PAST WINNERS HAVE LEFT THEIR ECO-FRIENDLY FOOTPRINTS WORLDWIDE
▶ From the smallest school to the biggest corporation, from solar lights to national energy policies, the award honours a wide range of efforts to make the globe more sustainable.
1. Li Junfeng
Last year’s Lifetime Achievement winner has been active in the field of energy policy in China for 30 years, calling for less reliance on coal while strengthening renewable power goals.
Mr Li drafted a number of crucial documents in China, including the renewable energy law, which was passed in 2005 and facilitated the country’s boom in renewable energy development. He joined the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission as a senior research fellow in 1982, where he focused on climate, energy, the economy and policy.
He then spent two years as an economist at the World Bank in Washington before returning as deputy director of ERI NDRC in 1994, and was appointed director general in 2011.
Mr Li is director general of the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation – National Development and Reform Commission and president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. He is a member of China’s National Energy Advisory Council, the expert committee of the national high-tech research and development programme, an academic committee for China’s ministry of environmental protection and an expert committee on low carbon development for Beijing, Shanghai and Shanxi.
▶ 2017 Lifetime Achievement winner
2. Sonnen
Last year’s winner in the Small & Medium Enterprise category, Sonnen developed a smart storage system, sonnenBatterie, that stores the excess solar energy of a residential photovoltaic system and releases it later when it is needed.
The product closes the gap between the production and consumption of solar energy, which has been one of the biggest challenges for this renewable energy source.
In regions with unreliable electricity supply, the storage system enables people to use energy even during power outages. In early 2016, Sonnen launched sonnenCommunity, the world’s first online platform for sharing excess household energy with others.
The platform allows users to transfer energy from those with an excess to those who cannot produce or store enough on their own.
This allows people to be fully independent of the conventional power grid.
Sonnen also released sonnenFlat, which allows people to pay nothing for their electricity in the future.
It follows the company’s vision of providing clean and affordable energy for everyone.
Sonnen was featured in MIT’s list of the world’s 50 Smartest Companies of 2016.
It is also the European market leader for residential energy storage systems and one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Germany.
Founded in 2010 by Christoph Ostermann and Torsten Stiefenhofer, it now employs 250 people worldwide.
▶ 2017 Small & Medium Enterprise winner
3. SOS HG Sheikh Secondary School
The $100,000 award SOS HG Sheikh Secondary School won from the Zayed Future Energy Prize has allowed it to start the first part of its proposed renewable energy project, which is designed to produce alternative power for the school through the use of a solar and biogas system.
The non-profit school focuses on science and math, and as a social development organisation it is entirely dependent on private contributions.
Its main objective is improving the quality of life of disadvantaged children in Somalia.
The campus provides boarding houses for 300 pupils, as well as teachers and administration staff, and is situated in Sheikh town, a three-hour drive from Hargeisa.
The school was closed with the fall of the central government in 1991, but was reopened in 2002 under the supervision of SOS Children’s Village in Somalia.
▶ 2016 Global High Schools (Africa) winner
4. Al Gore
Al Gore is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient
Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.
He is also the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of the dangers posed by climate change.
The former vice president of the United States, who is also co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, spends most of his time as chairman of the Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organisation he established to focus on solutions for the global climate crisis.
A resident of Nashville, Tennessee, Mr Gore was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982.
He was elected to the US Senate in 1984 and 1990.
Mr Gore was inaugurated as the 45th US vice president on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.
He is also a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and a member of Apple’s board of directors. ▶ 2015 Lifetime Achievement winner
5. Liter of Light
Liter of Light won its $1.5-million award for creating inexpensive solar
lights to be used by poor people in disaster-prone countries.
The company teaches people in the Philippines how to install the lights when a natural disaster hits. Mr Diaz believes that his organisation’s method is a better option than putting already-stressed people into debt through more costly solutions.
The concept involves filling an empty plastic bottle with water and a spoonful of bleach to kill algae.
The bottle is placed in a hole in the roof where it catches light, so it only works in daylight but can allow, for example, children to do their homework.
A country such as the Philippines endures about 20 typhoons a year and, on average, about five are considered destructive, with occasional superstorms such as Haiyan, which destroyed 14 million homes in 24 hours in 2013. ▶ 2015 Non-Profit Organisation winner
6. Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland
Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland was the guiding force behind the Brundtland Report on sustainability more than 25 years ago, in which she focused on the developmental impact of climate change and global warming.
For more than four decades, the stateswoman, physician, manager, politician and international activist has led the world on issues of global significance, including promoting sustainable development, increasing environmental awareness and advocating for good health as a basic human right.
She also served as the UN special envoy on climate change, seeking ways to balance human enterprise and the planet’s limits.
Dr Brundtland spent 10 years as a physician and scientist and 20 years in public office, including serving as prime minister of Norway for more than a decade – the first woman and the youngest person to ever do so.
She was also the chairwoman of the World Commission on Environment and Development and the first female director general of the World Health Organisation.
Other titles she holds include deputy chair of the Elders – a group founded in 2007 by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Kofi Annan. She continuously contributes to tackling the world’s toughest issues with the aim of making the world a better place.
▶ 2016 Lifetime Achievement winner
7. Abellon CleanEnergy
Abellon CleanEnergy helps poor farmers in countries like India and Ghana make a living.
It makes and sells biomass pellets made from agricultural and sawmill residue.
The agricultural residues are sourced from local farmers, in partnership with Poornakumbha, an NGO established by Abellon in 2008.
Poornakumbha helps farmers create value from waste – where waste refers not just to agricultural residue but also to under-utilised land and other natural resources.
The company uses an integrated approach to establish supply chains in rural areas in India and Ghana.
These range from decentralised biomass collection to power production and power trading.
Abellon has been driving economic growth, improvement in crop yields and support for rural farmers in its home state of Gujarat in India. While its main operations are in India, it is also expanding to other developing and developed countries.
Founded in 2008 by Aditya Handa, the company is also a founder member of the BioEnergy Council of India, an organisation established to promote and co-ordinate the development of the bioenergy industry in India.
▶ 2014 Small & Medium Enterprise winner
8. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Bangladesh Islamia School
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Bangladesh Islamia School in Abu Dhabi focuses on conservation measures such as switching off electricity to make efficient use of daylight, and planting trees to create a lower-temperature micro-climate.
The school has already greatly reduced energy consumption by replacing existing lights with energy-efficient ones.
It also proposed introducing solar panels on the spacious rooftop to supply energy for the school.
The first phase supplies all the energy demands of the school, excluding air conditioning. The second phase uses solar energy to power the air conditioning. The school has also explored reducing power use by other innovative means such as passive cooling.
Established in 1980, the school actively participates in the Sustainable Schools Initiative and other programmes organised by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi.
▶ 2013 Global High Schools (Asia) winner
9. Fraunhofer ISE
Work at Franhofer ISE ranges from the investigation of scientific and technological fundamentals for solar energy applications through the development of production technology and prototypes, to the construction of demonstration systems.
The institute also conducts research on the technology needed to supply energy efficiently and on an environmentally-sound basis in industrialised, threshold and developing countries.
The 1,300 staff members focus their work on energy-efficient buildings, applied optics and functional surfaces, silicon photovoltaics, alternative photovoltaic technology, renewable power generation, hydrogen technology and solar-thermal technology.
One of its projects includes the Morgenstadt, a carbon-neutral city of the future.
A pilot project was commissioned in September 2016 for the largest agrophotovoltaic (APV) system in Germany.
It can meet the electricity demand of around 62 households.
Fraunhofer ISE is the largest solar energy research institute in Europe.
▶ 2014 Non-Profit Organisation winner
10. Dr Ashok Gadgil
Dr Ashok Gadgil’s work focuses on sustainable invention.
Among the solutions he has pioneered is UV Waterworks, which affordably and effectively disinfects drinking water, and the Berkeley-Darfur stove, which cuts firewood use by 55 per cent and 20,700 households in the Darfur refugee camps in 2012.
The project claimed $1 million (Dh3.67m) in carbon credits. A University of California at Berkeley professor, he is the director of the environmental energy technologies division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
WaterHealth International, which markets UV Waterworks, sells water at about 2 cents per 10 litres, serving more than 4 million people daily in India, Mexico, the Philippines and Ghana.
He also developed utility-sponsored programmes for poor households to reduce their energy expenditures, improve electricity supply and efficiency as well as reduce carbon emissions.
These programmes are in operation in more than a dozen countries and have benefitted more than 100 million low-income people in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.
Dr Gadgil has won a number of honours, including being named a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment.
▶ 2012 Lifetime Achievement winner