Low carbon energy pioneer groups in Asia and Africa are having success with alternative energy, helping regular people and protecting the environment.

As reported in IPS News: "While the big debate continues about oil prices, the alternatives to oil and the development of biofuels, scattered groups are finding new successes in generating all the energy they need, doing it cleanly -- and now doing it on an impressive scale.

"Just the top ten low carbon energy pioneers picked by the Britain-based Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy this year reach nine million people and save 1.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions, the group says.

"The savings in emissions these groups bring in Asia and Africa are equivalent to the total domestic emissions of about 700,000 citizens of Britain, the report says. In Bangladesh, just one solar programme has installed more than 160,000 solar home systems, compared to 2,300 domestic solar panel installations in the UK.

"The systems being installed in Bangladesh by the group Grameen Shakti (Village Power) are an extraordinary case of the small-scale going big. 'We started in 1996 installing a few hundred such solar systems a year,' Dipal Barua from Grameen Shakti told IPS. 'Now we are doing 8,000 a month. We had a target of a million by 2015, but we expect now to pass that in 2010.'

"Typically, one such solar system can provide power for up to five hours of electricity to run four lamps, a black and white tv set, a radio, and a charging point for a mobile phone, Barua said. 'It costs about 400 dollars, but we do not ask for down payment. We take a small advance, and our engineers collect the rest over a period of two or more years.'

"The solar systems are making a tremendous difference to life, Barua said. 'Kerosene for lamps is expensive, and it is not environment friendly. This way we give steady light in the evening hours for children to study at home, and for shopkeepers and others to run their business.'

"The rapid demand has seen Grameen Shakti grow to an organisation that employs 2,000 engineers, with an annual budget of 30 million dollars.

"In Nepal's villages, new biogas systems are being installed, which digest animal dung to produce gas for cooking and lighting, replacing wood fires and kerosene lamps. These cost about 400 dollars each. Households get subsidy for one third, contribute one-third in kind, and pay the remainder through microcredit.

"Like the solar systems in Bangladesh, one such installation provides for essential household needs for energy. The demand for such units, and production, is rising rapidly. And now Grameen Shakti is also developing biogas plants and new technology to improve the cooking stove.

"Apart from switching to such technology, the clean new technology can be widely adopted for people who have inadequate access to any energy source, the report says.

"The report points out that 2 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity, and 1.6 billion still rely on fuel wood and open fires for cooking.

"A key finding of the report is that potential beneficiaries need to have access to affordable credit. "This is because upfront costs of new technologies such as solar panels can be a barrier -- even though high prices for kerosene and other alternatives mean that the payback times can be surprisingly short," the report says.

"The report recommends microfinance backed by soft loans and government subsidies, and to specifically designed carbon finance as a way to support such energy sources."

Hats off to these low carbon energy groups! 

Now let's get moving here in the US.  Check out Apollo Alliance as a start, for clean energy and green collar jobs.