Archive for February 2008

What are the judges looking for?

Last week Vicki shared her top five pointers to help you with your entry for the Big Green Challenge. Whether you’re just making a start on your application or about to submit it, here’s a quick reminder of the key criteria for the Challenge.

To be in with a good chance of winning, your ideas should have the potential to:

• Achieve a measurable level of carbon saving
• Do things differently
• Last beyond the Big Green Challenge competition
• Be capable of being expanded or copied in a different setting
• Involve a community

There’s more guidance on the judging criteria in our FAQs and rules. If you’ve got a question about how to apply, you can call our helpline on 020 7438 2664 or email admin@biggreenchallenge.org.uk.

5 pointers for applicants

With the application deadline for the Big Green Challenge now only two weeks away, I thought I’d share my top five pointers to help you with your entry.

1. While entries to the Big Green Challenge must be from ‘groups of people’ and those groups must be not-for-profit, there are very few other restrictions. This means you can either set up a new group just to enter or enter as a group or not-for-profit organisation that already exists. Whoever you are, you should think about how you involve other people – you could link up with existing groups in your area or include people from your wider community to develop your idea.

2. We’re looking for fresh thinking on climate change but that doesn’t mean your idea has to be 100% brand new. You could be applying an old idea in a new way or have come up with a better way to encourage the take-up of existing measures. Think laterally about how to tackle the carbon emissions people produce in their everyday lives.

3. This is an ambitious project, and we want YOU to be ambitious about what you can achieve with your ideas. We think if people work together they can have a big impact, which is why we want to see how close you can get to a 60% cut in emissions. Do bear in mind that this is a target to aim towards and we’re interested in how close you can get to it. If you get through to the next stage we will also be able to advise you on how to measure this reduction.

4. The end goal of a share of the £1 million prize pot can seem far away, but remember that we’ll be providing support to the Big Green Challenge competitors in the next two stages of the competition so you won’t have to go it alone.

5. There’s lots of useful info in our FAQs and rules but if you have any questions at all on how to apply, we’re here to help. Call the helpline on 020 7438 2664 or email admin@biggreenchallenge.org.uk.

Domestic biogas plants in Nepal

This week I’ve been looking at some of the visionary renewable energy projects going on in developing countries. To round off the week I thought I’d highlight the work of the Biogas Sector Partnership in Nepal.

The Biogas Sector Partnership has managed the installation of more than 150,000 domestic biogas plants in Nepal. The plants use cattle manure to provide biogas for cooking and lighting. Households with biogas plants have a greatly reduced need for burning fuelwood, making significant savings on carbon emissions.

The use of cattle dung to generate biogas is well known in the Indian subcontinent, but the Nepal project is the biggest of its kind and has been a great success.

Biogas already serves one million people in Nepal (4% of the population) and the sector provides 11,000 permanent jobs. The project is a great example of how small scale can be transformed onto a much bigger scale!

Find out more about the Biogas Sector Partnership project on the Ashden Awards website - where you can also find lots of other interesting case studies.

Solar power in Himalayan villages

Today’s spotlight on renewable energy in developing countries is on the use of solar power in remote Himalayan villages.

The Barefoot College has introduced solar technology to villages in the Himalayan mountains, where winter temperatures can fall to -40°c.

Villagers are provided with the equipment to generate solar electricity and then trained as ‘Barefoot Solar Engineers’ at the organisation’s base in Rajasthan. After the training, they return to their villages where they install the equipment and provide an ongoing maintenance and repair service.

The project has provided solar electricity to more than 15,000 people in Himalayan villages. Barefoot Solar Engineers have installed solar water heaters and lighting systems in homes and have also built ‘solar passive’ houses which collect heat during the day and maintain a temperature of 20°c at night.

With less reliance on burning wood and using diesel and kerosene as sources of power, the communities have been able to drastically reduce their carbon emissions and levels of atmospheric pollution.

Find out more about the Barefoot College project on the Ashden Awards website.

Micro-hydro power in Peru

Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at some innovative examples of how groups are reducing carbon emissions in communities across the UK. I hope that reading about Baywind, BedZED and SusMo has given you some food for thought about action you could take in your own communities.

There’s plenty of inspiring activity going on overseas too, and this week we’ll be highlighting some of the visionary renewable energy projects going on in developing countries.

First up is Practical Action, which has brought micro-hydro power to the Eastern slopes of the Andes in North Peru. The region’s difficult terrain and scattered population mean that few people have access to grid electricity, but with high rainfall and an extensive network of rivers and streams, micro-hydro power provides an efficient source of renewable electricity.

The project’s 47 micro-hydro schemes provide metered electricity to around 5,000 families, improving the standard of lighting, refrigeration and entertainment in the home, as well as enabling the use of better equipment in schools and healthcare facilities.

Improved access to power is improving the economy of the area too - around 25% of households have started or expanded businesses as a result of having electricity, and many people who left the villages to seek employment in the cities have come back and started local businesses.

You can read a case study about micro-hydro power in Peru on the Ashden Awards website.

Reminder: live webchat tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that Vicki Costello will be answering your questions in a live webchat tomorrow at 12.45pm.

You can submit your questions now or during the programme, which you’ll be able to watch here.

For those of you who can’t watch live tomorrow, we’ll be adding a link to the recording on this website.

Targets, targets, targets

With the Climate Change Bill going through parliament, the debate is now about how much the UK needs to cut its CO₂ emissions by 2050 in order to head off unpredictable effects of climate change. Should we be aiming for 60, 80 or even 90%?

Although 2050 is a long way off – around eight general elections away – even a 60% reduction will be a tough target. It’s all too easy for politicians and policymakers to put off really difficult decisions like this by thinking ‘we’ll tackle that next year, after the election’. The same goes for the rest of us, who might think ‘why do something difficult now when we can leave it to our children to sort out?’

But as we all know, the longer we put off big changes, the harder they become. The more we delay, the bigger the cuts we will need to make – and the more difficult it will be to make them.

The Big Green Challenge encourages people to think seriously about how to reach a 60% reduction in CO₂ emissions. Our finalists will have a year to see how much progress they can make towards that target. With people working together in ambitious and creative ways who knows what’s possible?

If you’d like to know more about how communities can measure and reduce their carbon emissions, then take a look at our new FAQs on carbon savings.

The clock is ticking…3 weeks to go!

The deadline for entering the Big Green Challenge is 29 February - that’s 3 weeks from today.

Remember that it’s just your ideas we want at this stage, so the application form is nice and short.

The sooner you start filling in the form, the more time you’ll have to think about your ideas, so get started today!