Renewable World is very honoured to be the only non-Norwegian organisation to receive an award from the Statkraft Fund for the second year running.
Statkraft, Europe’s leader in renewable energy, has awarded a total of 5 million Norwegian Krone to organisations working on climate and development projects. Renewable World is proud to receive the award alongside eminent Norwegian organisations; Norwegian Church Aid, Norwegian People’s Aid, Energiråd Innlandet, Grane Næringsutvikling and the Ny-Ålesund Symposium. Stakraft CEO, Christian Rynning-Tonnesen explained that, ‘this year’s awards reflect the diversity of national and international energy and climate projects. This is in line with Statkraft’s efforts to fight climate change and develop more renewable energy in Norway, Europe and the rest of the world’.
Last year’s award from the Statkraft fund allowed Renewable World to develop our Africa programme by establishing key relationships in the region as well as supporting the work of two partners, including the Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) who have established Maarifa centres across the region. Maarifa means knowledge in Swahili which is exactly what the centres provide to remote communities in the form of agricultural, health and social information and with Renewable Worlds capacity building in renewable energy, ALIN have been able to extend their network of centres to places where the services would have been unfeasible before.
This year Renewable World has been very generously awarded NOK 1 million (£110,000) which will enable us to expand our programme work in South Asia. We will work with partner BSP Nepal to enhance their capacity to implement community bio-gas systems and use them to deliver income generating outcomes. This will involve supporting the installation of small-scale bio-gas systems in three rural villages currently dependant on traditional biomass for cooking and heating. Access to bio-gas will reduce the time and effort involved in collecting traditional fuels and the health implications from indoor fumes. We will also work with BSP to enable local farmers to increase their incomes through using the energy to process dairy products and the slurry outputs from the bio-gas to fertilise their crops and increase their yields.
Renewable World is very grateful to Stakraft for their continued support and looks forward to working together to make a greater impact on the lives of the 1.4 million people in the world without access to electricity.