A crash course in changing the world.
Mission 3 has really given me a kick in the teeth. From what other Evoke Agents have shared there are clearly many silos of activity in the area of sustainable power generation.
I found my social innovator in my own backyard. As I shared with Agent Joanna Chaplin following her Call to Action, Kenya is coming out of a 3 year drought. We relay heavily on hydroelectric power and have been experiencing both water and power rationing for over 2 years. Our governments imediate solution was to utilize fossil fuels for power generation, which lead to leving of a new fuel tax, more than doubling the cost of power. This has adversly affected our manufacturing and service sector.
In the past 2 or so years, Kenyan organiations have been growing biofuels especially jatropha and sugar cane. One of this companies, East Africa Fuels has contracted over 75 farmers who have grown over 60,000 Jatropha trees. From this website I learnt that Jatropha is drought resistant and can grown on rocky land. It is easy to grow, lasts for about 40 years with each mature Jatropha tree producing upto 1/5 litre of oil and other useful by-products including fertilizer and methane gas. Jatropha is not edible, unattractive to wildlife and livestock and its its oil is said to burn 80% cleaner than fossil fuels. Unlike other alternative energies (sun, wind, water) it does not require new technology (cars, generators etc. will run on Jatropha),
Sounds PERFECT doesn't it? Researching the disadvantages, I found that, IMHO, many could be surmounted by better technology. The only question I couldn't see an easy answer to is should we grow food for cars or food for people? Evoke Agents, who can come up with a solution to this??
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