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Wanted - Small Change!
From Mitra's spring newsletter: The world is changing faster than Mitras anticipated two years ago, when we set out to raise an ‘energy conscience’ amongst young people and their parents, at schools, campuses and community gatherings.
Not everyone is convinced about the imminent threat of devastation due to climate change but they are more aware of the phenomenon and that helps.
Mitras have observed genuine interest amongst the young, to find ways of living a better, sustainable and useful lifestyle.
Mitras spent a large time of last year interacting with individuals and institutions that are working with the lesser privileged amongst the urban poor and in far flung hamlets.
As a result of our interventions we are slowly building a small but diverse community of renewable energy users who demonstrate that it is possible to lead better sustainable and useful lifestyles.
Key to that goal is of course, education. A holistic understanding of the cause and effect of human activities and ways of reducing our negative impact on society and the environment.
Mitras are pleased to share, with you, a new project in our current battery of carbon neutral campus program.
A library in a tribal school for warli children in Dahanu, Maharashtra. We are so proud of it!
Our update on carbon neutral campus program on page 2 clearly shows the increased awareness and demand for change.
Small change, we believe, is a good good starting point.
Interestingly, small change is all what we got for our fund raising efforts this year.
An area of our work that certainly needs to change.
So, Mitras, through this news letter, is inviting you to chip in, give, donate, small change or a big cheque, but please do.
It will help.
TO READ THE WHOLE NEWSLETTER CLICK ON SPRING 2009 (Newsletter section in sidebar)
Condoms for Climate Change!
It weighs fraction of an ounce, can be as thin as 1/500 of an inch and the best solution for climate change, hunger and assorted self-imposed human miseries.
Eric Sorensen’s “Seven Wonders for a cool planet” published by Sierra Club tells us that “Researchers theorize that just a 14 percent increase in the use of contraceptives can lead to a decrease of one child per woman in the total fertility rate, the average number of children who would be born to a woman in her life time. This could result into 1 billion fewer births by the middle of this century, with dramatically less carbon dioxide being emitted. Based on today’s emission rates, a billion fewer humans might spare the planet perhaps a 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.’
And if you are wondering about the impact of “single use condoms”, for the sake of the 'throwaway culture critics', Mr. Sorensen gives us a better argument than the mercury peddling INGOs who are selling CFL bulbs – “If all the world’s couples used condoms every time they had sex, they’ end up using 10 million condoms a day and 200 tons of rubber, 70 tons of lubricant, and, 1,400 tons of packaging. But that would still pale in comparison with the 5,500 tons of synthetic and natural rubber consumed in a single day of tire manufacturing in the United States.” Ahem!
Thank you Mr. Sorensen, for pointing out the obvious (UNFCCC would have never cracked it anyway) and we hope that starting this Earth Day, (Screw earth day ) people will use condoms, halve the population and the trickle down effect, will hopefully halve greenhouse gas emissions.
Bright Idea in Bonn - IANS
Bonn (IANS): A member of the Indian delegation to the U.N. climate change talks here has been brandishing a light bulb in order to make a political point.
“This is an electronic, energy-saving LED bulb that is being developed in India,” Ajay Mathur, Director General of the government's Bureau of Energy Efficiency told a surprised plenary session on Monday, holding up the bulb for the hundreds of delegates gathered in the large hall.
The light bulb, which has been made by the Indian company Crompton Greaves by developing an original Dutch design, looks like an ordinary bulb, but has an electronic LED chip inside it that makes it greener than anything else on offer.
Its five watt-power is equivalent of a 40-watt normal bulb and it has lifespan of 50,000 hours — that's more than 11 years of lighting if you keep the bulb on for 12 hours a day.
“This is our song-and-dance story,” Mr. Mathur told IANS later.
The hitch is that because the scale of production is still small and because the Dutch company Lemnis partly holds the patent, it is being marketed at around Rs 1,200 per bulb — putting it well beyond the reach of most Indians.
If everybody in India changed to LED light bulbs, Crompton Greaves estimates, the country would save 56 billion hours of electricity and 44 million tonnes of carbon dioxide — one of the main contributors to climate change.
“This can be a cheap alternative, for India certainly, but also for other countries. The problem is that we have to import the LED chip from a Japanese company, which takes the cost up,” Mr. Mathur said.
Mr. Mathur said that developing such technological solutions to the problem of climate change needed countries to work together and share technologies and patents.
“Technology is the only way. It's not as if we cannot do it without international support, but international support is needed to scale up production,” he said.
“You need a global regime that supports the dissemination of such technologies.”
Indian companies, according to him, are doing their bit: Crompton Greaves helped to modify the original Dutch design and bring down the cost of the bulb from $60 to 70 to $12.
The glass cover of the light bulb is produced in Firozabad, the 'heat sink' made in a factory in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi and the entire bulb assembled at Crompton Greaves's Pune factory.
Mr. Mathur says the cost of the light bulb could be lowered much more through the system of carbon trading, so companies from industrialized countries, who have a cap on how much carbon they can emit, are drawn into supporting this project.
Under the system, companies that want to emit more Carbon dioxide can do so by buying credits from those that pollute less.
“The purchase of emission reductions would provide the additional costs to scale up,” Mr. Mathur said.
More than 2,000 negotiators and environmental activists have gathered in Bonn for the March 29-April 8 meeting — the first of three conferences being organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) before a final, year-end meeting in Copenhagen.
Delegates are trying to agree the future direction of climate change and the emission of harmful greenhouse gases.
Unearthly Hours!
At Mitra office, its earth hour, for two to four hours every day (and when it is summer, even in the nights), thanks to BESCOM's enforced power cuts in Bangalore. But we switch on, not off, with our solar powered batteries for the minimum light and fan requirements. So when we see the giants of the global environmental movement taking the mickey out of each other's tactics, we wonder if Sita our help, who is at the mercy of BESCOM as well, for the two bulbs and one fan in her shanty house, will get it. We dont. Switch on, we say, with solar power, wind power, and yeah switch off coal power and silly games of the promoters of mercury peddlers.
Adarsh (ka) Ghar – Smart Home in Bangalore.
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| Adarsh's home |
And now Adarsh, our carbon free neutral campus program coordinator, has gone all the way by building a smart house for himself.
Powered by the wind and sun, Adarsh’s new house in Bangalore is the best example of how combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency can provide uninterrupted electricity for your daily household needs.
Adarsh’s parents were initially hesitant about the idea of having a 28 foot tall wind turbine on their roof, skeptical about solar panels, dubious about the LED lighting and shocked at the costs involved.
They had no problem with installing a solar water heater, but investing in an integrated renewable energy system was as alien an idea as the mobile phone was 5 years ago.
Adarsh gave them a tour of installations he has done as part of Mitra’s carbon neutral campus program. He did the investment vs. monthly bill calculations to convince them.
But what finally did the trick was the promise of 'uninterrupted' power supply.
You see Senior Mr. Vansay is a big sports-tv addict. His biggest irritation in his retired years is the power cuts imposed by Bescom during cricket matches.
Adarsh installed a 650 watts wind turbine and an array of solar panels rated at 640 watts that would give him 2.5 kw of power for lights, fans and other appliances (including TV, efficient kitchen appliances and washing machine) on his roof. He bought a 48 volt 360ah battery to store the power generated by the wind turbine and solar panels. And most importantly he got a local supplier to design special LED lights for his house.
Yeah, we don’t like them incandescent and we absolutely think that the CFL bulb is a loser’s option. The 120 watts of LED lighting is enough to light up the house (see picture) and consumes 4 times less of juice from the batteries than those silly CFL bulbs would have.
It took 2 days for Adarsh to install the turbine, the panels and a 200 litre solar water heater on the roof. A week to install his specially designed LED bulbs. And 2 months to check and double check before he announced Mission Successful.
Calling all Daddies!
The Polar Ice sheet is facing unprecedented thinning, sea-level rise is threatening the very survival of coastal communities but there is no reduction in green house gas emissions, in fact it is accelerating every day, every month, every year.Mitra Foundation is calling daddies (and mommies) to do their bit. Talk to your children. Tell them how your lifestyle has threatened the very survival of the future generations. Apologise. And then find out what you can do. Time is running out. And the tide is closing in. Download the postcard on the right and post it to your friends, relatives, office colleagues. Enlist!
Nandgaon gets second Solar Study Center
Press Release
Pune, 10th May 2008: Peepal Foundation, a Pune based initiative of socially conscious professionals have been working relentlessly for over five years to bring hope and cheer in lives of under privileged children and senior citizens, while empowering them to be independent and self-sufficient by providing them with basic opportunity and services to fulfill their ambitions.
Observing the enthusiasm and commitment with which the Jambulne community has been using the Solar Study Center, Peepal Foundation have decided to set up a second such Center in Nandgaon village again located in Lonavla taluka. The center will help the students in their studies, as well as help the community with literacy programmes and livelihood training skills for women.
The concept of Solar Study Centers pioneered by Mitra Foundation,
The
“Such projects provide an opportunity for British Gas employees, a part of the Centrica Group based in
Calls for Carbon Neutral Campus Program 2008-2009
Mitra Foundation is proud to announce the opening of two Solar Study Centers in remote off-grid villages of Maharashtra, hosting a series of climate change awareness events in Tamilnadu and most importantly facilitating installation of about 5 kW of renewable energy at a residential school in Karnataka in the first year of our Carbon Neutral Campus program.
Mitra foundation invites schools and educational institutions in Pune, Chennai and
Two modules of informative and experiment based programs have been specially developed in line with the syllabus for classes IX and XI. We have already reached over 600 students at five institutions with the aid of audiovisual presentations and field visits to renewable energy park.
The 2008-09 program includes a non-power point presentation, field visits to renewable energy production facilities or parks, energy audits at campuses and recommendation to institutions for collective measures for reducing a campus’s carbon footprint.
We also develop special programs in consultation with school faculties on Climate change, renewable energy, energy efficiency for specific syllabus or program requirement of students.
Deadline for applications :
Contact :
Centre for Learning gets high on wind-energy
Yesterday evening, there was applause by students and staff when Adarsh finally clambered down the 65 feet high pole after attaching the blades and hub on the 650 watts wind turbine.
A little later, there were loud cheers and more applause when the turbine adjusted its tail and the blades picked up its first gust of wind and rotated to produce a crackle of electric energy.The students were busy at their studies this morning when Seema helped put finishing touches to the wiring of the heart of the system, the charge controllers and switchboards. But Mitras quietly applauded and cheered ourselves for a job done, well done.
Together with a spanking new photo-voltaic solar system and a refurbished existing pv solar system, the wind turbine will produce almost 3.5 kw that will provide uninterrupted power supply to all dormitories and the computer lab.
Mitras are proud of having walked with them so far and look forward to helping them fulfilling their wish of self-sufficiency in near future. Honge oil pressing machine anyone?
Mitras wishes the cheerful CFL community, a happy Holi, a happy Navroz, a happy Id-E-Milad, a happy Easter, and a very very happy Mela celebrations this weekend. And to you too.
Peepal and Mitra bring light to Jambulne school
On 23rd February 2008, Vasti shala, a tiny school in the small off-grid hamlet of Jambulne (Devgarh) near Pune, became the first Solar Study Center thanks to the efforts of our partners Peepal Foundation, a bunch of professionals working relentlessly to empower the under privileged.
The solar lighting system, Venus, gifted by Centrica Plc, will provide sufficient light for four hours after dusk for about 40 students of this hamlet to study, revise and prepare for important examinations. Peepal Foundation that holds educational and cultural programmes for the less fortunate students in Pune and Senior citizens also plans to use the Solar Study Center to run literacy and livelihood programmes for children and women when the center is not being used by the students.
Mitras will monitor this pilot project for six months for efficacy and efficiency and then replicate it to more such schools and community centers in off grid villages in the hinterlands of the country. Our objective of course is to empower with the right power, in this case solar power, but where possible we hope to use other renewable energy technologies suitable for local conditions.
Besides thanking the folks at Peepal Foundation for helping us realise the first project of our Solar Study Center concept, we will also take the opportunity to convey our best wishes and more power to Vineet Kharat, the force behind Peepal, on his birthday that happily enough coincided with the date of the installation.
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