Archive | February, 2012

Why are people with mobile phones still using kerosene for light?

27 Feb

Kerosene Lamp in India

Reprinted, with thanks to the Fifth Estate. See the original version here.

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We’ve heard it all before. The developing world, they are so poor. They live in the dark. They have no other options.

But is this really true?

I’ve been travelling across some of the poorest countries in the  Asia-Pacific with Good Return and everywhere I go I see people with poor-quality light. People using wood fires.

And this isn’t unusual – almost 40 per cent of the world’s population rely on some form of biomass for cooking and heating and 20 per cent have no access to electricity. And yet another 15 per cent only have access to unreliable electricity networks.

But many of the people I’ve seen are also riding motor bikes, using top-quality shampoo and laundry detergent, and are talking on mobile phones.

The International Telecommunications Union stated that by the end of 2011, five billion people worldwide had mobile phones – and the coverage rate in the developing world was 79 per cent.

Which means there are people using kerosene for light and wood for fires, but mobiles for communication.

And actually, there are a significant number of people like this.

How has this happened?

I’ve read over and over that there are three main issues associated with energy poverty; three issues which standards groups, certifications schemes, Clean Development Mechanism schemes, donor funds and entire research centres have spent years working on: access to information, access to after-sales service and access to finance.

But didn’t people face these same barriers before they bought a mobile phone?

Perhaps a few answers

I know people are not happy with their kerosene light and wood fires. But when I spoke to my investment banker brother he was clear: “The benefits of the change do not outweigh the costs.”

Perhaps people do not understand the benefits – maybe because marketers keep focusing on payback. (And tell me, what exactly is the payback on expensive shampoo?)

Perhaps the quality of products is the issue, as found in this highly sceptical GTZ report of solar lanterns

Or maybe a person’s life just doesn’t change enough when they make the switch to good quality light or smokeless stoves –  and so people are just making do until they are reached by more reliable, cheaper sources of modern energy.

A year of sustainable energy for all

This year is the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All

Over the next year I plan to contribute articles to The Fifth Estate about some of the answers the best companies and organisations have found – from energy companies, to microfinance institutions, to investors, to local entrepreneurs.

May it truly be a year of sustainable energy for all.

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<3 of the week: A guest post

23 Feb

Kids from the quarry in India

More from the project I have been working on in India:

It is midnight in Bangalore but out in the quarries a few huts now have light.

We picked up the solar systems and headed out to the quarry at about 4:30 today. It was chaotic! One of the key problems was that we only had managed to get one screw driver, lacking a translator did not help much either. Both of the quarry workers who had been trained on the systems on Monday left to go back to Tamil Nadu. There were three of us, one screw driver and 10 solar kits to be assembled.

We had made some progress towards working out which kit belonged to who when there was an explosion nearby. It was blasting time at the quarries! Over the next 5 minutes there was a migration to the shop, which is covered by a metal roof, to provide some shelter for us and the kits. Putting together the kits with only one screwdriver takes time and curious kids do not speed up the process but the solar panels were cradled like a small child. The sun was setting but for once this was not a problem as we had light!

With the sun set and the lights set up we went for a bit of a wander through the huts to see what was going on. It was about dinner time and Aimee and Rachel found a family with some light. The mother was breast feeding with the radio blaring. We were then dragged around by some kids who took us to every place that had light then being invited in to admire. They were so excited!

We sold another five systems tonight and it was a bit tough to collect names in the dark. We were sorting out orders in a hut basically because it had light. It is a bit hard to describe but the best place to do this was in a small thatch leave hut because we could all see what we were doing.

Electricity seems like such a small thing until it has been given to someone. Before we left some of the women were talking about televisions and bug zappers (very had to communicate through mime).

Rachel described tonight as magical. With a few huts glowing it really was.

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Borneo, and losing track of time

19 Feb


We leave the small city of Sintang and it is green everywhere. Here in Borneo, we are working in tropical rainforests which a man from the WWF tells me contains 40-50% of the world’s flora and fauna.

People tell me of monkeys and orang-utans in their backyard. We transport turtles in our pickup, while constantly swerving to avoid snakes, as well as dogs, pig, chickens and potholes the size of small houses.

I regularly overdose on the endless laughter, the freshest of jungle fruit and DEET mosquito repellent.

I often feel like I am on some sort of cultural-adventure holiday. Some of the villages we visit are best reached by speedboat. Others, by tiny dirt paths, expertly negotiated by motorbike, or canoe, or even just walking.

At one village a rooster is sacrificed in my honour and children line up to greet me. At another we are stranded for hours by rain and are invited to join the harvest festivities.

But – it isn’t all adventure and laughs. I am here also to learn of the hardships. Families spending the same for kerosene light as others just a few hours away are spending for full electricity access. Free LPG stoves from the government which would reduce deforestation and improve health, but which scare locals. Corruption. Landowners who are exploited by large palm oil corporations. The lure of illegal logging. Vast areas without mobile phone access. Motorbike injuries I am shown – almost daily.

As always, I am struck by contrasts. Traditional “Dayak” music mixed with Bryan Adams and Shania Twain. Families living communally, in traditional wooden ‘long houses’, with giant TV antennas (called ‘parabolas’). Houses hours from roads and electricity supply, with refrigerators (“cool-cases”). Communities with endless curiosity about solar – down to the environmental impact of the panels and the wiring selection. And then, just the next day, other communities oblivious to the benefits.

It doesn’t take long to realise few foreigners make the trip to this part of the world. I am followed by the local paparazzi when I ride my bike. I pose for endless photos. I am interviewed for the local TV and radio news.

And just when I think I received more than my fair share of the world-famous Indonesian hospitality and kindness – I am honoured by having a newborn named after my family.

I am accused of ceding control of my life, and it is true, I have. I have lost track of time. My daily run seamlessly joins my next daily run, meal into meal, podcast into podcast, survey into survey.

I learn the rainforest here is 130 million years old, making it the oldest in the world.

I think that perhaps it too, has lost track of time.

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Image: Some rights reserved by matley0

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<3 of the week: TV with a social message, management consultant pay and on being awesome

16 Feb
  • What happens when I ask people here in Borneo what they want to use modern clean sources of energy for? Watching television. I’ve always thought access to information is fantastic thing. And even more so since hearing that the community I am working with in India – with no lights, let alone TV and radio – didn’t know the name of Indian Prime Minister. And then this week I found this in the New York Times: Soap Operas with a Social Message. “Around the world, from North India to South Africa, there are dozens of television and radio shows that tightly weave social themes into entertaining narratives, a technique often referred to as entertainment-education.” And then the results: “The long-running South African television series “Soul City” has 12 million viewers and is as familiar as Coca-Cola to black South Africans. Regular viewers are almost four times as likely to use condoms than others. In Saint Lucia, the radio drama “Apwé Plézi” (“After the Pleasure”) became so popular that producers had to set up a separate helpline for people requesting information on family planning. Brazilian women with exposure to soap operas, which usually portray small families, have been found to have significantly lower fertility than others.”
  • Like Robin Hanson and others, I have often wondered “why firms pay huge sums to big name consulting firms, when their advice comes from kids fresh out of college, who spend only a few months studying an industry they previous knew nothing about.” Having worked on a few management-consulting-style projects, I’d have to agree with his conclusion: “My guess is that most intellectuals underestimate just how dysfunctional most firms are. Firms often have big obvious misallocations of resources, where lots of folks in the firm know about the problems and workable solutions. The main issue is that many highest status folks in the firm resist such changes, as they correctly see that their status will be lowered if they embrace such solutions.”
  • And finally, check this out – related in part to this, one of my most favourite websites.

Image: Some rights reserved by videocrab

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What is possible – Family-owned hydroelectricity in Indonesia

13 Feb

Reprinted from Good Return’s blog. See the original here.

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Like 60% of Kalimantan, the village of Ansok is not connected to subsidised government electricity.

Those that can afford it have a personal generator. And in fuel costs alone, they pay around 25 times as much as they would if the network reached them – for only 3-4 hours of light every night.

For the rest, there is the “pilitah,” or kerosene lantern. The consumers that use this light pay the same in kerosene costs as a family just a few hours away pays for full electricity access – with lights and television for as many hours as they’d like.

This massive disparity in prices in not unusual in serving the poor. In C.K. Prahalad’s book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2005), he surveys prices paid by slum dwellers in Mumbai compared to the middle class and “finds the poor paying considerably more for basics like water, phone calls, diarrhea medicine and rice.” *

Here in Ansok they decided to do something about it.

They knew of a hydropower company on another island, who had installed a system in their district back in the 90s. The only barrier was capital – and this is where Keling Kumang, Good Return’s new Indonesian partner, stepped in.

They formed groups of 20 families and took out a AUD $10,000 loan. Now they each pay just $1 every month to access enough energy for 5 lights and 1 television for each family. They look after routine maintenance themselves, and the company flies in for significant repairs when required – like the day I was in town, when they were replacing some failed circuitry.

I asked the manager, Mr Antong, whether people were happy and whether the loan had been repaid. The answer was clear in the spread of the technology. Another 4 groups of families in the district already have micro hydro systems, and there are another six on the way.

Seeing Ansok made me excited about what is possible – and not just because of the trail biking I got to go on to visit the plant (!!).

Ansok, like Jakarta, reminded me of the Holstee Manifesto: “Life is about the people we meet, and the things we create with them.”

 

* Quote taken from Portfolios of the Poor (Rutherford et al, 2009)

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<3 of the week: Public energy consumption, Mongolia, and being misunderstood

10 Feb

Horseracing in Mongolia

  • I know it is a bit silly to link to Seth Godin as half the world already reads his blog, but I really liked his article this week on whether energy consumption will stay private. “What happens when Google maps shows you the block or building that consumes the most electricity or makes it easy to compare across industries? A significant byproduct of the connection revolution is that things that were private because they were difficult to measure will no longer be private.”
  • Mongolia, a tiny country of just a few million, is booming thanks to vast mineral resources, according to an Economist podcast. Interesting listening for anyone who still has romantic images of a nomadic Genghis Khan influenced culture.
  • I heard a story this week of a journalist who worked in rural China for many years. It reminded me of my many failed attempts to speak Bahasa here in Borneo. (“Oh! You are trying to say a Bahasa word!”) The journalist went up to a group of farmers and asked how long it would take to get to destination X. He spoke very good Mandarin and tried asking for directions in several different ways. The farmers just stared and him and each other, and said nothing. Finally the journalist gave up and started to walk away. Only to hear one farmer turn to the other and say “I could have sworn that foreigner was asking how far it was to destination X!” Like how strange it was that his language sounded so similar to Mandarin!

Image: Some rights reserved by Emilia Tjernström [Arriving at the horizon]

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We never know the seeds we plant (or, lighting up a corner of India)

5 Feb

Kerosene lamp in the quarry community

I have been thinking about this quote from Lederach’s “The Poetic Unfolding of the Human Spirit”.

After three decades of work I had noticed that the most interesting peacebuilding emerged spontaneously, and seemed to have little to do with all our peacebuilding work. Was this work worth it?

He then talks about a short meeting he had with a group of Colombians, where thoughts were scribbled out on paper napkins. He finds out 20 years later that these napkins planted the seeds of a significant non-violent peacebuilding campaign.

I can hardly compare my work to peacebuilding, but I can relate to the spontaneity of progress.

For the last year I have been feeling around in the dark.

My current life is best described as a series of conversations, and my deliverables amount to “make something happen”. It feels like a long way from the technical-heavy, deliverable-driven world of corporate engineering I left behind.

I’m making it up as I go, and I have no idea whether what I am doing will end up being useful or not.

Occasionally however, a light clearly shines through.

An example of the solar lighting kit

I’ve been working on a project with my cousin’s charity – the 40k Foundation – over the last few months. The illegal quarry community which he built a school for has no access to electricity. I went to India in October to take a look and see whether solar would be suitable.

This week the ever-brilliant Jamie and 40k team went back and really did make something happen – organising sales, loans and training.

A conversation scribbled out over paper napkins, so to speak, ended in a place I would never have imagined.

We never know the outcomes of our actions.

We never know the seeds we plant.

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* For those interested in the tech-y details – how the loans will work, hours of operation, wattages of the lights we picked etc etc and more etc – email me for the low down

** None of this would have happened without the rest of the 40k team – special thanks to the ever-resourceful Rachel, as well as Grif and Clary.

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<3 of the week: Parking (yes, really), a year without polio and the peace builder’s poetry

2 Feb

  • I know its off topic, but this piece on parking in the United States was downright fascinating. There is too much to quote, but this was probably my favourite part: “In the United States hundreds of engineers make careers out of studying traffic. Entire freeway systems like L.A.’s have been hardwired with sensors connecting to computer banks that aggregate vehicle flow, monitor bottlenecks, explain congestion in complicated algorithms. Yet cars spend just 5 percent of their lives in motion, and until recently there was only one individual in the country devoting his academic career to studying parking lots and street meters: Donald Shoup.” (Via @bencasanocha).
  • The world community has made a big step to the eradication of it’s second disease ever – India recently celebrated a year without polio.

“Advice from the Mediator’s Fellowship”:

Don’t ask the mountain
To move, just take a pebble
Each time you visit.

  • And a couple more posts on the Good Return blog: on some of our clients who we have trained to become trainers, and on one of clients, Monica. The client trainers fascinated me in that they liked training because it “meant that they got to travel”. And Monica used a loan to buy a rickshaw which she and her family rent out for $1/day. It helps diversify our income, she told me.

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