India

Barefoot College Masaai Kenya Solar Grandmother

From Dishonored Grandmother to Solar Engineer

We’re all looking for stories of hope – that the world can be changed, that we are not limited by our culture, our backgrounds, our histories. Lucy Naipanoi, a grandmother of the Maasai in Kenya, one of the last hunter gatherer tribes left on the planet, represents the potential for evolution and advancement that has …

Read more

Can A Grandmother From A Hunter Gathering Tribe Become A Solar Engineer?

We’re all looking for stories of hope – that the world can be changed, that we are not limited by our culture, our backgrounds, our histories – and few stories are as inspirational as that of Lucy Naipanoi, a grandmother of Maasai, one of the last hunter gatherer tribes left on the planet. With the …

Read more

U.S. Navy Invests in World’s Largest Solar Farm

The U.S. Navy is investing in what will be the largest solar farm in the world in order to provide power for 14 of its bases.

The climate of Arizona, where the two earlier phases of the Mesquite solar farm are already up and running, provides 300 days of sunshine a year. And the Navy’s deal to extend the farm is the largest purchase of renewable energy ever made by a U.S. federal government agency.

The solar farm project is one of a growing number being installed across what is known as the American Sun Belt-the southern states of America, which have expanding populations, plenty of sunshine but also large areas of arid and unproductive land.

Solar Prices Fall Farm

The price of solar panels has now fallen so far worldwide that, in sunny climes, they can compete on cost with any other form of energy generation. This new generation of huge solar farms produces as much power as a large coal-fired plant.

China and India are also building similarly massive installations, taking advantage of their own sun belts and desert regions. It is doubtful that Mesquite 3, huge as it is, will manage to remain the world’s largest for long.

Barren Land

In the same week that the U.S. Navy disclosed its plans, the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh announced it was to construct a 750 MW plant (one megawatt is roughly enough to supply 1,000 typical British homes) on barren, government-owned land in the country’s Rewa district.

It is claimed that it would be the world’s largest solar plant and the state’s energy minister, Rajendra Shukla, says the plan is to have the plant up and running by March 2017.

A number of other giant projects are also in the pipeline in India, as part of government plans for a dramatic expansion of the industry, although they have yet to be constructed.

REPO Calidornia US Nacy Invests Solar InfoGraphic

Mesquite 3, which will be sited 60 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, will provide the Navy with 210 MW of direct power. This means the installation of more than 650,000 extra solar panels, which will move to track the sun as it crosses the sky, to get the maximum value from the intense desert sunshine. The Navy says it will save $90 million in power costs over the 25-year lifetime of the contract.

Some solar power plants in India have caused controversy because they need teams of people to wash off the layer of dust and particles from air pollution to keep the panels efficient. This uses a lot of scarce water.

However, in the cleaner desert air of Arizona, this is not a problem. The Navy boasts that Mesquite 3 will require no water, so saving “this precious resource for other needs.”

The building of the plant will require 300 construction workers but it will create only 12 long-term jobs. The plant also avoids controversy because it is sited on “previously disturbed land” and so is not damaging a pristine environment. It is also near existing power plants and transmission lines, so the plant will not need additional infrastructure.

Reduced Emissions

The Navy estimates that the station will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 190,000 tons annually—the equivalent of taking 33,000 cars off the road.

Ray Mabus, the Secretary of State for the Navy, who opened the project, has been pushing hard for renewables to be used for military power generation.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense was instructed by Congress to get 25 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2025 but Mabus accelerated that goal and directed thatone gigawatt (1,000 MW) should be procured by the end of 2015.

The new contract adds to a 17 MW installation at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and another of 42 MW at Kings Bay, Georgia. The Navy says that, in total, its renewable energy procurement will be 1.2 GW by the end of 2015, which is well ahead of target.

It will use the power for Navy and Marine Corps shore installations in California and surrounding states.

Opening the project at one of the installations, the Naval Air Station North Island, in California, Mabus said the project was “a triumph of problem solving” and would help increase the Department of the Navy’s energy security by diversifying the supply.

India Built The World’s First Solar-Powered Airport

The southern Indian city of Kochi is now the proud home of the world’s first solar-powered airport.

On Aug. 18, the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL)-India’s fourth largest international airport in terms of passenger traffic-commissioned a 12 mega watt (MW) solar power project. The airport already had a 1MW solar power plant, which can produce 4,000 units of electricity daily.

With its new solar plant, the airport can now produce 60,000 units of electricity every day, which is more than enough to meet its daily requirement.

“We initiated a pilot project in February 2013 as part of our plan to shift to renewable energy by setting up a 100 kilo watt unit,” VJ Kurian, managing director of CIAL told Quartz in a telephone interview. “When we found that feasible, we set up a 1MW unit in November 2013.”

“We did not want to be identified as just another airport and be confined to it,” Kurian added.

CIAL Airport Solar Kerala India World Largest Solar Airport

After the airport found the 1MW project financially viable, it invited tenders to set up a 12MW project within the airport complex. “Work on the 12MW project started in February 2015 and was completed in less than six months” Kurian said.

Spread across 45 acres of land-equivalent to 25 football fields-the project was built by German engineering company Bosch for Rs62 crore ($9.5 million). The area for the solar unit was earlier designated for setting up a cargo handling facility.

Since the airport expects to produce more than what it is likely to consume, CIAL is planning to feed some of the power into the state grid.

“Over the next 25 years, this green power project will avoid carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants by more than 3 lakh metric tons, which is equivalent to planting 3 million trees or not driving 750 miles,” CIAL said in a statement.

Meanwhile, close on the heels of Kochi, another Indian airport has also laid out plans to focus on solar. On Aug.18, Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, said that it plans to set up a 15 MW solar power plant on 60 acres of land.

India is currently in the midst of ramping up its solar power generation. The Narendra Modi government has plans to increase the country’s solar power capacity from the existing 4GW (gigawatt) to 100GW (gigawatt)by 2022.

To fund such an ambitious expansion, the government expects an investment of $100 billion in the sector in the next seven years. Some of Asia’s biggest billionaires-including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, Gautam Adani and Anil Ambani-have already promised massive investments in the sector.

Alongside, smaller establishments like Kochi’s airport are also joining the party.

Humans Are Set To Wipe An India-Sized Chunk Of Forest Off The Earth By 2050

(CREDIT: AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

By 2050, an area of forests the size of India is set to be wiped off the planet if humans continue on their current path of deforestation, according to a new report. That’s bad news for the creatures that depend on these forest ecosystems for survival, but it’s also bad news for the climate, as the loss of these forests will release more than 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The report, published Monday by the Center for Global Development (CGD), found that, without new policies aimed at cutting back on deforestation, 289 million hectares (about 1,115,840 square miles) of tropical forests will be cleared away. That’s a chunk, the report states, that’s equal to one-seventh of what the Earth’s total tropical forest area was in 2000. And, according to the report, the 169 gigatons of carbon dioxide that this deforestation will unleash is equal to one-sixth of the carbon budget that humans can emit if they want to keep warming below 2°C – the level that’s generally viewed as the maximum warming Earth can endure while still avoiding the most dangerous climate impacts (and even 2°C is seen by many experts as too high).

The study, unlike other recent studies on deforestation, projects that in a business-as-usual scenario, in which the world doesn’t make any effort to reduce deforestation, tropical deforestation will increase, rather than decrease. According to the study, tropical deforestation rates in such a scenario will likely climb steadily in the 2020s and 2030s and then speed up around 2040, “as areas of high forest cover in Latin America that are currently experiencing little deforestation come under greater threat.”

The study does point to one change in policy that would cut deforestation rates and help alleviate climate change: a price on carbon. According to the report, a price of $20 per ton of carbon would keep 41 gigatons of carbon dioxide from being emitted between 2016 and 2050, and a price of $50 per ton would keep 77 gigatons from being emitted.

“Our analysis corroborates the conclusions of previous studies that reducing tropical deforestation is a sizable and low-cost option for mitigating climate change,” the study’s authors write. “In contrast to previous studies, we project that the amount of emissions that can be avoided at low-cost by reducing tropical deforestation will increase rather than decrease in future decades.”

The study also noted that, if all tropical countries put in place anti-deforestation laws that were “as effective as those in the Brazilian Amazon post-2004,” then 60 gigatons of carbon dioxide would be kept out of the atmosphere. Brazil took action against deforestation in 2004 and 2008, and deforestation rates in the country have fallen from 27,000 square kilometers (about 10,424 square miles) in 2004 to 7,000 square kilometers (about 2,700 square miles) in 2010. According to the Climate Policy Initiative, this slowdown in deforestation rates helped keep about 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide in these forests and out of the atmosphere.

Forests can act as major carbon sinks, but for some forests, that role may be changing. A study from this year published in Nature documented the “long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink,” which the study says could be occurring due to changes in climate. The study also points to increasing tree mortality rate – via deforestation – as another factor in the forests’ decreasing ability to store carbon.

Monday’s study noted that decreasing emissions from deforestation is a relatively cheap way for countries to reduce their overall emissions. If countries implemented a system in which wealthy countries paid tropical countries to keep their forests intact, those payments by wealthy countries would constitute a cheaper way to fight climate change than some alternatives.

“Conserving tropical forests is a bargain,” CGD research fellow and report co-author Jonah Busch said in a statement. “Reducing emissions from tropical deforestation costs about a fifth as much as reducing emissions in the European Union.”

Other studies have warned of the danger the world is in if countries don’t curb rates of deforestation and forest degradation. A study published this week in Science warned that, without policy changes, the world’s forests will become increasingly broken into unconnected patches – a fragmentation that will endanger the species that live in the forests.

“I fear a global simplification of the world’s most complex forests,” Simon Lewis, lead author of the study and tropical forest expert at the University of Leeds said in a statement. “Deforestation, logging and road building all create fragmented patches of forest. However, as the climate rapidly changes the plants and animals living in the rainforest will need to move to continue to live within their ecological tolerances. How will they move? This is a recipe for the mass extinction of tropical forest species this century.”

Basic International Law Can Make You A Better Activist

Samit is an attorney in the United States holding Juris Doctorate and Master of Arts degrees. We have followed his work on several different humanitarian projects, including a mission in Israel and Palestine for developing a legal digest on War Crimes to present to the Constitutional Court in Sarajevo, Bosnia; and being part of a Guantanamo detainee’s legal …

Read more

Your Old Laptop Can Bring Change In Enormous Ways

So I just got off the phone with Becky Morrison, the founder of Globetops, an organization that receives your unused old laptop, cleans ’em up and sends them to social entrepreneurs in remote or technologically-deficient parts of the world. Maybe this sounds trivial, but as an active member of humanitarian organizations, I can tell you that it isn’t being done …

Read more

Prayer For Nepal

On April 25th just a few hundred kilometres away from Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu a magnitude 7.8-8.1 earthquake shattered the ground, homes and hearts of millions. The event has devastated many of us in the Valhalla community, as well as our network of friends in the Mountain Country. I was in my room, working on my …

Read more

Change Is Best Left To Mothers

We live in an age of giving. When media outlets showcase devastating tragedies that take the lives of innocent people our immediate response is to help our fellow brothers and sisters around the globe. We donate, volunteer and even pray to bring hope and create new opportunity for those who lack the resources which we have …

Read more

Sanitary Pads on A Train

Looking at my screen, noticing the blotch marks of oil and grease. There’s dust everywhere and my keys don’t seem to press down with the same elegance they once did when she was new, my laptop, who I affectionately call “my baby” has been good to us. It is the fourth hour on our train from Kishengar to New Delhi and …

Read more

Rural Illiterate Grandmothers To Solar Electrify The Rural World

In a quiet classroom forty empty chairs await their students. A blackboard, dusty with chalk, takes up one wall; directly opposite a world map flutters in the dry desert breeze from an open window. Sunlight streams in from the doorframe, as the students begin to take their places around a long trestle table. This is not your …

Read more

Photo by Craig Garner

Dear Skeptics

A lot of people have confronted me over the years about the truth around climate change, whether it’s a huge conspiracy, whether the hockey stick graph is a myth, and the IPCC E-mails leak that has been used to negate climate change’s human causes. Others point to previous Ice Ages and say that climate change …

Read more

They Invented Tree Hugging

It’s something often done these days – but have you ever wondered who were the first to start this powerful non-violent style of protest? February of this year, Sheila and I located and learned from an ancient tribe of people who call themselves, The Bishnois. What came from the visit involved way more than just story telling… …

Read more