Anantapur – Solar Based Livelihoods

Climate change is one of the most important environmental social and economic issues which occupy the centre stage of world concerns today. Despite growing efforts made to reduce green house gas(GHG) emissions, some impacts as higher temperatures, more intense floods and droughts, wild fires and raising sea levels are now inevitable. It is imperative that we plan to minimize the negative impacts of such likely events by enhancing the pace of substituting the traditional methods of energy production and use with more efficient and renewable forms of energy. This will need changes in the way in which we use energy at all levels by proper understanding of the issues. These challenges affect decision making at all levels from individuals to Governments and in all sectors of the economy. There is need to bring together research schools, policy makers and all other stakeholders from developed and developing countries to share insight into the challenges, the threats and the opportunities for mitigating GHG emission and preparing for adaptation requirements.

Demonstration of solar products
Demonstration of solar products

Towards this end S3IDF has been organized by few persons to design develop and verify through implementation some innovative alternative paradigms for providing the energy and other infrastructure services to the poor and then most importantly to disseminate the new paradigm to achieve expected impact in the society. It is focusing on designing and deploying innovative clean energy devices to replace or supplement the lighting, cooking drinking water purification now being done by the fossil fuel using devices, which leave a large carbon foot print and affect the local and global sustained well-being. Even though the household in rural India are poor and the per household contribution GHG emission is somewhat small compared to urban households , the cumulative emission from the rural households is a significant fraction of the total emission in India. A clear understanding of the nexus between the emissions in rural household due to use of kerosene for lighting and traditional fuel for cooking, the GHG emission produced and the global warming and consequential climate change impact will alone lead to sustained efforts towards the adoption of the energy efficient and renewable forms of energy. Our efforts, therefore, focus on propagation of the adverse impacts of carbon emission from poor households and assure them to provide technical and related services to them, for adopting energy efficient and renewable energy lighting, heating and drinking water supply at affordable costs. As part of our efforts to provide a bundle of services to improve their socio-economic development, we supplement our services to create new livelihood opportunities in the process of these efforts and by the use of solar power to improve the productivity of their traditional crafts.

View the full report: – Sustaining the Rural Poor with Solar