Solar power is becoming an increasingly attractive and sustainable energy option around the world, and one without the environmental costs. Many have the misconception that photovoltaic (aka solar) power is a less effective source of power and beneficial only for environmental reasons, but that is simply not the case. Besides replacing dirty energy, which contributes to pollution and may add to the World Health Organization’s statistic that one in eight deaths are related to pollution, photovoltaics also provide real economic value. Using photovoltaic and energy efficient technologies in developing nations is ideal for many other reasons: the portability of photovoltaic setups, the high value provided by many low-power consuming devices, and the increasing affordability of photovoltaics.

Recently one of the world’s largest renewable energy companies, SunEdison, announced plans to bring electricity to 20 million people in the developing world by 2020. While the goal is notably ambitious, what makes it unique is their plan to use micro-grid solar-power. Instead of using large central power plants and extending the existing grids out to more rural areas, SunEdison is building small solar installations in each of the targeted communities. This saves on the immense cost of stretching and maintaining power grids, and enables areas outside of grid range to have access to electricity.

SunEdison offers a good example, a path governments and investors would be wise to follow. Currently in many developing nations, the only widely available and portable power sources are gasoline-fueled generators. Not only are generators expensive to purchase and operate, but they emit carbon monoxide. They are often run inside homes to prevent theft or because of inclement weather, making carbon monoxide-related deaths common. Furthermore, kerosene lanterns used for lighting also are expensive to run, and pose their own health risks.

Although photovoltaic installations and solar lanterns can sometimes cost more initially, they almost always easily pay for themselves with savings on fuel costs. While grid-based power can be a reasonable alternative in urban areas, it lacks portability to rural areas, which more often need electricity. Often the main grid is too far away to extend for a reasonable cost, and conventional power plants operate on such a large scale that they’re not affordable to a single community.

Mark Schellhase in class at Montgomery College

One key element to any strategy for stimulating economies through solar power is targeting the most valuable power needs, and using energy-efficient technologies. Fortunately, the most significant needs are already ones that either consume little power by nature, or have energy conserving options available. These would include cellphones, laptops, and lights. Cellphones have already had an amazing impact in emerging economies around the world. They enable commerce and communication in ways that were previously impossible for many. They can also serve as a gateway to Internet access, which opens up other possibilities.

After hearing an outspoken critic of photovoltaic usage claim that a $100 solar panel couldn’t achieve more than powering a lightbulb for a couple hours, I was curious to see what I could accomplish with even less money. I decided to purchase a $20 solar charger with a built in battery, and use it to charge my phone for a couple weeks. I was surprised to learn that by charging the solar chargers internal battery in the day, and plugging my phone into it at night, I could easily use it as my everyday phone charger. If this type of charger was made available throughout developing nations, people would have a reliable and cheap way to charge cell phones.

Mark Schellhase decided to buy a solar charger for his phone

Mobile phones have already been instrumental in promoting economic growth in developing nations by facilitating mobile banking, remote transactions, and the efficient exchange of information. Enabling more people to use them is the next logical step in continuing a great thing. It’s also important to promote energy-saving alternatives to more electricity-intensive devices. A lower-end solar setup might only be able to power incandescent bulbs for a couple hours, but with LED bulbs that demand a fifth of the power, the need for power completely changes. Developing nations have the chance to beat their wealthier counterparts to a place where everyone ultimately needs to be—a low-energy consumption model of electricity with long-term sustainability.

Solar prices have dropped over teh last 30 years

Lastly, it is important for governments, investors, and policymakers to remember that photovoltaics are rapidly decreasing in cost. The cost per watt of photovoltaic unit is less than a hundredth of what it was in 1977, and the price is dropping every year.

The portability and the ongoing reductions in price have an economic case for using photovoltaics, even apart from its clear environmental benefits. It’s time to stop thinking of solar power as only an  environmentally sensitive option, and start accepting it as a player in the fight for economic advancement, and sustainable power for all.

Mark Schellhase is pursuing a degree in Computer Science at Montgomery College, in Rockville, Maryland, currently enrolled in the Introduction to Sociology class. Interested in finding technological solutions to social problems, he co-founded an organization working to create a system for educational delivery in the developing world. In his free time, he loves roasting and brewing coffee.

Despite being major centres, it is not a given that decisions made in New York and Paris reverberate in villages in Bangladesh, in boardrooms in Bogota and in the city hall of Vancouver. But that’s exactly what needs to happen this Autumn when world leaders meet at two major summits in those cities. There, they will set a course for the future by signing two agreements to deal with the interlinked challenges facing us - poverty, inequality and climate change.

What these summits must signal is the speeding up of the seismic shift underway in the underpinnings of our economy - from reliance on polluting fossil fuels to a future powered by 100% sustainable renewable energy.

Why? Because the latest climate science warns us that we cannot do otherwise. And because 100% renewable energy is what communities are rolling out in order to beat back poverty as these technologies can provide sustainable energy access where coal, oil and gas have failed for the last century.

Sustainable energy can improve health by reducing pollution, it can improve education, create jobs and kickstart industries in minor economies. You don’t need to take our word for it - listen to Marajina, from Bangladesh - one of the many real climate leaders who aren’t waiting to get started.

Marajina Begnum from Bangladesh Credit: Helena Wright

She faced energy poverty, which is a lack of reliable energy access as do 2.2 billion other people around the world. This problem was exacerbating gender inequality in her village, with women unable to walk safely down unlit streets, but then she harnessed the power of renewable energy and lit the way for her daughters, now and in the future.

What’s not evident from Marjina’s story is that this kind of action will also, eventually, limit the climate impacts these communities are projected to experience, the kind of impacts that are stripping away the hard won development gains made in recent years. They’re already dealing with rising seas infiltrating arable land which is itself impacting on the availability of food, and are doing what they can to build resilience, but without comprehensive coordinated global action to phase in 100% renewable energy by 2050 fairly, it will get much much worse. 

But luckily clean renewable energy is where the smart money is going - wind, solar and other technologies have never provided more bang for our buck as prices drop while effectiveness rises. This shift has happened as it becomes clear investments made today in fossil fuel infrastructure under the guise of development is a mirage painted by an industry in the throes of structural decline.

Why sell poorer countries a pup we’ve already abandoned, especially when investments made today will never be used for their full life cycle because science says that in order to keep global warming below 2°C we must leave more than 80% of fossil fuel reserves in the ground? 

We need to make this transition fair - richer countries have to help poorer ones to leapfrog the mistakes they made. Investing in 100% renewable energy is the fairest way to do that, making that the sharpest tool in our shed. The job of our politicians is to enshrine the power of renewables into the new global agreement by committing to a long term goal for phasing out of fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible.

We’re counting on world leaders to see the light and do as others have done and invest in a bright future powered by renewables.

Grocery runs deep in my genetic code, but all I ever wanted to do was work for my hometown congressman. I was a two-issue girl, and I decided early to devote my life to campaign finance and energy policy – two areas I felt were poised for progress. I spent every summer of college interning and eventually landed a job as a legislative aide responsible for campaign finance and environmental issues. I spent the better part of the next decade working for Democrats, Independents and Republicans, who prioritized both (with a brief stop at the Justice Department, suing companies for violating the Clean Air Act). Most recently, I worked in the Senate on the American Power Act, the last major Congressional effort aimed at capping greenhouse gas emissions and creating a domestic clean energy economy.  

When that effort failed, I took a hard look at the prognosis for legislative progress, and my conclusions were bleak. But that didn’t weaken my resolve.  I decided to start a business that would make climate change progress incrementally or, as we say at Glen’s Garden Market, one bite at a time.

Television reporter Holly Morris, Chef and television host Carla Hall, and Glen's Garden Market founder Danielle Vogel. 

My father was a grocer. His father was a grocer, and so was my great grandfather. My mom’s dad owned supermarkets too. It wasn’t entirely counterintuitive that when it came time to start a business of my own, grocery would be my avenue of choice. But unlike my (actual) forefathers, my approach would be entirely mission driven.

Every single decision we make at Glen’s Garden Market in Dupont Circle is made with the environment in mind.

• Foremost, we source our food from the states of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed; and so we cut transportation and refrigeration emissions by bringing our food in from very close by. 
• We seek out thoughtful, meticulous producers who treat their land, their animals and their ingredients with respect.
• We built our store with old cattle fencing that had been discarded by one of our vendors in West Virginia.
• Our countertops were constructed from compressed, post-consumer recycled paper.
• We offer only reusable bags (what sense would it have made to send plastic right back into the watershed that provides our nourishment?).
• Our lights and equipment all meet the most rigorous efficiency standards.
• We retrofit our display cases to include doors to prevent the unnecessary waste of ultra carbon-intensive hydrofluorocarbons.
• We installed showers in our team’s bathrooms and bike racks in our break room to encourage our folks to bike, walk or run to work – and most of them do.
• Our kitchen operates under a no-waste mandate.
• We recycle and we compost, aggressively. 

But the thing we spend the most time on is helping other small businesses grow along with our own. In the 17 months since we opened, we’ve helped launch 17 food businesses. Seventeen companies have seen their products on a grocery store shelf for the very first time here. Often, those products come in through our front door in the arms of the person who made them. And after that happens, we promote them aggressively and help grow their brand. It’s one of my greatest pleasures to eventually find them on the shelves in our competitors’ stores – not just because it means their businesses are maturing, but because I know how thoughtfully those products were made. I want to see them displace demand for industrially produced food, which is exactly what they’re doing when they bump less carefully-crafted items off the shelves in other stores.

The notion of a “green” business is so ubiquitous these days that it’s trite. We don’t make the choices we do because we need the “you’re vaguely progressive, finger snaps for you” t-shirt. We make them because this business exists, fundamentally, to make progress toward addressing climate change. We do it by growing small, local businesses that create food thoughtfully, by being conscious of the real costs of food waste and working to mitigate them, by sourcing locally – not “whenever possible” but always. Even when that means our produce department includes little more than apples, potatoes, onions and kale in the cold months. And by working to create a space where only good food choices can be made. 

Glen’s Garden Market is very much a grocery store and killer craft beer bar with $4 pints all the time, and a heck of a sandwich and pizza shop, but it’s also a small business incubator, a community participant and a mission-driven progress-mobile.

It’s not an economy-wide climate change bill, but it’s progress, one bite at a time.

Gerardo saving the environment, one recycled bottle at a time

For me, working for Connect4Climate is not just about coming into the office every day at 9am and get out at 6pm. This is not that kind of job that once you are at home you feel “disconnected” from what you did all day: working for the environment means that I embrace the belief that every gesture can make the difference in mitigating my footprint on the planet.

How can I sensitize people if I’m the first to act in the wrong way?

Mahatma Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” What a perfect statement to synthesize my vision of the role that every citizen has to defend our mother earth!
More than fifteen years ago, I started to reduce my footprint recycling my household waste, but let me tell you something:  this habit wasn’t an “innate” part of my behavior, it wasn’t part of my “childhood manners” that my parents taught me.

I was born in a small coastal town in the South of Italy called Salerno, which is actually one of the top Italian recycling cities.

Fifteen years ago it wasn’t so, my region suffered from huge waste management problems. This led my region to several collapses of the entire waste system (do you remember Naples invaded by trash?). I imagine “yes”.

People didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to “enter” into the recycling habit until Salerno’s city council financed a massive infrastructure plan to open new recycling centers and empower people through some capillary communication and awareness programs.

After that even my Grandma (90 years old) shouted at me “this bottle goes to the plastic bin and this goes to compost bin, idiot!”

 Those radical changes that I experienced prove that if you give to the people the right tools, they’ll understand “WHY” they need to change behavior.

After all these years, even if I’m living in another continent, for me it is impossible not to recycle my trash!

It became an automatism, a good one.

I have no doubt that informing and empowering people to action in their everyday life is the key to protect our children’s future.

We do not need to wait for another law to pass or for another high profile ONU meeting, the planet needs your every day actions!

I invite you to start today.

Sustainable urbanisation

With our Future Proofing Cities (FPC) initiative Atkins is taking a leading role in the global drive towards sustainable urbanisation, increasingly recognised as a crucial underpinning for economic development. Formally launched with a major publication released in 2012 (free to download from this link), funded by the UK government and supported by a wide range of international stakeholders, the FPC initiative is now being progressively applied on all our projects globally.

Closely aligned with our FPC initiative, Atkins has recently developed a highly innovative Eco-Low Carbon (ELC) Urban Planning Methodology specifically for China. With funding from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and co-funded by China’s Ministry of Housing andUrban-Rural Development (MOHURD), the methodology was officially launched in Beijing in May 2014 and is also available for free download (see this link). Using a practical, process based, step-by-step approach, the methodology places strong emphasis on integration, understanding local context, and human scale development in harmony with nature, as well as the importance of place making in urban form, and partnering to finance ELC development through green credit initiatives.

Cadre City Plaza, Guangzhou, China – International TOD centre. Photo Credit: Atkins

With attention now increasingly focusing on the quality as well as quantity and pace of urbanisation in China, the methodology has generated wide interest both inside and outside China. It includes many elements which are replicable in different contexts across the Asia Pacific region as well as globally.

When you first enter a classroom and see a wave of unfamiliar faces, do you expect to work with everyone in that class or do you assume that whoever sits near you will be your discussion partner for the whole semester? Would you ever imagine that one of them would be so ambitious and motivate the whole class to join together and make a major statement for social change?

In two sociology classes taught by University of Maryland’s Professor Leszek Sibilski, 50 students all joined forces to not just raise awareness of climate change but to also start a chain reaction of actual social change around the issue.

On the first day of Professor Sibilski’s "Contemporary Social Problems" class, I was very much a cynic and had little faith that my classmates would think about coming together for any serious endeavors. I even doubted my professor when he told us that we would work together on a video project that would spread globally and really get people talking. Well, I stand happily corrected in my cynicism. There was a great deal of kinship when we all supported one another as we flubbed through lines, changed our intonations, and sat through countless versions of the video until we had created the best one possible for the world to see.

Thanks to the power of social media and online marketing, many people from all over the globe have indeed seen our class video! We have comments in multiple languages on YouTube and at latest count, there are over 2800 views from around the world. When we set out to make a genuine effort to spur people to act and commit to social change, I was floored to see the results we garnered so quickly. If anything could be said about this project, it would be that it not only got external people involved in seeking change, but it also inspired a group of normally apathetic students - myself included - to want to seek real global change as well.

Now, with the collaborative support of the World Bank’s Connect4Climate (C4C) initiative, we are proud to introduce a new video that we shot on Earth Day, 2013, when members of the C4C Team came to speak to our class.

In this video, my classmates and I all share simple ideas as to how we can begin the process of correcting the damage we have caused. Unless collective social action is taken now, the dire effects of climate change will be felt most acutely by our generation and those younger than we are. There is thus a clear need for students and youth to be proactive and to share positive role models and ideas with other young people from around the world. Earth Day is a day for the world and its inhabitants to connect - even if it’s just through the Internet – to improve the planet. So even though April 22 has passed, Earth Day is really just a reminder of what we should be doing on a daily basis. With this video, we are starting a global challenge to address climate change and sending a message from our university campus to you and your communities: all people need to unite and revive the planet we love. Please join us and Connect4Climate!

Learn more about the UMD/C4C connection.

A Journey Filled with Sweat and Tears

One cold and windy evening in February 2013, we received a call from Dr. Leszek Sibilski, our professor of contemporary social problems at the University of Maryland. He told us about a unique opportunity to make a short video documentary at a World Bank event organized by Connect4 Climate (C4C) entitled “Right Here, Right Now.”

Immediately, we sensed it would be an interesting endeavor and we spontaneously said: “Let’s do it!”

We are two young Chinese women studying in the U.S. Yaqi Liu is an undergraduate broadcast journalism student. In her sophomore year, she decided to take Sibilski’s contemporary social problems class, which ultimately changed her life in an incredible way. She talked about the class to her friend, Marianne Ma, who was doing first-year graduate studies in Supply Chain Management at the same university. Yaqi was enthusiastic about all the social changes and movements that professor Sibilski mentioned in class and Marianne was inspired by her enthusiasm.

We decided to talk with professor Sibilski, asking him for opportunities to witness or even participate in current social movements. The trip to the World Bank headquarters was exactly the opportunity we were hoping for.

Although we did not have professional equipment or sophisticated video production skills, we were passionate, feeling that this project would be challenging and interesting. But we never thought it would raise our social consciousness, and perhaps even change the path of our lives as well.

The first solar-powered flight across the Pacific Ocean is now past the point of no return. Pilot André Borschberg now must commit to flying five days and nights until he lands in Hawaii.

What better way to demonstrate the importance of the pioneering, innovative spirit than by achieving “impossible” things with renewable energy - and by highlighting new solutions for environmental problems?

With this in mind, Solar Impulse launched the global campaign #FUTUREISCLEAN.

If technological solutions exist allowing an airplane to fly day and night without fuel, imagine the potential of similar technologies in helping us in our daily lives with energy savings andreducing C02 emissions. "We would like to capitalize on the tremendous media coverage of Solar Impulse flying around the world to promote the various social and economic benefits our planet can derive from a clean future! Only a significant worldwide support will push governments to replace old polluting technologies with clean and efficient technologies.

This is what we want to create throughout our solar powered Round-The-World Flight!" says Bertrand Piccard, pilot and founder of Solar Impulse. Piccard is also known for completing the first hot air balloon flight around the world.

Solar Impulse 2 takes off to Hawaii. Photo credit: Solar Impulse

Support the campaign by registering on www.futureisclean.org

“The question facing us today is not so much whether man will be able to go even further and people other planets, but how to organize ourselves to make life on earth more and more worthy of living”, August Piccard declared in 1931 following his first balloon ascent into the stratosphere. What could be more logical, seventy years later, than that his grandson should launch a project that combines scientific exploration with the promotion of renewable energies?

The idea of Solar Impulse came to Bertrand Piccard following the first round-the-world balloon flight with Brian Jones in 1999. It was the realization that a lack of fuel could have caused his adventure to fail that led him to promise to circumnavigate the world a second time, but this time without fuel or polluting emissions.

Solar Impulse's ultimate adventure: a round-the-world flight. Photo credit: Solar Impulse

After the take-off on 9th of March in Abu Dhabi, the team of Solar Impulse 2 had to stopover in Japan and wait several weeks for a good weather window to cross the pacific. Finally, yesterday 18.00 UMT, André Borschberg took off successfully. The relief about the continuation of the journey was noticeable in the whole team; Betrand Piccard: "The point of no return for this flight to Hawaii was also the point of no return for the entire project."

Pilot André Borschberg on board of Solar Impulse 2. Photo credit: Solar Impulse

The flight to Hawaii will last around 120 hours and it will be the longest flight ever made by a solar-powered airplane in terms of both duration and distance. The pilot will be exposed to extreme conditions during the next leg to Hawaii, living in the confinement of a 3.8m3 cockpit. He will be facing many human, technical and operational challenges which have been carefully researched, developed and simulated, and will be in constant communication with the Mission Control Center.

During the coming months, Piccard and Borschberg will continue the journey and stop in Midwestern United States, New York, Northern Africa or Southern Europe before attempting to return to Abu Dhabi having travelled 35,000 kilometers around the globe, accumulating 500 flight hours over five months to spread the message that clean technologies can achieve the impossible.

[video:https://vimeo.com/98563072]

Roughly one person every second is displaced by a climate- or weather-related disaster and in the last six years, 140.5 million people - two percent of the Earth’s population - has been displaced by such disasters alone. With millions of people forced to move each year by rapid-onset climate-related hazards and slow-onset environmental degradation, social well-being, human rights, economies and even state stability are at risk.

To coincide with UN Human Rights Day, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) is highlighting the need for climate change to be viewed through a human rights lens. Climate change is magnifying the existing vulnerabilities of affected communities and eroding their capacity to cope with change. The global community is failing to provide the protection, assistance and access to durable solutions that those on the frontlines of climate change require and deserve.

In a new report released today, ‘Falling through the Cracks’, the EJF examines the various legal and policy frameworks governing climate-induced displacement at the international level. EJF has found that the ‘protection gap’ is more like a series of holes - suggesting the need for a new global framework, which is broad in scope and sensitive to the needs of multiple populations of concern.

Environmental governance is about political environmental policy related to defining, developing and implementing the elements needed to achieve sustainability. It is about the design and execution of policy. All human activities; political, social and economic, should be understood and managed as subsets of the environment and ecosystems. Governance includes not only government, but also business and civil society, and emphasizes a holistic system management. Environmental Governance in Africa has not been as successful as in Europe or North America because of lack of effective coordination. Environmental experts have identified the absence of coordination among governmental agencies as a major challenge confronting environmental governance in Africa. Also sovereignty, existing divergent values, different levels of development, corruption and insincerity of purpose are challenges militating against a healthy environment in Africa.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been the forerunner in involving governments in developing and implementing Environmental Law or Governance. However, since its establishment in 1972, the number of Governmental institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) dealing with environmental matters and related issues in the African continent have increased. In 2000 for example, statistics show that there were respectively 49 to 59 NGOs per million people in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. The role of Environmental NGOs’ include but are not limited to promoting activities such as environmental education and advocacy, participation in environmental policy-making and implementation, and business-NGO partnerships. It is unfortunate that with all NGO-governmental efforts, the economic significance derived from environmental governance is yet to be fully understood or acted upon hence the myriad of environmental challenges currently present in the African continent.

A recent report by the Institute for Security Studies in Africa (ISS) suggests that Africa’s challenges are linked to environmental insecurity and the development catastrophe, which includes poverty, water scarcity, degradation and inequitable distribution of natural resources, loss of arable land, food insecurity, coastal degradation and wetlands intrusion. These have posed (and continue to pose) great institutional challenges in Africa. Furthermore, many African countries are severely strained by these problems which are intricately intertwined and compounded by rapid population growth and migration causing unanticipated pressure on the resource base.  As a result the international community has placed immense demands on these countries, yet these African countries lack the capacity to cope with these changes and where they make an effort, it is negligible.  Therefore, many environmental institutions in Africa require an overhaul in guiding principles, policies and laws. For effective environmental governance in Africa; national governments require a lot of assistance if at all they are to contribute to sustainable development. It is also notable that national implementation of the Agenda 21 and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) in Africa has barely progressed and results remain to be seen. This is owed to diverse institutional and policy challenges, most common being ineffective governance structures, lack of adequate expertise, inadequate finances, lack of tools and equipment to implement and enforce current laws and international conventions, conflicting sectoral strategies towards human and natural development, unsustainable trade policies and corporate unaccountability. To address these challenges it is important to effectively address the synergies created between different MEAs. Governments should prioritize on expanded capacity-building programs and develop stronger commitment and discipline toward environmental policy.

Full Implementation of the Agenda 21 and MEAs can be achieved through advanced communication by MEA secretariats - a role played by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). However, communication is faced with challenges that include false reporting and inadequate sharing of environmental databases among institutions. Rwanda, for example, is working toward enhancing the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) which consolidates and coordinates the country’s information technology resources. Since RITA ensures information flow among sectors, this is great initiative for other African countries to borrow from. In summary, African countries will achieve effective environmental governance, if all of its countries demonstrate their capacity to conquer environmental challenges.

In conclusion, Global Environmental Governance (GEG) has not ignored Africa’s challenges; one of the two themes for discussion at Rio+20—the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to take place in June, 2012—is “Institutional Frameworks for Sustainable Development,” within which GEG reform is a key area for discussion. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), funded by the Danish government, and working closely with UNEP and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), has embarked upon a project that seeks to make an intellectual contribution on GEG reform to the African preparatory process for Rio+20. Through two high-level African consultations, the project seeks to identify key issues for Africa in GEG reform and to draw out options that are not currently part of Africa’s official preparatory process.