DSDS is a pet project of Dr. Pachauri‘s that has been happening for 12 years and is the largest sustainable development summit in Asia.  So it is no surprise that the summit attracts some of the top minds and dignitaries around sustainable development as speakers, sponsors and delegates.  We felt incredibly privileged to attend and as always were welcomed warmly by the staff of TERI and all the organizers.

It doesn’t take much more than a quick browse of our Twitter feed to see that we were incredibly engaged the entire event and constantly learning new things and meeting new people.  Instead of going into detail, I thought I would pull out a few of the highlights and key takeaways from the event.

1) Protecting the Global Commons

The main theme of the conference was centred on protecting the Global Commons 20 years post Rio.  It was somewhat surprising to me that despite all my knowledge of energy and the environment I had never come across the term.  So for those of you who are not familiar with the term like myself it refers to the earth’s unowned natural resources, such as the oceans, the atmosphere, and space.  Managing the global commons is so difficult because of the lack of ownership and accountability in the system, it is in fact the biggest challenge we face globally.  The first step in protecting the global commons is fully understanding the challenges and interests of those most vulnerable.   At DSDS various presidents of small island states such as the Seychelles and the Maldives talked about how their states were the most vulnerable and that they are early indicators of the state of the world’s climate and environmental well being.  Additionally, Gro Harlem Bruntland, the lady who coined the term sustainability, talked of the need for a global review of sustainability statistics in order to have a better understanding of the challenges we face.  This would help to put all information in public domain openly and transparently so that each country can be held accountable for its performance.  Another interesting concept that was put forward by Jeffrey Sachs was that perhaps a globally binding agreement on climate change is not needed… that a simpler approach could be taken.  Sachs recommended that instead the UN should institute “Sustainable Development Goals” to replace the Millennium Development Goals that will expire in 2015.  One thing is certain, protecting the Global Commons will take bold new thinking, determination, and cooperation.

2) Asian Perspective of Sustainable Development

It is quite easy to get stuck in our own realm of perspective when it is all we are exposed to.  DSDS was extremely valuable in exposing the Student Energy board to a completely different view of sustainability.  Asia is a fast growing power house and it is crucial that their development occur much cleaner and smarter than the industrial revolution did.  There is tremendous potential but only after overcoming many obstacles.  The Asian Development Bank presented Asia 2050 (a report and video) that is a road map for development on the continent.  One thing we noted throughout the conference was the lack of participation from China.  Being a growing force in the global economy, this presence (or lack of) was definitely noticed and a bit unnerving.

3) Education Accessibility

Another key message addressed by many, but particularly by Jeff Sachs, was the need to accessible education on sustainability.  Technology has a huge role to play in spreading knowledge across the globe and can in turn help people to develop livelihoods that do not put the planet at jeopardy.  One thing that resonated was Prof. Sachs comment that “current academic institutions will not work for knowledge transfer at scale. Students shouldn’t have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to see me talk, they should be able to purchase my lecture for 10 cents on iTunes.”  By making information more readily available and in forms that are digestible and meaningful to various stakeholder groups we can spur sustainable development.  This is one area that Student Energy plans to play a big role in from an energy perspective.

4) The Role of Youth

Finally, DSDS was closed with a speech from three Indian youth leaders who expressed the need for youth involvement in the development process.  After all, we are future leaders, CEOs, researchers, teachers.  The message was clear “we are humble in our lack of experience but we extend a hand to you and ask are you willing to guide us?”

Overall, we had a wonderful time at DSDS and feel very fortunate for the opportunity to attend.  It was incredible to be in the presence of the world’s greatest minds on these topics and it is even more exciting to think that one day it will be us who fills those chairs!! Fuel the future.

With the sweat barely dry on our foreheads, we wanted to share our initial thoughts on the Delhi version of the International Case Challenge. Over the coming days and weeks we will post additional thoughts and ideas in depth – India definitely has a way of making you think.

The International Case Challenge kicked off in Indian fashion, slightly late. With a quick rush to get everyone in the rooms, Kali kicked things off by saying “Hi” to the students back in Calgary that were just finishing their event. We hear the whole ISEEESA team rocked it and we can’t wait for a full debrief on how things went in Calgary.

It was amazing to know that students from an energy powerhouse city like Calgary and a future superpower were tackling the same challenges with the same enthusiasm at the same time.

After two enlightening speeches from TERI University. First we had Dr. Kishore, Professor  & Head of the Department of Energy and Environment at TERI University. Dr. Kishore focused on some of the opportunities and challenges for local, micro energy project. The slides can be found in the link below:

Decentralized Energy Technologies for Micro Level Sustainability

Next we were privileged to have Shafat Sultan, from the incredible Lighting a Billion Lives project discuss Energy Access. His slides can be found below as well:

Energy Access and Global Initiatives

After the presentations, the 85 delegates all split into teams to start putting together a global framework to tackle the challenge we had laid out for the day:

“As a global community, how do we provide emerging/developing nations with the energy services necessary to continue their rapid growth – and thereby continue to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty – without jeopardizing the well-being of future generations?”

Students were asked to give a macro-level, strategically focused idea for each of the 8 spectrum’s we had defined:

1. Knowledge Sharing and Transfer
2. Energy Education
3. Technology Development
4. Government Incentive Structures
5. Finance
6. Technology Deployment
7. Stakeholder Relations
8. Business Environment

The theme of “Conserving Global Commons” didn’t really resonate with us until the opening speaker, Rita Mathur, discussed the concept in depth. Global Commons are the shared resources of the world where no defined rights or ownership exist. These discussions were influenced by the ground-breaking work of Garrett Hardin and the Tragedy of the Commons (worth the read). They represent such a challenge because they are so vital to the global ecosystem yet don’t fall under any direct protection or supervision. If someone goes out to international waters to dump garbage, who is there to protect it? The obvious and unfortunate answer is no one.

Traditionally we think of these Global Commons as our oceans but they also represent trans-border rivers and the lovely little continent of Antarctica.

Some really interesting questions were brought up:

Who owns these resources?

How do we enforce environmental standards on these resources if no one owns them?

How can we charge polluters to these communal resources?

The vulnerability of these global commons was also discussed at length and how we must focus on the stakeholders that are most at risk from environmental damage and potential harm. We all found these morning discussions to be intriguing because they aren’t something that we often discuss in North America. We’re more focused on technologies, ghg reductions and the constant power dynamic between oil exporters and importers. The concept that our worlds major natural resources are a shared global common simply isn’t in the daily conversation of developed world students and energy professionals.

These discussions will be a major focus of DSDS which we’re ecstatic to be attending starting on Thursday. We also just found out that Arnold Schwarzenegger will be presenting this Thursday which is great and slightly hilarious. If I can’t fit in doorways and rickshaws here, I have no idea how Arnie is going to manage!

The day finished off with a tour of TERI University where we’ll be hosting our International Case Challenge tomorrow and a cultural event at the India Habitat Centre.

We’ll make sure to add in more pictures once time slows down a little bit and give a more personal update on the adventures of the trip so far. You’ll all be happy to know that we have seen pet monkeys and cows being walked in the street and scared to know that we’ve seen pedestrians and guys on motorbikes hit in the insane Delhi traffic.

Chat soon!

Sean

Today the whole Student Energy Team (Kali, Janice and myself) are up at 6am to get ready for YUVA Meet. YUVA stands for Youth Uniting for Volunteer Action and has a theme of Global Creative Commons: Transferring Knowledge into Action.

We were fortunate enough to stumble into Shruti Syal, an ISES 2009 alumni who is back from her time at McGiil doing a Masters at TERI in Delhi. We’ve now elected her to be our official travel guide for the next week in Delhi and she’s forbidden us from seeing any Bollywood movies right now. Shruti says that all of the movies out right now are unoriginal knock-offs of legitimately creative movies from years past.

We’re hoping to meet up with a lot of the students that will be participating in the International Case Challenge that we’re producing two days from now and put some faces to the email list of names. After getting the pre-event submissions from the Calgary Event teams and New Delhi event teams, we know we’re in for some amazing presentations. The level of intellect, analysis and creativity that the students showed in such a short time in preparing their reports really inspired and amazed us.

As a quick reminder, we’ll be live-streaming all of the content from India for our International Case Challenge so check us on twitter or facebook for the link information.

Chat soon!

Sean Collins

Red Fort - Kali and Sean visited on Day 1 in Delhi

Kali and Sean here.  We have officially begun our (very long) journey to Delhi, India for the International Case Challenge.  Despite a delay at the airport trying to check 50 kilograms of delegate material we have just arrived via Calgary to Frankfurt.  It is 1:24am back home but 9:24am here so we have decided that Germany + time change + long flight = beer for breakfast!

We are so excited that the International Case Challenge in a few days.  We are currently sitting in a restaurant, squeezing our last bit of battery life out of our computers to madly finishing up emcee notes, power points and emails for the Challenge. Gotta run but stay tuned for live blogging and tweeting as we continue our journey.

On a recent and enjoyable stumble through the internet, I came across a really cool non-profit that has roots in Canada and is pursuing community solar projects in West Africa. We often spend time talking about 50,000 foot discussions such as global policy issues or what needs to be done at COP-17/18/19. It’s important to balance that with passionate people that are on the ground, getting their hands dirty and making change on a local and regional level.

Simon Williams, Energy for Opportunity’s Executive Director, was kind enough to do an interview with us and we hope it will give you all some perspective into their organization.

The aspect of the EFO story I find so interesting is their focus on PROGRAMS not PROJECTS. A one-off project might feel good and make for a good PR snapshot but diving into a long-term program with sustained focus is a great way to impart lasting change.

On to the interview!

Question 1: Tell us about Energy for Opportunity. What is the overview and mission of your organization?

EFO’s mission is, Creating greater opportunities for the people of West Africa through the  implementation of solar energy projects.

Question 2: Why did you create Energy for Opportunity?

EFO came out of work that Paul and I had done in Uganda and Sierra Leone with other local organisations. We saw the potential that solar power had to bring energy to the most isolated locations and the impacts that this power could immediately have on peoples lives. There were other organisations that were working with solar power in their project work but there was a lack of an organisation that specialized in solar power and we thought that by focusing, we could maximise the impacts and develop a needed skill set within the development community. A big part of what we are trying to do is bring the utilisation of solar power into the mainstream and we are starting to see more and more  organisations working with us as our organisation grows.

Question 3: What have been your most successful projects? Why have they been successful?

One of the things we are proud of is that two years on, everyone of our installations is still working as sustainability is such an elusive goal in this field. This is more a result of a program, rather than a project model, which we try to stress. Our work in Kamabai is a good example of how this works. We started with a CCS and through the effective management of that site, the community has been able to contribute to installations at their clinic and secondary school as well as support maintenance along the way. This year, 10 students from the school passed the standardized test to get into university, the first time in the history of the school. (Sean’s Note: AMAZING!)

Question 3a: What have your biggest lessons learned been?

The program concept works and can be extremely effective in promoting solar and ensuring that the initial projects operate and can be maintained after the project funding is long gone. We have in-country training that has developed our own staff and those in the communities we work with, the CCS model is successful at generating revenue that can then be used to expand projects and for maintenance. This approach is much more effort than simple drop in projects but helps ensure that the projects are linked, are needed and wanted and can be providing benefits years after the funding is gone.

Question 4: Why has your organization selected solar power as your primary source or electricity for projects?

We felt it was the most appropriate technology for providing energy in the areas we work. Every technology has its pros and cons and they have to be considered before any application. In our case solar is modular, low maintenance and doesn’t require any real ongoing costs, which means it can reach and impact isolated communities immediately.

The frequent criticism of solar power is that it is expensive but compared to generator power, the payback period is only 1-2 years and with prices dropping so rapidly in the past year this is making the case for solar even stronger.

Question 5: What have been some of the most interesting and unexpected impacts of EFO projects?

The success of the students in Kamabai was certainly beyond our expectations and highlights the importance of energy! One thing we have seen in the communities we work in, is that the CCS changes the phone charging operations as prices drop and hours expand due to the presence of the solar.

Question 6: What do you see in store for EFO over the next 5 years?

We have established a strong group in the solar electricity field in Sierra Leone and we hope to make a two prong expansion over the next five years. Firstly, we want to expand our expertise into other alternative energy sectors and have started working on issues around fuelwood and micro-hydro. The other goals is to establish and expand into other countries in West Africa. We know the demand is there and we have some good partners we can work with, it is just a matter of funding and timing.

Question 7: What resources or readings would you recommend for students interested in developing world projects?

Solar Energy International is a USA based organisation that provides training in all types of energy technologies. I think it is critical that students, well anybody, who wants to work in this field has a solid tech base. We stress that our projects be done to international standards or more, so that they will be durable and have maximum benefit and this requires a solid understanding of the technology you are working with.

Question 8: How can students help Energy for Opportunity?

We are always looking for international partners that want to implement projects in Sierra Leone or West Africa in general and we appreciate the links that students can provide. Unfortunately we don’t take interns as we are a small organisation and it is hard to ensure they have a full experience with the resources we have.

To read more about Energy for Opportunity, please visit:

http://www.energyforopportunity.org/en/home/ 

EFO Program in Sierra Leone

Yes, you heard right, we are taking Student Energy to India!  To be clear this is NOT our biennial International Student Energy Summit, this is a special one-time case challenge where we are having students tackle one of the world’s largest problems… how to bring the developing world out of energy poverty without jeopardizing the environment.  We are so excited to work with a whole new group of students to see what kind of brilliant and innovative ideas they can come up with. 

Many of you are probably wondering… how did this come about? Isn’t this new for Student Energy?  What about ISES?  How come I didn’t hear about this sooner?  Here’s the story…

In June 2011, we held our second and very successful International Student Energy Summit in Vancouver, Canada.  At the event our featured keynote was Dr. R.K. Pachauri, who is a Nobel Prize winner and the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also happens to be a phenomenal human being and someone who “has tremendous faith in the youth of today.” Dr. Pachauri was very intrigued by ISES and told us about an event that he hosts every year in New Delhi, the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.  Somewhere in the conversation we arrived at an idea… what if Student Energy put on a youth event the day before DSDS!?  As soon as the idea was planted we knew we were going to make it happen (like most ideas in Student Energy). 

We got to work planning in early September.  What were we going to do?  Who would attend?  How would we coordinate it all?  That’s when we found out about the YUVA Meet.  YUVA stands for Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action and they host a meet just prior to DSDS every year.  So it was settled, we would host an event with select students from YUVA and then attend DSDS.  But then we had another idea, what if we also tied it back to Canada?  What if students in the developed and developing world could tackle the exact same problem?  We are a global community and we are all tackling the same climate and energy challenges, so why not pull that into our event?  That’s where ISEEESA came in.  ISEEESA is a phenomenal student run group out of the University of Calgary that puts on phenomenal events and programs related to energy, environment and economy.  We approached them to run our Calgary event as their own and they agreed (because they rock).

That brings us to today…  We are less than a month away from leaving for India and could not be more excited.  This is a great opportunity for us to try a new type of event, and more importantly reach a new group of students.  ISES will always remain our pinnacle event but that doesn’t mean we can’t do smaller, regional events in between!  This International Case Challenge will be a huge learning and growing experience for our organization.  Perhaps if it is successful we will do it annually and have a challenge on every continent? Who knows what the future holds… 

Stay tuned, we will be live blogging, webcasting and tweeting our experience

As I’ve blogged before, I oversee a lot of the fundraising, marketing and strategy stuff for Student Energy and in the wonderful world of Energy, funding is a topic that comes up over and over again.

How are you funded? Who will you accept funding from? What sort of limitations do your funders place on you?

All valid, intelligent and rational questions. A few weeks ago, we got together as a board and hashed out EXACTLY what our Funding Ethics strategy was. With the strategy being focused completely around transparency, we wanted to make it publicly available to all of our followers. This is something we take very seriously and we’d love to hear any questions, thoughts, comments or suggestions.

Student Energy Funding Ethics:

The mission of Student Energy is “to open the eyes of the worlds students to all perspectives on energy” and we take this to heart regarding our approach to seeking funding . We seek and encourage all organizations to sponsor and fund the incredible work of Student Energy.

Student Energy does not advocate any agenda; therefore if we were to exclude any funders, this would be taking a specific stance that we do not agree with their organization or purpose. This would go against a core value of our organization. Transitioning our world to a sustainable energy future will take the collective action of industry, government, non-profits and students and as such we actively seek support from every possible stakeholder group and have done so for all previous events we have held.

Guiding Principles:

1. No sponsor or funder will ever be permitted to control our program and content.

2. Should a potential funder place conditions on their funding that would prevent us from sharing all perspectives on any topic, this request will be flatly refused.

3. All partnerships will be held to the triple win test. The triple win test is that the three stakeholder groups of Student Energy, Funders and Students must directly benefit from any partnership that is formed. This means that Student Energy will receive direct contributions to support our operations, the funder will receive high-value exposure and most importantly, the partnership must benefit our students through offering them new perspectives a high-value experience or unique content.

Transparency Policy:

Information Sharing: Should any individual wish to know the organizations who has supported or been approached to support Student Energy, all information will be freely shared. To ask any questions of Student Energy’s funding approach, please email our Funding Manager, Sean Collins via: scollins@studentenergy.org . Note: No personal contact information collected by Student Energy will ever be shared with third parties for any reason.

To view funders from our previous International Student Energy Summit events, please visit:

ISES 2009: http://ises2009.com/calgary Click on Key Partners on the navigation bar

ISES 2011: http://ises2011.com/partners

Budget: As a registered non-profit, all funds must be re-invested to fulfill the mission of our organization. To continue the theme of open transparency, our financials, received funds and expenses will be detailed and openly published annually in our Annual Financial Report. The first Financial Report will be compiled and released in December 2012.

We will refer future partners, sponsors and EnerNerds back to this post and appreciate any and all comment on our Ethics Strategy.

Cheers,

Sean Collins

All of the submissions are very impressive, and we are surprised by the diverse strengths and perspectives each institution has to offer! We can already tell that the evaluation process will be difficult, but can’t wait to start the process with the Student Energy Bid Committee. The successful school will be notified in January and the decision will be officially announced publicly in March, so stay tuned!

As you can see we have been slacking a bit on our blogging the last couple weeks but there is no way I am letting two full weeks go by without a post, so here is an update on what the Student Energy team has been up to this November.

Fuelling Change

Early in the month we found out that Student Energy was selected to compete for a grant  through Shell Canada. We are eligible for $25,000 that will go directly to helping us build our new web portal, one of our biggest initiatives at the moment.  The contest is one of those online voting forums, where we need to convince people to sign up and vote for us.  We took the opportunity to release our new video with this challenge!  Student Energy came out in a commanding lead proving just how awesomely supportive our enernerds are.  We have since slipped to 4th but we are cool with that because voting goes until April 30, 2012 and we just have to finish in the top 8.  Tonnes of time

One thing that always amazes me about the students who are engaged with Student Energy is their amazing ability to ask tough and very valid questions.  When we launched our campaign for Fuelling Change one of our ISES 2011 delegates asked us if we were comfortable accepting corporate money and if that in any way could sway the mission and vision of the organization.  This is a great question and something that we are very transparent about because it is crucial to our foundation.  I won’t go into too much detail in this post as we have another post that explains fully and you can read my direct response here.  I will also add that on December 4 the Board of Directors has a full day strategy session focused solely on funding strategy and our ethics guidelines so that we can put all these values in writing and be as open as possible.

Meetings Galore

One of the reasons we have been so quiet the last month is because we have been hitting the pavement and have been in non-stop meetings!  Sean, our funding and strategy director, has been traveling like mad working to secure us funding for our super sweet and secret project (see below) as well as talking to potential “Student Energy Visionaries”.  We are currently looking to secure a board of 10-12 entrepreneurs and philanthropists that will support Student Energy both financially and with their advice and wisdom.  The progress has been great and we expect to have big updates on this front early in the new year.

We have also been having many great internal strategy meetings.  We have met this very talented marketing specialist, Michelle, who agreed to help us define our engagement strategy.  We came up with an amazing shell of a framework that will allow us to better educate, inspire and unite students.  We are meeting again next week to continue building on this to make it more detailed and comprehensive.

We also had our first full team meeting.  Although our team is currently only 6 people we do feel it is crucial we are all in the loop and therefore have committed to have a monthly update meeting. Given that we all live in different cities across Canada we have these virtually and will continue to as our team grows to include students from all over the world.  If you are interested in being a part of Student Energy sign up for our newsletter and we will keep you posted on volunteer positions as they become available.

Super Sweet Secret Event

For the last 6 months we have been working on a very exciting event that will be taking place early in 2012.  I am sworn to secrecy because we have agreed to release the details the first week of December however let’s just say that this one is going to blow your mind! I will give you a hint… what do you get when you mix the Taj Mahal, solar panels and the IPCC? We’ll tell you soon, stay tuned!!

ISES 2013

In a recent post, Janice Tran Vice President of Student Energy gave an update on the progress of the bid for hosting ISES 2013.  We are so excited to see the bid submissions as they roll in this December 1.  We plan on announcing the winning institution and location or the next ISES in March.  Exciting stuff!

We also have a transition team that has been working like mad to put together a “How to Plan ISES” manual as well as gathering and organizing the thousands of documents that have been prepared for past ISES events to help make the job easier for the next team.  The transition team is two rockstar EnerNerds… Rosie Pidcock, the chair of ISES 2011 and Dan Fipke, a key member of the ISES 2009 team.  They are going to begin blogging in December to highlight some of the interesting work they are undertaking.

That’s all folks!

I think that’s it for major updates.   We of course have been busy with other day-to-day tasks – some exciting, others not so much – EnerChats, legal agreements, insurance, designing our new approach material and business cards, creating bid assessment criteria, the list goes on and on.  We are making some great progress on building a strong foundation so that we can properly support all the amazing initiatives we are planning in the next year. Thanks for your ongoing support, fuel the future!