Interesting Site on Micro Financing

http://www.kiva.org/

Are Backyard Ethanol Brewers an Answer to High-Priced Gas?

A company banking on drivers' weariness of skyrocketing gasoline prices unveiled a home refinery device on Thursday offering another option: ethanol. E-Fuel Corporation says its EFuel100 MicroFueler can produce up to 35 gallons (132 liters) of ethanol a week that consumers can pump directly into their cars and trucks. There is no combustion inside the device, which runs on a standard household 110- to 220-volt AC power supply (consuming about 150 watts per day) and uses a membrane system to distill the sugar, yeast and water solution required to make ethanol rather than combustion heating elements, as commercial ethanol producers do.

Interested drivers in the U.S. can put in their orders now for their own EFuel100 MicroFueler at the company's Web site with a $3,000 down payment toward the total $10,000 tab; the first units are expected to ship some time this fall. The company, which has plants in Los Gatos and Paso Robles, Calif., as well as Hong Kong, also plans to sell MicroFuelers in Brazil, China and the U.K.

The prototype rolled out at a press conference in New York City yesterday is 72 inches (1.8 meters) high, 42 inches (1.1 meters) wide and 72 inches long, but the company says the consumer units are likely to be a bit smaller.

Ethanol fuel is made from a combination of water, yeast and sugar, Tom Quinn, E-Fuel founder and CEO, said at the press conference, adding that the process was no more complicated than what is taught in "third-grade science." The adoption of ethanol has been held back because drivers do not have access to the fuel, he said, pointing out that there are only 1,200 ethanol stations in the U.S., compared with about 176,000 gas stations.

To make ethanol in the EFuel100, feedstock (consisting of sugar and yeast) or discarded liquor is loaded into the device's 200-gallon (757-liter) tank. Using the LCD screen located on the front of the device (next to the pump), the operator places the EFuel100 either in ferment (for feedstock) or distillation (for liquor) mode to begin the process. The EFuel100 is hooked up to a water source—much like one's washing machine or dishwasher is—and regulates the amount of water flowing into its tank to begin the ethanol-conversion process.

Once the feedstock is fermented, the device transfers the solution to its distillation system, where it is vaporized in a vertical column tube and sent through a membrane that separates the alcohol from the water. The distilled vapor is then cooled back into liquid form and sent to the 35-gallon storage tank, from which it can be pumped into an automobile using a 50-foot (15-meter) retractable hose. The process of turning sugar into ethanol fuel takes nearly a week (although alcohol distillation can be done in a matter of hours).

The cost of operating and maintaining the EFuel100 vary, depending on rebates (a $1,000 federal tax credit is available) and the cost of the sugar feedstock—it takes 14 pounds (6.4 kilograms) of feedstock to produce a gallon of ethanol. E-Fuel also offers its Carbon Credit Coupon Program, which will allow its customers to buy discounted E-Fuel–certified sugar feedstock for an estimated 15 to 30 cents per pound, the company said Thursday. One of the company's main objectives with the program is to keep the cost of ethanol less than $1 per gallon.

The company says that families would save a barrel of cash in the long run. It estimates, for instance, that a family will save about $4,200 per year on fuel (assuming gas costs $3.60 per gallon and ethanol costs $1 per gallon) if it has two cars that get 22 miles per gallon (9.3 kilometers per liter) and are driven a total of 34,500 miles (55,500 kilometers) annually. Automobiles do not require their fuel to be 100 percent ethanol, so greater savings are possible if drivers dilute the finished product with water (as long at that mixture contains at least 65 percent ethanol).

E-Fuel chose sugar as its raw material (instead of corn feedstock or cellulose) because of its ease and abundance: corn feedstock or cellulose have to be broken down into sugar before they can be turned into ethanol. But E-Fuel said it plans to eventually build corn and cellulose versions of its microfuelers, although no time frame has been set. A version that uses corn is lower priority, Quinn said, because corn, unlike sugar, is an essential part of the world's food supply. As Bruce Padula, the company's vice president of sales and marketing puts it, "Doctors aren't telling you to eat more sugar." Still, much of the ethanol-producing infrastructure in place is designed to use corn feedstock—corn-based ethanol accounts for most of the total ethanol produced in the U.S. at this time, according to Louisiana State University's Agriculture Center.

However, the company's claims about the environmental friendliness of ethanol are in dispute. E-Fuel touts ethanol as cheaper and more environmentally sound than gasoline, claiming that it produces 85 percent fewer climate change–causing carbon emissions than gasoline. But Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering, says ethanol is no better for air quality. Jacobson last year published a report in Environmental Science & Technology noting that ethanol produces less benzene and butadiene than gasoline, but it releases more formaldehyde and acetaldehyde into the atmosphere.

Although ethanol is made from seemingly innocuous materials (like sugar or corn), it becomes dangerous when broken down in the atmosphere into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (the latter of which is corrosive and irritates the eyes), Jacobson says. "[Ethanol] kills people," he says. "Just like cigarette smoke, you're breathing in particles that are harmful."

Criticism by Jacobson and others against this fuel that many hope will become an alternative to high-priced, foreign-sourced petroleum is an issue E-Fuel and other ethanol backers will have to address, no matter how much cheaper their product is.


Link to the article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=backyard-ethanol-brewers

Lighting The Way In India

While greed is infectious, it hasn't touched Harish Hande. Unlike many entrepreneurs, Hande didn't dream of great wealth, luxury or power as he built SELCO India, a rural solar energy company.

At a time when his fellow Indian Institute of Technology engineering alumni were drifting aimlessly into the domestic IT industry, Hande stayed focused on his major: energy engineering. After earning a Ph.D. in the specialization from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Hande headed back home in 1993 to provide reliable, clean energy to unelectrified areas of rural India.

“We believe that in anybody’s daily life, reliable energy like solar electricity or solar lighting, can lead to a better quality of life," Hande says.

SELCO, short for Solar Electric Light Co., sells small-scale, modular solar photovoltaic systems to households and businesses in villages in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

He started small, buying one solar-lighting system with $300 he had left over in scholarship money.

To find workers to do installations on a larger scale, he went to village TV stores in Karnataka. Hande described what he was doing, and asked if anyone was interested. They were, since many of them didn't have electricity in their homes, relying on candles and kerosene lamps for light after sundown. This gave him confidence that he could build a team and that there was a market for what he wanted to do.

Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.

Since most rural Indians are poor and can't afford to pay for SELCO's systems out of pocket, Hande needed to obtain bank financing. In late 1996 he convinced Malaprabha Grameen Bank in Karnataka to finance 100 solar-lighting systems, “probably because they were getting fed up with me more than anything else,” Hande jokes.

He then leveraged the bank's backing to get other banks to finance more solar-lighting systems. “That was our biggest code to crack, since our entire model is based on banks providing the financing,” Hande says.

In addition to providing a source of safe, clean lighting to rural people, SELCO also helps them generate much-needed income. With light after dark, they can keep shops open later and stay up at home working on crafts. Some of his customers told Hande they can now make two to three baskets a night, selling them for 30 rupees each.

This gave Hande the idea to create a business plan for a tribal community in Karnataka, with four-year bank loans under which they would pay for their solar-lighting systems with the proceeds of basket sales.

So far, SELCO has installed close to 100,000 solar-lighting systems, and in the process, it has brought light to people who were considered too poor to be part of the capitalist system.

I use the term "light" both literally and metaphorically, since Hande’s thinking went far beyond solar lighting system installations. What he did was innovate at a much deeper level by connecting energy services to income generation.

Sadly, Hande says few of his fellow Indian Institute of Technology energy engineering alumni are working in alternative energy. “When I went back to IIT last year, all 26 seats in energy engineering went to [work in] software," he says. "There is an extreme shortage of energy engineers.”

I recently wrote an open letter to IIT students asking them to look beyond software--and maybe do something electrifying, following Hande’s example.

Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.

Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.



Link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/02/mitra-hande-solar-tech-science-cx_sm_0502mitra.html

Curbing soot could blunt global warming: Study

Curbing soot could blunt global warming: Study

Alternative energy-efficient and smoke-free cookers can reduce soot’s role in global warming; can delay unprecedented climate change, which is due primarily to CO2 emissions

Paris: Sharply reducing the amount of black carbon -- commonly known as soot -- in the atmosphere could help slow global warming and buy precious time in the long-term fight against climate change, according to a study released in the British journal, Nature.Smoke inhalation cause of death Curbing soot emissions could be a life saver. Each year, more than 400,000 deaths among women and children in India alone, and 1.6 million worldwide, are attributed to smoke inhalation during indoor cooking using biofuels such as wood or dung, one of the primary sources of black carbon, according to the World Health Organization.Reviewing dozens of recent scientific studies, two researchers in the United States calculated that black carbon is the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels. In addition, the eight million metric tonnes of soot released into the atmosphere every year have created a number of “hot spots” around the world, contributing significantly to rising temperatures.35% black carbon output from China, India The plains of south Asia along the Ganges River and continental east Asia are both such hotspots, in part because up to 35% of global black carbon output comes from China and India. Emissions in China alone doubled between 2000 and 2006, according to the study, published in 2006. Fine black soot settling on snow and ice -- and thus trapping more of the Sun’s radiative force -- have also accelerated the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and ice cover in the Arctic, two regions that have been hit especially hard by climate change in recent decades.“A major focus on decreasing black carbon emissions offers an opportunity to mitigate effects of global warming trends in the short term,” the authors conclude. While the presence of black carbon, sometimes in the form of great plumes several kilometres high called atmospheric brown clouds, has been known to scientists for some time, their impact on warming has been hard to assess. Direct measurement requires multiple aircraft flying over the same domain at different altitudes for an extensive period at the same time. Cut back soot output Significantly cutting back on black carbon emissions is not only possible, but would yield rapid benefits, say the authors, Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute in San Diego, California, and Greg Carmichael of the University of Iowa.40% of soot comes from the same sources as greenhouses gases, notably the burning of coal and oil, and will only be reduced as quickly or slowly as economies become less carbon intensive. Remaining 60% of black carbon in the atmosphere comes from the more easily altered practices of burning biofuels and forests, the authors say. Also, cutting back soot output would have an almost immediate effect. Unlike carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere for 100 years after it is released, black carbon has an atmospheric life cycle of approximately one week. “Providing alternative energy-efficient and smoke-free cookers, and introducing transferring technology for reducing soot emissions from coal combustion in small industries could have major impacts” on reducing soot’s role in global warming, they conclude. Such measures would result in a 70-80% reduction in heating caused by black carbon in south Asia, and a 20-40% cut in China, according to the study. The authors caution, however, that soot reduction can only help delay unprecedented climate change, which is due primarily to CO2 emissions.

Link to the article: http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/24102355/Curbing-soot-could-blunt-globa.html

Profitable alternative for extensive farming

Bangalore, Feb 10 Sericulture proved to be a profitable farm practice, when compared to other cash crops including fruits. According to a paper presented by the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSSLUP) and the Directorate of Sericulture of Maharashtra, sericulture could yield higher income even when it was cultivated in fields suitable for other cash crops like paddy, wheat, and cotton.

In the study area of Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, which is well known for production of fruit crops like orange and guava, acreage and productivity is declining gradually due to imbalance in climatic condition and recurrence of pests and diseases.

In horticulture, a farmer has to wait for more than six years for fruits to bear and ten years for optimum income. On the other hand, the productivity of cash crop like cotton has not been steady due to erratic and unpredictable rainfall, disease outbreak, inadequate marketing facilities, and government policies.

To understand yielding capacity of different crops, field trials were conducted in Kuchi taluk in Vidarbha region, which is predominantly a paddy area. Paddy-sunflower, soybean-wheat, soybean-gram, and mulberry were the components of the farming system in Kuchi area.

It was noted that higher productivity potential under paired row planting of mulberry could be achieved in Vidarbha, although it is not a traditional belt for sericulture. The mulberry crop efficiently utilised sub-soil moisture of deep soils by shrink-swell in the dry period. The income from mulberry started after three months of plantation with optimum production from the second year onwards. In marginal lands with protective irrigation, farmers fetched higher returns from sericulture than traditional crops, and also generated employment for more than 170 mandays.

The income from sericulture was found to be highest at Rs 82,315 per hectare per year against the cost of cultivation of Rs 26, 515. The sericulture fetched 300% profit on investment. But paddy-sunflower fetched Rs 33, 242 against an investment of Rs 12, 133 at a profit rate of 173%, followed by soybean-wheat at Rs 23, 744 for an investment of Rs 8,760 at a profit rate of 171%. Even soyabean-gram fetched only Rs 18,995 against an investment of Rs 7,375.

Link to the article: http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Sericulture-emerges-as-lucrative-farm-practice/271417/

Can rice farmers make do with less water than they've always thought their crop has needed?

Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma reports on a promising innovation.

November 2003 - In his life as a progressive farmer this has been the biggest surprise. As Harchand Singh explained the experience of growing paddy without the usual flooding of the fields, curious farmers from adjoining villages on the outskirts of Ludhiana watched him with rapt attention. Holding the rice ears in his hands he exclaimed, `It has been better than the flooded rice in both quality and quantity.' As other bewildered farmers watched, Singh claimed that his net saving on water had been around 60-70 per cent.

At a time when scientists at the resource-crunched International Rice Research Institute in Manila are struggling to develop new rice varieties that can grow in less water, the success in farmers' fields in Punjab may indeed have come as a welcome respite. With some 60 per cent of the world population being fed on rice, the impact of rice cultivation on freshwater supplies - especially in Asia - is a serious concern. Rice fields alone consume some 85 percent of all freshwater supply.

`Erroneously, agricultural science has believed all this time that the capacity of the paddy plant to tolerate flooded conditions has been the necessary condition for its survival,' commented Dr Daler Singh, who has pioneered the development of less-water paddy at the JDM Foundation in Ladhowal, Ludhiana.

During the last four years, Dr Singh and his colleagues have demonstrated at farmers' fields in several locations in Punjab that indeed this is not the case. Paddy can survive and thrive on much less water than previously thought. The incredible results with less-water paddies have attracted Noble Laureate Norman Borlaug and the World Food Prize Laureate and noted rice scientist Dr Gurdev Khush to farmers' fields in the past four years. The innovation has caught the attention of the Johl Committee on Agricultural Policy & Restructuring that has made recommendations to the Punjab Government to alter cropping patterns in favour of conserving dwindling freshwater supplies in the state.

The innovation is simple. Rice seedlings are transplanted on to ridges spaced 24 inches apart with furrows that are filled with water. While the crop is irrigated daily for the first week after transplantation, subsequent irrigation is at weekly intervals with special attention during tillering and grain setting stages. Since less water is used than the flooded rice fields, about 30 per cent less fertiliser is applied in the ridge-furrow system of paddy cultivation.

Paddy alone occupies 60 per cent of the cropped area during summer, and a significant portion of the annual consumption of 43.7 lakh ha metres of water is utilised for irrigating paddy in Punjab. Any reduction in water consumption at the farm will have a telling impact on electricity consumption in the state too. Statistics indicate that 35 per cent of the total electricity consumed in the state is being used to energise 7.5 lakh tubewells - mostly for irrigating paddy.

While researchers in Manila may have impending water crises in the backs of their minds as they work to identify rice genotypes that have efficient water usage systems, field trials in Punjab have put the existing rice varieties to accomplish the same task. `The results indicate that all rice varieties are inherently capable of growing under less moisture conditions,' said R P S Aulakh, a member of the research team and Chairman of the Agriculture Technocrats Action Committee.

However, the innovation has yet to be adopted for wider dissemination by the agriculture department of the state, despite the government's focus on converting over a million-hectares under rice-wheat cropping rotation to other water-saving crops. Though the agriculture bureaucracy of the state has acknowledged the multi-faceted value of less-water paddy cultivation, it doesn't want the entire credit of developing the system to go to the JDM Research Foundation.

Further, Punjab's crop diversification plan hinges on the subsidy support of Rs. 1,280 crores that it is requesting the Central government to shell out. By giving an incentive of Rs. 12,500 per hectare, the government aims to inspire farmers to switch from the present paddy-wheat rotation to water-saving crops like durum wheat, pulses and oilseeds. However, the state government not only stands to firm up its electoral base amongst farmers but gain patronage of the private companies in the process too.

In such a situation the future of this innovation, that neither attracts any large capital transfer to the state on one hand nor benefits the private companies by way of better market for their seeds on the other, remains obscure. Many fear that the innovation may not get the desired patronage of the government on account of it being under agreement with the private companies for input delivery and buyback of the harvest under the crop diversification plan.

At a time when global research is focussed on reducing freshwater consumption on the farm from food security concerns, the traditional water-guzzler paddy is the key crop being targeted. Asia, where rice is a staple for more than half the world's people, faces a crisis in fresh water as populations swell, forests shrink and water tables recede. It is indeed incredible that the answer to cutting freshwater consumption on the farm comes from Punjab, the state that is at the forefront of all listed ecological sins.

The International Rice Research Institute not in a position to provide answers by way of a variety of aerobic rice for widespread adoption in the near future. In this situation, it is for the government to capitalise on the situation to ensure that the maximum number of farmers benefit from the innovation that reduces water needs. If this technique for saving huge quantities of water in the paddy fields were adopted by farmers in the peninsular India, the Cauvery dispute will get resolved once for all.

Link to the article: http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/nov/agr-paddy.htm

Navadarshanam - Back to the basics

Buildings of sun-baked mud blocks , a solar-powered flour mill, a biogas plant, wind turbines, fruit and flowering trees... on a 115-acre site, 50km south of Bangalore along the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, an unusual community called Navadarshanam enjoys the simple pleasures of life by going

The idea of Navadarshanam was born in the Study Circle that used to meet at the Gandhi Peace Foundation and the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s. A few like-minded individuals decided to create a community that would use technology to enhance rather than destroy the ecological balance.

We are told that the Navadarshanam Trust, which now has more than 1,700 members, was created in 1990 and the community came up on 115 acres of barren land bordering the Thally reserve forest 50km south of Bangalore.

Years later, this sprawling wasteland has come to life simply by preventing grazing. T.S. Ananthu, a member of the Trust, says: “Thousands of trees have appeared on their own and soil conditions have improved dramatically. There are around 30,000 sandalwood trees. We have planted very carefully so as not to disturb what has come up naturally. No chemicals and pesticides are used. Mulching around the plants takes care of their nutrition. All power requirements, including that for pumping water and lighting, is generated through solar panels, wind power and also from oil made from the seeds of the Honge tree. Gobar gas (methane emitted by cow dung), charcoal and wood stoves are used for cooking.”

We notice there are no TVs, refrigerators or washing machines. The community kitchen has large open shelves, red-oxide flooring, and an almost monastic appeal. A built-in bench runs around the kitchen, and villagers come here to have a cup of tea at the end of the day. Water is sparingly used and recycled wherever possible.

Ananthu and his wife Jyoti live in a house designed by architect Ramu Katakam. It is a linear structure, which houses a library, an open kitchen, and rooms for the couple and Ananthu’s mother. “We don’t need fans in these houses because of the open plan and ventilation,” says Ananthu, adding, “there was no architect supervising the buildings as they came up. Villagers helped us. As most of the houses had no load-bearing beams, there was minimal use of cement and steel.”

The first house built here belongs to Partap Aggarwal, another member. He designed it like a jungle lodge with a loft and a high roof with rafters, and banisters of recycled wood.

Om Bagaria built his on a crested plot. Pink and white bougainvillea blossoms spill over onto a cobblestone pathway leading to the house. Shahnaz and Naozer Kothawala’s house has smoothly contoured, compressed brick walls; arches embellished with embedded wine and flavoured milk bottles and natural cement flooring. Bamboo banisters and a verandah with built-in seats overlooks the grounds.

The house is on two levels, with a big hall and an open kitchen. Two bedrooms flank the hall and a staircase made of jackfruit and neem wood leads to a loft and a study. The roof has Mangalore tiles and rafters made of wood from the coconut trees. Galvanized steel gutters running down the slope of the roof collect rainwater for recycling. Cement jaalis embedded in the walls are both functional and decorative windows.

In the community kitchen, a village woman makes fresh lime juice flavoured with cardamom and jaggery. For first-time visitors like us, the journey back to the city, just 50km away, suddenly seems a bit too long.

Fourteen villagers have also become part of the Navadarshanam core team.

Many of those who own houses in the community do not live here all the time, they come and go but work towards keeping the spirit of Navadarshanam alive

FACT FILE

Concept

The Navadarshanam Trust was formed in April 1990. The aim was to create a space that would facilitate an alternative way of living and working for a group of people who dared to translate their ecologically sensitive ideas into a way of life. Of the 115 acres of hilly land bordering the Thally reserve forest (50km south of Bangalore along the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border), 35 acres were bought with Trust funds and the remaining by individuals who share the Trust’s vision and aims.

Materials

Sun-baked mud blocks for walls, terracotta tiles, red oxide and cement for flooring.

Terracotta and cement ‘jaalis’, recycled wood and bottles used as design accents.

Link to Navadarshanam site: http://www.navadarshanam.org/