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When night falls in remote parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, hundreds of millions of people without access to electricity turn to candles or flammable and polluting kerosene lamps for illumination.
Slowly through small loans for solar powered devices, microfinance is bringing light to these rural regions where a lack of electricity has stymied economic development, literacy rates and health. A woman sews clothes on a sewing machine driven by solar energy in Ahmedabad/ Photo credit: Amit Dave/ Reuters
“Earlier, they could not do much once the sun set. Now, the sun is used differently. They have increased their productivity, improved their health and socio-economic status,” said Pinal Shah from SEWA Bank, a micro -lending institution.
Vegetable seller Ramiben Waghri took out a loan to buy a solar lantern which she uses to light up her stall at night. The lantern costs between $66-$112, about a week？ s income for Waghri.
“The vegetables look better by this light, and it？ s cheaper than kerosene and doesn？ t smell,” said Waghri, who estimates she makes about 300 rupees ($6) more each evening with her lantern.
“If we can use the sun to save some money, why not？”
In India, solar power projects, often funded by micro credit institutions, are helping the country reduce carbon emissions and achieve its goal to double the contribution of renewable energy to 6%, or 25,000 megawatts, within the next four years.
Off-grid applications such as solar cookers and lanterns, which can provide several hours of light at night after being charged by the sun during the day, will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and reduce the fourth biggest emitter？ s carbon footprint, said Pradeep Dadhich, a senior fellow at energy research institute TERI.
“They are reaching people who otherwise have limited or no access to electricity, and depend on kerosene, diesel or firewood for their energy needs,” he said.“The applications not only satisfy these needs, they also improve the quality of life and reduce the carbon footprint.”
SEWA or Self Employed Women？ s Association, is among a growing number of microfinance institutions in India focused on providing affordable renewable energy sources to poor people, who otherwise would have had to stand for hours to buy kerosene for lamps, or trudge miles to collect firewood for cooking.
SKS Microfinance, India？ s largest MFI, offers solar lamps to its 5 million customers, while Grameen Surya Bijlee (Rural Solar Electricity) Foundation helps fund lamps and home and street lighting systems for villagers in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
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A year ago, this lush coastal field near Rome was filled with orderly rows of delicate durum wheat, used to make high quality Italian pasta. Today it overflows with rapeseed, a tall, gnarled weedlike plant bursting with coarse yellow flowers that has become a new manna for European farmers: rapeseed can be turned into biofuel.
Lured by generous new subsidies to develop alternative energy sources - and a measure of concern about the future of the planet - European farmers are plunging into growing crops that can be turned into fuels meant to produce fewer emissions than gas or oil when burned. They are chasing after their counterparts in the Americas who have been cropping for biofuel for more than five years.
"This is a much-needed boost to our economy, our farms," said Marcello Pini, a farmer, standing in front of the sea of waving yellow flowers he planted for the first time this year. "Of course we hope it helps the environment, too."
In March, the European Commission, disappointed by the slow growth of thebiofuels industry in Europe, approved a directive that included a "binding target" requiring member states to use 10 percent biofuel for transport by 2020 - the most ambitious and specific goal in the world.
Most EU states are currently far from achieving the target, and are introducing new incentives and subsidies to boost production.
As a result, bioenergy crops have now replaced food as the most profitable crop in a number European countries. In this part of Italy, for example, the government guarantees the purchase of biofuel crops at €22 per 100 kilograms, or $13.42 per 100 pounds - nearly twice the €11-to-€12 rate per 100 kilograms of wheat on the open market last year. Better still, European farmers are allowed to plant biofuel crops on "set-aside" fields, land that EU agriculture policy would otherwise require them to leave fallow to prevent an oversupply of food.
But an expert panel convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization this month pointed out that the biofuels boom produces both benefits as well as tradeoff and risks - including higher and wildly fluctuating global food prices. In some markets grain prices have nearly doubled because farmers are planting for biofuels,
"At a time when agricultural prices are low, in comes biofuel and improves the lot of farmers and injects life into rural areas," said Gustavo Best, an expert at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. "But as the scale grows and the demand for biofuel crops seems to be infinite, we&39;re seeing some negative effects and we need to hold up a yellow light."
Josette Sheeran, the new head of the UN World Food program, which fed nearly 90 million people in 2006, said that biofuels created new dilemmas for her agency. "An increase in grain prices impacts us because we are a major procurer of grain for food. So biofuels are both a challenge and an opportunity." In Europe, the rapid conversion of fields that once grew wheat or barley to biofuel oils like rapeseed is already leading to shortages of ingredients for making pasta and brewing beer, suppliers say. That could translate into higher prices in supermarkets.
"New and increasing demand for bioenergy production has put high pressure on the whole world grain market," said Claudia Conti, a spokeswoman for Barilla, one of the largest Italian pasta makers. "Not only German beer producers, but Mexican tortilla makers have see the cost of their main raw material growing quickly to quickly to historical highs."
For some experts, more worrisome is the potential impact to low-income consumers from the displacement of food crops by bioenergy plantings. In the developing world, the shift from growing food to growing more lucrative biofuel crops destined for richer countries could create serious hunger and damage the environment in places where wild land is converted to biofuel cultivation, the FAO expert panel concluded.
But officials at the European Commission say they are pursuing a measured course that will prevent the worst price and supply problems that have plagued American markets.
"We see in the United States farmers going crazy growing corn for biofuels, but also producing shortages of food and feed," said Michael Mann, a commission spokesman. "So we see biofuel as a good opportunity - but it shouldn&39;t be the be-all and end-all for agriculture."
In a recent speech, Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU agriculture and rural development commissioner, said that the 10 percent EU target was "not a shot in the dark," but rather carefully chosen to encourage a level of biofuel industry growth that would not produce undue hardship for the Continent&39;s poor. Over the next 14 years, she calculated, it would push up would raw material prices for cereal by 3 percent to 6 percent by 2020, while prices for oilseed may rise between 5 percent and 18 percent. But food prices on the shelves would barely change, she said.
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