Energy enterprises for development in rural areas: the case of clean cooking – project in progress

Our village-based energy-development project (referred to in our quarterly newsletters earlier this year) is progressing towards completion.  The goal of this project is to demonstrate the sustainable provision of improved energy services, integrated with improved livelihood.  In the case being demonstrated in a village (Chikkana Devara hatti) in Karnataka state, biogas – a cleaner, more efficient and more convenient alternative will be provided to all the households, including the poorest.  A dairy has been established to provide income and employment and to fuel the biogas plants.  While the establishment of the biogas delivery system and of management/accounting systems are in progress, that of the dairy has been carried out during the past three months. [Click here for a progress report, December 2007].

This project is being supported chiefly by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany (through its third round of Sustainable Energy Project Support).  It is intended that the lessons learnt from this experience are used in drawing up other examples of energy-development integration for larger-scale replication.


Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD), the journal of the International Energy Initiative

The Regional Energy Initiative – Asia has been directly involved with the production -- processing, publishing, web site management, and circulation -- of IEI’s journal Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD), since April 2007.  ESD has been supporting IEI’s activities, by being a medium for information exchange, for conveying the results of analytical and training efforts, and for sharing the lessons learnt from field projects.  A new web site dedicated to the journal has been developed.  It contains all the 50 issues published thus far; these are accessible at www.esd-journal.org/esd-issues.html.  A search facility assists in location of articles from the archives.  While abstracts of all articles are available to the public, the complete texts of the articles are available to subscribers.

The issue just published (Vol. XI, No. 4, December 2007) completes Volume XI and is  available at http://www.esd-journal.org/vol 11_issue4.html

Energy-environment issues: Effluent treatment-cum-electricity generation option at coffee estates

A study had been made of the environmental effects of the effluents discharged from coffee processing units and the feasibility of an effluent treatment process involving a bioreactor.  The benefits from using such a method for wastewater treatment include: reduction in pollution of the surrounding water bodies, water conservation (through recycling and re-use), and production of biogas.  At present, penalties for effluent discharge have not been levied in India, and the charges for water supply are low, hence financial returns on the bioreactor investment are obtained only from the value of biogas and the avoided cost of diesel that is replaced by biogas in the generation of electricity.  The estimates obtained from the case study indicate that this effluent treatment cum generation option is already financially viable, and, if environmental policies were more stringent, would be even more attractive.  An article is being published in Water Digest, November-December 2007