Solar Schools in Action

I've been quiet in the weblog until now because, just as the other youth have mentioned, I was not sure what purpose I was serving in being here. The frustrations of being blocked from entering the convention center and meetings, getting held up by security for wearing GreenPeace T-shirts, and heightened security making actions difficult to impossible was taking its toll on me. But after a workshop I helped organize yesterday, I feel a new energy rising inside of me and excitement for what we can accomplish in the last few days of the summit.

The workshop was called Solar Schools in Action and was a discussion on how to implement the 10% new renewable energy goal at the local level. We held the workshop at NASREC, the convention center to which all the non-UN-accredited people are relegated. While Sandton is a frenzy of suis pushing political agendas behind closed doors, NASREC is a garden of diversity with a warm, open feeling. Young and old, Africans and Asians, civil society and delegates mix there for solid discussions on the future of their planet and the local actions they can take.

To start the workshop, we had four speakers introduce examples of what is already being done:
It started out with Mlusi Zwane, the principal of Myeka high school, speaking about the solar instalation that has changed the very fabric of education at his school. 55 miles from Durban, the school had no access to electricity until the first solar panels were put in place six years ago. Mlusi felt unable to provide his students with a quality education, as without electricity they were cut off from the technologically 'advancing' world. Thanks to the help of many groups, including the Solar Electric Light Fund, the school now has a photovoltaic/biogas hybrid electrical system. This provides the energy to power their forty computers (with a sattelite internet link), projectors, televisions, printers, and lights. Not only do the students now have light with which to read by at night, they also have access to the largest library in the world. Literacy rates are up thirty percent and graduation rates have just about doubled. Who knew the sun could do so much!

Next was Namosonto, a student at Myeka high school who exemplified the success of this project. Wonderfully bright and bright-eyed, she didn't bat an eye when she said she intends to be an electrical engineer when she is older.

Paul Horsman from GreenPeace spoke about the need for renewable energy at the community level to combat poverty in addition to global climate change.

I spoke about two projects I have worked on. The first was at my school, Cornell University, where I worked with a group of students to put a study together on the feasibility of putting photovoltaics on the residence halls about to be constructed. Though this project has not yet been implemented, I presented examples of fifteen other colleges and universities around the world that have already installed PV on their buildings. This information is all available at http://www.rso.cornell.edu/kyotonow/cleanenergy/solarunis.html

Next I spoke about a project I worked on last summer with Professor Duffy of UMass Lowell, USA. We installed a PV system in a primary school in the Peruvian Andes as a way to increase both educational opportunities for the students and to build the local economy. While half of the electricity produced went to lights and a laptop for the school, the other half went to a battery charging sation. Previously, villagers who could afford it would use a car battery to power a couple lights and a television. When it was drained, they would send the battery down to the city on the bus that came once a week. The busdriver would charge the batteries and bring them back the next week, charging a pretty penny. Now, batteries are brought to the school, filled with clean energy, and money is divided between the school and the village governing body.

Because we wanted the PV system to integrate into the educational program, I put together a set of twenty basic experiments on electricity, magnetism, and photovoltaics. At each of the three schools we visited, I gave the teachers a workshop on how to teach all of the experiments, the supplies they would need, and info packets translated into spanish.

When the speakers were done, Tricia led an amazing discussion wth the four main points:
1) What is clean energy
2) Where do we start?
3) How do we get funding?
4) How do we form a network and what should we do with it?

There were over sixty people in attendance at the workshop, each of them with ideas and dreams about clean energy at their schools. The hour we had to discuss things felt like five minutes, and before I knew it the workshop was over. The main point that kept coming up throughout the discussion had been the lack of information available. We decided that the outcome of the workshop would be an information packet to be distributed to everyone who attended and made available to others who are interested.

I felt so good coming out of the meeting, feeling that I had made some personal connections that could lead to concrete change. I am studying to be an engineer, and I like concrete things that I can wrap my hands around. The political posturing and amorphous negotiations taking place in Sandton have been difficult for me to get passionate about. However small the projects may be that come out of this workshop, it is steps like these that help to spread clean energy around the globe.

Posted by abigail at September 01, 2002 12:00 PM