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To substantially improve living standards, sustainable farming is not enough, access to modern energy is also crucial. Lack of access to modern energy is generally recognized as the biggest obstacle to sustainable development. The International Energy Agency 2010 report on energy poverty stated: “Lack of access to modern energy services is a serious hindrance to economic and social development and must be overcome if the UN Millennium Development goals (MDGs) are to be achieved.” This view is echoed in the report of the 6th Annual Meeting of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) : “Access to modern energy services, defined as electricity and clean cooking fuels, is central to a country’s development.”
Worldwide, 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity, 85 percent in rural areas, and 2.7 billion still rely on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating. The greatest challenge is sub-Saharan Africa, where only 31 percent of the population has access to electricity, the lowest level in the world. If South Africa is excluded, the share declines to 28 percent.
There is close correlation between income levels and access to modern energy. Countries with a large proportion of the population living on an income of less than $2 per day tend to have low electrification rates and a high proportion of the population relying on traditional biomass.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.45 million people die prematurely each year from household air pollution due to inefficient biomass combustion; a significant proportion young children. This is greater than premature deaths from malaria or tuberculosis.
Small agro-ecological farms are ideally served by new renewable energies that can be generated and used on site, and in off-grid situations most often encountered in developing countries. The renewable energies generated can also serve local businesses, stimulate local economies and create plenty of employment opportunities.
Within the past few years, off-grid power systems have entered the mainstream, driven by the ready availability of renewable energy options that can cost less than grid connections.
A UK company advertises on its website : “Homes across the UK and Europe are looking at the potential benefits of supplying some, if not all their domestic power requirement from off-grid sources” for a variety of reasons: connection to the grid is too expensive, reducing energy bills, protect from power cuts and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solar panels, wind turbines, and small generators are suitable for most homes, and a system with a battery connected to a battery charger/inverter is the most convenient.
Examples of small scale off-grid renewables are found across Scotland, such as remote ferry waiting rooms on the Western Iles and the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial hut on Ben Nevis using small wind turbrines. Photovoltaic (PV) installations integrated with battery are often used where only a small amount of power is required, as for lighting, maintaining power for monitoring equipment or maintaining water treatment facilities.
However, it is in developing countries where power requirements are generally low, and where rapidly improving electronic lighting and telecommunication equipment that have low power requirements and perform reliably with little or no maintenance that off-grid renewable energy is coming to its own.
Three examples of large scale off-grid renewable energy use with varying degrees of success are the Grameen Shakti f or renewables of Bangladesh, Lighting Africa and Biogas for China’s Socialist Countryside.
Grameen Shakti is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 to promote, develop, and supply renewable energy to the rural poor of Bangladesh. It has become one of the world’s largest and fastest growing renewable energy companies through a system of microfinancing, training of technicians (mainly women) for installation, maintenance and repair, provision of services including buy-back. It runs technology centres for training throughout the country. At the end of May 2011, Grameen Shakti had installed 636 322 solar home systems, 18 046 biogas plants and 304 414 improved cooking stoves. It also trained a total of 28 932 technicians in 46 technology centres nationwide, covering all districts. Its beneficiaries are 40 000 villages and around 4 million people.
What began as a grassroots endeavour to provide solar light for the rural population has now attracted the backing of the World Bank. It started by training “barefoot women engineers” for installing, maintaining and repairing solar panels, lights, telephone charging, batteries and other accessories.
Lighting Africa is now a joint World Bank and International Finance Corporation programme that aims to help develop commercial off-grid lighting markets in sub-Saharan Africa as part of the World Bank Group’s wider efforts to improve access to energy. It aims to provide safe, affordable, and modern off-grid lighting to 2.5 million in Africa by 2012 and to 250 million by 2030. The market for off-grid lighting products is projected to grow at 40 to 50 percent annually. In 2010 alone, the sales of solar portable lanterns that have passed Lighting Africa’s quality tests grew by 70 percent in Africa, resulting in more than 672 000 people with cleaner, safer, reliable lighting and improved energy access.
Provision of biogas is an important part of China’s New Socialist Countryside programme launched in 2006 to improve the welfare of those living outside booming cities, which include the country’s 130 million migrant workers and the rural poor. China is one of the first countries in the world to use biogas technology and it has been revived in successive campaigns by the current government to provide domestic sanitation and energy off-grid and to modernize agriculture. The anaerobic digester producing biogas is typically combined with a greenhouse for growing vegetables and other crops with a pigsty, so that pig and human manure can be digested while carbon dioxide generated by the pigs boosts plant growth in the greenhouse. The biogas produced (typically 60 percent methane and 40 percent carbon dioxide with traces of other gases) can be used as cooking fuel and to generate electricity, while the residue is a rich fertilizer for crops. It is an example of the circular economy that has served Chinese peasants well in traditional Chinese agriculture. More elaborate models include orchards and solar panels. According to the latest update from China’s Ministry of Agriculture, 35 million household biogas tanks have been installed by the end of 2009 in 56 500 biogas projects. This exponential growth phase that started around 2001 is set to continue, along with medium and big digesters for community and industrial use. Anaerobic digestion of organic wastes is a key renewable energy technology for a truly green circular economy off-grid that could make a real difference for improving the lives of the rural poor.