Bavarian village pioneers clean energy revolution

Yahoo – AFP, Pauline Curtet, July 13, 2016

A row of wind turbines towers on the edge of the picturesque Bavarian village of
Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, where rolling meadows meet pine forests and Alpine
peaks line the horizon (AFP Photo/Christof Stache)

Wildpoldsried (Germany) (AFP) - A row of wind turbines towers on the edge of the picturesque Bavarian village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, where rolling meadows meet pine forests and Alpine peaks line the horizon.

"I love them," says Thomas Pfluger, a local resident, gazing at the windmills jutting out above the tree-tops. "To look at them, it makes me proud."

Pfluger's home village, with its old Catholic church and traditional beer garden, may be rural Bavaria at its most idyllic, but it's also at the cutting edge of Germany's green energy revolution.

Known as the "Renewables Village," it uses mainly wind, solar and biomass to meet all its electricity needs, and sells the rest back into the national grid at a profit.

Like many other communities in Germany, Wildpoldsried took advantage of generous subsidies and price guarantees that were rolled out in recent years to boost alternative energy.

To ensure local acceptance, Wildpoldsried relied on a simple idea: to involve the entire village and spread the benefits among its people.

Like 300 other locals, Pfluger, a 55-year-old IT developer, put his money into the wind farm, which offered guaranteed, above-market-rate returns for 20 years.

"I invested 100,000 euros ($110,000) in the wind turbines," he said. "Every year, I get about six percent of this amount as profit."

Village mayor Arno Zengerle, 59, stressed that "the participation of the citizens is the most important thing".

"They must profit from the renewable energy. If only private investors from the outside took part, it wouldn't work."

So far business has been good. Last year, the village produced five times more electricity than it consumed.

The goal for this year is to raise that ratio to seven-fold.

Pfluger's home village, with its old Catholic church and traditional beer garden, 

may be rural Bavaria at its most idyllic, but it's also at the cutting edge of Germany's 

green energy revolution (AFP Photo/Christof Stache)

'Logical choice'

Martin Hartmann, who lives in a beautiful old house with flower boxes in a cozy village street, opted for solar and has covered his garage roof with photovoltaic panels.

"It was a logical choice," said the 33-year-old printer.

"I was born here, I grew up with the idea that Wildpoldsried is the 'energy village', so I got interested in it very early," he said, his eyes fixed on real-time power stats on his smartphone.

Across the village, all public buildings are energy self-sufficient or produce a surplus, which earn the municipality several million euros a year.

"In other words, local taxes are not very high here," smiled Zengerle, of the conservative Christian Social Union party.

Zengerle often hosts foreign delegations of diplomats, experts and journalists -- about 100 visits a year -- to inform them about the clean energy model.

Some companies have been drawn to Wildpoldsried, including Sonnen GmbH, which makes batteries for storing excess wind and solar power, and which employs 140 people here.

Its founder and boss Christoph Ostermann, 45, said: "When I look out the window, I see solar panels on a lot of roofs, windmills that are spinning.

"Wildpoldsried has been (energy) independent for a long time, so for a company like ours, it's inspiring."

As Nuclear Plants Shut Down, Renewable Energy Could Boom

Golden age

The village benefited from the golden age of generous grants, guaranteed prices and priority access to the grid that were the key planks of the energy transition.

As Germany is phasing out nuclear energy and, more slowly, trying to leave behind carbon fuels, the scheme has raised the share of clean energy to about one third of national consumption.

By mid-century this is meant to rise to 80 percent. To get there, Germany has just shifted gear to a more market-based approach that is meant to put a lid on costs.

The flipside of the energy transition has been that the cost of subsidised green power has been passed onto households who pay for it through surcharges on their power bills.

In future, providers of green power will have to bid in competitive tenders, letting market forces shape the way ahead.

Environmental groups fear for the future of the energy transition, and a shift away from local cooperatives to big business.

"In our country, renewable energy is at risk of going backwards," said the mayor. "There is a consensus on the idea of getting out of nuclear energy, but not on its replacement."

Wildpoldsried, however, is on the safe side, having already locked itself into a green energy system and pushing on with more reforms, including switching its street lighting to highly-efficient LED bulbs.

Pfluger said he has never regretted the choice, despite some naysayers.

"Some people say that wind turbines are not beautiful," he shrugged. "I prefer to have wind turbines in my area rather than a nuclear power plant."

Household battery energy becomes tradeable

German household-scale battery maker Sonnenbatterie will soon enable buyers of its systems to trade energy with each other over the grid. It'll save clients money, and it's another step toward a clean energy future.

Deutsche Welle, 26 Nov 2015

Solar PV systems on houses in Germany

On Wednesday in Berlin, Sonnenbatterie co-founder and CEO Christoph Ostermann presented "SonnenCommunity," a way for buyers of the company's household-scale electricity storage batteries - most of whom also have solar photovoltaic panels mounted on their rooftops - to automatically buy and sell energy from each other directly through a shared online platform.

Launching in January, the platform will allow members who have more stored power than they need on a given day to sell electricity to others who are short of electricity.

Sonnenbatterie's wall-mounted batteries, which the company calls "Sonnen" units - Sonnen is the German word for "suns" - are similar to the "PowerWall" batteries presented this summer by California-based Tesla, which the car- and battery-maker plans to start selling in Germany in early 2016.

However, Sonnenbatterie claims its Sonnen system is better than Tesla's Powerwall system.

Sonnenbatterie's wall-mounted household-
scale unit combines energy storage,
regulator and smart-grid connectivity in
a single rather elegant package

Friendly rivalry

"Tesla's technology is nothing special," said Mathias Bloch, Sonnenbatterie's public relations officer. "Its Powerwall unit is just a battery module, so it's only one component of an energy storage system."

Sonnenbatterie's Sonnen unit, in contrast, includes the battery module, a power regulator, and the software allowing the system to buy and sell power from other SonnenCommunity members over the electricity grid, all integrated into a single package, making it very easy for installers and clients to work with, Bloch said.

Both Sonnen and Powerwall battery modules are based on the same kinds of batteries used in mobile phones, with Tesla using a grid composed of hundreds of small Panasonic batteries in each Powerwall unit, linked into a tightly packed grid, and Sonnenbatterie using Sony batteries.

"Sonnenbatteries's Sonnen units still retain 70% of their charging capacity after 10,000 charge-discharge cycles," Ostermann said, suggesting this was superior to the performance expected of Tesla's Powerwall units.

Sonnenbatterie's wall-mounted
Sonnen power storage unit comes
in white as well

Money talks

Sonnen buyers who join SonnenCommunity will directly benefit in financial terms, the company said. For one thing, new Sonnen unit buyers will get a discount of 1,875 euros off the retail price of the battery, in exchange for having to pay a 20 euro per month members' fee.

Members will also get 1,000 kWh of free electricity per year - power SonnenCommunity will acquire from grid operators at times when excess solar or wind power, due to bright sunshine or strong winds, is flooding Germany's wholesale electricity market to such an extent that the spot price of electricity goes to zero. That's an increasingly frequent event in a country where 30 percent of total electricity produced in 2015 was renewable electricity - much of that from wind and solar power.

Buying and selling

Under German law, the electricity grid operator must buy any solar power offered to it by anyone in the country, and pay a regulated "feed-in tariff" that sets a firm price for solar power sold over a 20-year contract period starting when the solar panels are first installed and connected to the grid. At the moment, the grid operator must pay about 11 cents per kWh for new solar power installations.

SonnenCommunity members who instead sell power to other members will get 0.25 euro cents more per kWh than they would get from the grid operator for solar-generated electricity.

A much more significant benefit will accrue to members of SonnenCommunity who are short power on a given day. They'll pay a flat rate of 23 euro cents per kWh to buy electrictiy from other members of the Community, a much lower rate than the roughly 32 euro cents flat rate they pay to grid operators for electricity.

Solar PV Panels on the Roof of an Ikea
 store in Rothenburg, Germany. Eventually,
solar PV fields and wind farms will be
 combined with interconnected smart
energy storage systems to form
microgrids

Ostermann mentioned some other benefits for SonnenBatterie battery owners associated with becoming members of SonnenCommunity, but the price advantage for electricity buyers seemed to be the strongest benefit.

More developments to come

Electricity markets are heavily regulated - they have to be, since the electricity system is fundamental to the functioning of modern civilization and the government has to ensure systems are reliable, resilient and affordable, even under extreme loads or weather conditions.

For that reason, the details of regulations affect business models heavily, and there's a reciprocal relationship between new technologies driving evolution in regulations, and new regulations driving technological evolution.

For example, Germany's legally mandated generous 20-year flat-rate contracts for electricity produced using solar or wind power generation, or "feed-in tariffs" (FiTs), first introduced in the year 2000, caused a huge boom in solar and wind power.

That in turn drove rapid technical evolution. Wind and solar power generation units today are dramatically cheaper, more reliable and more efficient than they were 15 years ago as a direct result of Germany's FiT law of 2000.

Sonnenbatterie's Sonnen unit has a
 competitor from California, also wall-
mounted: the Tesla Energy Powerwall

Household energy storage is the next frontier

As energy storage units like those of Sonnenbatterie have come onto the market, they've begun to change the financial incentives consumers face. At some point, when all costs are taken into account and "levelized" on a price per kWh basis, it will probably become cheaper for most owners of single-family households to buy something like a Sonnen unit or a Powerwall unit, plus some solar rooftop panels, rather than buy power from the grid. SonnenCommunity helps move things in that direction.

The marketplace for household-scale energy storage systems is still in its early stage. Sonnenbatterie has sold 8,500 Sonnen units so far - out of a total of 25,000 household-scale battery packs that have been sold in Germany to date. It's the market leader in a small market.

But with solar and wind power generation unit prices continuing to drop year-on-year, and regulations continuing to evolve, the market for household-scale energy storage units is sure to grow.

Sonnenbatterie sales and marketing chief Philipp Schröder, who left his position as head of Tesla Germany to join Sonnenbatterie, told DW he expects new business cases to emerge - for microgrids, for example. "The renewable energy business promises to stay exciting for years to come," he said.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, announces the company’s
entry into the energy market

Related Articles:

Tesla announces low-cost batteries for homes

"2013 - What Now ?" – Jan 6, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“… New ideas are things you never thought of. These ideas will be given to you so you will have answers to the most profound questions that your societies have had since you were born. Inventions will bring clean water to every Human on the planet, cheaply and everywhere. Inventions will give you power, cheaply and everywhere. These ideas will wipe out all of the reasons you now have for pollution, and when you look back on it, you'll go, "This solution was always there. Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we do this sooner?" Because it wasn't time and you were not ready. You hadn't planted the seeds and you were still battling the old energy, deciding whether you were going to terminate yourselves before 2012. Now you didn't…. and now you didn't.

It's funny, what you ponder about, and what your sociologists consider the "great current problems of mankind", for your new ideas will simply eliminate the very concepts of the questions just as they did in the past. Do you remember? Two hundred years ago, the predictions of sociologists said that you would run out of food, since there wasn't enough land to sustain a greater population. Then you discovered crop rotation and fertilizer. Suddenly, each plot of land could produce many times what it could before. Do you remember the predictions that you would run out of wood to heat your homes? Probably not. That was before electricity. It goes on and on.

So today's puzzles are just as quaint, as you will see. (1) How do you strengthen the power grids of your great nations so that they are not vulnerable to failure or don't require massive infrastructure improvement expenditures? Because cold is coming, and you are going to need more power. (2) What can you do about pollution? (3) What about world overpopulation? Some experts will tell you that a pandemic will be the answer; nature [Gaia] will kill off about one-third of the earth's population. The best minds of the century ponder these puzzles and tell you that you are headed for real problems. You have heard these things all your life.

Let me ask you this. (1) What if you could eliminate the power grid altogether? You can and will. (2) What if pollution-creating sources simply go away, due to new ideas and invention, and the environment starts to self-correct? (3) Overpopulation? You assume that humanity will continue to have children at an exponential rate since they are stupid and can't help themselves. This, dear ones, is a consciousness and education issue, and that is going to change. Imagine a zero growth attribute of many countries - something that will be common. Did you notice that some of your children today are actually starting to ponder if they should have any children at all? What a concept! ….”

Sustainable farming reaping benefits for women in Cameroon

Improved soil management practices and better farming habits are putting smiles on the faces of women in Bafut, a community located about 400 kilometers (240 miles) from Cameroon's capital Yaounde.

Deutsche Welle, 17 Aug 2015

Women farmers in Cameroon

These innovations all fall within the field of "permaculture," a system of sustainable agriculture and design principles aimed at creating a more ecological relationship with the environment.

The innovation was brought to the women by Joshua Kankonko, who grew up in the area. Women say they are experiencing better harvests and putting more money in their pockets as a result. The project has been running for two years.

Kankonko is the developer behind an eco-village built using only local materials. Farmers in the village have implemented permaculture practices aimed to benefit residents through better management of soil and environmental resources. Simple practices such as composting and erosion control are helping to increase yields.

"This is the way our parents used to farm. All the kitchen waste was thrown behind the house where the vegetables were harvested. Everything that we produce, we get from the environment then we give it back to the environment," Kankonko said.

Small plots, big yeilds

Pressures on scarce fertile lands in Cameroon's northwest have historically fueled tribal conflicts. Permaculture sets out to replenish the soil and maximize yields on relatively small plots thereby limiting the need for conflict.

According to Project Coordinator Sonita Mdah Neh, one of the best ways to do this is through natural and mechanical erosion control. Natural erosion control uses plans to hold the soil and moisture together.

This hut was made using only
local materials.

"Natural erosion control is done with vertiva grass. We can also use pineapple, so we use what we call a plant family meaning that you put two plants together and they form a web. When they form a web, they hold the soil and water together," said Mbah Neh.

Mechanical soil control means that local, natural materials like bamboo and other woods are used to create barriers.

The project also stresses the use of organic fertilizers and the use of different plants and practices to maintain or even boost the amount of nutrients in the soil.

"A lot happens in the soil which we don't see. There are a lot of interactions between soil organisms," she said.

A revolution

The system is already working. Farmer Justina Lum hails the system. She says within two years her yields have doubled. She says even at home she switched to using traditional cooking methods.

"Smoke is channeled through a chimney and therefore our eyes are not exposed to smoke. Besides, it uses less wood and is not costly to build," said Lum.

Kankonko remembers his mother who used compost manure to fertilize her crops. As a student in the University of Yaounde, he was already making a living from township gardening. After leaving university, he decided to bring his experience home to his Bafut community.

Kankonko notes that the entire experiment has been a success story, not only improving family incomes, but also restoring the natural environment that continues to suffer from irresponsible use.

But the sustainability of the system will depend largely on youth involvement. Kankonko complains that many youths do not think there is a future in agriculture but instead leave to pursue white-collar jobs in the cities.

Related Article:

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  Health

Normal good health is turning to simple physics for some of the simplest things. New kinds of foods are being grown with new physics, not chemistry. These will be physic-foods [Kryon name] that are not genetically altered or chemically altered, but benevolently enhanced by physics! This causes a new kind of super growth that can feed the planet in a way it's never been fed before. It will create food that is resistant to absolutely everything - insects, bacteria and disease - all through physics. Who thought of that? What you're expecting in the future regarding health is based upon the past. The big filter of past knowledge keeps you from thinking out of the box. You don't know what you don't know.  ….”

Moroccan villagers harvest fog for water supply

Yahoo – AFP, Zakaria Choukrallah, 19 June 2015

A Moroccan inspects fog fences in a hamlet on the outskirts of the southern

coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

Sidi Ifni (Morocco) (AFP) - Green technology to turn fog into fresh water straight from the tap has put an end to exhausting daily treks to distant wells by village women in southwest Morocco.

Families in five highland Berber communities have begun to benefit from "fog harvesting", a technique devised in Chile two decades ago and since taken up in countries from Peru to Namibia and South Africa.

On the summit of a mountain named Boutmezguida, which looms over the villages at 1,225 metres (4,019 feet), thick fog shrouds about 40 finely meshed panels designed to trap water and relay it to a network of pipes.

A Moroccan woman uses water collected 

on fog fences to wash her hands in a 

hamlet on the outskirts of the southern

 coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015

(AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

To have water running from a faucet at home is a "revolution" for inhabitants of the semi-arid mountains known as the Anti-Atlas, says Aissa Derhem, the chairman of an active regional association called Dar Si Hmad for Development, Education and Culture (DSH).

DSH prides itself on building "the world's largest fog-collection and distribution system" and helping locals in the Sidi Ifni region -- Derhem's birthplace -- to learn to operate it, after repeated droughts and scarce rain.

"Our rain here is the fog," Derhem adds.

Tiny droplets are caught on the mesh while fog wafts through panels. The harvesters mix all they catch with more water derived from drilling, then supply the villages on the lower slopes.

Derhem first heard about fog harvesting 20 years ago. A few years later on returning to Sidi Ifni, he realised that the local climate was similar to that of the Andes in South America.

DSH joined forces with Fog Quest, a Canadian charity whose volunteers work in a range of developing countries. North Africa's first pilot project became operational after almost a decade's work refining techniques.

'An imitation of nature'

The valves were opened at Sidi Ifni for the first time to mark World Water Day, March 22. Ever since, "92 households, or nearly 400 people," have enjoyed running water at home, says Mounir Abbar, the project's technical manager.

Aissa Derhem, the president of the "Dar Si Hamed for development, education

 and culture" association touches a fog fence in a hamlet on the outskirts of the

southern coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

"Morocco has a lot of fog because of three phenomena: the presence of an anticyclone from the Azores (north Atlantic islands), a cold air current and a mountainous obstacle," Derhem says.

The mesh that traps water is "merely an imitation of nature," he adds, pointing out how spiders have always caught minute droplets of water in their webs.

"This is ecological and enables us to look after the regional water table, which we have been emptying away," Derhem says.

The scheme will be extended to other villages and, in time, advocates hope, to other parts of the country.

In the village of Douar Id Achour, residents are proud of their new taps, for good reason. Women and children used to spend an average of four hours a day on a round trip to a well, even longer in dry summer.

"I filled two 20-litre (5.3-gallon) containers four times a day," says Massouda Boukhalfa, 47. "But even those 160 litres wasn't enough for us, because we have cattle as well."

'Ready for export'

During droughts, water was carried in by tanker trunk. "That took a fortnight and cost 150 dirhams (13.7 euros), $15.6) for 5,000 litres on average," young resident Houcine Soussane recalls.

According to Dar Si Hmad, 7,000 litres of fog water cost three times less than before, even with a fee of 20 dirhams to each household for the right to a counter.

Thick fog is trapped by finely meshed panels and relayed it to a network of pipes

(AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

Villagers today have more time to collect the nutty fruit of argan trees and extract its prized and potentially lucrative oil, used in cooking, skin care and easing arthritis. Reputed as an anti-ageing product, argan oil has been taken up abroad as an ingredient in high-end cosmetics.

"Our women and daughters no longer wear themselves out. They go to school and are safe," 54 year-old villager Lahcen Hammou Ali sums up. "With the time saved, we can pay for water all year by producing a bottle of argan oil."

DSH next wants to supply fog water to as many villages as possible in the area. It also plans to replace mesh in the panels with a new variety that can resist wind speeds of 120 kilometres per hour (75 mph).

The panels were perfected on Moroccan soil with help from the German charity Wasserstiftung, and successfully passed the testing phase.

"The nets are now ready for export to other towns in Morocco, in all the mountainous regions and along the seafront," Derham says, hopeful they can be deployed in all highland areas where fogbanks are frequent.

Related Article:

Advert turns air into drinking water

Urban growth: Vertical farming offers solutions for China's cities

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-05-19

The design of a vertical farm shown during an expo at the Hainan
International Creative Harbor in Haikou, Hainan province in 2011.
(File photo/CFP)

Lin Jinyi plants 800 head of lettuce in his 15 square meters of living space in Hangzhou and can harvest as much as 500 kilos of the vegetable at a time. Without using any growth hormone or chemicals, all the 39-year-old Lin does is hang the plants on poles. It is the purest form of soil-free cultivation.

A former employee of Google China, Lin is now a "modern farmer" who guides Chinese farmers in building vertical farming systems.

Vertical farming is a concept proposed by scientists as a way to resolve a potential lack of resources in the future as the global population surges. The idea behind the concept is to take full advantage of resources and space to maximize the output of a particular crop.

People from around the world who research and practice vertical farming attended the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) Summit 2015 in Beijing on May 9-10. Most of the participants could not speak Mandarin but were excited to discover that China could be one of the world's best places to develop vertical farming.

The summit was held in China in recognition of the country's fundamentals, AVF chair Christine Zimmermann Loessl told Guangzhou's Southern Weekly.

It is estimated that by 2030 there will be 800 million people living in China's cities who need a safe and stable supply of nutrients. By that time, vertical farming practices in cities may play a role in contributing to the supply, according to Loessl.

It was a major drought in five southwestern provinces in 2010 that prompted Lin to seek a water-saving, economic and environmentally friendly farming model. During the drought, he saw farmers watering tomato plants on dry land with water they preferred to use on their crops rather than themselves, Lin said.

The concept of vertical farming was proposed by ecologist Dickson Despommier, who saw the possibility of growing food in buildings with plenty of sunlight.

According to Despommier, 80% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. By that time, the population will increase to 9.2 billion people, most of whom will live in developing countries, making food supplies a problem.

Under Despommier's plans, a 30-story skyscraper with vertical farming practices could offer food for 50,000 Manhattan residents. And the food from 160 such buildings could feed all New York City's residents.

Southern Weekly said that while commercial applications of the vertical farming model are not yet mature in China, many property developers have taken notice of the potential of such projects.

If urban communities have their own vertical farms, their residents can harvest their own crops after work, saving time and energy shopping at supermarkets or malls. The planting, transportation, consumption and waste processing can all be handled at one location, the weekly said.

The cost of building a vertical farm is extremely high, however, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 yuan (US$800-$1,600) per square meter. A high-quality farm of its kind could run into the billions of dollars to build, a far cry from the traditional farming costs Chinese are used to.

Tesla announces low-cost batteries for homes

Elon Musk claims at launch that two billion large batteries could provide enough electricity to meet the world’s needs

The Guardian, Michael Safi, Friday 1 May 2015

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, announces the company’s 

entry into the energy market

The electric car company Tesla has announced its entry into the energy market, unveiling a suite of low-cost solar batteries for homes, businesses and utilities, “the missing piece”, it said, in the transition to a sustainable energy world.

The batteries, which will retail at $3,500 in the US, were launched on Thursday at a Tesla facility in California by the company’s ambitious founder, Elon Musk, who heralded the technology as “a fundamental transformation [in] how energy is delivered across the earth”.

Wall-mounted, with a sleek design, the lithium-ion batteries are designed to capture and store up to 10kWh of energy from wind or solar panel. The reserves can be drawn on when sunlight is low, during grid outages, or at peak demand times, when electricity costs are highest.

The smallest “Powerwall” is 1.3m by 68cm, small enough to be hung inside a garage on or an outside wall. Up to eight batteries can be “stacked” in a home, Musk said, to applause from investors and journalists at the much-anticipated event.

The batteries will initially be manufactured at the electric car company’s factory in California, but will move production to its planned “gigafactory” in Nevada when it opens in 2017.

The Nevada facility will be the largest producer of lithium-ion batteries in the world, and it is hoped its mass-production scale will help to bring down costs even further.

It is not the only battery storage system on the market, but the Powerwall boasts a relatively high storage capacity, a competitive price, and the heft of investment and excitement generated by Musk’s vision.

The entrepreneur, who helped to invent the online payment system, PayPal, has also founded a private space company, Space X, and is experimenting with a high-speed public transportation system called Hyperloop.

Musk also unveiled a larger “Powerpack”, a 100kWh battery block to help utilities smooth out their supply of wind and solar energy - which is generated intermittently - or to pump energy into the grid when demand soars.

He said on Thursday about two billion Powerpacks could store enough electricity to meet the entire world’s needs. “That may seem like an insane number,” he said. “But this is actually within the power of humanity to do.”

Deutsche Bank estimates sales of battery storage systems for homes and businesses could yield as much as $4.5bn in revenue for Tesla. The energy storage industry is expected to grow to $19bn by 2017, according to research firm IHS CERA.

Tesla is currently taking orders for the systems, with the first units expected to shift in August.

Screenshot from YouTube user thegatesnotes

Related Articles:

Bill Gates drinks cup of water that used to be human poop (Video)

"2013 - What Now ?" – Jan 6, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“… New ideas are things you never thought of. These ideas will be given to you so you will have answers to the most profound questions that your societies have had since you were born. Inventions will bring clean water to every Human on the planet, cheaply and everywhere. Inventions will give you power, cheaply and everywhere. These ideas will wipe out all of the reasons you now have for pollution, and when you look back on it, you'll go, "This solution was always there. Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we do this sooner?" Because it wasn't time and you were not ready. You hadn't planted the seeds and you were still battling the old energy, deciding whether you were going to terminate yourselves before 2012. Now you didn't…. and now you didn't.

It's funny, what you ponder about, and what your sociologists consider the "great current problems of mankind", for your new ideas will simply eliminate the very concepts of the questions just as they did in the past. Do you remember? Two hundred years ago, the predictions of sociologists said that you would run out of food, since there wasn't enough land to sustain a greater population. Then you discovered crop rotation and fertilizer. Suddenly, each plot of land could produce many times what it could before. Do you remember the predictions that you would run out of wood to heat your homes? Probably not. That was before electricity. It goes on and on.

So today's puzzles are just as quaint, as you will see. (1) How do you strengthen the power grids of your great nations so that they are not vulnerable to failure or don't require massive infrastructure improvement expenditures? Because cold is coming, and you are going to need more power. (2) What can you do about pollution? (3) What about world overpopulation? Some experts will tell you that a pandemic will be the answer; nature [Gaia] will kill off about one-third of the earth's population. The best minds of the century ponder these puzzles and tell you that you are headed for real problems. You have heard these things all your life.

Let me ask you this. (1) What if you could eliminate the power grid altogether? You can and will. (2) What if pollution-creating sources simply go away, due to new ideas and invention, and the environment starts to self-correct? (3) Overpopulation? You assume that humanity will continue to have children at an exponential rate since they are stupid and can't help themselves. This, dear ones, is a consciousness and education issue, and that is going to change. Imagine a zero growth attribute of many countries - something that will be common. Did you notice that some of your children today are actually starting to ponder if they should have any children at all? What a concept! ….”

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno