Exploring Energy Access for Communities Worldwide
This week saw the launch of the RELIEF Centre's latest Massive Open Online Collaboration - this time on Sustainable Energy Access for Communities, running on the Edraak platform in Arabic and the FutureLearn platform in English.
In the welcome video for the first week, we explained that our vision for “Sustainable Energy Access for Communities” was that it would act not so much as a course, but as a collaboration with all of the participants. The comments and contributions have shown that this really is the case. What has been remarkable about the discussion so far is seeing the diversity of participants and the range of rich experience they bring. Participants have introduced themselves on the English version of the course on FutureLearn from Ghana, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Spain, Switzerland, St. Kitts and Nevis, Mongolia and the UK. On the Arabic version on Edraak, participants from Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Morrocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia told us about their passion for finding renewable options for energy in the region. We have people working in renewable energy as public bodies, NGOs, banks, a real estate company, a university, a project engineer in a consulting firm, an electrical engineer, an environmental scientist, a horticultural contractor, an architect, a designer, a researcher, a community champion, and lots of students (of mechanical engineering, geography, theology…) as well as all those here to learn a bit more about sustainable energy for general interest. All these perspectives bring such a lot and show that all around the world, there are people interested in making a change to bring sustainable energy to everyone so that they can all reach their potential.
On the Edraak platform, participants used a Padlet to explain the issues surrounding energy access in the MENA region:
One of the participants reported that "the lack of energy negatively affects the local production and makes the citizen's life in his community difficult, especially if the citizen has become accustomed to using energy and then the service was cut off." For example, he described that in his country, Yemen, the power cuts, the lack of oil derivatives, and the disappearance of household gas have adverse effects on the citizens’ conditions. For this participant, this situation was a catalyst for finding alternative solutions, such as solar energy.
We discussed how measuring energy access is not straightforward and considered the usefulness of tools such as the Multi-Tier Framework for making sense of the complexity of access. In the discussion, participants showed us that aspirations for energy access could also vary. One of our educators, Dr Priti Parikh, head of UCL’s Engineering and International Development Centre, observed that people climb the energy ladder in a non-linear manner, and in periods of financial crisis, they can go down by being forced to reduce consumption.
This was given a personal flavour from participants posts – like this one from the “Energy Access” Padlet on FutureLearn, from a UK participant who shows it is not always easy to adopt ‘clean’ energy, even when you might want to:
we have found it interesting moving into an older house which doesn't have the benefit of a modern heating system. We are very reliant on a wood fired stove to provide sufficient heat during the winter months. We have looked at green energy systems to improve our situation but are unable to have solar panels and have a small footprint of land which makes other methods of heating difficult.
We heard too from participants in very different contexts who showed the light and shade of access to clean energy worldwide. For example, a participant from Mongolia told us how the nomadic population used portable solar power, whereas the urban dwellers were still using fossil fuels. Another participant made the point that in Mexico, new policies were rolling back the support for renewable systems, and others across both platforms highlighted how the interconnectedness of economics and politics are bound up with the availability of solutions.
Nevertheless, we have participants with the will to bring renewable solutions within the reach of many more people and the skills to do it. We included a video from MECS discussing how pollution from cooking can exacerbate health inequalities, such as the effects of Covid-19, particularly for women.
Following the video, participants explained the roles they could play in bringing clean energy options to communities. One participant on the FutureLearn platform made a powerful point about the need to give voice to those who are not always heard.
The challenge of clean cooking requires an interdisciplinary approach and collaboration between the public and private sectors. It also requires users to change their cooking practices and habits that may be closely related to their cultural identity. Among the solutions that the participants shared on the Edraak platform included emphasising the role of the national government:
The state's provision of a program to support and encourage renewable resources and educate NGOs on how to use these resources.
Another Edraak participant suggested that the citizen has an individual responsibility. The individual can contribute through:
collective and cooperative work with the help of bodies and associations by clarifying the importance of clean and renewable energy for the environment, health, and disease prevention, and activating that role by helping some families and providing them with devices that work on clean renewable energy.
This participant emphasised that we can achieve more together:
Using modern cooking tools and stoves, and showcasing the actual experiences of different cases can have a bigger impact.
This is our ambition for Sustainable Energy Access for Communities - to create a collaborative learning community where participants from different parts of the world exchanging problems and approaches from their diverse communities and contexts.
It would be a great outcome for our collaboration to channel the wide-ranging expertise, enthusiasm and will to change what we have heard in the discussion into engaging the wider community to debate these issues.
We are looking forward to more discussion in the coming weeks!