Change Agent

Green Sun Rising president Klaus Dohring and vice-president Tanja Nuske show the solar thermal collectors and mounting systems their company produces and sells in a former auto parts plant in Windsor, Ontario. By turning to alternative energy sources, especially wind and nuclear, Ontario will soon be able to shut down all of its coal-fired power plants. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters/File)

How Ontario is putting an end to coal-burning power plants

By Keith Schneider, Yale Environment 360 / 04.03.13

By most measures of environmental policy and progress, Ontario, Canada, ranks well. Over the last half-century, Canada’s most populous province required cities and industries to treat every gallon of wastewater, dramatically reduced the level of sulfur and other pollutants that caused acid rain, and convinced the big and politically powerful pulp and paper industry to install state-of-the-art emissions control equipment.

Next year, though, Ontario is scheduled to complete a 21st century environmental cleanup project that distinguishes it among North American jurisdictions. After a decade of work by the Liberal Party government, Ontario at the end of this year is scheduled to close the last of its big coal-fired generators, and leave a single small coal-fired unit available during periods of peak electrical demand until it closes next year. In shutting down the province’s 19 boilers fueled by coal, Ontario will become the first industrial region on the continent to eliminate coal-fired generation.

The decade-long process to replace a quarter of the province’s electrical generating capacity with new plants fueled by natural gas and renewable energy sources represents one of the most ambitious low-carbon generating strategies in the world. And achieving the coal-less electricity sector has yielded lessons about the constraints of government policy and public acceptance in an industrial democracy seeking to make such a momentous transition.

“What Ontario has done is impressive,” said Tim Weis, the director of renewable energy policy at the Pembina Institute, one of Canada’s most respected environmental research organizations. “But it’s also caused a lot of resistance... The government overcame the struggles to some extent. It does illustrate what is possible, and what to anticipate in terms of getting off of coal.”

Weaning economies off of coal, as Ontario learned, is no small feat. In 2003, Ontario generated 7,500 megawatts of coal-fired electricity, a quarter of its power supply. Ontario’s coal consumption peaked that year at 18.6 million metric tons. Coal-fired power plants were Ontario’s largest source of toxic chemical, heavy metal, sulfur, and nitrogen air pollution. Carbon emissions from coal-fired generation had risen to more than 41 million metric tons annually.

The program to end coal began that same year with an exceptional debate about energy that helped decide the election for provincial premier. Liberal candidate Dalton McGuinty and Conservative incumbent Premier Ernie Eves challenged each other on how quickly to shut coal-fired plants.

Smog, dust, and mercury emissions worried Eves, who said he could do it by 2015. McGuinty shot back that he could push Ontario out of the coal-generated electricity business by 2007, a message of energy conservation and efficiency that helped propel him to victory. McGuinty served for more than nine years as Ontario’s premier before stepping down in February.

Soon after McGuinty’s election in 2003, the provincial government began the process of closing coal plants.

In 2005, the 1,130-megawatt Lakeview coal-fired plant in Toronto, one of the province’s oldest, was shut down. In 2009, four generating units at a plant in Nanticoke and two units at another plant in Lambton were shut. A year later, two more units at Nanticoke were closed. Last year a small plant in Atikokan closed.

This year the last generating units in Nanticoke and Lambton close, and the Atikokan station is being converted to burn wood pellets. Coal consumption, coal-fired generating capacity, and emissions of mercury, other toxic compounds, and carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants will fall to near zero, according to the Ontario Environment Ministry.

The final two coal-fired generators, at a 300-megawatt plant in Thunder Bay, will close next year, according to Neal Kelly, the spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, the provincial utility.

“The 2007 deadline was ambitious,” said Garry McKeever, director of energy supply in the Ontario Ministry of Energy. “When the new government got into office it ran up against the mechanics of how to get this done. Communities worried about job losses. Industries worried about having enough power. It takes time to build replacement generation.”

According to the Ministry of the Environment, from 2000 to 2010, air quality improved province-wide in Ontario, and the phasing out of coal plants was a key reason. Ontario also implemented programs to reduce emissions from smelting plants and reduce particulates and toxic air contaminants from the transport sector. Overall, mean particulate concentrations in the province’s air fell from 8.1 micrograms per cubic meter in 2003 to 4.8 micrograms per cubic meter in 2010, a 40 percent decline.

The economic effects of the coal plant closures varied from town to town. For instance a coal-fired plant in Sarnia, an industrial city in southern Ontario along the border with Michigan, was to be replaced by a new natural-gas-fired plant now under construction. And Ontario Power Generation responded to its own staff resistance by promising severance payments, or jobs in the utility’s 65 hydro and three big nuclear plants for workers willing to transfer.

The transition away from coal also was helped by political and economic circumstances. Unlike the US, where miners, producers, truckers, railroads, and utilities form strong regional coal alliances, coal-fired power in Ontario had no other influential political constituencies.

Most of the coal-fired generators were also closed as the US economic meltdown engulfed Ontario’s auto manufacturing sector, North America’s largest producer of vehicles and parts, and one of Ontario’s biggest power consumers. The demand for electricity fell in Ontario, a market that was producing over 35,000 megawatts of generating capacity. Ontario’s three big nuclear plants alone produce almost 13,000 megawatts of generating capacity and 56 percent of the province’s electrical power. Hydropower generates almost 8,000 megawatts of capacity and 22 percent of the electricity.

The province’s ample electricity supply, and the closing of coal-fired generators, carved political space for Premier McGuinty and his staff to propose generating new jobs in energy innovation and manufacturing with homegrown renewable technology. In 2009, the province enacted the Green Energy Act to promote renewable sources. It included feed-in tariff provisions, modeled after similar programs in Denmark and Germany, which offered 20-year contracts to purchase wind, solar, biomass, and biogas-fueled electricity from producers at generous prices.

The new statute and its revenue provisions spurred a rush of big wind farms. Hundreds of windmills, for instance, were built on farmland along the highway corridor from Windsor to Toronto. Wind generating capacity now measures 2,000 megawatts. That will double in the next 18 months, according to the Energy Ministry, which would mean wind would produce more than 10 percent of the total generating capacity of 36,000 megawatts. The provincial government estimates that 30,000 jobs are connected to the Ontario Green Energy Act and the manufacturing and installation of wind parks.

“It’s a good story to tell, and a lot of people haven’t heard it,” said Paul Gipe, an energy industry analyst from California who worked with Ontario citizen groups to replace coal with renewable energy. “I’ve encouraged Americans to look across the border and learn something.”

Ontario’s transition to cleaner energy sources, particularly in the electrical sector, reflects a trend unfolding with gathering momentum in many industrialized nations.

Electricity generated from renewable energy sources contributed almost one fifth — 19.9 percent — of the European Union’s electricity in 2010, according to commission statistics. From 2000 to 2010, the number of gigawatts of electricity generated from biomass in EU nations more than tripled. During the same decade, the number of gigs generated by wind turbines increased almost seven-fold. A gigawatt is 1 billion watts.

The US also appears to be steadily moving away from coal and toward cleaner fuels.

As recently as 2007, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a research unit of the US Department of Energy, projected that the fuel mix for producing electricity in the US would persist largely unchanged through 2035. According to that estimate, a little more than half of the country’s electricity would come from coal, about 20 percent from nuclear plants, and a little less than 20 percent from natural gas; the balance, roughly 12 percent, would be generated from wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower.

A lot changed over the last five years. In 2012, according to the EIA, US utilities burned 815 million tons of coal for electricity, down from over 1 billion tons in 2005, and the lowest utility coal consumption since 1990. Less than 38 percent of the country’s electricity last year came from coal. As recently as 2009 it was 53 percent. In its most recent assessment, the EIA projects that 49,000 megawatts of coal-fired power — equal to 50 big plants, and 15 percent of existing coal-fired capacity in 2012 – will be retired over the next seven years.

Replacing coal is a surge of plants fueled by natural gas and wind. Last year, gas supplied 29.9 percent of US electricity, up from 23 percent in 2009. And in 2012, with 13.2 megawatts installed nationally (equivalent to 13 big coal-fired plants), wind energy accounted for 42 percent of the nation’s new electrical generating capacity, more than coal and natural gas combined. Texas, of all places, generates 20 percent of its electricity with 12,200 megawatts of installed wind capacity.

In Ontario, 17 new natural gas-fired generating stations have been built and, with 10,000 megawatts of capacity, have replaced the generating capacity that came from coal. Both gas and wind, though, have prompted civic dissent. Citizen opposition forced the cancellation of gas-fired plants in Oakville and Mississauga, two suburbs of Toronto. And wind farms have attracted opposition in rural areas.

The discord over wind, said Tom Adams, an energy consultant in Toronto and author of Tomadamsenergy.com, a blog, is driven in part by a provision in the 2009 Green Energy Act that removed the authority of local governments to review and approve land use permits for wind projects. “People began to feel like their rights were taken away,” said Adams.

Opposition groups formed to stop projects. Ontario issued a formal moratorium for offshore wind development in Lake Ontario. Citizen groups filed lawsuits to halt projects, many of them motivated by fears that projects would reduce property values.

Wind energy development is also being blamed for rising electricity prices in Ontario. But Gipe, the industry analyst, responds that wind development — which accounted for less than 4 percent of all electricity generated last year — isn’t big enough to dramatically affect power prices.

Other factors also are in play, said McKeever of the Energy Ministry, including the cost of expanding and modernizing the province’s transmission grid and refurbishing the province’s big nuclear generating sector.

“The current Liberal government has heard the opposition,” said McKeever, “and is working to address the concerns of municipalities, and restoring some of those authorities. It’s been a learning process for this government.”

• Keith Schneider is senior editor of Circle of Blue. He is a former national correspondent and regular contributor to the New York Times. In previous articles for Yale Environment 360, he has written about an increase in the development of unconventional sources of oil across the western US and Canada and about how a fossil fuel boom could slow the development of clean energy.

• This article originally appeared at  Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

A girl shows her coloring book at a kindergarten for children of Afghan National Police officers and staff at a training center in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. The Afghan Dreamers project plans to tell the world about the positive stories taking place in the country. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters/File)

New nonprofit joint venture will tell the positive stories of Afghanistan

By Rosie Spinks, Dowser / 04.02.13

When President Obama remarked in his last State of the Union address that “by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” he was signalling the end of something that many media consumers stopped paying attention to a long time ago.

The media watchdog Tyndall Report found that in 2012, the three major US television networks’ coverage of the conflict in Syria was nearly three times that of the war in Afghanistan.

Even if, as Mr. Obama indicates, US troops do withdraw next year, Afghans will undoubtedly be left with a nation that is riddled with problems and ravaged from more than a decade of war.

But that, of course, is not the only story. A new joint venture project between nonprofit Mountain2Mountain and ad agency cum publisher Sharp Stuff seeks to tell the stories that 12 years of war have stifled.

After carrying out a series of pop-up photography exhibitions in Afghanistan in 2012, Mountain2Mountain executive director Shannon Galpin (who is also a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for 2013) was asked to do a spinoff version of the American Dreamers book, which featured contributions from “people with interesting ideas about way the world could be” in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Dreamers project will feature 15 to 20 Afghan visionaries, teachers, leaders, artists, and movers and shakers who are moving the country forward in the face of great adversity. Project co-producer and photographer Anna Brones, who accompanied Galpin on the trip in 2012, will also be part of the Afghan Dreamers project. She spoke about why our perceptions of Afghanistan are different from the reality:

“It is a conflict zone, for sure, there are a lot of terrible things that happen on a daily basis. But I think as a media consumer we are trained to expect these really terrible things,” Brones said. “There are a lot of really good people doing really amazing things, but the structure that they’re working within is pretty messed up and very difficult to work with. But after nearly a decade of war, I think highlighting our similarities is a lot more powerful that highlighting our differences.”

Haseena Qudrat is an economics lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, founded in 2006. She said a combination of factors – including heavier media focus on the Iraqi war and the tendency to focus on negative stories in Afghanistan coverage – have crippled the nation’s progress.

“The media has constructed a carefully crafted narrative about an embattled country struggling to keep radicals at bay, while success stories go widely underreported,” Qudrat said. “If the media agencies were to report on the current progress and imminent potential seen in Afghanistan we would witness a pivot in public perception that would usher in an era of sustainable long-term projects that yield a flurry of social and economic benefits.”

Mountain2Mountain director Galpin has been working in Afghanistan since 2007, when she mountain-biked 140 miles across the Panjshir Valley to bring attention to women’s issues. To complete the project, she will use her strong ties to region to find interviewees and stories to feature. The current roster includes Kabul’s mayor, the nation’s first metal band, a female rapper, and a female graffiti artist.

The Afghan Dreamers project is using the independent fundraising website Rally to raise funds to cover travel and reporting costs. In the light of Obama’s recent forecast for the end of the war, Brones feels that getting the funds realized is more important than ever. After the war, she said, Afghanistan’s problems will still persist while media coverage will be virtually nonexistent.

“I asked an NGO worker what his perspective on the country was, and he told me ‘the people are sweet but the country’s a mess,’ ” Brones said. “That’s a very true statement, but the visionaries in this project are the people that are going to move the nation forward. That’s why it’s so important to tell these stories.”

• This article originally appeared at Dowser.org.

Paul Kariuki shows off some of the produce he grows after returning to Embu, Kenya, to farm with his mother. Crop insurance has attracted Kenyans back to farms from urban areas. (Kagondu Njagi/AlertNet)

Crop insurance helps Kenya's urban poor return to farming

By Kagondu Njagi, AlertNet / 04.01.13

Since she began insuring her crops against erratic weather two years ago, Goretta Wanjiru has gained peace of mind about her livelihood as a farmer. But just as importantly, she has also got her son back.

Wanjiru’s crop insurance is an innovation for Kenya and one of the country’s first schemes covering farmers against losses incurred due to drought or excessive rain.

It comes to the rescue of struggling farmers like the 59-year-old widow, who is now able to protect some of her savings that were previously spent on offsetting her losses.

The plan, run by the Sygenta Foundation, UAP Insurance, and the telecommunications company Safaricom, compensates farmers in kind with fertilizer and seed for losses to crops like maize, wheat, beans, and sorghum, with the aim of helping them restart farming after a loss.

An unexpected benefit, however, is that the added income stability is helping lure some young people back to farming.

As Wanjiru works on her one-acre (0.4 hectare) farm at Kiritiri village in eastern Kenya, gusts of wind flick away dried maize stalks that shrivelled due to poor rains the previous season. Experts attribute the increasingly unpredictable precipitation to the effects of climate change.

“I had insured my seed, so I am not worried because I did not harvest enough,” says Wanjiru as she spreads a handful of manure on the freshly tilled earth. “I am preparing for the planting season.”

Two years ago on a sunny morning like today, Wanjiru would have been working alone on the farm, with only the chirping of the birds and the occasional greetings of a passerby to keep her company.

These days, however, her 32-year-old son, Paul Kariuki, works nearby, persuaded to return home from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, by his mother’s change in farming fortunes.

After completing high school, Kariuki had idled at home for five years because his mother could not raise fees to pay for his son’s college education. Eventually he moved to Nairobi, planning to land a good enough job to support his family. But his high hopes butted up against a tough reality.

“I survived on odd jobs like being a push cart operator,” recalls Kariuki. “The little I earned was not even enough for me to afford a decent meal.”

After his mother talked to him about new projects to support farming, he decided to return home to Embu County.

Kiriuki’s return brought his mother happiness, and also something else of value – a small investment in the farm, where he now grows kale, tomatoes, and onions.

“He was happy when I promised to buy him a water sprinkler to start his own farm project instead of wasting away in the city,” says Wanjiru. “He came back home last year and has moved on with life.”

As he tends the young vegetables just a few yards from where his mother is working, Kariuki hums happily, with an occasional dismissive laugh when asked about his life in the city.

Embu, a semi-arid region, can be a difficult place to reap a harvest. Local weather stations record daytime temperatures as high as 27 Celsius, while the average annual rainfall is about 1,200 mm (47 inches).

But some, like Kariuki’s mother and 11,000 other farmers across Kenya reportedly insured by the scheme, no longer grumble about failed crops.

 “I feel less burdened when I receive the insurance compensation,” explains Wanjiru. “I can save some money to do other small investments, and this is how I was able to help my son to start the vegetable project.”

To gain the insurance coverage, Wanjiru was required to buy a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of improved seed and a 10 kilogram bag of fertilizer from a local agricultural dealer, for a total cost of 34 Kenyan shillings (about $0.40).

In the event meteorologists record extreme weather considered likely to harm crops, she and other insured farmers receive an automatic payout equivalent to a portion – or all – of what their harvest might have earned.

Such innovations are being seen in rural Kenya as a way to slow the number of youth migrating to the cities to look for jobs.

The Kenya Institute for Public Policy and Analysis, a think tank, says some of Kenya’s youths are returning to farming because of high urban unemployment rates. According to a recent report by the institute, about 1.5 million youths living in cities are without work due to lack of formal education.

“Most of these youth have skill sets that enable them to adopt to extreme situations,” says James Kinyangi of the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security. “Kenya needs these skills to develop short- and medium-term solutions in agriculture.”

However, the government believes the return of some urban migrants to their rural farms is also the result of government efforts to use newly “devolved” regional spending to subsidize community projects in health, education, and agriculture to help foster more lively economies in villages.

“Initiatives such as the youth-enterprise development fund provide small, low-interest loans to young people seeking financial support. These help in tackling unemployment,” says Mugo Kibati, chief executive of Vision 2030, the Kenyan government’s growth blueprint. He points to the government’s willingness to work with the private sector, and its support for crop insurance.

At Kariuki’s village, the devolved fund has established an irrigation project that taps water from a distance of more than 20 km (12 miles). Kariuki now draws on this water for his small vegetable plot.

“Starting such an investment would not have been possible previously because of reliance on rainfall, which sometimes failed,” he says. “I left for the city because of unemployment, but now I am learning to be self-employed through vegetable farming.”

• Kagondu Njagi is an environmental writer based in Nairobi.

• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, a humanitarian news site operated by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker scores a 64-yard game-winning touchdown on a pass from quarterback Troy Aikman against the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1997. Today the former NFL superstar tells audiences about his struggle with anger and other mental issues and urges them to get help, as he did. (Reuters/File)

Herschel Walker tells soldiers: 'Don't be afraid to ask for help'

By Gail Wood, Contributor / 03.29.13

He admits it was easier being Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner. Easier being Herschel Walker, the All-Pro NFL running back.

But now, as he stepped in front of a room packed with soldiers eager to hear his story, he was Herschel Walker, a man with mental health issues. And Walker's message was simple and to the point.

“Don't be afraid to ask for help,” he said. “I did.”

Mr. Walker, the 1982 Heisman winner while at the University of Georgia, said if he hadn't he would have killed someone. Probably his ex-wife. And probably a man who had failed to deliver a package on time.

“I got my gun and I got in my car,” Walker told an attentive audience.

Fortunately for Walker, and for the unsuspecting delivery man, the former NFL running back saw something on the bumper sticker of the delivery van. It read, “Honk if you love Jesus.” That jarred Walker out of his angered state.

“That's when I realized I needed help,” Walker said.

Following treatment and counseling, Walker was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

“When I came out years ago, I was hurting,” Walker said. “No one ever saw it. No one knew I had problems. But I did. I said I'm not ashamed of who I am. I love who I am.”

But Walker needed a scary wake-up moment before he admitted he needed help. It required courage.

“It was very tough asking for help,” Walker said. “It's very difficult. I was totally confused. You know I'm Herschel Walker. I've won a Heisman Trophy. I won an NFL rushing title. How could I have a problem? That was it more than anything. Just admitting I had a problem. Even sometimes today I won't admit it.”

Walker recently talked an hour with soldiers at Fort Lewis, Wash., telling snippets of his life story, from when he was a child to when he was a highly recruited All-American running back coming out of high school in George.

Walker, who played for the Dallas Cowboys and four other NFL teams from 1986 to when he retired in 1997, is comfortable in front of a crowd. Without using notes, he talked about the struggles he had as a kid in the classroom and on the playground.

“My teacher told me I was special,” Walker said, a broad smile breaking on his face.

But it wasn't the kind of special he wanted. He said he was transferred to special education because he couldn't read well. At recess, kids made fun of him because he was overweight. Eventually, Walker, motivated by the anger he felt toward his teacher and his classmates making fun of him, began working out and studying hard.

“This is going to freak you out,” Walker told the crowd. “I told my mom the reason I started working out was because I wanted to break the necks of the people picking on me. I wanted to hurt them. I said I didn't want any teacher to put me down any more.”

So, Walker got up early in the morning to exercise and to study. He'd do pushups until his arms couldn't hold him. He'd run by himself until his lungs ached, working hard to turn his fat into muscle.

“I had that anger in me,” Walker said.

It wasn't until Walker went to a counselor after his NFL career ended that he realized his emotional problems, that he had dual personalities that vary between a nice, likeable Walker to an angry, want-to-hurt-you Walker.

“If you remember, every kid wanted to beat me up,” Walker said. “I had teachers who said I was not good enough. So, I said I will become good enough. So I became this guy who became obsessed to become good enough. Now I sit down and tell people who I was. Now, I say, 'Do you know who I am?' ”

    With a broad smile, Walker paused and panned the audience. He painted a picture of a desperate man, a man who didn't understand fear or pain. He talked of how he separated his shoulder in a game at the University of Georgia and insisting that the trainer pop it back into place while he was on the sidelines, and not in the locker room, as the trainer suggested.

Off the field, Walker took unreasonable risks.

“I was this guy who used to love playing Russian Roulette,” Walker said. “People would say, 'What do you want to do? Kill yourself?' I'd say no. It was a game for me. Playing Russian Roulette showed how tough I was. I used to say to my ex-wife that I was going to kill her. Later, she told me that I had said that, and I didn't remember it.”

In front of a room packed with soldiers, Walker didn't hide behind his trophies. He revealed his hurting side. He then shared a message of hope with the soldiers, some of whom are having trouble adjusting after assignments in the Middle East.

“I'm here today to [talk with] you if you're burdened, if you don't think you can make it,” Walker said. “You've got problem? Talk with a friend. Get help. God loves you. I love you.”

 Wives of soldiers in the audience began wiping tears.

“We have the DNA of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Walker said. “You're somebody. We all have problems. I finally saw that.”

In the past year, Walker has given several similar talks to soldiers across the country. He tells them that people like him with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have emotions beyond their control. He tells them how he created alternate personalities to deal with some of his problems. Those alternate personalities are often the result of profound abuse or a traumatic event in a person's life.

Admitting he needed help wasn't easy.

“But it's easier today,” Walker said. “Years ago if you said you had a mental problem, it would be tough. Today there are so many leaders saying if you've got a problem go get help. Get treated.”

It's Walker's openness about his mental issues that the Army hopes will help hurting soldiers decide to make a call for help.

“One of the things we combat in the military is the stigma that if you're really strong, you don't have problems,” said Col. Dr. Dallas Homas, the commander of the Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis.

And often if a soldier does admit to himself he has a problem, he doesn't tell anyone else.

“I think what Herschel brings is a testimony that it's okay to admit that you have a problem,” Colonel Homas said. “Her's a guy who is a super hero, who is brave enough to say, 'Hey, I've got a problem. I had a problem. I took it on, head on, and I'm better for it.' ”

In his book, “Breaking Free,” Walker writes about his mental health issues. He's said if he could help just one person, then going public with his problem would be worth it.

“[For] every individual out here who might be wrestling with an internal demon or a challenge, Herschel has shown them it's okay to go get help for it,” Homas said. “Not many of our sports heroes are as giving, as selfless, as Christian as he is. He's a model for everyone to emulate.”

Joachim Gebauer, a former teacher who now guides groups of visitors, poses next to a sign reading 'Germany, land of ideas' at the village of Feldheim, a 60-minute drive south of Berlin. Feldheim is Germany's first self-sufficient village. Germany is a world leader in renewable energy. (Tobias Schwarz/Reuters)

German village offers a blueprint for green energy

By Christoph Steitz, Reuters / 03.28.13

Nations as diverse as North Korea and the United States have sent delegations to visit a tiny village in former East Germany to see how it has transformed the way it uses energy.

A 60-minute drive south of Berlin, and home to about 125 people, Feldheim is Germany's first and only energy self-sufficient village and attracts both international energy experts and politicians.

"We're seen as pioneers, and the world wants to know whether they can duplicate our success," says Joachim Gebauer, a former teacher who guides visitors through the remote hamlet. "No coal or gas is burned here, it's all clean."

Instead, Feldheim is powered by a mix of 43 wind turbines, a woodchip-fired heating plant, and a biogas plant that uses cattle and pig slurry as well as maize silage.

Local energy costs of 16.6 euro cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) are just a little more than half of the 27 to 30 cents Germans pay on average, according to the New Energies Forum Feldheim, an information center.

Feldheim's rates are not far off those in Poland, which generates nearly all its electricity from carbon-intensive coal-fired plants.

Households there paid on average 14 cents per kWh in 2012, while those in the Czech Republic, which relies on nuclear for about a third of its power generation, paid about 15 cents per kWh.

The Feldheim project is just one small part of sweeping changes in energy across Germany aimed at moving away from coal and nuclear power.

The country of more than 80 million aims to derive 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.

It has bolstered wind and solar energy generation, and following Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011 Germany announced that it will phase out nuclear power by 2022.

Yet at an estimated cost of 550 billion euros ($709 billion) through 2050, Germany's energy transformation is an immensely costly challenge.

Last year alone German consumers paid an extra 17 billion euros for energy, including subsidies used to foster renewable energy generation.

Feldheim's low energy bills also reflect subsidies and other help.

To get started, all homeowners in Feldheim had to agree to pay 3,000 euros in connection fees for new power and gas lines, cutting their links to the regional grid provided by German utility E.ON.

The village then received 850,000 euros in European Union and government subsidies to help cover the 2.2-million-euro cost of new pipelines.

Local power firm Energiequelle agreed to install most of Feldheim's wind turbines and in return sells excess power they generate on the market.

The local agricultural cooperative helped by agreeing to use about 350 hectares (865 acres) of land to plant corn for the biogas plant.

Officials acknowledge all of this backing underscores why Feldheim may not be a model that works for large cities around the world, or even across the country.

"You can't do it the same way everywhere in Germany," German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said during a visit here. "But I believe it can be a role model for many rural communities."

Feldheim is part of the small town of Treuenbrietzen, which was first mentioned in a historic document in the year 1208.

Tour guide Gebauer said that part of the project's success was rooted in a willingness among villagers to help each other out.

"In Feldheim, people stick together," says resident Peggy Kappert.

A handful of other communities around the world are also aiming for energy independence.

Abu Dhabi's Masdar City project, designed to be the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, is among the most prominent.

Yet its opening set for 2019 has been delayed until 2025, and officials have conceded it may need some help from external energy sources.

Charles Whall, a fund manager at asset manager Investec, says Germany's own 2050 renewables target was technically possible but could also prove difficult due to high costs and the need for back-up generation capacity to offset swings in renewable energy supply.

(Additional reporting by Michael Kahn in Prague; editing by Jason Neely)

Actress Julie Mauro discusses the hiding place of Anne Frank with students in the Anne Frank exhibition at the Indianapolis Children's Museum in Indianapolis. (Michael Conroy/AP)

Seeds from Anne Frank's tree bring message of tolerance to US

By Pamela Engel, Associated Press / 03.27.13

Saplings from the chestnut tree that stood as a symbol of hope for Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis for two years in Amsterdam are being distributed to 11 locations in the United States as part of a project that aims to preserve her legacy and promote tolerance.

The tree, one of the Jewish teenager's only connections to nature while she hid with her family in a Secret Annex in her father's company building, was diseased and rotted through the trunk when wind and heavy rain toppled it in August 2010. But saplings grown from its seeds will be planted starting in April, when the Children's Museum of Indianapolis will put the first one in the ground.

The 11 US locations, which also include a park memorializing victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York City, an Arkansas high school that was the heart of the desegregation battle, and Holocaust centers in Michigan and Washington state, were chosen by The Anne Frank Center USA from 34 applicants.

Winners were selected based on their commitment to equality, demonstration of the consequences of intolerance, or historical significance to civil rights and social justice in the US, according to a news release from the center.

"The heart of our mission is tolerance. ... Tolerance is really essential for being able to bring better welfare to everybody," said center spokesman Mike Clary.

The tree is referenced several times in the diary that Anne Frank kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until her family was arrested in August 1944.

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind."

Her father, Otto Frank, was the only member of the family to survive the concentration camps, and upon his return to Amsterdam, he was presented the diary, which had been saved by a family friend who had helped hide the Franks. The diary was first published in 1947 and would be translated into many languages and adapted for the stage and screen.

A global campaign to save the chestnut was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it taken down. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court, but age and nature ultimately brought it down.

Jeffrey Patchen, president and chief executive officer of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, said the sapling planted in the museum's Peace Park will stand next to a limestone carving of a podium with Anne's diary on it. A mock chestnut tree looms over the entrance to the museum's permanent Anne Frank exhibit, which features live performances in a space that teaches visitors about life in the Secret Annex where the Franks hid.

"We're taking the lead in producing the educational materials that will go along with the tree," Mr. Patchen said. "We're producing this unit of study ... that focuses heavily on the humanities and presents the tree through selections of her diary and ... as a symbol of renewal."

Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., plans to plant its sapling in September, on the 56th anniversary of the previously segregated high school's integration. A group of black students called the Little Rock Nine, who braved angry mobs in the fall of 1957 to integrate the school, became a symbol of the civil rights movement.

"Both [Anne Frank and the Little Rock Nine] dealt with hatred from ignorant people," said Nancy Rousseau, the school's principal. "All of them displayed great bravery and courage, which wasn't necessarily seen then or now, also, in adults. They were all children."

Other states that have sites receiving saplings are Massachusetts, Idaho, and California.

The Anne Frank Center wants the sapling project to go beyond the initial planting of the trees. The center is launching an education initiative called Confronting Intolerance Today that will encompass a "teaching and discovery" website to create dialogue and show how the sites are using the sapling project to advance tolerance, a distinguished speaker series, and temporary exhibits from the center that will show the history of Anne Frank.

"We know that the tree was a sign of hope for Anne Frank, who was unable to leave her living quarters," said Yvonne Simons, executive director of The Anne Frank Center USA. "She wrote about it in a diary. For us, the tree portrays a symbolism of hope and growth and renewal."

Kirk Mayes, executive director of the nonprofit group Brightmoor Alliance, stands in front of an abandoned home in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit. Black men interested in serving their communities can seek funding through Black Male Engagement (BMe), launched by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters/File)

BMe helps black men make a positive difference in their communities

By Niema Jordan, Shareable / 03.26.13

A network of black men in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore is steadily growing. These men are mentors, fathers, brothers, and entrepreneurs. They are connected because they care. They are connected because they dedicated to positive change in their communities. They are Black Male Engagement (BMe). And it all started with the idea of sharing.

In 2011 BMe (pronounce “Be Me”) was launched by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Open Society Foundations. The foundations wanted to empower black men who were actively engaged and making a difference in their communities.

Aware of the stories that are often shared interpersonally and in the media, the foundations sought to develop another narrative. The people behind BMe wanted to look at the positive actions of black men in urban environments instead of approaching them as a group that needed to be fixed.

Members of the BMe team asked the question: What do you do to make your community stronger? In eight weeks they received and posted more than 2,000 answers from men in Philadelphia and Detroit.

“So many brothers are doing more than their fair share to make our communities stronger,” says Trabian Shorters, vice president of communities for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “By providing funding, BMe hopes to both give them the boost they need to go further with their work, and bring more people into the growing ranks of engaged black men.”

The 2012 grant cycle awarded funding to 10 men in Detroit and 10 men in Philadelphia. Awards ranged from $5,000 to $40,000 for community projects including literacy programs, book clubs, and mentoring programs.

Andre Dandridge, founder of New Young Fathers, received money to design and facilitate workshops in Detroit to help ensure that young men were more equipped for fatherhood. Alex Peay, who now serves as a member of BMe’s community engagement team, was granted funds to strengthen his organization, Rising Sons. The after school program arranges for college students and recent graduates to mentor high school students and then trains the high schoolers to mentor elementary school students in the area. Curtis Lipscomb’s grant enabled him to train 22 Detroit youths to become advocates of social issues facing the LGBT community in their city.

While previous grantees are hard at work utilizing their resources, BMe has started a new grant cycle with the theme, “Call for Community Impact.” Each chapter has up to $200,000 to give to programs and projects its city. If you are a black man living in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Detroit, are over the age of 18, and have uploaded a video to BMe’s site, then you’ve already met most of the criteria.

While last year’s funding went to individuals, this year there is a particular emphasis on partnerships and collaboration. Hoping that BMe members will share ideas and build upon them together, as the founders of Philly’s Live & Let Live Coalition did, grants and future programming are being geared more toward collaborative efforts.

This year BMe will expand to Pittsburgh, and they are looking to establish chapters around the country, each operating with a “simple truth” at their core: “That black men are assets to our nation. That there are thousands of black males who – by example – inspire others to get involved, to persevere and to lead on issues and opportunities facing the community.”

• This article originally appeared at Shareable, a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of how sharing can promote the common good. The original article includes a video of one member of BMe in Philadelphia who shares his story about what he does for his community.

A grinding machine halves the time and labor needed to thresh grain into flour for these women in Niger. (Courtesy of ICRISAT)

Threshing mills make life less of a grind for West African women

By Agathe Diama and Alina Paul-Bossuet, AlertNet / 03.25.13

The majority of women in developing countries rely on agriculture, and it is widely acknowledged that gender should be a major consideration in agricultural development for the rural poor.

When we think of how to improve the situation for women farmers, we often focus on farming issues such as land rights, training, and access to better seeds and markets. But for many women, post-harvest chores entail a heavy work burden that needs to be relieved to improve their lives. Doing so could also improve their communities’ resilience to drier climates.

The pestle and mortar are still the main tools used to grind staple cereals such as millet and sorghum in most sub-Saharan countries. But manually grinding grains is painful and time-consuming for rural women with relentless daily workloads in West Africa.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and its partners have been working with women to try progressive technologies to ease their work burden. As part of the HOPE Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, women farmers like Zénabou Halilou from Niger are replacing manual pestle and mortars with grinding machines that save time and labor.

"Before the mill was installed in our village, we manually processed all our grain,” says Halilou. “Threshing, husking, and milling used to take about 16 hours of my daily time. Thanks to the mill I save nearly eight hours a day. This has made a big difference.

“I can now spend more time on food processing and have just started a poultry farm. I also have more time for my children. Instead of meals served very late or not at all, they now eat every night before going to bed,” she explains.

The time needed to prepare and process grain is a key criterion for smallholder farmers in choosing their crop. Saving several hours a day in millet preparation encourages farmers to grow this drought-tolerant crop. So introducing this post-harvest technology helps farmers become more resilient to drier climates. 

Under the CODEWA project funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, ICRISAT explored crop diversification strategies to help farmers in the Sahel region boost their resilience to drought. This includes encouraging them to grow highly drought-resistant traditional crops, such as fonio, the smallest millet and a major staple cereal crop in dryland regions of West Africa.

Very nutritious and fast growing – it just needs six to eight weeks from sowing to harvest – the grain is used to prepare porridge, couscous, bread, and beverages. But its tiny size (2,000 grains per gram) means women commonly spent hours threshing the grain.

Over the past decades, farmers have adopted other cereal crops that are easier to process, such as maize. But maize yields suffer in dry weather, leaving drought-affected farmers at risk of losing their harvest when water is scarce.

The dissemination of an award-winning fonio threshing machine that can prepare 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of grain in six minutes instead of two hours of hand pounding has been a driver to reintroduce the cultivation of this hardy cereal.

The World Bank, through its West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program Project, has recently funded the distribution and assessment of fonio-husking machines in Senegal. This is good news as fonio is often the only crop farmers succeed in harvesting in very dry climates.

Technologies that free women from manual threshing are also appreciated for other reasons. Halilou proudly shows off her hands.

“Threshing and husking used to make my hands very rough,” she says. “Now that I use the mill, they are much smoother, and I am not ashamed to greet people with my hands.”

• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, a humanitarian news site operated by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Children play in their village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The number of girls in Cambodia making it to school is slowly increasing because of Lotus Pedals, a program that gives bicycles to young Cambodian girls. (Adrees Latif/Reuters/File)

Nonprofit's gift of bikes helps Cambodian girls get to school safely

By Michelle Gienow, The Chronicle of Philanthropy / 03.22.13

For young girls in rural parts of Cambodia, the road to school is often not only long but also perilous.

Because girls risk rape or abduction by sex traffickers, many parents prefer to keep their daughters at home rather than exposing them to danger on the daily journey to school. Attendance figures bear out the result: Only 11 percent of girls in Cambodia reach secondary school.

But the number of girls making it to school is slowly increasing because of Lotus Pedals, a program to give bicycles to young Cambodian girls.

It’s hard to attack a girl on a bike, says Erika ­Keaveney, executive director of Lotus Outreach International, the San Francisco charity that runs the program.

“Lotus Pedals is a simple intervention but a terrifically effective one,” she says, adding, “And donors like it because a one-time gift can make such an enormous, direct difference in one girl’s life.”

The charity spends $80 to provide each bike, counting the costs for transport and delivery, a repair kit, and a pump, along with project management and follow-up.

Lotus Pedals distributed 500 bikes in Cambodia last year, and Ms. Keaveney says the goal is 2,000 in 2013. Lotus Outreach International was founded in India in 1993 by Khyentse Norbu, a Buddhist teacher who sought to serve the world’s most dispossessed people through education.

A decade later, the charity opened a U.S. office that serves as headquarters, coordinating affiliate operations in seven countries. The charity now serves 30,000 women and children, mainly in India and Cambodia, with a 2013 operating budget of $925,000.

Contributions from individuals account for two-thirds of the budget, with most of the rest coming from foundations. This year the charity hopes to increase donations through marketing deals with bicycle manufacturers and retailers.

“We have seen how one bicycle is so much more than two wheels,” says Ms. Keaveney. “It is amazing how many Cambodians can fit onto a bike. Our girls often give their siblings or neighbors a ride to school on the handlebars and anywhere else they can hold on, so one bike actually enables multiple kids to get to school.”

• This story originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.