shell and GravityLight partnership intends to provide electric light to those off-grid regions in Kenya.

Electricity is crucial to improving the lives of the world’s poor. Access to light alone improves education and the economy by allowing people to study and work after daylight hours. However, the resources required to produce light can be extremely expensive, especially for those living in poverty. The world’s poor spend an estimated 30 percent of their income on kerosene needed to burn in lamps. GravityLight eliminates the need for kerosene to produce light, which is not only cheaper but also safer. Kerosene fumes are known carcinogens that are toxic for both humans and the environment.

Because the GravityLight Foundation uses local people and businesses to organize the sale of its product, marketing for GravityLight supplies Kenyans with jobs. By providing employment, GravityLight is bringing bright futures as well as bright homes to off-grid regions in Kenya.

Shell and GravityLight are not the only groups seeking to improve energy accessibility in order to aid impoverished populations in Africa. In 2015, the same year GravityLight won the Springboard grant, the U.S. government passed the Electrify Africa Act. The act aims to provide 60 million households and businesses throughout Africa with electricity.

Around the globe, 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity. If GravityLight’s debut in Kenya is successful, the foundation plans to continue spreading light throughout the world.

– Mary Efird

Photo: Flickr

Water Quality in Kosovo: Story of Two Lakes

Water quality in Kosovo has been a topic of discussion in recent years. Kosovo’s two main water resources are the Badovac and Batlava lakes in the region of Pristina, which supply almost 1.8 million Kosovars with water. But climate change has strongly affected the lakes water levels, which have fluctuated from excessive water accumulation to drought levels in a period of two years.

New Infrastructure

These abrupt climate changes have impacted the almost 200,000 people who live in Pristina, the capital and largest city of Kosovo. For instance, in 2012 severe snow and blizzards affected the area, a year after, flooding impacted Kosovars and the year following that brought with it a drought.

In 2014, Kosovo lived through the worst water shortage in three decades, according to public officials in the country. Around 400,000 people in Pristina faced reduced drinking water supplies thanks to the low water levels of the Badovac and Batlava, a problem that directly impacted the water quality in Kosovo.

However, last year the lakes reached their maximum level, making the extraction of water difficult. The Kosovar system is based on pipes that work in conjunction with a water processing plant, some of which don’t have the capacity to process water when the Badovac and Batlava are at their highest levels.

To resolve the problem, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) informed that, the European Commission and the German Development Bank granted Kosovar around 17 million euros in order for the country to make improvements to the infrastructure of their water processing plant system and to guarantee water for its citizens.

They Planned to Poison The Lake

Kosovo’s government cut off the water supply from the Badovac reservoir in 2014 after police arrested several suspects linked to the Islamic State (IS) who were allegedly planning to poison the lake.

This reservoir supplies half of Pristina with water. The Guardian informed that policemen found a suspicious substance in the lake. Over the last two years, officials have identified 314 Kosovars who have joined the Islamic State.

Water Quality

Water quality in Kosovo is not perfect. In bacterial and chemical testing of the water, the Water and Waste Regulatory Office reported a 90 percent rate of purity, while the international standard is above 99 percent. Citizens are recommended to buy water instead of to drink it directly from the tap.

– Dario Ledesma

Photo: Flickr

10 Facts About the Polish Genocide

Genocide brings to mind horrific images of concentration camps and apartheid rule, however, few picture the planned extermination of Poles in Volhynia by Ukrainian Nationalists in the 1940’s. Despite its impact on Polish history, it is still largely unknown. In hopes of spreading awareness, here are 10 facts about the Polish genocide:

1. Genocide is defined as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
2. Prior to the outbreak of WWII, Volhynia had been divided between Russia and Poland. As nationalism crept through Germany and other parts of Europe, Volhynia became a coveted voivodeship (governorship) causing tensions between the Ukrainian population and the Poles (at the time Ukraine was part of a changing political landscape).
3. Volhynia was an agricultural region in the northeast of pre-war Poland and was referred to in Polish mythology as the Kresy (Borderlands).
4. The interwar Polish political climate was full of discriminatory practices that gave rise to a drastic anti-Polish sentiment among many Ukrainians. For instance, Ukrainians were barred from government jobs, protests were suppressed and Orthodox churches were destroyed with people forced to convert to Catholicism.
5. Between 1942 and 1945 the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its military counterpart the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out an ethnic cleansing of Polish Volhynians as a means of ensuring that Volhynia would not remain under Polish control.
6. The massacre was staged to look like an unplanned peasant riot as part of an “anti-polish operation.” UPA documents recorded the planned extermination of the Polish population and recounted that “the resistance of the Polish self-defense diminished to an extent that the Ukrainian operations recall German actions against the Jews.”
7. The UPA units that carried out the massacres used axes instead of firearms and recruited Ukrainian peasants to reinforce the façade of a spontaneous uprising. A survivor recalls the brutality, describing the slaughter of a church mass with body parts strewn around and having to see a young man she lived with dragged behind a carriage and then thrown at the house. Historians estimate 60,000 Polish civilians were killed.
8. The aggression between Ukrainians and Poles was not limited to the region of Volhynia, it was also present in other parts of the region with mixed populations like Lvov, Tarnopol, Stanisławów and other voivodeships bordering Volhynia.
9. Poles killed during the Polish-Ukrainian clashes in the city of Lvov were commemorated by the Eaglet Cemetery (Cmentarz Orlat), which was destroyed under Soviet rule.In 2005 the Eaglet cemetery reopened with the attendance of both Polish and Ukrainian presidents, a major moment in Polish-Ukrainian history.
10. The massacre of Polish citizens in Volhynia was not originally classified as a genocide. In 2013 Polish Parliament voted to refer to the events as an ethnic cleansing with signs of genocide in an effort to improve Polish-Ukrainian relations. In 2016 a resolution adopted by 432 lawmakers of the 460-seat parliament stated, “The victims of the crime committed in the 1940’s by Ukrainian nationalists were not duly commemorated, and the mass murder was not defined as genocide in accordance with the historical truth.”

Even after its classification as genocide, the Volhynian massacres remain unknown to many Ukrainians. Awareness is spreading as Polish leadership seeks to edify the public about this historic tragedy. As politics change and new global leadership arises there is hope that this remembrance of history will encourage a more peaceful future.

– Rebekah Korn

Photo: Flickr

Water Quality in Guatemala: Battling Drought and Disease

Water quality in Guatemala has become an increasingly important issue because the country is facing one of its worst droughts in decades. The drought has reduced access to clean water, and poor water quality has resulted in the spread of waterborne illnesses throughout the country. Additionally, this lack of water means immense food shortages and increasing malnutrition among children in Guatemala.

Approximately 43 percent of Guatemalan children under the age of five are fatally malnourished, and among rural Guatemalan children this number rises to around 80 percent. It is in rural areas that the drought has the strongest effect, as there is less access to clean water and there are more stagnant bodies of water that increase the spread of disease.

Due to the drought, Guatemala’s disposal of solid and liquid waste in local bodies of water is having a larger impact than ever. With limited quantities of clean water, the waste that is deposited in rivers makes the spread of disease and infection in the population even more rampant. Access to clean water is a major issue facing the country, but there have been some strides in resolving it.

Guatemala was able to reduce the percentage of citizens without access to drinking water to 50 percent, which met the 2015 Millennium Development Goal for access to clean water. In 2016, 93 percent of Guatemalans had access to non-polluted water, which is an impressive statistic.

There are also nonprofit organizations working to improve water quality in Guatemala. Water for People is an organization that focuses on providing clean water to certain communities in impoverished nations. They currently have a number of projects running in Guatemala, one of which is the Everyone Forever program. The program pledges to provide water and sanitation to every single person in those communities, forever. This is a very ambitious project, but it is also incredibly important.

In addition to simply providing clean water to those in Santa Cruz Del Quiche, or San Bartolome Jocotenago, Water for People creates a model that can be replicated by governments to provide water and sanitation for all parts of the nation. The organization also has programs for watershed management and school programming related to water sanitation.

There are also, of course, programs set in place by United Nations agencies such as the Pan American Health Organization, UNDP, and UNICEF. These organizations put in place measures that will raise the living conditions of people in poor communities, primarily through improving water sanitation systems.

Ultimately, water quality in Guatemala is a major issue, but there are improvements being made. Through collaboration between NGOs, the Guatemalan government and United Nations agencies, the issue of water quality and access in the country will hopefully be resolved soon, improving the quality of life for all of its residents.

– Liyanga De Silva

Photo: Flickr

How to Solve Energy Poverty

The entirety of human civilization uses 14 terawatts (14 followed by 12 zeroes) of power per year. Developed countries consume the majority of that total. The United States, although only 5 percent of the world’s population, accounts for 25 percent of its energy consumption. The lack of available power in underdeveloped countries fosters more demand for power at an unrealistic cost for families living on $2 or less a day. Low incomes combined with expensive and non-renewably sourced power fosters a cycle of energy poverty.

Nearly two billion people worldwide do not have access to modern energy. In less developed nations with prominent health crises, a lack of reliable energy sources can cause business owners to lose customers or even lead to the loss of life-saving vaccines. These communities rely heavily on burning coal, waste or wood for cooking, heating and light. To equip the underdeveloped world with modern energy options and enable the use of exuberant amounts of energy in the developed world would require roughly 30 terawatts of energy by 2050, according to experts.

The best formula to solve energy poverty has been widely debated. Some argue for coal plants, citing China as a success story. According to the U.N. Development Programme, China has helped millions of people out of poverty and to join the middle class by burning more coal. However, China is now also the leading nation in greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of burning coal are not limited to the environment. Smoke from burning coal and other biomass cause respiratory diseases that kill over 3.5 million people each year.

Alison Doig, the senior adviser on climate change at Christian Aid, warns that the poor are hit the hardest by climate change. An analysis by Cafod, Christian Aid and thinktank The Overseas Development Institute explains that the perpetuation of current coal-reliant energy policies risks leaving one billion people without access to electricity and three billion without access to clean cooking facilities by 2030.

The next options pit centralized distribution against distributed generation.

• • Centralized distribution follows the current electrical power management model with a central plant dispatching energy through transmission lines.
    CONS: The implementation of centralized power requires the construction of transmission lines and steep capital investments.
  • Distributed PV (photovoltaic or solar energy) has the capacity to supply power closer to the demand, eliminating transmission loss that might occur with transmission lines.
    CONS: Panel output intermittency cannot be directly managed and it is unclear how much distributed PV can be supported by an electrical grid.

Although arguing the cost-efficiency and sustainability of various solutions has made implementation of any one option near impossible, here are some suggestions to solve energy poverty:

A study released by the International Energy Agency and two U.N. bodies, the Development Programme and the Industrial Development Organization, states that energy poverty can be solved without breaking the banks of nations or contributing to the growing climate change issue. The study emphasizes “parts and patterns” as opposed to “packages and services”; that is, giving communities the capacity and training to solve their own energy problems. Providing energy to the poor as outlined in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals program would require only .06 percent of global GDP. Aiding the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity and the three billion who rely on burning biomass could be simpler than once estimated. According to the study, by 2030, electricity generation would only increase globally by 2.9 percent, demand for oil would increase by less than 1 percent and carbon emissions would be 0.8 percent above current projections.

Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane is a co-founder of Solar CITIES, a nonprofit organization that works with residents of poor neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt and other African nations to install rooftop solar water heaters and small-scale biofuel systems. Culhane suggests that aid organizations use their financial clout to buy materials needed for small energy projects and distribute them at radically reduced costs.

The Sierra Club Energy Scorecard cites four key recommendations in response to failed energy poverty alleviation efforts by multilateral development banks (MDBs):

1. Banks should increase funding for energy access projects to account for at least 50 percent of energy portfolio financing until the regions affected have 100 percent energy access.
2. Banks need to increase funding for off-grid and mini-grid clean energy projects.
3. The MDBs should establish clear criteria for defining “energy access” to improve consistency when measuring the efficacy of energy access projects.
4. MDBs should commit to clearer reporting on energy access at the project level. Currently, project descriptions can be vague in regard to expected outcomes, using inconsistent measures that make it difficult to establish an understanding of activities and funding levels.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2014 to 2024 the “Decade of Sustainable Energy for All” and established the Sustainable Energy for All initiative in 2011. Research is still being conducted to determine the best methods to solve energy poverty, but with the help of aid organizations and the U.N., SE4ALL has made supporting universal energy access a priority.

– Rebekah Korn

Photo: Flickr