Affordable and clean energy – DDRN

Building Research Capacity for Sustainability Assessment in Tanzania

DDRN — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 04:33:44 +0000

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: I work as an Associate Professor, Natural Resources Management, Head of Department, Department of Animal, Aquaculture and Range Sciences (DAARS), Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), situated in Morogoro, Tanzania. I also work as Deputy Principal for the College of Agriculture in this university. But in relation to the talk we have today, I served as the overall coordinator for the Building Stronger Universities (BSU) program, which ran over 12 years. I served for almost half of this time.

Morten Birkved: I am a professor at University of Southern Denmark. I am also heading the Life Cycle Centre, which is a research unit, where we conduct research on industrial ecology and environmental engineering. Over the years I have been participating in a number of projects in emerging economies, one of which being the BSU III project, where Anthony was acting as the Southern leader. I am also participating in a newer project, ‘Create Green Africa’, which is similar to the BSU program. It is also about improving environmental educational capacities in the South. It is a collaboration between nine African countries, where the exchange of students takes place over a period of three years in order to improve the educational level within environmental engineering and environmental assessment capabilities. During BSU III, I visited SUA quite a number of times. Towards the last part of BSU III, we managed to build a test biogas plant at SUA which started running at the end of the project. The intention with that biogas plant was to improve teaching capacities within novel and sustainable energy conversion technologies.

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: First, I should say that BSU was a unique program for SUA, because before BSU we used to have mainly research projects, and we used to collaborate with our partners in research-related projects. For BSU, it was not really an intervention on research, but rather it was a project on institutional capacity development strengthening the capacity of the institution to undertake quality research. So, it was not really research-oriented like the FFU projects; it was unique and for that matter it was also unique for the SUA community. And for quite long, we had no such kind of projects. In terms of strengths, we thought there were a number of issues for this project. First, this project managed to end while developing three post graduate programs, all of them for PhDs. These programs have been institutionalized in the SUA system; they have been hosted by the departments within SUA. They are enrolling students. That was a tick number one, and a major issue was that everyone at SUA and in Tanzania would keep remembering the existence of the BSU. We had PhD programs in agro-ecology and agrobusiness, these programs exist, and in my department, I have one which is Master of Science in aquaculture. We are training men and women in this program, and aquaculture in particular is a very growing industry in Tanzania, it is a very particular sector because of the need for the protein and fish could be one of the most accessible proteins for the livelihood, safety and food security for community. So that was a big issue. BSU trained six academic SUA staff to the level of PhD in a full funding mode. They were ten months in Denmark. Some achieved double degrees from SUA and from universities in Denmark. They are now a very well workforce in SUA. Some are actually getting higher positions in administration now. So that was really another big issue for BSU. And there were a number of capacity building in innovative pedagogic approaches: How to teach our students and mainly BSU transformed the way of teaching. Mainly we were under the teacher-centered approaches where you just give lectures, students memorize and then do the exams. But we see a transformation through BSU, where people were trained in a number of these pedagogical approaches transforming the thinking from teacher-centered to student-centered approach. And that has helped even for the students to think as they do their education. The other area was actually the capacity of staff to do research and also to write research projects. It was through the training that we had in the BSU. Researchers could even write research projects and get funding from other donors. And we have this program going on now, like we established an agro-ecology hub in Tanzania. It is a hub that coordinates initiatives on agro-ecology in Tanzania and that is hosted by SUA and it is being funded by a foundation from USA. This is a capacity that was built through the BSU and now we have a hub for agro-ecology going on in Tanzania hosted here at SUA and I am one of the secretaries, I work in that hub. And we are continuing with projects through this hub, and we are working with almost all partners in agro-ecology in the country – universities like Nelson Mandela Institute and we work with University of Dar es Salam and University of Dodoma and we have NGOs and research institutes in the hub. And we have farmers who are working in agro-ecology and organic farming. So, you can see that this was a seed that was planted through the BSU. And you can see now that this hub is working and that SUA is coordinating all stakeholders supporting government policies related to agro-ecology and we have reached a stage where we have the strategy for agro-ecology. We don’t yet have a real policy, but we developed a policy in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Livestock and other partners. We are there.

I will now proceed with the weaknesses. When we were in BSU 2, if you remember, we entered into an era of Covid 19, and I can assure you that it reduced our speed of intervention and it impacted a lot on this program. Most of the face-to-face interventions could not be done for almost two years. And we were not prepared for online communications and unfortunately SUA was not very good in that area, if you compare it with other universities. So, it really impacted us a lot, and it reduced the speed of implementation. But in BSU we also worked to develop research groups. And we learned from this process that it was not easy. Before we thought it was just a normal thing. As we talk now, we are still united, we call it BSU family. When there is a call for proposal, what we have been doing in BSU is that all members will get information. So, within this BSU family, we have research teams. If you go to agribusiness, you will find two or three teams working together. I assure you, it was not very easy to reach that, because we are people with different disciplines. That was a new experience. Sometimes before, people on crop science would work by themselves. But today, a crop scientist will work with an animal scientist and somebody in agribusiness. So that is how it looks now. And we reached there with a lot of difficulties. Something that was also a bit delimiting and challenging was the linkages to the industry. Our interventions did not have a very clear link to what is happening in the industry in some cases. And at the end, we realized that it would be an area where we need to be more attentive. So, we are working with farmers, but it was not at a level where we really needed. But also, another weakness that we found was the approval of professors, where we are trying to accredit the programs which we developed. The design was to have this program up and run earlier than was expected, so there was a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of teams had to be made to project the capacity of teaching these courses and lot of logistics issues from the governing bodies. Later, they were approved, but they were approved a bit later than we expected in the project. These were a few issues that I can mention that became limitations in our interventions under BSU.

Morten Birkved: My role in the BSU3 project was to be responsible for teaching academic staff and PhDs in sustainability assessment competences and disseminate sustainability assessment frameworks and so on. It was a substantial travelling I had. It did not amount to as many hours as Anthony has invested in the project by far. I think the framework of BSU has some strengths seen from my engineering perspective, which is quite different from that of most other participants from the North who came from a humanistic and socio-economic and socio-technical background. I felt that through the courses and tools and methods which I was disseminating I got the sense that the receiving Southern partner had the feeling of being empowered by a larger global agenda, which is of course sustainability enabling them to do something active for their own area of research for their own industrial sector within which they were working and got quite positive feedback. Of course, it was quite challenging to disseminate a complicated framework, but I think overall the people received it quite well and they felt empowered because it was facilitating the Southern part to engage in the global sustainability challenge and actually provide decision support for local policy makers and also national policy makers. I got a positive impression of the engagement that was exhibited by the local Southern partner. Overall, I see it as a success, because we have actually disseminated these competencies, and it was received quite well. And of course, it is becoming more and more urgent that South countries participate in the sustainability challenge or green transition challenges. And these tools are requisites for engaging in this challenge in an informed way. I think SUA staff and PhDs have learned quite a lot and some quite useful things. Further, being able to build that biogas plant at SUA also provided a teaching tool which will enable SUA to teach actual technologies that can facilitate green transition. That is what I saw as positive sides to the program. As mentioned earlier, it is a very limited role that I played in the program. On the negative side, in relation to the follow up program, BSU4, I got the sense that the Danish funding bodies suddenly had a change of mind about what they would like to support. It felt discontinuous, so in that way it is a very limited, narrow timeframe that DFC (Danida Fellowship Centre) allocates for focusing on this particular area. In that way, they are not trying to ensure the success of survival in the long term, which was a bit disappointing seen from my side, because I think by supporting what was achieved during BSU3, it would be possible to ensure the survivability of the majority of the competences that were disseminated to the people at SUA. But that was not a priority for the Danish funding parties. The shifted focus and now it is something new, which they are focusing on. And of course, they are free to do that. I just had the impression that we could do a lot more by ensuring survivability of what has been achieved. I think that is it from my limited view of BSU3.

AW: Do you have any specific changes or improvements of the BSU program, which is still on?

Morten Birkved: I don’t think the shift in focus is in the interest of DFC nor the people participating in these large programs. So, building in some continued focus supporting the survivability of what has been achieved is something that DFC should maybe consider.

AW: Dr. Anthony, what is your recommendations for improvements of the BSU program? How do you respond to what Morten has just pointed out?

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: Yes, I have more or less similar feelings like what Morten said. At the end, when we heard this announcement that there is no longer funding for BSU 4, we asked for reasons and DFC said that it was about the capacity building and they have a feeling that our universities are now becoming stronger and they would like to go to smaller universities also to build their capacity, and for Tanzania they had to choose the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA), which is a relatively newer and smaller university to SUA, and also other areas in the South; they went to Uganda, Gulu University, and also Somaliland where there is a university. But also we requested, if that is the case maybe if you have a feeling that our capacities are well enhanced maybe we need to take a role to partner now with these new universities and act as mentors. And that could be actually strengthening South to South partnerships and collaborations, but at the same time we could also proceed with the South-North partnerships that were on my view actually somehow strengthened because it was also very easy for Morten I think for this talk to just say ‘well I can have this talk with Anthony just because we have worked together before, he knows me, to mention another person. Like the biogas plant I think Morten worked with the two researchers, David who is in my department, but there is another lady, Amina, who is in a small campus close to where I am. So, already we established very clear working relations and to me I thought we would have taken this much further rather than actually ending at BDU3. If you look at how we implemented BSU3, it was in the same order that there are some issues in BSU1, which started way back in 2011, and we came to develop the programs actually in BSU2 we started it in 2014. So, when we came to 2017, when we initiated BSU 3, actually, the idea was to consolidate our efforts that were made in BSU 1 and BSU2. So, for BSU4, it was the proper time to cement whatever we started in BSU3 like the running of the programs. And we initiated activities like circular economy was more into the BSU3 and almost at the end of it. So, luckily for example that the biogas plant was constructed, it started working, and by the end of the project, it was working and is an area where now can be used by farmers to train, by postgraduate students to do research. So, there were issues now that we needed actually to continue, for example in the area of circular economy, which is very hot today. We needed more time, because it is one of the areas that were not very

much developed under BSU3. So, I have the same feeling that I think it is also good to scale up to other areas. We agree. It is also good to scale up other areas, but I think we were supposed to have some activities going on to cement whatever we initiated in these three phases.

AW: Let me move on to another topic. I mean, the methodology of lifecycle assessment is sort of a key methodology in sustainable development. And it was also taught and promoted in the BSU program. I mean, to what extent is LCA life cycle assessment practiced in Tanzania today? Are there examples of products being, I mean, analyzed with this methodology? Morten, maybe you can start.

Morten Birkved: We were teaching the LCA framework with the, how can I say, the background that this is the default assessment methodology within Europe. And our hopes were that by enabling the Tanzanians to conduct various assessments of products and most formerly food items that could be exported to Europe. Tanzania could gain an upper hand on the export market by becoming aware of what data the European authorities would need for these assessments. The PEF framework, which is this product environmental footprint, which is being promoted in Denmark and Europe in these days for comparing various items. That way, the Tanzanians would have the upper hand by being very familiar with the framework that needed data from the Tanzanian producers and industry sectors in order to assess the products from Tanzania and facilitating a more seamless marketing process of these products in Europe. And that of course I think is in the overall interest of Tanzania to gain an upper hand in the export of products in general. And of course, also over time become, I can say, able to conduct these assessments themselves and at least introduce some decision support in navigating various industry sectors, for instance the food sector, in terms of what products should be promoted nationally and what health slash sustainable nutritional strategies should be promoted within Tanzania. Overall, I sense that there was a great interest in this program, especially in terms of the data part what data were needed by the European authorities and other authorities that was of great interest to the to the locals in SUA in Tanzania and I think the framework as such is not more complicated – it is complicated – but it’s not more complicated than it can be handled by also academics from Tanzania.

So it is, I think, proper preparation to at least become familiar with this framework in order to gain the upper hand in a very competitive export market.

AW: Dr. Anthony, what is your opinion about, I mean, the application of LCA, both for export, but also in the national context of Tanzania.

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: Let me declare the interest that actually this is not a subject of mine, but so far we are discussing issues related to the SDG number 12, which relates to these assessments about responsible consumption and production and i think we understand Tanzania is one of the country where population is also increasing and for that matter there is a need to have methods okay for doing assessment and monitoring like food waste, because we know we are producing a lot of food. Sometimes there are also a lot of waste that are produced, and we are all aware of the global population increase. And if we don’t have clear methods for assessing such issues, then it’s a problem. I think the government needs to have policies. Policies of reducing waste generation but also promoting circularity, circular economic practices, and having sustainable procurement policies and also looking at ways that are sustainable in our lifestyles. So how do we consume our food? How do we choose production? Where we produce with lower environmental impacts? And how can we have activities that lowers carbon footprint and so on? So, I think in my view, all these issues are being currently researched here at SUA. And life cycle assessment is one of the methods that are used in various research, and in so doing, I think we are really tackling this sustainable development goal number 12. Those are my observations. And BSU, I think, as I said before, we started here, but unfortunately it is where we really ended, almost at the end of the BSU3.

AW: Are there any specific examples of LCA applications? I mean, for example, in the form of messages or recommendations, advice to the general public about healthy food and labeling of food products, and similar things in Tanzania?

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: I think there are examples because I’m seeing now a lot of initiatives and even in the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries. If you look at the strategy also that has been developed for agroecology and the organic farming, you see a number of activities, but also lifestyle issues that leads to communities, to encourage community to see the need of consuming safe food and also communities or farmers to produce in a sustainable way so that there is local ownership of technologies, production, but also consumption, reducing waste, and consuming health food for sustainability. So, I see some initiatives in this line in Tanzania. Morten, if you can add anything.

Morten Birkved: At least from the literature I see comparison of European production forms and African production forms, especially for pork meat, and especially how the two production forms can benefit from each other and how the expectations are in terms of exporting meat from Africa to Europe within this green transition and what the constraints will be. So, I see some work going on in terms of optimizing the southern production forms in such a way that they fit with the expectations of the European Union as a receiving market. So, there is a focus on empowering the southern producers in assessing the product in such a way that they become competitive with European products. I think it’s very important for the African agricultural industry to be aware and to be capable of conducting these assessments in order to achieve this export upper hand that we talked about before. If they’re not capable and do not understand what it is that the European Union is asking for, they will be helpless.

AW: In the national context of Tanzania, I mean, do you see any scope for an even more advanced application of LCA that is, I mean, to establish circular economy in certain product lines? Can you point out any examples, which might, I mean,

Morten Birkved: That was the whole purpose of this biogas plant, that circular economy, converting organic material into energy. And the purpose of LCA in that context is to explore utilizations of various residual resources, kitchen waste, and I think we had waste from sunflowers and various infield activities. There were plant residues that could be used in various forms either for as direct fuel or for biogas and then also for fertilizers so the question is what route would be the optimal to utilize these resources in and that was something that Amina and David picked up quite fast that, okay, you need LCA to decide which route or route works best seen from a climate perspective, seen from an environmental perspective, seen from a resource perspective, and that there is no, I’m going to say, black and white. You actually need to figure out how to compare climate performance with resource challenges and so on. So in that way, the decision support power of LCA is something that was grasped by the locals at SUA and I hope it’s something that they utilize, especially when they teach biogas production to the academic staff and to the students in such a way that they become aware that the decision to produce biogas is not as simple as, yes, we can do it, that’s why we do it. No, sometimes you have to go through calculations and also figure out which route is the best and whether it actually makes a residual resource for biogas plants.

AW: Dr. Anthony, any comments on this question about the biogas plant and the scope for circular economy?

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: Yes, if I talk a bit broadly from what Morten said, you know, at SUA now we have decided to initiate these courses that have a holistic approach like PhD agroecology. At first, we were mainly concentrating on this like conventional agriculture and so on. Now, with the PhD up and running at SUA, we thought it was not enough because sometimes we receive fewer students in that program. Now we have developed the MSc Agroecology. The whole idea is to have trained staff who will go out and work with farmers who will have these skills: How do you handle agriculture on a holistic approach apart from having an MSc and PhD? We have also developed tailor-made courses for in-service extension staff, those who are already working with farmers out there and they have never gone through such holistic thinking of producing crops and livestock. So, we have also done these tailor-made courses for in-service extension staff. And the whole idea is to create awareness for the farmers, the people who are keeping fish, the fisheries, the livestock keepers and so on. To start thinking that there is a better way of producing our products. And the whole idea is the security of the resources and efficient use of the resources in the biosystems. So, at SUA, we have even a plot, a demonstration plot, where we demonstrate how circular economy works on the ground. And only that the biogas plant is designed in let’s say like a hundred meters out of this pilot. We could not find a better place for that plant, but it’s very close to it. So, farmers, students and anyone who wants to learn about it, there is a plot where you could see how you can, for example, produce fish in a sustainable way and how can you use the effluent coming from the fish into the gardens, into the pasture? And how can this pasture also be used to feed livestock? And the livestock will produce manure, manure will come back to the farm, but also livestock will produce manure that will also be the input for the biogas and get the clean energy afterwards. So, we have a demo plot that actually demonstrates how circular economy works.

AW: What is the scope for future research cooperation between the two of you? Have you any specific plans in the pipeline for new projects?

Morten Birkved: We already tried out one GFC application that didn’t work out. We didn’t make it through first round. So of course, there is an incentive to attract new projects that can extend what has already been established in BSU3. Of course, GFC provides funding for that, but to me it also appears that Tanzania is not an easy country to attract funding for. There are projects being launched in Tanzania, that should be said, but it appears that it’s not as easy as it used to be and competitive, quite fierce. But I think with effort we should be able to attract funding for a new smaller project where we could focus on for instance, circular economy and sustainability assessment, even industrial ecology if that is something of interest. So, there is hope for future collaboration, but we haven’t been able to fund these plans yet.

AW: Dr. Anthony, how do you see the situation? What are your priorities for future research and in particular, of course, collaboration with Morten and his team at SDU?

Anthony Zozimus Sangeda: I think when we were trying to train our staff on circular economy particularly, eight young staff from SUA visited Denmark for some two or three months. And when they were in Denmark, other issues that they learned on how to do circular economy projects. And when they came back, they started to design like small research projects. Some of these projects are being implemented by masters students now but the idea was also to develop some of this into researchable research projects and try to work with the Danish partners to implement maybe through funding from Danida or European Union that has not happened yet to reach a point where we have a consolidated project and submitted to EU or Danida. But that has been our thinking. That’s the way we want to enhance our future collaborations and our future partnerships. Although some of these small research projects are developed now, and I’m not very sure but some of these have been submitted to COSTEC, which is the National Commission for Science and Technology which normally provides research funding to institutions so that is another area that we target for such kind of research projects. So, there are some initiatives about the four research ideas were developed out of the trip that was done to Denmark. And we are working to see if these can be developed further to a level that can also be funded in future collaborations. That’s what we have now.

AW: Any concluding remarks from your side, Morten?

Morten Birkved: No, except that, of course, it was a very positive experience with BSU3, and I really hope that we, at some point, will manage to attract funding that allows us to continue some of the activities that we had within the project.

Dialogue between Professor Morten Birkved and Professor Anthony Zozimus Sangeda moderated by Editor Arne Wangel

https://ddrn.dk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/audio1502904665publish.mp3

Solar Thermal Project Provides Hot Water to Quilpué School

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 23:15:29 +0000

The Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué, a school with a high level of vulnerability, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to its library and other community areas on the campus. Then, its members went a step further and installed solar thermal panels in the bathrooms for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children, generating a series of benefits that extended to the entire community.

Quilpué, the so-called “City of the Sun”, is located in the Valparaíso Region of central Chile. It is the third most populated municipality in the region, behind the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. In the summer, Quilpué enjoys long, hot, sunny days. This small municipality has a calm atmosphere and pace. In the Belloto Norte sector is the Luis Cruz Martínez School, a municipal facility with a high vulnerability index that for ten years has been seeking to incorporate environmental sustainability transversally into its routines and daily life.

Although this school is connected to the electrical grid, the school community decided in 2020 to implement solar panel solutions and solar thermal systems as a way to educate students, parents, guardians, teachers, and school officials about the benefits of this type of energy and, at the same time, solve its infrastructure problems at a lower cost. María José Sepúlveda and María Eugenia Cataldo, both teachers and members of the school’s Environmental Committee, explains that the initiative to take advantage of solar energy and apply it to the establishment began after being part of an energy efficiency contest: “We realized that we were consuming too much light. Our costs were very high. It was after that experience that we asked ourselves as a community, ‘what can we do?’ And just then the Government’s Environmental Protection Funds appeared and we applied to finance our solar panels.”

During 2021, the Luis Cruz Martínez School, through the “Encuentro Solar” project, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to the library and other community places on campus. It should be noted that this establishment receives more than 600 students each year. “Currently, the library’s television, computers, and monitoring center (security cameras) receive solar energy, and we also made a connection to a garden,” explains Ana Hernández Duarte, a geography professor and thesis student of the Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the University of Playa Ancha, who is part of the Environmental Committee of the establishment.

Likewise, during 2022, the community installed a solar thermal system that provides hot water to the sinks and showers in the bathrooms of the children who are in the preschool stage. This project called “Solar Encounter 2.0” was on the priority list of the school community. This is because, despite the fact that Quilpué is called “the city of the Sun”, it has a valley climate whose characteristics are extreme minimum and maximum temperatures. “During winter, it is very cold in the morning and very icy during the day,” says Professor Sepúlveda. “The kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers approached the school’s Environmental Committee to request hot water for the bathrooms in these classes. We, as the Environmental Committee, gathered this information and saw that providing warm or heated water through renewable energy was a priority,” explains Hernández.

The bathroom has an associated shower and the school has often lent this infrastructure to vulnerable families in the school community. “We call it a ‘social bathroom’ because there is a family with very few resources in the community that uses this bathroom,” explains Cataldo. In addition to contributing monetary and energy savings for the school and social help for those who need it in their community, the solar panels and the solar thermal system for bathrooms and showers allow for the development of environmental awareness among the members of their community.

In this context, Hernández mentions that despite the fact that the school is in an urban area connected to the electrical grid, as a school community they seek to refute the idea that solar energy is only viable in rural areas when the objective of the municipal establishment is to promote environmental education in the educational community (and other schools in the area) and reduce emissions in general.

“In recent years, the school has seen an increase in students, and it often happens in Latin American countries that the infrastructure of the establishments begin to age and that the electrical system is not always updated at the same time as other renovations. Although there is no specific limitation because we are not in an isolated territory where we do not have access to the electrical grid, we can be a model in education for sustainability and raise awareness among the entire educational community (other schools, parents and guardians) that this type of technology can be used and is accessible. This is because, in general, there is the conception that photovoltaic panels are only used in Germany. So we, as an educational community that works for sustainability, wanted to demystify that idea a little,” says Hernández.

Connections with the community

For the school community, the “Encuentro Solar” 1 and 2 projects not only included the installation of solar thermal panels but also training in renewable energy, environmental education, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in their community, taught by professionals and academics from the Catholic University of Valparaíso. “There is a mother in the community who, when we taught about solar panels and dehydrators, replicated the system when she had financial problems and started her own business. Now she has a solar oven that she uses to cook and dehydrate fruit,” explains Sepúlveda.

The solar energy photovoltaic system installed by the “Encuentro Solar 1” project reserves energy to use in cases of power outages. “This backup is used to power the school’s security cameras and also one of the pre-school classrooms, which would be like our place in case no one anywhere in the school had electricity.” The next step for this community is to apply for a project with automated and efficient irrigation for the school garden, which will be connected to the electrical grid of the solar panels already installed.

An example for its community

According to local environmental authorities, the proactivity of the Quilpueíno establishment has an impact on the local school community that is generating more awareness, ties and sustainability, which is the result of collective work. The Luis Cruz Martínez School is part of a community with several levels, made up of students, parents, educational assistants, and teachers. Each child and person in the school has a family as well. “Their range of action is also quite wide, and we even link up in one of these projects with a Neighborhood Council. So, we try to create this network where the resources obtained from the project are utilized as efficiently as possible to maximize opportunities and how beneficial it can be,” says Hernández.

Currently, the school has links to the Catholic University of Valparaíso, the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), and the Corporation of the Municipality of Quilpué. “We have a support network at this time that has been forged through habits. There are even other schools that ask us for advice and help. They come to visit us, to learn about the environmental facilities we have at the school,” adds Sepúlveda.

Through all of the above, they seek to demonstrate to their community that it is possible to find sustainable answers to their problems. “We are executing an energy transition. We are moving to be able to use renewable energy. This is because we seek to be an example for other establishments or communities. If you are in a more isolated territory, solar energy or solar panels are often the only solution to have energy, but when you are already in a context where a network is available, there is usually more resistance to sustainable solutions and, of course, we want to demystify ideas that sustainable solutions are far away or difficult,” says Hernández.

“We even held a workshop on the costs and benefits of having this type of infrastructure (solar panels) for the parents of the school, so that they can implement it in their homes. So, it is like putting the point up for discussion to generate that ecological transition.” However, Hernández says that as a community they are proud that the sustainable technical solutions for the school have been maintained over time. “Our first project was to reduce waste in 2017 and it is still operating. In addition, all of our infrastructure continues to be connected to each other and continues to improve or complement other needs or problems that we want to solve or improve. We continue with this great goal that we have set ourselves of being a model for an educational project that involves education for sustainability,” he adds.

In this context, the Luis Cruz Martínez School has made presentations and talks to other establishments in the area, to the municipal corporation to which the school belongs, and at COP26, disseminating the educational project of the establishment.

“We identified that the educational community understood renewable energy as distant. So, being able to have it in your school and seeing that it works in your library with solar panels, that you go to wash your hands in pre-primary and the water is warm, is something demonstrative and also raises awareness and is part of the children’s daily lives. This is transforming not only their perception and how they receive this type of technology or this type of practice, but also that they are already incorporating some behaviors and patterns with the change,” explains Hernández.

Maintenance: the limitations of the Solar Encounter project

Despite all the benefits and impacts of the “Solar Encounter 2.0” project for its community, this initiative also has its limitations. The installation of the “Solar Encounter 2.0”, for example, included four million pesos for financing (approximately 4,500 dollars). However, repairs and the cost of materials are not included in this budget. In addition, there have been problems with maintenance and coordination of visits. “The solar thermal panel had a leak. After a period of use, like any pipe, it began to leak water. And that is solved by a technician coming. The other thing is that sometimes it has to be regulated, there is a regulator in which the hot water and the cold water have to be balanced. Because if you open the tap, sometimes hot water comes out, and that is dangerous. So there has to be a balance between cold and hot water,” explains Cataldo.

The teacher explains that “at the beginning we had to introduce the team to both the solar panels and the solar thermal, we created a manual with instructions on what to do, how to maintain it, the minimum maintenance that must be done, and we tried to spread it to the assistants. But the same thing happened to us at the beginning when they turned off the hot water taps. Regarding maintenance, it is difficult for us to keep these technicians because they are not so constant over time. Sometimes the service is not on the schedule when one would like. We have to coordinate well in advance for the maintenance visit or any problem that one may have.”

“The dynamics of a school is complex because it is a municipal establishment with more than 600 students, so things have to be done well in advance and they have to be within the budget for the year. For example, now we are thinking about 2025, so we have those types of precautions or details in mind now,” adds Hernández. Despite the difficulties, Hernández, Sepúlveda and Cataldo highlight the importance of communication and community commitment for the success of these solar and solar thermal initiatives.

“What we are achieving is that the school is entirely sustainable,” says Sepúlveda. Cataldo says that “there is a complete change from how the children were before and now. They have more environmental awareness that they take home.” As for other potential uses, she adds that “I would put solar panels on all the lights here in the school. So that would be ideal. Do more things with this energy. This is a school with a high vulnerability index in which not all parents can pay for electricity. I know that there are many parents who are hanging from the electrical grids. If we had panels, more solar panels, and they knew how to use them, they would not need to be hanging from the electrical grids,” adds the teacher.

“We are motivated to develop environmental awareness in students. In the end, we are already experiencing climate change. Climate change is here. We are experiencing it, so it is very important that the children are aware that with small actions they can contribute to climate change not being so harmful,” concludes Cataldo.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Pataguas Cerro and La Cebada: The History of the First Community Photovoltaic Plants in the O’Higgins Region

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 13:47:54 +0000

In the middle of fertile valleys that produce corn, wheat, potatoes, oranges, lemons, avocados, peaches and grapes, and with the Cachapoal River as their northern boundary, the inhabitants of the communes of Pichidegua and Las Cabras live 140 kilometers from Santiago and suffer — as is usual in rural Chilean localities — frequent power cuts and the difficulties of having low voltage. “In this area (Pichidegua and Las Cabras) the lack of electricity is a more frequent reality than one thinks. In winter there are power cuts due to storms, or due to falling trees and branches, among others,” explains Constanza López, environmental manager of the Las Cabras commune. López explains that these difficulties are compounded by the exponential growth of electricity consumption from the electrical grid as the communes are growing in population. “Our electrical grid is old and the transformers overheat,” she adds.

Since its invention, electricity and its access have emerged as a primary need for people and their quality of life. This is why, in areas where electricity is a scarce commodity, rural communities can benefit from small-scale renewable energy projects.This is according to Carla Douglas González, project coordinator of the NGO Energía Colectiva, whose objective is to promote citizen participation in the energy transition. “Renewable energy projects are scalable, therefore they represent a very good solution for the lack of electricity supply, especially where there is none or it is intermittent,” she says.

Community Photovoltaic Plants: Pataguas Cerro and La Cebada

In this context, the communities and institutions of Pichidegua and Las Cabras installed two community photovoltaic plants: the first, called “Pataguas Cerro”, was installed in Pichidegua in November 2021, and generates 54 kWp – which is a unit of measurement used to measure the performance of photovoltaic solar energy systems. The second is called “La Cebada” and is located in the commune of Las Cabras, and has a capacity of 35 kWp. Both photovoltaic plants allow the generation of clean energy and energy savings not only for the institution that installed them — the Cooperativa Campesina Intercomunal Peumo (Coopeumo) — but also for the three rural health posts; the Latin American High School, the Pataguas Cerro School in Pichidegua and the Santa Eugenia Rural School, and the headquarters of the neighborhood council in Las Cabras.

“This project seeks to improve the continuity of the electricity service for the satisfaction of the community. Today, energy is a commodity that is required every day,” explains Roberto Rodríguez, head of the environmental office of the Pichidegua commune, on the reasons for community photovoltaic parks.

The Step-by-Step Construction of the Pichidegua Photovoltaic Park

The idea of installing solar panels and sharing the surplus with the surrounding community was conceived by the Coopeumo Cooperative, which is dedicated to the sale of agricultural inputs, credits, provision of technical assistance, marketing and project development, among others. “The project began to take shape in 2020, when the Coopeumo Cooperative was contacted by RedGenera, a cooperative dedicated to providing comprehensive engineering and assembly solutions that incorporate the use of solar energy, efficient energy management and energy education. They contacted us because we met the requirements to apply for funds that were being launched by the Ministry of Energy’s energy sustainability agency, which financed half of a photovoltaic project of a certain characteristic and capacity. Together with the Municipality of Pichidegua, we applied for these funds and together with RedGenera – who are the technical advisors for renewable energy – we were granted this project, which has a capacity of 32 kilos of generation,” says Ignacio Mena, who in charge of technical projects for the Coopeumo Cooperative and also lives in Pichidegua with his family. Mena explains that, for the Coopeumo Cooperative, the main motivation for installing photovoltaic panels was, at first, monetary savings. “The photovoltaic panels were installed on the roof of the shed, where we store inputs for agricultural work,” he explains, and adds that the remaining energy is redistributed through the splices – which are the union of two or more cables of an electrical installation – to different educational and health establishments.

According to the person in charge of the Environment Office of the municipality of Pichidegua, in order to choose which institutions to benefit from the remaining electric energy, a follow-up was made of the electric consumption of health centres and schools. “The entire school community and health officials were summoned to inform them of the project. Then came the most meticulous work, which was to take, in this case, all the electricity bills and analyze the last six months to get an average. Then, to find out which institutions (schools and health centres) to support in order to lower the cost. In this way, we reached these five benefiting establishments: Patagua Cerro School, Latin American High School, San Roberto Rural Post Office, Patagua Cerro Rural Post Office and Larmahue Rural Post Office. The first stage worked extremely well, so we decided to apply for a second stage of expansion,” says Rodríguez.

In the Las Cabras commune, the process was different according to the neighbors. “Coopeumo approached us and included us in the project when they started and it seemed like a good idea. Here in the sector, the issue of electric light is that it’s not regular, the voltage is low and we have power cuts in the winter. In addition, there is overpopulation and more and more houses are connected to electric light. We, as the La Cebada neighborhood council, were willing to participate in the project at all times and supported it through a letter,” says Sandra Madrid, president of the neighborhood organization. In this sense, Madrid values the renewal of technologies, considering the social and environmental benefits that they can generate for the local population.

Víctor González Arriaza, director of the Pataguas Cerro School, tells how solar panels have been great allies for the school in economic and educational terms. “The sixth grade children visited the Coopeumo facilities where the solar panels are and received direct information from Ignacio Mena and the expert who was installing the project. They were told about the photovoltaic panels and they understood very clearly how they work and how this renewable energy system can be achieved,” he says. “The children’s impression was that it was very interesting. They didn’t know that the sun could be transformed into electrical energy and that it is transported through the cables they have to the interconnected system and reaches their homes. They were, in general, very happy, fascinated, and grateful for the presentation that was given,” he adds.

Regarding the discount on the electricity bill that the school receives, González Arriaza says that it is very useful because they are very dependent on electricity: “At the school we use a lot of lights. In the mornings, for example, we need to light up this room that we are using, in the offices we use computers and printers. Teachers use a lot of the ‘data’ [projectors] for their presentations of the subject. Energy is also used in heating and in electrical appliances for food such as kettles, microwaves and electric ovens.”

In this context, the economic savings become important — and according to data provided by Mena, the Coopeumo Cooperative has saved approximately 170 thousand pesos per month since the installation of the photovoltaic panels. Likewise, according to the organization, the average savings were 75 thousand pesos per month at the rural health centers and 30 thousand pesos at the schools. In the long term, the decrease in costs in the electricity bills also results in savings for public entities, in this case both municipalities, which can allow these resources to be allocated to other purposes. “Likewise, electrical engineers have explained to us that having a solar or electric generation plant close to a community improves their voltage tension,” says Mena, referring to other benefits that the neighbors have experienced since the installation of the photovoltaic park.

The Difficulties of Community Photovoltaic Parks

Despite all the benefits that photovoltaic panels have represented for the communities of Pichidegua and Las Cabras, there are still difficulties in the implementation of this type of project at a general and individual level; i.e., lack of training, dissemination and financing. Carla Douglas Gonzalez, project coordinator of the NGO Energía Colectiva, maintains that at a general level the main barrier to renewable energy projects is the monetary investment because “they are projects that are still expensive. On average, this technology costs 1,000 dollars for each kWp installed, and each family needs two.”

Douglas adds that another difficulty for this type of project is the lack of knowledge that rural communities and local authorities have to implement them: “Many communities do not have the tools because there has not been a dissemination campaign. We in the NGO Energía Colectiva have carried out training and people are motivated, but then it is difficult to continue without an organization that supports you in implementing or a state fund that helps you finance.” In the case of the Pichidegua commune, one of the main limitations was the size of the project, says Mena, referring to the number of panels that the first initiative had. “In total, there are 74 solar panels placed on the roof of a cooperative warehouse. It is difficult to have the technical infrastructure to support all the weight of that amount of equipment installed on the roof, and for it to be safe. There is a difficulty or an indication, so to speak, that you have to have a [solid] infrastructure to be able to set up a plant.”

“Likewise, we had bureaucratic problems for the CGE company to make the discounts on the electricity bills. They were unaware of the law and the treatment that had to be given to a plant of this type, where there were discounts for different connections, so that was a problem,” he adds. For López, from the Las Cabras municipality, the most difficult thing has been to show people that sustainable energy projects work and are beneficial for the community: “The truth is that people always have fears, especially in rural environments. Our commune is rural and access to information is difficult. So, through this we can try to educate people and the community to be able to show them that they [the plants] do work.”

“Like the La Cebada neighborhood association, we were willing at all times to collaborate on the project. I knew about the concept of solar panels, but I thought they were only used in homes; I had no idea that one could apply for headquarters,” adds the president of the Las Cabras neighborhood organization. “The ideal would be for this type of project to become better known. In other words, for the entire community of the region or the country to know about these projects that are being carried out, which are truly totally for their own benefit, so that they can continue to be replicated in other communes and in other sectors,” she concludes.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Why Emerging Economies also need Knowledge Transfer of Environmental Engineering

Arne Wangel — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 06:30:50 +0000

How did you get involved in sustainability?

Originally, I am an environmental chemist graduated from University of Copenhagen. My path into my current work is sustainability. By sustainable transition in developing economies, you can achieve results with far less resources than what is possible in industrialized countries.

My take when participating in projects in developing economies is that the transition towards sustainability, i.e. minimizing impact on the climate, primarily should happen in those economies because that is where you can most for the available resources.

As a chemist, how did you get involved in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

By detours. After my degree, I worked as a consultant for several years and came to realize that the challenges posed by chemicals did not constitute the full story. In that way I became interested in life cycle assessment and wrote a PhD thesis after having worked in industry for a couple of years. I went back to industry, however decided that I would rather do research. Then, I came back to the Technical University of Denmark, first as assistant professor, then I became an associate professor and worked with LCA and projects with industry on LCA, development of LCA methodologies, and application of LCA.

Thus, my career has not been a straight line, but rather by detours motivated by my interest on how to drive a sustainable transition, help industry to arrive at the most valid conclusions about optimization as related to climate change.

Could you give a few examples of your current research concerning industrialized countries as well as developing economies.

‘Take off’ is an EU Horizon project, which targets the development of new types of climate neutral jet fuel by capturing CO2 from e.g. chimneys or directly from the atmosphere adding hydrogen made by wind power and using some very advanced catalysators it is possible to make some oil-alike substances which can be further refined into jet fuel. This is a high-tech project which probably isn’t feasible in a developing economy. However, global South countries will benefit as this project makes it possible to manufacture fuel for combustion engines which is climate neutral. The idea is that the prices of these new fuels over time will become comparable to those of fossil fuels. In that way, the project can indirectly contribute to a sustainable transition in developing economies as well.

Which is your specific role within the international team of this EU Horizon project?

That is to make an environmental and climate assessment of the chemical pathways leading to the oil-alike substances. It is a very advanced technology, which does not exist yet. Currently, we are sort of guessing how it should perform for it to be optimized. We will obtain primary data which will enable us to make a complete assessment at the level of pilot scale.

You told me earlier that SDU has been involved in the research station in Guinea-Bissau, where research on malaria has been conducted for many years. Which are the research plans of SDU for the station?

The research station in Guinea-Bissau is still primarily focused on research on health by Christine Stabell Benn, who has worked with the Bandim Health Project since 1993 (also read post about Peter Aaby). I have had some meetings with the Dean. The research is about vaccines, positive and negative effects of vaccinating population group in developing economies. We would like to contribute with our research, however currently this is not possible, as we have difficulties in getting funding for projects in Guinea-Bissau.

What is your opinion concerning the objective of research capacity development in the DANIDA program ‘Building Stronger Universities’ (BSU) program? In other interviews, Danish faculty have mentioned that the BSU efforts are not followed up locally. The universities in Africa do not give priority to or do not have the funds to continue the research activities.

At Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania, they are very interested in learning from us. However, when the funding disappears, the route taken will be discontinued. I am teaching/disseminating sustainability assessment and try to introduce the scholars at SUA to circular economy. They are very interested, but their dedication is not sustained, when the funds are gone.

Sweden has invested substantial funds institutionally in a few selected universities, i.e. not based on specific course development or limited to a certain period.

I met somebody from SIDA; it looks that they are also interested in SUA, which renders it somewhat strange that DANIDA said that SUA would not be part of BSU IV, except for the university in Zanzibar. There is some sort of disharmony between the Swedish and Danish priorities, as the assessment by the Swedes seems to be that there probably is a basis to build upon.

Which are your recommendations for a strategy to build capacity? Should other components be added, or should the overall approach be changed?

I don’t know. However, one should certainly follow upon our point of departure in what we are trying to teach them so that it will be applied in their everyday context. Currently our effort seems to be some exotic interventions which cannot be applied directly in their teaching programs. I don’t know why because what we are trying to teach them has general relevance. In some cases, it seems that they are losing interest when we have left. I think it is important to secure a deeper implementation of research.

Have you met other donors during your involvement? It is my impression that several agencies are actively involved in this field, however with little or no coordination, as you hardly know each other. However, this experience is from some years back.

I have heard and observed that NORAD and USAID are active at SUA. Thus, more investors are involved. This only makes the pull-out by DANIDA even more peculiar. By a joint coordinated Nordic effort, it would be possible to achieve much more than today.

How do you assess the partnership itself in terms of publication, promotion of academic working methods, and equality in working relations?

I experience a certain level of involvement, however sometimes one may wonder whether the Tanzanian partners are participating for the money only, or whether they are motivated by academic interest. That is not clear to me. The suspicion is there, that they only do it out of economic interest.

What do you mean? It is ‘gap-filling’?

The driving force is not necessarily an academic interest from the South partners in learning something new, it could be the fact that money is attached. I feel that this is the wrong motivation for this kind of projects. I feel somewhat frustrated when I get this feeling.

Do you have any reform proposals which could lead to a higher level of involvement?

That is the Holy Gral. I have thought about it, however I do not have any proposal. It is a problem. I can understand their motivation; they are under extreme pressure every day, as very few resources are available. I just think it is a pity that educational systems in developing economies have not advanced. We do all the best we can to facilitate an upgrade of the South universities.

How about publication strategies? From the point of view of SDU, and as viewed by the partners. How much academic publication is produced?

Not very much, I have to say. That means that BSU has a much lower priority in Danish universities, where the current management is much more focused on academic publishing. That makes it difficult to motivate future involvement, as the Danida Fellowship Centre (DFC) is not and cannot be aligned with the key performance indicators of Danish universities. I would consider other initiatives outside DANIDA. A researcher from Vietnam visited us, and we will try to create projects with developing economies, that are operating at a slightly higher level of academic performance and thus having a better chance of producing scientific publications. It is very difficult to motivate African faculty to publish, they are not ‘publication-driven’.

What are your ideas and plans for research in the future?

There is some disappointment with the current practice of DFC. We feel that our research applications are not prioritized/appreciated and that it is the same groups that are receiving funding over and over. This is our one-sided interpretation which we probably cannot prove, however, this is the feeling across disciplines we are left with. Maybe, some of the countries in Africa, in which DFC is involved, are operating at a level that does not match our key performance indicators at SDU. That is why we momentarily are looking more towards Asia and alternative sources of funding such as DFF (Independent Research Denmark). We will try to look at some of the research methods we are using that can be applied in the context of developing countries for mutual benefit. It becomes more oriented toward research rather than development, however with the objective that both parties should benefit. It is a more difficult exercise, however if successful I think that the benefit has a higher value for both parties.

Do you have a more detailed strategy?

We have in 2023 applied for funding for a project on plastics jointly with partners in the Netherlands and Vietnam for research on micro and macro plastics to be applied e.g. in a circular economy for plastics.

Is it still something about how things can work better in the South, or does it include a sort of feedback to strategies in Denmark?

It will always be related to the Danish strategy. The question is always whether the payoff of climate interventions in developing economies is better than in Denmark. Our high level of technology development means even small improvements typically are very costly. In developing countries, much more can be achieved at a lower cost, because solutions are low technology, e.g. converting residuals from agriculture to biogas and avoiding emissions.

Do you have any suggestions how to organize the research cooperation differently? One suggestion is to move the funds to Independent Research Denmark, which is divided into sectors and has a much shorter period of processing applications. Also, the universities can nominate members to the research councils of Independent Research Denmark.

I have thought about that myself; there should not be the kind of selection, first internally at DFC. Instead, you should apply the fund and those achieving the highest priority should be selected for funding. By that, not political, but scientific priorities would prevail.

A counter argument is that strategic priorities apply for Independent Research Denmark and for the Innovation Fund as well. That is not very different from the strategic priorities of DANIDA.

The question is whether the priorities of DANIDA corresponds to national priorities of the recipient countries. Sometimes, I find it difficult to validate that this is the case. If aiming for coordination with Sweden and Norway national priorities of the recipient countries must be the point of departure, not DANIDA priorities. It would require that DANIDA let go – and they may not agree to such a difficult process – which I think is possible. There is no guarantee for anything, but I think that DANIDA maybe represents an archaic organisation type for distributing research funds in a society with very different priorities than in the 1970s.

The Importance of Studying Latin America When it Comes to Sustainability

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 05:59:57 +0000

A British researcher in Aalborg is working with anti-fracking movements and environmental issues in Latin America. According to her, Latin America adds something extra to the debate about our societies’ perspectives on nature. She regrets that Latin American studies are now pushed into the margin of research.

It is “really important that academics publish in accessible means and participate in publication projects that might not necessarily gain them academic points, in order for their research to reach beyond the academic community”, says Malayna Raftopoulos.

She comes from Wales and is now Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University in Denmark. Her current research focuses on anti-fracking movements in Argentina and Colombia, especially the human rights and environmental consequences of extraction projects on local communities.

“My research is particularly useful in communities in Latin America where you are living with mining, oil and gas activities, and extractivism at your doorstep, and do not normally speak English. Therefore, publishing in Spanish is very important for it to be used by civil society groups in the region when discussing the impact of extractivist activities in their territories.”

However, the BFI-point-system to measure employee performance at Danish universities has made it “more difficult for academics to prioritize writing in lesser known Global South journals or books.” Now the BFI-system has been canceled in Denmark as part of a political agreement, but the performance of academic employees is still measured in another way, and the system has hardly become less anglophone.

As a student, Malayna Raftopoulos studied Spanish and Development Studies at Liverpool University and finalized a master thesis and her PhD in Latin American Studies at the same university. Later, she focused her research efforts on environmental politics, environmental governance, climate change policies, disaster risk management and natural resource development, particularly oil and gas. In recent years, she has studied anti-fracking movements in Latin America and increasingly also in countries in the Global North like the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.

“My research career has focused on sustainability from the beginning. When I started my PhD about sustainable tourism in small rural communities in the ’eyebrow’ of the Amazon region in Peru in September 2009, it was a relatively new emerging area, a new field of expertise. Now, sustainability has become a massive buzzword – in academia but also in the public and private sectors, all throughout society.”

Shortage of interest in Latin America

Malayna Raftopoulos observes that ”there is a real shortage of interest and literature about Latin America in Denmark. There are very few Latin American programs at Danish Universities, and unfortunately the one in Aalborg will soon close. Another option to learn about Latin America is being closed.”

“This is not particular to Denmark,” she underlines. ”Exactly the same is happening in other European countries like the U.K. A few decades ago, many people engaged in the fight against poverty and inequality in the region. There are still parts of Latin America, like Central America, which are extremely poor and have huge political, economic and social problems. But now several Latin American countries are emerging as middle-income countries. Under President Lula, Brazil had massive economic growth. People become less interested in a continent that is doing well by itself. Nowadays, when you think about the Global South, you mostly think about Africa.”

“At the same time, we can observe a general decline in academic and media interest in the Global South. If you combine these trends, Latin America is increasingly pushed to the margin of research in Europe. I think that is extremely sad.”

Malayna Raftopoulos has spent a lot of time in Latin America the last fifteen years. She has been ”on the ground” a lot, she has witnessed how diverse and interesting the continent is, and she has of course gotten a lot of local contacts. Not only an Associate Research Fellow at the Centro Latino Americano Ecología Social, Uruguay, as well as at different academic institutes in the UK – she also collaborates with NGOs, representatives of civil society groups, and quite a number of local people. “I have networks with all of them. It’s a real mix between civil society and academics.”

“I just write to people, I contact them directly, I explain my project and my research. People in Latin America are normally very willing to talk to you. I have interviewed so many people in civil society groups and also in government institutions, as well as local citizens. Many of them have become my friends.”

“I definitely develop my own ideas at my office in Aalborg, but when you start talking to people, especially on the ground, these ideas evolve. The next direction you take is influenced a lot by your discussions with other people. When you come as a Global North researcher, how can you possibly deduce the reality of the situation? You can observe and see it, you can experience a little bit of it, and you can talk to people. But of course you cannot write about something that happens in the Global South without involving relevant people from the Global South. It’s impossible to do this work without having South colleagues as partners.”

“We are exchanging empirical as well as theoretical knowledge. That is what academia is about – it’s knowledge exchange. Even though we are based in the Global North, we can still make important contributions by considering the broader perspective and linking one case to the other, while drawing on insights from the local perspective and collaborating with scholars from the Global South.”

Viewing nature as a subject with its own rights

One challenge researchers in the South and North have in common is how to find funding for your research.

“The fracking issue is highly political, isn’t it? Energy security is on top of the political agenda, and most governments are still pushing forward with fracking. I am working together with a colleague from the University of London, and when I was still working there myself, we had angry pro-fracking people running through the corridors.”

“However, it is important to understand the impact of energy policies like fracking both to help governments and industries better understand the social and political dynamics of fracking, but also to address the concerns and grievances expressed by communities and civil society organizations.”

“It’s interesting to make comparisons between how anti-fracking movements work in the Global South compared to the Global North. There are so many transnational connections – this issue is able to transcend national boundaries. Most environmental issues are. by nature, global issues, not contained by boundaries.”

Malayna Raftopoulos is participating in a network with other Danish-based researchers with the purpose of strengthening collaboration between scholars and civil society within the field of global environmental justice in both the Global North and the Global South. This network collaboration between Aarhus University, Aalborg University and Roskilde University has received a networking grant from Denmark’s humanities’ research council.

Apart from that, she is using the time allotted for research in her job as Associate Professor. “It’s very difficult to get additional funding”, she says. When it is related solely to Latin America, it is ‘virtually impossible’.”

Malayna Raftopoulos has worked with sustainability as a goal for her research long before anybody sat down to formulate the UN Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs). “Sustainability has become defined by the SDGs. We are using them in our teaching, and it’s positive as well as negative. It has become very difficult for sustainability to be envisaged outside the SDG goals.”

“But in terms of knowledge processes, Latin America has – with all its diversity – something important to add to the way we are seeing and understanding nature and the environment, in terms of ontological and epistemological perspectives. Something which is not easy to include in the standard reading of the SDGs.”

In countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, the current constitution gives nature its own legal rights and bridges the division between nature and society. They shall be protected. In spite of that, both countries have ”massive extractivist” policies. But still, in the eyes of Malayna Raftopoulos, ”Latin America adds something extra to the debate about our societies’ different perspectives on nature.” “We in the world, North and South, still view nature as an object. We don’t see it as a subject, as some people do in Latin America.”

“That explains, partly, the richness of research that is coming out of Latin America – and this was part of the reason that my research interest originally developed in the direction of natural resource development and environmental politics in the region. I am fascinated with its immense diversity, not just biodiversity, but also in terms of different communities with totally different approaches to the nature and environment around them.”

The Rough Road to Energy Transition in The Global South

Namrata Acharya — Wed, 04 May 2022 12:13:26 +0000

In February 2022, the Chinese government approved the opening of three new coal mines—two in the northwestern province of Shaanxi and another in Inner Mongolia. This is a part of its efforts towards augmenting coal-based power generation. The plan includes opening 43 new coal-fired power plants, and 18 new blast furnaces, as projected by the government in the first half of 2021. China is not the only country to step up fossil fuel-based energy production in the recent past. In June 2020, India announced the auction of 41 new coal blocks for commercial mining and opened the mining sector for private players. The government said it would spend $6.8 billion on creating infrastructure for coal extraction and transportation. In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been pushing for a bill that would give the state complete control over the energy market. This would make the private investments in the renewable energy sector unviable as the country moves towards spending billions of dollars on fossil fuels.

This defiance of the Global South towards the Global North’s push for clean energy, was reflected in the UN Climate Change Conference at Glasgow in November 2021, which saw significant compromises towards clean energy transition goals. One of the noteworthy among them is the agreement to “phase down” coal-fired power plants, against the earlier goal to “phase out” by 2040. In reality, even the phasing out of coal-based power, and fossil fuel at large, for the Global South remains a distant goal.

Why Fossil Fuel Will Continue to Light Homes in the Global South?

The Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG) by the UN on energy talks about universal access to ‘affordable and clean’ sources of power, with substantial increase in the share of renewable energy by 2030. However, the simultaneous use of terms ‘clean’ and ‘affordable’ is a paradox, for the shift to clean energy is not an affordable switch for most developing countries.

Globally, about 13 percent of the world population does not have access to electricity. Most of these countries are in Sub-Sahara Africa, according to statistics from One World in Data. Only 8.8 percent of Chad’s population has electricity access. Nearly, three billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking—a problem exclusively of the poor countries in the Global South. An average US citizen consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, four-five times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China, according to the data.

These disparities in energy consumption across nations were further aggravated by Covid-19, which triggered global coal shortages due to supply chain disruptions in the peak phase of the pandemic, followed by huge demands in the recovery phases. In response, India and China pressed the panic button and ramped up coal supplies. According to a report published in the Guardian, Chinese coal production climbed to an all-time high of 4.07 billion tonnes in 2021, up 4.7 percent on the previous year. China accounts for roughly 54 percent of the world’s coal consumption, while India accounts for 11.6 percent. China and India have the world’s fourth and fifth-largest coal reserves in the world respectively.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unanticipated impact on energy transition. The impact is multi-dimensional, ranging from the continued downturn in the energy market to the disrupted global energy supply chain. The plunging fossil fuel prices have also weakened the price competitiveness of renewable energy,” according to research published at Applied Energy in February 2022.

“This transition to renewables must happen, but unfortunately, the demand is likely to rise much faster than what only renewable energy can provide. If the quality of life in India has to improve, the per capita consumption of electricity has to rise from 1200 units at present to 2000 units by 2030. These 800 incremental units multiplied by 1.3 billion people, would itself means 1100 billion units of additional generation. Even 50 percent of that addition will not be met by the renewables,” said Partha Bhattacharya, Former Chairman, Coal India, which controls more than 80 percent of coal assets in India in a telephonic interview with DDRN.

At present, India’s installed capacity for renewables is about 150 GW, and the government has set the target of 500 GW by 2030. Currently, coal contributes around 78 percent to India’s total power generation. By 2030, nearly 54 percent of India’s power generation would still be met by coal, according to government data.

“For Global North, the energy transition is about the question of replacement. For India, renewable energy will not replace, but only complement the energy needs. Therefore, the growth of renewable doesn’t mean coal is ending, and this will continue for the next 10-15 years,” said Bhattacharya.

In Africa, solar and wind are likely to account for less than 10 percent of the electricity mix in 2030, according to an article at The Conversation (Alova and Trotter). A report by the Global Energy Monitor, published in 2021 suggests, there are 432 new coal mine developments and expansion projects currently announced or under development worldwide, amounting to 2,277 MPTA of new capacity. China, Australia, India, and Russia make up over three-fourths of these projects.

“While many nations in the Global North have begun to turn away from coal, the associated decline in cost has made it an attractive option for many global south nations looking for new sources of energy. On the other hand, the advent of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies has made natural gas (also a carbon-emitting fossil fuel) abundant and cheap. So, these are the energy sources we see expanding most quickly in developing nations, in an absolute sense,” said Patrick Trent Greiner, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Policy Studies, Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, in an interview over email with DDRN.

Displacement and Energy Imperialism

At Assam in northeast India, more than 100 farmers, along with women and children, have been protesting since January 29, 2021, against forced eviction from their lands for setting up a solar power plant. About 5,000 KM away, a wind power project in Nyandarua county in Kenya had to be shelved in 2016 after local communities alleged that they were misled into signing oppressive contracts. While these incidents might be geographically disparate, they represent conflicts that come with the energy transition in the Global South.

According to the data from Land Conflict Watch, in India at present there are six ongoing conflicts over land for renewable energy projects, affecting about 2836 people and covering 6274 hectares of land. “The problem is that such conflicts do not make big headlines, as the displacement in case of solar energy is more in terms of livelihoods than dwelling places in solar projects. In today’s world, big companies want to control the energy market. So, for this concentrated energy production, controlled by big corporates, huge parcels of lands are needed, leading to the displacement of livelihoods,” said Pranab Ranjan Choudhury, Associate Director, Center of Land Governance, India in a Zoom interview with DDRN.

The displacement brought about by energy transition is two-pronged: displacement of livelihoods of the farmers affected by the project and the coal mining community. Research by Sandeep Pai at the University of British Columbia, in 2017, shows, at least 40 percent of India’s districts (284 out 736 districts in India) have some form of coal dependency.

Researchers also point out that the uneven distribution of energy and the rising dominant position of certain countries in the Global North would usher ‘energy imperialism’ when a handful of nations dictate the terms of the energy transition.

“In many ways, I think that energy imperialism has been at the center of the global economy’s development. If the global energy store is looked at monolithically, then there have always been a handful of nations dominating deliberations of what energy sources are used, where they are drawn from, and who gets to consume them. In the past nearly, all energy was funneled to the Global North either directly or embodied in goods that Global North nations consumed, but declining costs in access to oil, then gas, and then renewables has led to less desirable fuels like coal being sent to developing nations,” said Greiner.

Greiner’s views are also supported in an article published in the Springer in March 2022 (Wapakala and Ogolla), which points out, “while it is fair that the world is today discussing how to tackle the climate crisis and making pledges, what is not acceptable is the paradox of the powerful countries of the West pushing for climate adjustment in the South and championing new ‘green’ conditionalities of development finance (including designing new instruments and facilities such as the IMFs Resilience and Sustainability Trust) while continuing not to honor their existing financial commitments, and at the same time, continuing to invest heavily in extractive corridors to shore up their supplies of oil, gas, and coal.”

An Optimum Solution

Despite the pressing needs of energy self-sufficiency in the Global South, the realities of climate change are hard to ignore. According to a report by the World Bank published in October 2021, natural disasters cost about $18 billion a year in low- and middle-income countries through damage to power generation and transport infrastructure alone. They also trigger wider disruptions for households and firms costing at least $390 billion a year.

“We do understand that we cannot abruptly close a coal mine today and start a renewable energy project tomorrow. The process of a just transition starts with a conversation led by the government, and consultation with communities, with business, including the unions in the case of South Africa. The problem that we see as environmentalists is that there is not enough effort put in terms of applying the existing research to find alternatives that will enable a just energy transition. We also don’t see the political will to do this,” said Nhlanhla Sibisi, Climate and Energy Campaigner for Greenpeace Africa, in a Zoom interview with DDRN.

According to Aditya Valiathan Pillai, associate fellow at Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the transition to clean energy must come with incentives for private players to participate in the process. He also points out that if countries like India continue to build new power plants, it might lead to the creation of stranded assets, difficult to phase out later. Pillai suggests that the energy transition should be optimized balancing the needs of all stakeholders.

“I think the transition to clean energy must happen, and at the earliest. This requires a few prior steps. We must keep in mind that we’re looking at tens of thousands of livelihoods. So, there has to be a soft transition. First, a policy package must be put in place for the displaced communities. Secondly, the transition needs to be made very quickly, be it in the form of adding the capacity for renewables or pushing for electric vehicles. The best strategy to achieve these objectives would be to set up a manufacturing base. This, in turn, would happen, only if companies find this investment profitable,” said Pillai in a Zoom interview with DDRN.

While some of the advanced nations in the world briskly move towards clean energy, the transition in low and mid-income countries is a complex process with several social and economic considerations. At the same time, the rising global temperature, calls for urgent actions. Balancing the two considerations to get optimum results is the challenge that the world leaders need to navigate.

Namrata Acharya is a journalist with bylines in Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post Zenger News, Mongabay, The Wire, The Juggernaut, KR- Asia and more

Green Charcoal: Could Research at Gulu University Ignite a Biomass Energy Revolution in Uganda?

William Odinga Balikuddembe — Sun, 02 May 2021 14:20:19 +0000

On a quiet Friday evening in March, Miriam Ajak, 23, stoops over the traditional three-stone stove in front of her hut in Lawiyeadul village, Laliya Parish, on the outskirts of Gulu City in northern Uganda, to prepare dinner for her extended family.

As she pushes in the firewood, smoke slowly rises above the sooty stones and pans to shroud her entire body. Some of it enters her eyes. She grimaces in pain, picks up a makeshift fun and flaps it up and down to add more pressure to the fire. But the wood can hardly burn because it is highly moist. The more smoke it spews, the more she breathers into her lungs.

“Firewood is very scarce, and charcoal is very expensive,” she tells me. “But I have to cook because we must eat.”

Plant biomass is her only sources of energy for cooking. Access to electricity is a very distant dream for Ajak. Not a single electric cable or pole is in sight from her homestead. But she is only one of the millions of Ugandans going through the same plight.

The energy poverty

Only 42.7 percent of Uganda’s population has access to electricity. Although this figure represents an impressive increase of 24.2 percent from 2015, rarely in Uganda is electricity used for cooking by those who have access to it. The cost is high that even middle class households limit its use to basics such as lighting, pressing, charging telephone, TV and radio sets, and refrigeration at most. At USD 0.186 per kWh, Uganda’s household electricity price is way above the global average of USD 0.137 per kWh. As thus, only 4 percent of Uganda’s households use gas, kerosene or electricity for cooking. The rest of the households rely on biomass energy, with firewood the most popular (78%), followed by charcoal (18%). But wood is increasingly getting scarce.

Gender and the kitchen

All able-bodied female members of Ajak’s family have to, in a group, frequently walk to Akony village, about three kilometres from Lawiyeadul, in search of firewood. By 2007, the average distance people in Uganda travelled to access firewood had increased from 0.73 kilometers in 2000 to more than 1 km (State of Uganda’s Forestry Report, 2016). For Gulu and other districts in northern Uganda including Kitgum, Nebi, Amuru and Adjumani, households travel more than four kilometres for firewood, on average.

It is a long held tradition among Uganda’s 56 tribes that women have to manage the cooking, so they bear the burden of getting cooked food onto the table. But the issues at hand go beyond gender, energy and food. They transcend into other major global concerns – as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – including public health and Climate Change:

Nearly 4 million people in the world die each year from household pollution associated illnesses such as pneumonia, stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The risks are higher among women and children because at home they come closest to wood, charcoal or other highly toxic fuels; the huge demand for firewood and charcoal, in addition to cutting trees for timber and clearing of land for agriculture, has fuelled rapid deforestation, in effect contributing to Climate Change. In Uganda, forest cover dropped to nine percent in 2015 from 24 percent in 1990, according to the National Forestry Authority (NFA). This has increasingly called for local interventions in challenges of national and global dimensions.

The Green Charcoal project

A few kilometres from Ajak’s village is Gulu University. A team of researchers there is studying agricultural waste for two key outputs: One, to provide cleaner energy for cooking and two, to reverse environmental degradation from deforestation. These should come with an additional but equally important benefit of providing jobs especially for the youth.

The Green Charcoal project, as it is called, is basically about making briquettes. The arguments are: Briquettes produce much less smoke than charcoal and firewood and therefore, they are healthier; when people turn to briquettes, there will be less cutting of trees for firewood and charcoal, thus reducing deforestation.

The project, funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) under the Building Stronger Universities project, started in September 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, interrupted the team’s progress. In March 2020, universities were closed as part of the general lockdown in Uganda to control the spread of the pandemic. The project only resumed in January 2021.

The team is currently fabricating and testing machines to carbonise agricultural waste for biochar, grind the biochar into small particles, mix it with a binding agent (at the moment cassava starch), and then extrude it into briquettes.

Making briquettes is not new in Uganda, although their use is still very low. The approach the team is taking, however, is to localise the entire process right from fabricating the machines to the production and consumption of the briquettes. This has opened up interdisciplinary research paths around briquettes.

“Traditionally we have been importing [briquette] technologies but we are trying to develop the technology locally,” says Dr. Collins Okello, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, Gulu University. Okello is the team leader of the project. “The idea is to make a model which can be replicated across Uganda and even other regions within Africa which have similar situations like ours.”

Okello is an agricultural engineer, Benedict Ebangu is an electrical engineer, Fredrick Amanyire is a renewable energy expert and Peter Okot Mwa is a mechanical engineer. The four are at the centre of the study. They are joined by researchers from the Faculty of Education and Humanities, and the Faculty of Business and Development Studies, especially for the community participatory research aspect.

“We want it [this research] to be participatory. We develop a product, send it to the community, the community uses it and gives us feedback. Where necessary we adjust the design of the machine, improve the product and send it to them again for feedback. On the basis of that feedback we refine our technologies and at the end of it all we have a technology which is highly accepted by the community because they have participated in its development. We are going to have a lot of research activities at the university around the green charcoal value chain,” Okello says.

Experiments will be done on different types of agricultural waste to establish the quality of briquettes from them, the pros and cons of using the different types of waste, the kind of cook stoves to be used, binding materials, consumer preferences, sociocultural factors and several other aspects.

Three locations in northern Uganda have been selected for the pilot project: Gulu City (where the university is based), Pabo trading centre (along the road from Gulu to South Sudan), and Prongo trading centre (along Gulu-Arua Road). These were primarily chosen because through agro processing, they generate a lot of agricultural waste including rice and peanut husks. Another factor for selecting Prongo was because of its proximity to a refugee hosting area, Adjumani district.

By the end of March 2021, Uganda was home to nearly 1.5 million refugees, 61.4 percent of whom were from South Sudan. In Adjumani, nearly half of the district’s population (48%) comprises refugees.

“There is very big pressure [on trees], taking into account the increasing population locally but also the increase in energy demand ignited by the influx of refugees in the country,” Okello says.

The challenges

While briquettes are lauded as a clean and sustainable source of energy – and have been adopted by the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), a government parastatal charged with research and development or acquisition of appropriate technologies for the country’s industrial sector – you need energy to run the machines that make them, and sustainable energy at that.

Most of Uganda’s electricity is hyrdo so it is renewable, but northern Uganda has some of the worst power interruptions in the country. In 2019, the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, described the situation as a “scandal.” Okello and team have to contend with the same situation today.

“Our biggest challenge is power interruption. A lot of the time power is off,” Okello says. “It is the same challenge I see when we install these machines at the different centres. The companies which are going to be using them will certainly have power interruptions. And we strategically do not want to use diesel because it is not renewable.”

But Okello is hopeful that there soon will be improvements in the power supply. “I think there is hope. There is a big electricity infrastructure plan for the region so I believe in the near future that will not be problem.”

Uganda’s demand for biomass energy will not reduce any time soon. Research projects to make it cleaner and more sustainable are a logical intervention. The financial sustainability of such projects, however, is always a key concern for the project implementers.

William Odinga Balikuddembe is a science journalist based in Kampala, Uganda
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Dr. Collins Okello with BSU Coordinator Agatha Alidri

Dr. Collins Okello with BSU Coordinator Agatha Alidri

William Odinga Balikuddembe

Circular economy: Breaking the plastic waves

Megan Roux — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 15:55:02 +0000

This article pertains to my ongoing MSc thesis in Sustainable Biotechnology, in which I am examining the role of bio-based plastics in the transition to a circular economy in Denmark. I am due to complete my Master’s in June 2021. In this article, I’ll be discussing the problem that I am examining in my thesis, as I am still gathering results.

You’ve heard it all before: the state of our plastic waste crisis is dire. And it’s true. Around 13 million tonnes of plastic leaks into the ocean annually, and this is just expected to increase unless we act now¹. Of all of the plastic waste generated, the majority is plastic packaging, and constitutes 60% of the coastal waste². So packaging is an interest focus area. When we zoom in on this fraction of plastic waste, it’s usually made up of polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET is one of the most widely used plastics, and also one of the most consumed. We use PET to make plastic bottles, and worldwide we consume about one million bottles every minute.

Linear and circular economies

One problem contributing to the plastic waste crisis is the way that we use things, which is in a very linear fashion. We take natural resources from the ground, we make a product, then we buy and use it, and then when we think we’re done with it, we just throw it away and never think about it again. But what happens to our waste? Well, in Denmark, we burn most of it for energy. When it comes to plastic, even though there are technology opportunities for the recycling of plastics, the traceability of this is quite low, and it’s still estimated that more than half of our plastics are incinerated². While incineration is better than landfilling, it still results in a high amount of CO₂ emissions, and it is the lowest value recovery option of plastics. Burning our waste and our linear systems results in a huge loss of potential. It is estimated that by not recycling plastics and having to import virgin plastic into Denmark, the country loses DKK 1.6 billion each year².

A different way of producing and consuming that is becoming increasingly popular is the concept of a circular economy. In an ideal circular economy, there is no real waste – things are designed to be used forever, and whatever isn’t used in one process for one product, may be used in another. We see this in nature, which is a system that has evolved over billions of years to sustain itself. In the circular economy, instead of throwing our waste away, we return it to the producers and it is either reused or recycled. An example of a somewhat circular system is the Dansk Retursystem.

Both on an EU-level and a national level, there is a movement from a linear system to a circular one. But to achieve a truly circular plastics economy, using renewable feedstock for new material is key.

Bio-based plastics – what are they?

Bio-based plastics are considered to play an important role in the transition to a circular plastic economy because they allow us to reduce our dependency on non-renewable feedstocks. The accepted definition of bio-based plastics, sometimes interchangeably referred to as bioplastics, is a plastic material made from renewable biomass sources. There are many different kinds of these plastics. There are some which are biodegradable, like polylactic acid (PLA) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), but ‘bio-based’ does not necessarily mean ‘biodegradable’.

This confusion is quite dangerous because biodegradable plastic pollutes the plastic recycling stream, so we don’t want people throwing biodegradables away with recyclables. And ‘biodegradable’ often means biodegradable only under certain conditions, like elevated temperatures, which many people might not know. Even with the technology in place, we need to make sure we manage these sustainable innovations so that we optimise their environmental benefits.

Currently, bio-based plastics aren’t that big and represent only about 1% of the plastics market. However, there is investment by the European Commission, in a joint project with Bio-Based Industries (BBI), of 3.7 billion Euros to increase the production of bio-based raw materials. So bio-based plastics are soon become more present on the market – but is Denmark ready for them?

Working together to create change

We need to look both at the production of these plastics, as well as how they are handled, if we want to transition to a circular economy. Which is why my thesis topic is attempting to look at both of these aspects. Over the past few months, I have been conducting interviews with different stakeholders – people in policymaking, the plastic industry, waste management, and non-governmental organisations – about system-level strategies for bio-based plastic, in order to assess the readiness level of Denmark for the emergence of this material. Next, I’ll be conduct a citizen survey to better understand consumers’ perception of bio-based plastic. I’ll also be examining the production of a specific bio-based plastic that is an alternative to the widely used polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The intention behind this project is to contribute to the transition to a more circular economy in Denmark, and I’ll be sharing the results of the project in a few months’ time.

References

1. The PEW Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ “Breaking the Plastic Wave” (2018) 

2. McKinsey & Company “New Plastics Economy: A research, innovation and business opportunity for Denmark” (2019)

Megan Roux is a Master student of Sustainable Biotechnology, Aalborg University Copenhagen.

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Megan Roux

Thabit Jacob: Winners and losers in the green energy transition

Nicklas Kirchert — Fri, 01 May 2020 09:48:47 +0000

Achieving UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) requires careful attention to the risk of potential contradictions between the individual goals. For instance, how do we make energy both clean, affordable and accessible? Tanzanian Doctoral researcher Thabit Jacob’s scholarly contribution highlights the complexities of the global green energy transition. Especially the challenges in the sub-Saharan countries where most people are living without electricity. The thing is that while these African countries have signed The Paris Agreement to bring down carbon emission, the region holds large coal deposits ready to generate energy.

The scope of this article seeks to reflect one of the core challenges to the SDG’s achievement, as we pay attention to the winners and losers in the green energy transition.

Roskilde University

It is February on a grey, windy and rainy day that I make my way to the Roskilde University (RUC). This day, RUC hosts its annual open house for prospect students, so the campus is pulsating with all sorts of different activities. RUC is located 30 km from Copenhagen. It has several disciplinary and interdisciplinary departments and is considered an essential academic institution in the capital area of Denmark.

I meet Thabit Jacob in the Department of Social Science and Business. As I am a bit early for our appointment, I get the chance to meet Jacob’s supervisor Associate Professor Lars Buur. He is the head coordinator of the research project, Hierarchies of Rights, of which Jacob is a part of. When we sit down in Jacob’s office, he explains that the research project is about “investment into natural resources in Africa”. The special scope of the Hierarchies of Rights project aims “to analyse how struggles related to large-scale investments into natural resources affect rights, particularly of small-holders, to land in Sub-Saharan Africa” (RUC 2015).

In November 2015, after being shortlisted among six very qualified Tanzanian researchers, Jacob was offered a full position in the project. Besides RUC, Jacob has had visiting fellowships at the University of Michigan and the University of Sheffield. He is also currently a non-resident fellow at the Initiative for Sustainable Energy at Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Hierarchies of Rights is now coming to its end and Jacob is expected to hand-in his dissertation at the end of 2020.

I ask Jacob to explain the methodology and material he uses for his research. He describes his method as theoretical political economy conducted through qualitative research of different data. As Jacob’s project is about looking into the Tanzanian coal investments, he organizes his research at both a national and a subnational level. The national level is oriented towards the capital and its decision making on coal investment, whereas the subnational level is research in the rural field where the people who are affected by these investments live. Jacob is collecting his data through both qualitative interviews, archival research and ethnographic fieldwork.

Competing energy narratives

Jacob’s research is considered controversial to the Tanzanian government. This means that Jacob has been met with a lot of resistance when pursuing the critical work of his. Both from the people in power, but also from villagers who are reluctant to speak to him at times. Further, some of his academic colleagues in Tanzania, do not feel comfortable to be associated with him, as they fear it could bring them into trouble with authorities.

As Jacob tells me about the challenging nature of his work, he unfolds his work on what he calls Tanzania’s ‘competing energy narratives’.

Jacob explains the complex situation of a country that must deal with a very large percentage of its citizens living without electricity, while having ratified the Paris agreement to reduce carbon emission. This leaves Tanzania with two dominating narratives on the energy transition of the country. They can briefly be described as the ‘clean energy and pro-renewable narrative’ and the ‘energy security narrative’.

The conflation of the two narratives arose from “strong coalitions of civil society organizations which have formed a coalition with Northern based NGOs, mostly from Germany. They have called for a sustainable future in Tanzania which have to be powered by 100% renewable energy and clean energy fuels. On the other hand, you have another strong position, the government’s position, which is on ‘energy security’. It says that Tanzania is not energy secure and that the country has its own ambition of becoming a middle-income country by 2025. It has to build industries and to be able to do this, it has to use all its available energy resources including so-called ‘dead energy’ [coal and natural gas]”.

Obstruction of democracy

Since 2014, Tanzania has become less democratic and more authoritarian, shutting down open debates and enhancing surveillance and state sovereignty.

Jacob tells that the ‘winning’ narrative is the ‘energy security narrative’, as the recent government has imposed its power to immobilize what used to be a prolific civil society of clean-energy-activists: “Before the recent government came in, civil society had made a lot of progress and they have made much noise, but now their lives have become very hard under the current government. Before that they were able to bring in donors and get some commitment from the government in terms of reducing fossil fuels in the energy mix. The government bought into it and ratified the Paris agreement. At the same time Tanzania made its own ambitious plans on renewable energy. That has shown to be just a theoretical commitment since the actual politics has not gone that way”.

Until 5-6 years ago it was possible to have open debates in Tanzania, but this came to an end when the recent government came to power. This is evident in how the energy debate is relayed in national media: “Before the current government, these discussions were very popular in the media. The state broadcasters get more airtime than private media, but civil society has done much work in steering debates via privately-owned TVs, and they have run workshops across the country, but since the new government came in it has been much harder for civil society to operate.” Jacob explains that “the implementation of coal depends on the fragmentation of CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, In English “Party of evolution”, The ruling party in Tanzania) and on the position of civil society. If civil society had maintained their momentum, the clean energy narrative might have won, but since the government has come in it has made the work conditions too hard for civil society.” Jacob tells that this has become evident, as many international NGO are experiencing severe difficulties in collaborating with Tanzania’s civil society. “My point is that civil society moved from a very open environment to a very closed environment, so now their operations have become very hard”.

I his article “Competing Energy Narratives in Tanzania: Towards the Political Economy of Coal” from 2017 (Published in African affairs, a top ranked journal), Jacob explains that the execution of coal mining in Tanzania is entangled with elite politician’s reliance on rents: “Various forms of rents are likely to emerge from coal investments. They include large-scale fiscal rents accruing to the state and the ruling elites in terms of foreign direct investment, taxes, and royalties related to coal. They also include rents that are likely to be captured and diverted into individual hands by state bureaucrats and party cadres through direct monetary bribes and from the allocation of procurement contracts to supply inputs to coal mines, as well as the profits made by the state through the supply of coal-fired power to residential, commercial, and industrial consumers. Power production and distribution is state-controlled, and this monopoly paves the way for managers of state-owned enterprises with close links to the party to extract rents” (Jacob 2017, 351). The prospects of these rents make the implementation process of the SOE mines perplex and insecure for the people affected by these implementations. Jacob tells that “when a state-owned government wants to pursue investment the idea is ‘let’s do it as quickly as we can. If people want to be compensated, we can do it later, but there is nothing stopping us.” Most of these projects are increasingly seen as ‘national’ and should be supported by everyone.

Energy justice. Winners and losers in the energy transition

Understanding the political conduct of the Tanzanian government requires thorough attention to the unequal and unjust global situation, when it comes to energy access. Jacob is calling for other researcher’s attention to ‘energy justice’ and what Jacob calls “winners and losers in energy transition”. When we discuss issues on climate change and inequality, we cannot but ignore that western countries became superpower states through coal booms (Britain’s economic development was fueled by coal and other fossil fuels. Same can be said about Australia, USA, India, China). Now Africa has all these resources that they are being told not to use. Western countries did not stop and have not stopped using fossil fuels: “Everybody in the world has the right to access clean, affordable and cheap energy (SGD 7 ‘Affordable and clean energy’). And this is where a lot of people are missing the point, especially a lot of scholars from the North. As we speak now, in Africa over 700.000.000 people don’t have access to electricity. This is something that most people just ignore. The amount that the average American is using on Christmas decorations is more than an average African uses in a year. There are these huge disparities on energy access, so it is easy to point fingers at the developing countries and ‘say stop digging coal’. When you have 7 out of 10 people living in darkness, I am asking is it justice? In terms of making winners and losers this is an important point. This is where the developed countries have been fooling the world.”

After RUC

As we already have touched upon, Jacob’s research is perceived as very controversial in Tanzania, this has to do with his various media interviews and social media commentaries related to his research and broader political developments in Tanzania which are seen to be critical. I asked him about his plans after he finishes his research at RUC. He plans to go back to Tanzania after the summer, although he knows problems might await him: “It’s a tough decision that I’ve had to make, I’m not naïve, I know it is risky. And at some point, something might happen to me. But if it is the price to pay for doing this work, so be it, because at some point you cannot avoid it”. Jacob tells me that the has experienced surveillance from the Tanzanian government while he has been doing his research in Denmark: “When I was invited (with two other Danish colleagues) to give a talk at University of Copenhagen on political updates in Tanzania ahead of the election later this year. What happened was bizarre but unsurprising. The Tanzanian embassy in Sweden sent someone to record my presentation at the University of Copenhagen. We managed to block the recording but coordinated group of loyalists were still able to record an audio somehow. That shows the ongoing government surveillance campaign and latest spying efforts on critics seems to have reached a whole new level.”

Even though Jacob has been recommended to extend his stay in Europe, he does not think it is the right thing to do: “When you believe in the kind of things you do and have not done any harm, and I just do my job as researcher, then that is worth getting in trouble for. When I am here or in the UK, I lose legitimacy [to Tanzanian people], because people point to me and accuse me having become ‘too European’, saying ‘he is out of touch with what is happening in Tanzania’, ‘he is living a luxury life in Europe’. This is why I want to go back and be able to say these things while being there”.

Scholar activism. Getting out of the Ivory tower

Jacob is getting a lot of undiscerning remarks about his academic career pursuance. A lot of people think that he is “asking for too much trouble” and by that throwing away what could have been a bright future with a position at a Tanzanian university. To Jacob there is a quintessential connection between research and activism. For Jacob it is a big problem in academia that most of its research takes place in an ‘ivory tower’, meaning that academia research distances itself from society making its impact non-existent: “Some of my fieldwork in the coal region in South-western Tanzania was being around people who struggle daily for survival, the ivory tower feels quite removed from that reality.” Similar to the Marxian critique of precursory philosophers’ efforts in only describing the world instead of changing it, Jacob wants his work to have social impact. While doing his fieldwork he has helped villagers getting legal help by linking them with city lawyers. Jacob stresses how important it is for him to give back to the people who contributes to his research.

Going back to Tanzania will challenge the continuation of Jacob’s work, but he is sure that he will continue his collaborative work with researchers in Denmark, the UK and US.

Nicklas Alexander Kirchert is Master of Modern Culture and Cultural Dissemination, UCPH, and DDRN Culture Editor

Thabit Jacob

References

Jacob, Thabit. (2017). ”Competing energy narratives in Tanzania: towards the political economy of coal” African Affairs, 116/463. 341-353

Jacob, Thabit. (2018). State caught in the middle: Coal extraction and community struggles in Tanzania. København: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). DIIS Working paper, No. 2018:8

“In Africa millions of people lack access to stable electricity”. Musa Bishir is on the quest for a change

Dori Zantedeschi — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:28:38 +0000

During the ELLS Student Conference 2019, in Uppsala (see article), I had the opportunity to attend Musa Bishir’s presentation about his Ph.D. research project on microbial fuel cells. After his presentation, I asked him if he was available to have a talk about his background and interests. We sat in the library in Ultuna campus, (the conference’s venue), which is part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

From Africa to Europe

Musa Bishir comes from the north-west part of Nigeria, from a village called Bakori. After completing his primary and secondary education, he moved to Zaria, about 75 km from Bakori, to study microbiology at Ahmadu Bello University. As soon as he finished his first degree he was employed as a teacher at the same university, where he is still a lecturer. In 2016, he finished his Master degree. Immediately, Musa Bihir started his Ph.D. at the same university. In 2017, he was suggested to apply for a scholarship by a colleague, and one of his former lecturers. He followed her suggestion and he won the scholarship from PTDF, the Petroleum Technology Development Fund, who has a partnership with DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service. Since it was a governmental scholarship, he had to be granted permission from his home university to study abroad. Therefore, he signed a bound to come back after the completion of the Ph.D. and he moved to Stuttgart, at Hohenheim University. He is currently working on proposals to continue with a post-doctoral research anywhere in Europe, and why not even in Denmark?

The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) aims at creating high qualified Nigerian graduates in the field of the gas and oil industry, who, through research and adaptation of technology, can develop the industry. It does so by developing and upgrading local institutions that train and educate Nigerian, making available books and training equipment in these institutions, sponsoring visits to the oil fields, financing and participating in conferences and seminars about petroleum industry and finally, providing scholarships. PTDF offers one scholarship to study in Nigerian universities, and one to study abroad called: “Overseas postgraduate scholarship scheme under PTDF strategic partnerships in France, Germany, China and Malaysia”. In his application process, Musa had to include a Ph.D. proposal relevant to the oil and gas industry, stating the expected development impact on the national development, the viability of the research plan and an admission letter from the receiving university. Musa got accepted in Stuttgart, working in team with his project supervisor, Andrea Kruse.

How to make an already existing technology sustainable and cheap

“Characterization of biogas digestate and corncob developed carbon electrodes used in microbial fuel cells”. This is the title of Musa’s research. Difficult to even grab the topic if you are not in the field, but let’s take one step at a time. Microbial fuel Cell (MFC) is a technology to produce electrical current using bacteria in wastewater. So instead of consuming energy to treat wastewater, we use wastewater as a power plant. “Wastewater is already rich in bacteria, like the one digested from biogas plants, so you don’t need to collect, or to add bacteria, they are already there”, Musa explained me.

Here is how it works (picture in the sidebar). Two chambers filled with wastewater are needed. One of the chambers is sealed so it cannot get access to oxygen and contains an anode. The second chamber contains a cathode and it is exposed to oxygen. Microbes in wastewater such as bacteria, adhere to the anode and, without oxygen, oxidize the organic matter present in wastewater to produce electrons (e^–), protons (H⁺) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The protons are free to pass from anode to cathode through the membrane that separates the two chambers. The electrons flow through an electric meter to the cathode. The flow of electrons generates electric current used for any utility. In the cathode chamber, microorganism use electrons to reduce the oxygen into water, or convert nitrate to nitrite or N₂, or convert CO₂ to acetate.

This technology is already a reality, but Musa and his team’s research try to make a step forward: they aim at finding more sustainable and cheap material to produce the electrodes, which now are made of graphite at a prohibitive cost. They came up with the idea of using corncob which is a farm waste material otherwise left on land or burnt producing CO₂ emissions. Through the pyrolysis (thermal decomposition of organic material at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen) of corncobs they obtained a material with very good properties to be an electrode: high surface area for the colonization of the electrogenic bacteria, reliable stability in structure, and high electrical conductivity (read abstract in ELLS Scientific Student Conference 2019, p.38). “This gives a better application of this material over graphite, which is even expensive. And the good thing is that it is not only corncob biomass, nearly from all biomass you can produce this electrode material”, adds Musa.

Building up an interest

I ask Musa how he got the interest in this field. He tells me that he first got fascinated by microorganisms because “we use microorganisms to produce valuable products to mass economic benefit, like in the production of bread, beer and wine, in biogas production”. This brought him to study microbiology in his bachelor with a thesis about biogases. During his post-degree he got interested in applying microorganisms or their products in industry. His master degree was about glutamic acid production, which, he explains me, is “an essential amino acid, because we cannot synthesized it in our system, but it is used in many industries as a flavour enhancer, and it increases neurologic response, because it is a neurotransmitter”.

When he started his Ph.D. in Nigeria, he wanted to work on enzymes production of tannase, an inducible enzyme produced by a variety of microorganisms and used in the treatment of wastewater contaminated with tannins ^[1]. At Hohenheim University though, he found himself working on developing carbon material for microbial fuel cells, which still deals with wastewater, but from a different angle. “I am very happy for this topic, because it allows me to apply my knowledge about industrial microbiology in agriculture”.

Suppling good water and electricity at the same time

The microbial fuel cell from biomaterial has many applications, as Musa explains me: “you can use them as soil amendment agent, as electricity generation, you can use them in biogas generation, you can even use them in the production of super capacitor in making car batteries so instead of having fossil fuels in our cars, which increases the emissions, we can have rechargeable electric cars, whose batteries are made from this biomass material”. It really seems the solutions to many problems, but there is something that Musa has considered only recently after that somebody at a conference pointed out the issue to him: the CO₂ emissions from the microbial fuel cell is less compared to the combustion reaction, but still they are present, therefore pose a problem as Musa says: “we are trying to clean the environment by providing a substitute for the fossil fuel but at the same time you are also generating carbon dioxide, which is a problem”. He came up with the idea of capturing the carbon dioxide by plants in greenhouses, but the issue is still not solved.

Regarding his personal future prospect, would Musa be glad to go back to Nigeria to implement this technology? Yes, he says, Nigeria or in Africa at large. “In most African countries, unlike Europe, millions of people lack access to stable electricity and that is why most of our industries are not functioning. At the same time, rural areas are suffering from access to good water supply. We can establish the fuel cell in our wastewater treatment and at the same time produce some electricity instead of requiring electricity for aeration of activated sludge system that are commonly used in wastewater treatment”. The investments and the facilities are a problem though, so for now he is planning to stay in Europe to continue with his post-doctoral research and find some partnership with Europe and some funding that can allow him to implement the technology in Africa.

Studying in Europe

Lastly, Musa tells me about his experience in Europe. Being his first time in Europe, everything is new and very different from his country, but the economic strength and the regulation policies of Europe are not comparable to the ones in Nigeria. Therefore, in his opinion, there is access to good facilities and equipment everywhere around Europe. “In Hohenheim, I have access to whatever I need anytime I want to do an experiment, I have the equipment, I have the facilities, I have access, so I will do it. Back in Nigeria sometimes you would be limited by availability of facilities so you have no chance in doing that”, even though the teachers and professors in Ahmadu Bello University are very motivated and encourage students a lot, something that Musa appreciates very much about his home university.

^[1] C.N. Aguilar, C. Augur, E. Favela-Torres, G. Viniegra-Gonzales (2001). Production of tannase by Aspergillus Niger Aa-20 in submerged and solid-state fermentation: influence of glucose and tannic acid. Journal of Industrial microbiology and biotechnology, Nature publishing group.

Dori Zantedeschi is a Master student of Environmental Science in Europe, University of Copenhagen

Musa Bishir presenting at ELLS 2019