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Turning Heads
Fast Company, June 2009
By FC Expert Blogger Alice Korngold. Wed Jun 24, 2009
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.
Recently named TED Fellow Peter Hass, Founder and CEO of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) announced the winner of AIDG’s Haiti business plan competition.
“We are excited to invest in COOPEN, a new business enterprise in Cap Haitien that will sell biodigesters to the 1,500 members of COOPEN’s agricultural co-op. Families will benefit from this low cost fuel for heating, cooking, and waste management. COOPEN
will then buy back the effluent - the by-product of biogas production,
and vermicompost the effluent to produce a higher quality product that
they can sell on the agricultural market.”
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by Karen Rowan; extra reporting by Andrew Grant
Who knew that providing energy and water for all could be a matter of foot cranks and dirt power?
A Pelton turbine from the micro-hydroelectric system currently providing renewable power toComunidad Nueva Alianza in Guatemala.Photo: Xeni Jardin; courtesy of AIDG
A garden hose, a tin can, duct tape, metal piping, kitchen
cleaner, and gasoline: That is all television icon MacGyver needed to make a
flame-thrower to ward off a swarm of killer ants. In the real world,
technologies that are affordable and practical are not so simple to create, but
they can make a huge impact on people's lives. Instead of calling on complex solutions (reliant on engines and
imported resources) for low-tech problems (such as
cooking and lighting), some researchers are now developing what they call "confluent"
technologies—ones that are effective, affordable, and sustainable for use in
the developing world. Here's a look at the latest breakthroughs:
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by Mason Inman
Rural families can slash their energy costs, improve their health
and help preserve local forests by harvesting natural gas from rotting
manure, researchers argue.
They
say the use of biogas plants, which store the decomposing manure and
capture the natural gas it releases, could improve rural farmers'
livelihoods, while protecting the environment.
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By Alexis Madrigal
EWB-SF’s Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming with
low-cost turbine that they helped design. It will be tested in
Quetzaltenango this spring. Photo courtesy Jim Merithew/Wired.com
A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a
home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid
Guatemalan villages by this summer.
After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town
of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will
produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery
that can power simple devices like LED lights.
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by John Barrie
The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group is a new type of charity. They
incubate sustainable businesses that tackle some of the world's most
pressing social, economic and environmental needs by using smart sustainable technologies. Their founder and Executive Director, Peter Haas, took a few minutes to answer some questions from EcoGeek.
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by Wayne Ma
The tech world is misunderstanding
the concept of appropriate technology for developing nations as
“low-tech,” leaders in the growing field of practical invention said
today at the 2007 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Conference. In fact, the panelists agreed, it’s likely more
difficult to design these technologies for rich,
technologically-developed countries, which don't have to worry about
limited resources.
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By Meredith Rahman
Weston - Every morning Carolina wakes up in a sleepy daze and walks
on the soft dirt of her kitchen floor, compacted by generations of use.
Thick smoke fills the room as kindling begins to burn on the stove.
From dawn until dusk, 365 days a year, this smoke infests the room.
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Written by The Naib
When I stumbled upon Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, I
knew right away that they were doing something special. There unique
approach to creating positive change involves long term commitments to
the community; I was especially impressed with their commitment to
green technology. I was lucky enough to be able to get Peter Haas, the
founder and Executive Director of the AIDG, to take some time out of
his very busy schedule to answer ten questions for The Sietch.
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Day to Day, Many of Guatemala's rural indigenous communities lack
infrastructure basics such as clean drinking water, sanitation and
electricity.
A group of American
eco-engineers in the United States from the Appropriate Infrastructure
Development Group is working with a number of Mayan villages to change
that.
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Salon's How the World Works Blog
by Andrew Leonard
The Internet facilitates many kinds of behavior, but shines at one
thing above all else: If you need to find a manual to figure out how to
reprogram a remote control, or set a function on your bike computer, or
put together a Lego set, the Internet is so helpful it makes Prometheus
look like a miser. Manuals, how-to instructions, spare part catalogs --
no matter how obscure, no matter how out of date (or how cutting edge),
they all live forever on the Net.
I was thinking this, yet again, this morning, as I scrolled through a 30-page PDF file
containing exquisitely specific instructions on how to build a
biodigester septic tank that transforms pig [waste] into organic
fertilizer and cooking gas. Not that I'm planning to install one myself
in my backyard anytime soon, but I just feel happy knowing that should
I ever need to, the information is handily available. Just as I am
delighted to learn that using a laser printer, the right paper, a sheet
of copper and a clothes iron, I can make my own printed circuit boards.
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Cheryl B. Scaparrotta
The
idea came to Weston native Peter Haas on a pig farm in Cuba. Haas was
studying urban agriculture while traveling on a U.S. Department of
Treasury permit, and this was the first farm he visited. He was
surprised to learn that the farmer had installed a “biodigester” (a
mechanism that collects animal waste and, through a process, promotes a
controlled buildup of methane gas for heating, cooking, and lighting)
built by his nephew, to treat pig excrement. The organic fertilizer
generated by the biodigester enhanced the farm’s productivity. And
amazingly, the farm was relatively clean, operated efficiently, and
lacked the typical foul odor one would expect from a pig farm. The well
was also clean and the kitchen was spotless, thanks to the biogas stove.
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By Habib Rahman
Weston - Last Sunday, Peter Haas, a lifelong Weston resident and co-founder of
AIDG, presented one vision of empowering the world’s poor by developing
economically viable environmentally friendly businesses in the
developing world. It has successfully established several renewable
energy projects in Guatemala and, contingent on funding, is hoping to
start similar operations in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. AIDG
was founded in 2004 by Peter Haas and his friend Benny Lee, also a
Weston resident. Two other lifelong Weston friends joined the board of
directors – Adam Hyde and Grey Lee.
AIDG’s mission is simple –
empower the poor in developing countries by creating indigenous small
self-sustaining businesses that generate green energy. To this end,
they have interns and volunteers, primarily students from top colleges
like Berkeley, MIT and Stanford, work with local villagers, helping
develop renewable energy plants.This summer a group of 10 Weston
High School students and two chaperone teachers will go on a Teco-Tour
to Guatemala under the auspices of AIDG. The students will travel
through the country and work on renewable energy projects with local
villagers. The operations are by design small and have to be affordable
to locals, most of whom live on less than $2 a day.
"Our goal is to transform society one village at a time," Haas said.
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by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg
In the developed world, we perceive renewable energy technologies as the means of moving us away from pollution-spewing sources of electricity generation. In many parts of the developing world, though, renewables often provide the most efficient means of producing power in places that have never had it. In the Comunidad Nueva Alianza, a small village in El Palmar, Guatemala, the recent installation of a micro-hydro system now provides electricity to 40 households for the first time ever.
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When one isolated village in Guatemala decided to wire itself for
electricity for the very first time, they decided to step out of the
past and go straight to the future with renewable energy. They were
able to do it with the help of Xela Teco and the Appropriate
Infrastructure Development Group. Xela Teco installs and repairs
sustainable power generators in rural Guatemalan communities that
otherwise couldn't afford electricity. The company specializes in
hydroelectric systems and biodigesters that turn animal waste into
methane gas to fuel stoves. Many Guatemalan villages are too small to
build power plants and too remote to establish transmission lines.
That's where Xela Teco comes in. With support from the U.S.-based AIDG,
Xela Teco uses local expertise to service the technologies that can
deliver water, electricity and heat without harming the environment. In
one village near El Palmar, Xela Teco recently installed a solar water
heater and a complete micro-hydroelectric system. Forty families there
can now enjoy electricity in their homes for the very first time.
Amazing considering some villagers make as little as $2 a day. They are
showing the rest of us that you don't have to have the green to go
green on energy.
Original article can be found clicking here.
G4B's Monthly CSReport ~ Issue Twenty-Nine
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by Alexander Görlach
www.aidg.org stands for
everything Club of Pioneers believes in: a sustainable and fair future
for everybody on this planet. We see in the discussions about global
warming and climate change often a very self-centrated point of view.
There might be a slight tendency to lower the efforts if one own's
country seems not to be affected that much.
To www.aidg.org it
is clear that we all have to stand united and build a future for
everybody - for example by working on it that each and every one has
access to clean water.
The organisation offers internships for those who want to take a stance by acting, working for a sustainable future.
The original blog post is available at:
http://www.clubofpioneers.com/blog/alexs-blog/2/comments/114/
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by John Barrie
I follow the work of the Appropriate
Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) pretty closely. Through education
and business development AIDG promotes sustainable technologies that improve
the quality of life in developing countries. AIDG has identified several sustainable
technologies that can be made locally, with local “eco-engineers”. One
technology AIDG is promoting in Guatemala
is the use of Biodigesters.
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