Ashden Awards
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The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy are annual awards given by a charity of the same name that is based in London. They reward local sustainable energy projects in the UK and developing countries that protect the environment, and improve quality of life.
Sarah Butler-Sloss created the awards in 2001, from the Ashden Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts.
[edit] About the Ashden Awards
The Ashden Awards rewards and promotes excellent local sustainable energy solutions in the UK and the developing world. By rewarding the best, they aim to raise awareness of the huge potential of local sustainable energy to both tackle climate change and improve the quality of people's lives. They aim to encourage its wider take-up across the world.
[edit] How the Awards make a difference
The Awards help transform the prospects of sustainable energy in several ways:
- By giving substantial cash prizes, they help winners take their work forward.
- By actively promoting the winners and publicising their work through a worldwide media campaign, they aim to inspire others to follow their example.
- By bringing winners together with key decision-makers and opinion-formers, they aim to change thinking and policy among governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) alike.
The Ashden Awards also carries out research into the potential of local sustainable energy to meet the world’s energy needs and tackle climate change, and examine ways of overcoming the barriers to its wider adoption.
[edit] The UK Awards
In 2007, the Ashden Awards is offering awards for the UK in the following categories:
- Renewable energy
- Energy efficiency
- Energy business
There will be three first prizes of up to £30,000 each, and three second prizes of up to £10,000 each.
[edit] Renewable Energy Award
This award is for organisations such as NGOs, non-profit groups, commercial organisations, Local Authorities and Energy Agencies that have carried out projects or programmes to increase the supply of renewable electricity and/or heat at a local level. Supply can be from renewable sources such as biomass, wind power, micro-hydro, solar power or ground source heat pumps. We assume that any scheme involving renewable energy will also have incorporated appropriate energy conservation measures. Some past award winners relevant to this category include Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (2006), Moel Moelegan wind farm (2003), South Somerset Hydropower Group (2005) and Kirklees Borough Council (2006).
[edit] Energy Efficiency Award
This award is for organisations such as NGOs, non-profit groups, commercial organisations, Local Authorities and Energy Agencies which have carried out projects or programmes to increase the efficiency of energy use, or reduce demand, at a local level. Organisations such as Community Energy Plus (2005), Severn Wye Energy Agency (2006) and the Energy Audit Company (2006) won Ashden Awards for programmes which reached very large numbers of households with insulation and other domestic efficiency measures. We are also interested in programmes which have reduced demand through strategies like smart metering and behavioural change, or building developments demonstrating significant demand reduction.
[edit] Energy Business Award
This new award is for successful businesses which have used innovative ways of making local renewable energy and/or energy efficiency products and services more accessible to the public. We are particularly interested in enterprises which have opened up new opportunities, such as bringing to the market new technologies (the technologies need to have a proven track record, having been on the market for at least a year), or using new financial mechanisms for making the technologies more affordable or delivering other mechanisms for making the technologies easily accessible. Previous winners such as Renewable Devices (2005), Second Nature (2005) and Good Energy (2006) have shown the type of entrepreneurial drive which we would like this award to recognise.
[edit] The UK Schools Award
The Ashden Awards offers a special award for Sustainable Energy in Schools. This carries a first prize of £15,000, and a second prize of £5,000. It is open to individual schools which have succeeded in making sustainable energy a key part of the practice and culture of the school as a whole.
This Award was made for the first time in 2006 in recognition of the crucial role which schools play in both promoting the need for sustainable energy and demonstrating its practical effectiveness. The Schools Award is open to any UK school (providing education for pupils aged between 5 and 16) that has created a sustainability ethos in which the responsible use and generation of energy is a key component. The joint winners in 2006 were Cassop Primary School, County Durham and Eastchurch Primary School, Isle of Sheppey, Kent.
[edit] The International Awards
The International Awards are designed for schemes in the developing world.
Award winners use local renewable energy to reduce poverty, improve people’s health, wellbeing and economic prospects, and at the same time tackle climate change and other environmental threats, notably deforestation.
There are five international awards in total, each with a first prize of £30,000 and a second prize of £10,000.
Prizes will be awarded for schemes which address at least one of the following areas:
- Food security
- Health and welfare
- Light
- Education
- Enterprise
One of the five awards will take the form of a Special African Award, reserved specifically for an outstanding scheme from that continent.
[edit] Food security
This covers the use of renewable energy in any part of the food supply chain, from growing, processing, storage and cooking, through to marketing and distribution. Past winners of a Food Security Award include: Trees, Water and People (Honduras) and the Escorts Foundation (Pakistan), both of which have developed simple cooking stoves which both saves trees and makes for healthier, less smoky homes and ARTI (India) who developed a compact biogas digester for urban use.
[edit] Health and welfare
This covers improvements to health in homes or schools (by reducing smoke from cookstoves, for example), as well as energy for healthcare facilities (including providing lighting, refrigeration, sterilisation and communications). Past winners of a Health and Welfare Award include: Engineers without Borders in Peru, for solar-powered communications systems for remote jungle health centres and GIRA (Mexico) for a programme of improved fuelwood stoves which included detailed research showing the health and environmental benefits of the stoves.
[edit] Light
This refers specifically to the provision of clean, efficient portable lamps or fixed lighting for homes or community buildings in often poor and remote areas which are not connected to grid power or for whom mains electricity is unreliable or unaffordable. Past winners of an Award for Light include the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (Pakistan) for micro-hydro schemes which have brought electric light into thousands of homes in remote villages, NEST (India) for a cheap solar lantern making smoke-free lighting available for some of the poorest families and Grameen Shakti (Bangladesh) for installation and finance of solar-home-systems for lighting.
[edit] Education
This is principally concerned with the use of renewable energy in schools, either to provide light and power, or for cleaner, more sustainable cooking fuel. It can also apply to schemes which help enhance children's chances of enjoying a decent education outside the school, for example via home study. Past winners of an Award for Education include RETAP (Kenya), which combined the introduction of a highly energy efficient cooking stove for schools with a scheme by which they can grow much of their own fuelwood in the school grounds.
[edit] Enterprise
This reflects the important role which businesses can play in delivering renewable energy and encouraging its rapid spread, through viewing it as a business opportunity as well as a social benefit. Past winners of an Award for Enterprise include SELCO-India (India) for building up a thriving business network supplying high-quality solar lighting systems, GERES (Cambodia) for the rapid introduction of an efficient charcoal stove through the existing commercial supply chain, and IDEI (India) for the commercialisation of low-cost treadle pumps for irrigation.
[edit] Special African Award
This Award was introduced in 2005, in recognition of the particular challenges which climate change and poverty play in threatening the future of Africa, and the vital contribution which local renewable energy can make in tackling both. Past winners are the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (Rwanda) for using biogas systems to improve sanitation and supply cooking fuel in large institutions, and the Mwanza Rural Housing Programme (Tanzania) for developing small businesses which produce high-quality bricks fired using agricultural waste.
[edit] The Awards Ceremony
The Ashden Awards hold a high-profile awards ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London in June, where the finalists present their achievements and receive their awards before an invited audience of politicians, business leaders, and key figures from the environment, development and energy worlds.
Previous hosts include broadcasters John Humphrys and Jonathan Dimbleby and environmental journalist Mark Lynas.
Guest speakers over the last three years include Al Gore, David Attenborough, Hilary Benn, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Dr RK Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party and Lord May of Oxford, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government.
After presenting the prizes at the 2007 ceremony Al Gore commented:
"No one can attend an event like the Ashden Awards and fail to be inspired. We must find a path from an unsustainable present to a sustainable future. What impresses me most about these projects is they truly are becoming the change that is needed in the world. These Awards tell us how to illuminate this path to a sustainable future together. I hope that we can make it quickly."
[edit] Ashden Awards Seminars
The Ashden Awards also holds specialist seminars bringing together Award winners with practitioners, academics, and those who make or influence policy. Examples of recent seminars are:
[edit] Awards week technical seminar
During the 2007 Awards week the Ashden Awards their annual Technical Seminar, where the finalists presented their work to an audience of 150 people, drawn from business, government, NGOs and education. The seminar was hosted by Imperial College, and supported by British Gas.
Each presentation started with a short film of the Award-winning work. The winners then summarised their work, focusing on what had made it so successful, and how it could be replicated or developed elsewhere. The seminar was an inspiring summary of a wide range of sustainable energy systems working successfully throughout the world – including biogas in India, gasifying biomass stoves in China, ram-pumps in the Philippines, water mills in Nepal, micro-hydro in Peru, and solar PV in Ghana, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh and Laos PDR. From the UK, finalists spoke about energy efficiency for homes and businesses, the use of wood-fuel for heating, and renewable electricity from wind and solar PV.
The technical seminar will be repeated during the 2008 Awards week.
[edit] Wood-fuel for heating
On 29 January 2007 the Ashden Awards held a seminar looking at wood as a heating fuel, hosted by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council in association with the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly. This seminar followed one held in London in November 2006 in association with the Micropower Council and chaired by Baroness Maddock.
At each seminar four previous Ashden Awards winners working in this area gave presentations and answered questions from delegates. In addition, at the Barnsley seminar delegates had the opportunity to visit a variety of biomass facilities in the area including a wood-fuel processing and storage depot, a block of flats that had been converted from coal to biomass heating and a new office development using biomass heating.
- Dick Bradford explained how Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) reduced its CO2 emissions (relative to 1990 levels) by 20% in 2001, and 40% in 2005. This was achieved by converting old coal-fuelled boilers to wood-fuel, and by using wood-fuelled heating in new construction projects. Wood from tree surgery around the borough is being collected and processed into woodchip for council use.
- Richard Harvey discussed the options for those wanting to make use of wood-fuelled heating, drawing on his experience with the Rural Energy Trust. Case studies were used to illustrate the range of wood-fuel heating equipment, covering applications from domestic buildings to farm-scale glasshouses.
- Andrew Lamb explained how TV Bioenergy gathers wood from a variety of sources and processes it into a high-quality fuel. He covered issues of quality control, transport and storage, advising potential wood-fuel users on how they could best avoid any problems.
- Andrew Tolfts of BioRegional Development Group examined the different sources of wood-fuel, including sawmill co-products, tree-surgery arisings, forest management, recycled wood and energy crops. The pros and cons of each source of wood-fuel were explained, including available volumes in rural and urban areas, and suitability for small- and large-scale schemes.
[edit] International policy seminar
The International Policy Seminar was again held in partnership with DFID in 2007. The title ‘Low carbon energy in practice: the 2007 Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy’ reflected the growing interest in the impacts of climate change and development. Both DFID staff and senior representatives from other development organisations attended the seminar.
Three finalists were selected as speakers, to give a range of technology and geography along with different perspectives on sustainable energy and climate change. Pan Shijiao (Daxu Bioenergy, China) described the commercialisation of highly efficient stoves, which have significant potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and indoor air pollution by replacing wood and coal with briquettes made from crop waste. Javier Coello (Practical Action, Peru) discussed the role of well-managed microhydro schemes in bringing services and employment opportunities to communities in remote villages of Peru. Harish Hande (SELCO, India) showed the significant potential for low-carbon electricity from photovoltaics, for providing income and services to individual households and businesses.
The seminar was opened and chaired by Ian Curtis, Head of Profession in the Environment division of DFID, who gave a very clear and positive introduction – emphasising that access to energy was at the root of getting out of poverty. Each presentation started with the 5-minute film, followed by a ten-minute presentation by the finalist.
[edit] How to apply for an Ashden Award
To apply for an Award, visit the Ashden Awards website and follow the instructions there.
[edit] Winners in 2007
[edit] Winners in 2006
[edit] Winners in 2005
[edit] Winners in 2004
[edit] Winners in 2003
| Category | Country/region | Organization | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health and Welfare | Peru | Asociacion Madrilena de Ingenieria Sin Fronteras | Hispanic American health link in the Upper Amazon |
| Health and Welfare | Pakistan | Barefoot College | Solar energy to meet basic needs in the Himalayas |
| Food | Eritrea | Energy Research and Training Centre (ERTC) | Fuel efficient stoves for baking injera bread |
| Food | Nicaragua | Prolena Nicaragua | The Pro-Tortilla programme: modernisation of household tortilla businesses in Nicaragua with the 'Ecostove' |
| Enterprise | India | Madhya Pradesh Gramin Vikas Mandal | Solar lamps for street hawkers |
| Enterprise | Bangladesh | West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) | Sagar Island - Solar Island |
| Energy Efficiency | UK | BioRegional Development Group | Zed into the Mainstream |
| Renewable Electricity | UK | Cwmni Gwynt Teg cooperative | Ail Wynt project, Moel Moelogan Wind Farm |
| Renewable Electricity | UK | Sustainable Energy Action Ltd | Solar for London |
[edit] Winners in 2002
| Category | Country/region | Organization | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health and Welfare | Tanzania | Adventures in Health, Education and Agricultural Development (AHEAD) | A water testing and solar pasteurisation project for rural communities in Tanzania |
| Health and Welfare | Zambia | African College for Community Based Natural Resource Management | Solar powered electric fencing for securing livelihoods and conserving wildlife resources |
| Food | India | Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) | Converting sugar cane trash into domestic fuel |
| Food | Kenya | Solar Cookers International | Expansion of solar cooking programme at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya |
[edit] Winners in 2001
| Category | Country/region | Organization | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food | Nigeria | Centre for Household Energy and the Environment (CEHEEN) | Improved cooking stoves for poor families in rural and semi-rural areas of Nigeria |
| Food | Rwanda | Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST) | Popularisation of the 'KIST' improved bread oven, Rwanda |
| Health and Welfare | Honduras | Enersol Associates, Inc. | Clean water for health: using solar electricity to deliver clean water in rural Honduras |
| Education | Kenya | Renewable Energy Technology Assistance Programme (RETAP) | Integrating energy conservation and fuelwood production in schools to help conserve the forests of Mount Kenya |
