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

Our village-based energy-development project for the provision of clean cooking fuel and improved livelihood (referred to in our quarterly newsletters during the past year) is nearing completion.  The goal of this project is to demonstrate a case of our energy-development enterprise model, where rural energy services can be improved in a sustainable manner through integration with income and employment generation.

We are demonstrating this model in a village (Chikkana Devara hatti) in Karnataka state.  Here, a dairy has been established to provide income and employment to the village folk and simultaneously to fuel the generation of biogas, a clean and efficient fuel, to be supplied to all homes for cooking.  Establishing the dairy has involved construction of cattle-housing, office and water-supply facilities, purchase of cattle, and training of the local staff for the daily tasks.  For efficient distribution of biogas, eight biogas plants have been constructed, each connected by pipelines to the closest cluster of homes around it.  The households, earlier dependent on traditional stoves fuelled with collected biomass, have been provided with biogas stoves. [Click here for a pictorial update, March 2008].

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

IEI’s journal Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD) supports 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.  The Regional Energy Initiative – Asia continues to be directly involved with its production -- processing, publishing, web site management, and circulation.  The dedicated ESD web site contains all the 51 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.

This issue – March 2008 -- begins the twelfth volume of ESD publication, available at http://www.esd-journal.org/vol 12_issue1.html