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California is experiencing a third year of drought. Researchers studying tree rings found that the last time California experienced a drought this severe was 500 years ago.

California is a leading agriculture producer, and much of that farming takes place in the San Joaquin Valley. Farming and ranching in the San Joaquin Valley requires much irrigation, and irrigation water deliveries are expected to be reduced by 50 percent or more this year. About 2 million acres in the San Joaquin Valley are expected to not receive any water this year under contracts with the State Department of Water Resources or federal Bureau of Reclamation.

The California coastline hugs a huge body of water, the Pacific Ocean, but it is too salty to be used for drinking water or irrigation. Desalination can take that salty water and produce drinking water, but traditional desalination technology is costly and produces large amounts of harmful emissions.

One company just might make desalination less costly to both the bottom line and the environment. The Panoche Water District, a privately held company in the San Joaquin Valley, and WaterFX teamed up to create a solar desalination facility in Firebaugh, Calif. The desalination technology is WaterFX's Aqua4 technology. The 6,500-square-foot facility in Firebaugh is powered by solar energy and produces up to eight gallons of water per minute from salty water. Plans are underway to increase the facility’s production to 2,200 acre-feet a year.
Firebaugh is located in the western part of Fresno County, an area long plagued with irrigation problems. The Panoche Water District and Drainage District serves over 44,000 acres of the Valley in and around Firebaugh, which includes farms growing almonds, tomatoes, melons, asparagus, pistachios and alfalfa. Panoche gets water from the Bureau of Reclamation out of Shasta Dam in Northern California which travels through the Sacramento River to the Delta region and is pumped into the Central Valley Project delivery system in Tracy, Calif. It then travels about 45 miles to the San Luis Reservoir. There is saline in the irrigated water, and lack of drainage in that part of Fresno County causes a major problem. The saline levels in some of the water have a content greater than seawater.

WaterFX’s Aqua4 system is different from traditional seawater desalination, which is done with reverse-osmosis (RO) process and requires a great deal of electricity. The Aqua4 system uses advanced solar absorption technology and produces more than 200 acre-feet of freshwater per acre of solar collection area. RO needs high pressure to push freshwater through a membrane, and water recovery rate is 50 percent. For every 100 gallons of water processed with RO, 50 gallons of freshwater are recovered and 50 gallons of brine are disposed (causes environmental problems). Aqua4 recovers 93 percent of freshwater. For every 100 gallons treated, only seven gallons of brine are produced.

The brine that is produced has a high concentration of salt (20 percent salt by weight) and using salt separators, solids can be produced from the solution. That is something which is not economically feasible with RO because of the vast amounts of brine. Phase 2 of the Panoche project, expected to be completed by September 2014, will show the types of solid byproducts that can be produced and sold through the Aqua4 desalination system without causing environmental damage. Gypsum, a calcium based salt used to make drywall and plaster, is one example of a byproduct. Another example is magnesium salts, which are in the drainage water and magnesium sulfate is used in the medical industry to treat pain and complications during pregnancy.

Photo: WaterFX

If a California state senator has his way, sugary drinks will eventually be treated the same way that regulatory agencies treat cigarettes: as a health risk.

Sen. Bill Monning of Carmel, Calif., has introduced a bill to the state Senate that calls for warning labels to be placed on all sugary drinks. That includes drinks sold in vending machines and distributed in school cafeterias.

The new bill, which proposes to add an article to the state’s Health and Safety Code called the Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Safety Act, would be California’s latest attempt to regulate food and drug merchandizing. The Sherman Food, Drug and Cosmetic Law of 2008 (which regulates the branding of food among other items) and the Pupil Nutrition, Health and Achievement Act of 2001 both preempt federal food and drug laws and control what food manufacturers do to market items in the state. The two acts also make businesses that sell those products (either across the counter or in a vending machine) responsible for knowing what is being sold on their premises.

The proposed bill, which went into circulation last week, has already caused a fair amount of controversy. That may be in part because of Monning’s 2013 attempt to impose a tax on sugary drink sales, which proposed a 1-cent tax on each ounce of highly sugar-sweetened drinks. The monies collected would have gone to a fund to support nutrition education and research, which supporters said would help combat the epidemic of obesity and health problems now plaguing many communities. Unfortunately, the bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee 11 months after being proposed because of lack of votes to carry it forward.

The topic of this bill, however, promises to elicit a much more visceral reaction from consumers and parents who oppose the high number of sugar-sweetened drinks on the market, and who are concerned about the nutritional options at schools. It is co-sponsored by Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg and draws its strengths from the federal Food and Drug and Cosmetic Act, which makes it illegal to misbrand food (as well as regulates the percentage of actual juice that must be in a drink to be called "juice"), and the two state acts, which were put in place as a buttress against abuses that California lawmakers felt weren’t being addressed by Washington.

The Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Safety Act does have some hurdles to overcome, however. Store owners will probably not be enamored by the extra paperwork it creates, which requires vendors to keep records “including legible invoices and purchase orders, to determine the quantity and type of sugar-sweetened beverages distributed, purchased or sold” for a period of two years after the sale.

And manufacturers of sugar-sweetened drinks who don’t like the proposed legislation won’t have far to look for support in the food industry, since legislation that highlights the detrimental consequences of sugar aren’t always popular conversation-makers. Will products like ready-to-prepare corned beef, mustard, jams, bread, French fries and Cheerios be next to receive a warning label?

If the Monning-Steinberg doesn’t make it into law this time, perhaps the senators will turn their attention toward ensuring that supermarkets and other third-party vendors don’t call sugared juice drinks “juice” in their store advertisements. As California has proven in the past, its groundbreaking legislation sometimes has a tendency to influence federal laws as well. Ensuring that stores stay true to the limitations imposed on manufacturers is a healthy step toward ensuring that consumers stay informed.

Image of orange soda: Moneyblognewz

Image of grape and cranberry juice drink cocktails: Jmawork

Sewage is rarely thought of as a valuable resource, but the Green Urine campaign aims to change that--by utilizing urine for phosphate fertilizer and raising awareness of its benefits. The phosphates from urine will be extracted and turned into struvite, an agricultural fertilizer.

The campaign uses highly visible outdoor urinals in Amsterdam's La Place de la Bourse as collection sites and introduces the question: Is our wastewater actually a goldmine?

Urine was collected by the city's water company, Waternet, then upcycled to fertilize green roofs as part of International Water Week, which aims to create "integrated solutions for a green economy." This event aims to raise awareness about water issues and explore solutions, such as industrial and municipal water reuse and technology for optimizing the water cycle. Although publicly collecting urine may seem comical, it was a serious campaign aimed at raising awareness about waste reduction and the possibility of using urine as a source of phosphates for agricultural use.

Waternet is rising to the challange by constructing a facility that will make 1,000 tons of fertilizer from the wastewater of 1 million people. The facility is expected to open later this year.

Concern of phosphorus shortage could impact agriculture

Farmers largely use mined phosphorus to fertilize crops, previously using compost and manure to provide this vital nutrient. Unfortunately phosphorus fertilizer  ends up in our waterways, where it produces algal blooms that suck up oxygen and create dead zones. Some scientists are concerned that phosphorus resources used for making fertilizer will run out in the next 50 to 100 years. They expect peak phosphorus in 2030, creating soaring food prices, while undermining our ability to grow food. Although this concern of peak phosphorus is debatable, if nothing else, using urine in fertilizer could hedge against rising fertilizer prices and produce a new revenue stream for Amsterdam and beyond.

Urine to the Rescue

Urine can be used directly on plants when diluted with water, providing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium--the main nutrients plants need to thrive. Because urine is sterile, it doesn't pose a microbiological risk. The use of urine as a fertilizer has been described as an "age-old tradition" in Nepal. Hari Krishna Upreti, senior scientist at the Nepal Agricultural Research Council's Botany Division, recommends using urine and compost together for the best results.

The cross-contamination with feces, however, can create sanitation problems--as feces needs further processing, particularly before being used on food.  It is recommended to separate urine from feces to ensure sanitation. Ecosan toilets help make the process both simple and sanitary, while saving water. The technology enables human waste to be used safely as fertilizer, mitigating reliance on chemical fertilizers.

If you consider the volume we're talking about on a global scale, the potential is huge. "A person urinates an average of 550 liters per year," says Upreti. "So this produces some four kilograms of nitrogen, which is equivalent to eight kilograms of nitrogen-rich urea."

The concept of using human waste as fertilizer is still taboo in many parts of the world, making the highly visible outdoor urinal display in Amsterdam intriguing, as it pushes the envelope. Creating more sustainable systems will sometimes require questioning our norms and creating new ways of doing things...gee whiz!

Image credit: Chris Toala Olivares via AGV.nl

Sarah Lozanova is a regular contributor to environmental and energy publications and websites, including Mother Earth Living, Green Building & Design, Triple Pundit, Urban Farm, and Solar Today. Her experience includes work with small-scale solar energy installations and utility-scale wind farms. She earned an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School and she resides in Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage in Midcoast Maine with her husband and two children.

By Fiona Harvey

Greg Barker, the conservative energy and climate minister, has championed the idea that more of our energy should be decentralized and low-carbon.

With “sufficient financial rigour, affordable expansion [of local energy schemes] is achievable," he says. “We can build the Big Sixty Thousand.”

The prize, he believes, will be “growth, jobs, economic resilience, unprecedented consumer choice and a cleaner, safer environment–and energy security.” But signs of the ‘Big Sixty Thousand’ taking over the energy reins are still hard to find. Communities represent “a largely untapped source of renewable energy investment," says James Beard of the Renewable Energy Association. Could greater awareness of the benefits tip the scales?

This is the aim of the Community Energy Coalition, a group of 30-plus influential and trusted civic society organizations with a shared vision of community energy at scale in the U.K., by 2020. In 2013, the coalition–whose members include The Co-operative, the National Trust and the Church of England, convened by Forum for the Future–ran the first Community Energy Fortnight to encourage groups to set up their own projects. Giles Bristow, director of programs at Forum for the Future, says, “The value of visible support for community energy from known and trusted organizations can’t be underestimated. With a collective reach of over 16 million members, the coalition’s ability to raise awareness of the potential is vast.”

One of the most active regions in the U.K., with excellent solar resources as well as wind, hydroelectricity and the potential for marine energy, is the southwest. There, the sustainable energy center Regen SW supports 179 community projects, including the Bath and West Community Energy group, which has raised more than $3.3 million (£2 million) in share offers and installed a range of solar products. Chief Executive Merlin Hyman reports “a huge amount of interest in community energy, and some excellent initiatives." But, he warns, people must be prepared for hard slog: “Most communities find it takes a great deal of time and effort.”

One hurdle is funding. A useful source is the government’s $25 million (£15 million) Rural Community Energy Fund. This works in two stages, making available up to $33,000 for an initial investigation into feasibility, after which qualifying projects can receive up to $217,000 to support planning applications and develop a robust business case to attract private sector investment.

Private funding is also available, from mission-led organisations such as Good Energy and Triodos Bank, and increasingly from social impact investment funds, which aim to create returns for communities beyond the balance sheet. For instance, Resonance manages a community share underwriting fund which provides match-funding for projects of up to $1.6 million (£1 million). In November 2013, it supported the launch of Leicestershire, England’s first community energy share offer, which will enable John Cleveland College to install a renewable woodfuel heating system. This will significantly reduce energy costs for the college, support the market for local wood fuel and give students first-hand experience of low-carbon technologies.

Daniel Brewer, founding director of Resonance, says:

“There is significant opportunity to generate meaningful amounts of energy at a community level: more than individual households could achieve, and yet not enough for major energy companies to afford to spend time on. Underwriting community shares can turn a bunch of volunteers into a viable business, allowing people to invest directly in their own communities, and bypassing the need to get caught up in the opaque mainstream financial system. It’s a catalyst for giving power and autonomy to communities, whatever they want to do–whether that’s more woodfuel heating, or insulating the homes of older people.”

Another interesting new development is the advent of crowdfunding, whereby thousands of people contribute a small amount–from a few tens or hundreds of pounds to a few thousand each–to get projects off the ground, and then share in the revenues when they arrive. Julia Groves, managing director of Trillion Fund, and chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association, says:

“Crowdfunding is expanding the community of investors from neighborhoods to nationwide. Whereas, to date, local community projects have tended to raise less than £1 million, crowdfunding has the potential to fund larger scale renewable sources of energy to rival generation from traditional coal- and gas-fired power plants.”

Money isn’t the only measures of success. For Peter Spark, an energy entrepreneur, there are advantages well beyond the commercial: “Community energy brings people from all walks of life together, working towards a common goal that makes a real difference to their local area.”

Image credit: Adrian Arbib

Fiona Harvey is the environment correspondent for The Guardian.

More information: ukcec.org

Barely three years ago, the Obama administration launched the SunShot Initiative, an ambitious effort to transform solar power from an exotic, expensive form of energy into a mainstream fuel that can compete on price with petroleum, coal, and natural gas. In the latest development for low-cost solar power, last week Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that the program is already 60 percent of the way toward its goal of bringing the average price for a utility-scale solar power plant down to the target price of six cents per kilowatt-hour.

In raw numbers, that's a steep slide from an average of 21 cents in 2010 to only 11 cents by the end of 2013. That's now less than the average price of electricity in the U.S., which is about 12 cents per kWh, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The trend toward low-cost solar power is nowhere near at an end. The new announcement came with word of yet another SunShot initiative that will help bring the cost of solar power down even more in the coming years: A $25 million funding package for innovative technologies that focuses on manufacturing costs.

$25 million for solar power innovation

The SunShot initiative attacks the cost of solar power from all angles. One focus is on high-tech R&D that aims to make photovoltaic cells and other forms of solar energy harvesting more efficient. Another addresses the "soft costs" involved in installing solar equipment, including permits, administrative costs and labor.

A third area, which the new $25 million funding package is focused on, aims at bringing down the cost of manufacturing solar equipment, in addition to reducing the time and expense involved in installing that equipment.

That will mean, for example, the development of new modular systems that can be manufactured, shipped and set up with minimum expense, which translates into increased automation at both the production and installation ends.

The focus on manufacturing for low-cost solar power dovetails with several other Obama administration initiatives related to clean energy and energy efficiency, including a $7 million round of funding that will help lower the cost of LED lighting and a rather intriguing mashup between the Defense Department and the maker movement's TechShop.

Low-cost solar power up, fossil fuels on the way out

The Moniz announcement coincided with the official dedication of the massive new Ivanpah concentrating solar power plant in California. Another new utility-scale solar project, Crescent Dunes in Nevada, was recently completed and passed a major milestone last week on its pathway to full commissioning.

The two projects are significant not only because of their size, but also because they represent another critical area of competition for the U.S. energy sector, and that is the ability to compete in global markets. Both of the projects represent next-generation solar technologies.

Ivanpah is the largest solar power plant of its kind in the world. It consists of three units, each of which concentrates solar energy from a field of specialized mirrors called heliostats onto a central tower, where it heats a solution of molten salt. The heated molten salt provides thermal energy to produce steam for running a generator, employing an advanced process that uses 95 percent less water than similar solar power plants.

Crescent Dunes also runs its generators on heated molten salt, with solar energy concentrated by heliostats. In this project, the molten salt also serves double duty as a "salt battery," storing thermal energy for about six hours. That means the plant can continue to generate electricity long after the sun goes down.

Together, these two plants will provide enough electricity for thousands of homes, without ever needing to dig raw feedstock out of the ground.

As with any large piece of infrastructure, solar plants (and wind farms, for that matter) are not impact-free, but once they are in the ground they are free of impacts related to fuel harvesting and, for that matter, transportation. They are also free of impacts from byproduct disposal, such as coal ash and petcoke.

Contrast that with the steady stream of disasters related to the fossil fuel lifecycle just within the last few weeks, including the coal-washing chemical spill and the coal slurry spill in West Virginia, the North Carolina coal ash spill (which appears to involve a second pipe now), and the Kentucky gas pipeline explosion, and you've got a picture of a fossil fuel infrastructure bent to the breaking point.

Image: Crescent Dunes concentrating solar power plant courtesy of SolarReserve

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Lockheed Martin has hooked up with Australia’s Victorian Wave Partners LLC to begin the development of what’s billed as the world’s largest wave energy project.

The 62.5-megawatt peak power wave energy generation project will be built off the coast of Victoria, Australia, using the PowerBuoy wave energy converter technology of Ocean Power Technologies (OPT).

Project construction will occur in three stages, with the first stage producing approximately 2.5-megawatt peak power. Once completed, the project is expected to produce enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. Because it also contributes to Australia’s goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, the project is getting “significant grant support” from ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy Agency).

Wave power devices extract energy from the surface motion of ocean waves. Unlike wind and solar sources, energy from ocean waves is highly predictable, plus it can generate electricity for more hours in the year than wind and solar. Wave power devices are typically quieter and much less visually obtrusive than wind turbines, which typically run more than 130 feet in height. The PowerBuoy system is 30 feet in height above the waterline and actually is barely visible because it typically is located three miles offshore.

“We are applying our design and system integration expertise to commercialize promising, emerging alternative energy technologies, including ocean power,” said Tim Fuhr, director of ocean energy for Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training business. “This project extends our established relationship with OPT and Australian industry and enables us to demonstrate a clean, efficient energy source for Australia and the world.”

In this project, Lockheed Martin will provide overall project management, assist with the design for manufacturing of the PowerBuoy technology, lead the production of selected PowerBuoy components and perform system integration of the wave energy converters. Financial details of Lockheed’s investment in the project were not disclosed.

Victorian Wave Partners is an Australian special purpose company owned by OPT, a leader in wave energy technology development. The company’s PowerBuoy wave generation technology uses a "smart," ocean-going buoy to convert wave energy into low-cost, clean electricity. The buoy moves up and down with the rising and falling of waves. According to OPT, this mechanical energy drives an electrical generator, which transmits power to shore via an underwater cable. The system is electrically tuned on a wave-by-wave basis to maximize the amount of electricity produced.

If successful, the project will be a significant step forward in making ocean energy commercially feasible and available on a utility-level scale, or another way of saying that surf is really up.

Image: OPT PowerBuoy from Lockheed website

While the eyes of most of the world are on the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, some places are actually more focused on their own local events.

Take for example Tallinn, Estonia, where “February and spring is the perfect time for outdoor activities…and for attending musical events and festivals all the month long at the local concert halls and venues,” as the Tallinn.ee reports.

Now, it’s true that the Olympic Games might be a little more interesting than Tallinn’s upcoming BMX contest (Feb. 22-23), but the residents of Tallinn can be proud of having at least one thing the residents of Sochi don’t have: free public transit.

On Jan. 1, 2013, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became the first European capital to extend free public transport to all of its 430,000 residents. One of the main drivers was mobility for all, explained Allan Alaküla, head of the Tallinn EU Office. While pensioners and youths already benefited from free public transport in Tallinn, the city wanted to make it easier for people to travel in search of work, and for low-paid workers, who might choose not to take a job that they have to travel to if the cost of transport means it is financially not worthwhile.

So, does it really work? Is making public transportation free actually increasing mobility (i.e. getting people to use it more)? While it might take some time to evaluate the economic impact of this change, a new study of three researchers from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology provides an initial outlook into the changes in ridership following the introduction of free-fare public transport.

The researchers, Oded Cats, Triin Reimal and Yusak Susilo, compared data from fall 2011 through spring 2012 (the “before period”) and January through April 2013 (the “after period”). What they found was a 3 percent increase in the total number of boarding passengers and a 2.5 percent increase in total miles per passenger.

Yet, even this modest increase can’t be fully attributed to reducing the prices to zero. The researchers calculated that making the fares free is responsible for about 42 percent of the total impact, while the rest of the increase is attributed to other factors, such as new priority lanes for buses and service improvements. In other words, overall, the introduction of free public transit in Tallinn has resulted in a 1.2 percent increase in passenger demand.

The analysis looked not only at the generation effect (i.e. trips now carried out by public transport that otherwise would not occur), but also at the substitution effect (i.e. trips made previously by some other mode of transportation are now made using public transport). The desired effect is that public transport will be substituting car trips, but in the case of Tallinn the researchers suggest that if any modal shift is happening, it is that people are walking less and riding transit more.

One positive finding was an increased access to the city from the northeastern district of Lasnamäe, the most populous and dense district in the city, which is characterized by higher unemployment rates--transit ridership increased there by 10 percent.

Still, in total, the increase in ridership in Tallinn is very modest according to the study, which brings up the question: Why is it that the residents of Tallinn don’t take more advantage of the option to take free rides in their local buses, trams and trolley buses? The researchers believe this is due to the following factors: Public transport fare was relatively low to start with (about $2.20 for a single ticket) and many user groups already didn’t pay the full price, public transport share was relatively high (40 percent) to start with, and the introduction of the new scheme had to overcome a two-decades-long negative trend in the share of public transport.

You might wonder what the importance of this scheme is and why we should care if it succeeds or not--after all, this is not the first city experimenting with making its public transit free. First, as Sulev Vedler writes at The Atlantic Cites, what sets Tallinn’s experiment apart is its size and status as a European capital. “As the birthplace of Skype and online voting, Tallinn also has a reputation for innovation, Vedler writes. "So there's a feeling, at least among advocates of the idea, that if free transit can work here, maybe it can work in other large cities.”

Second, the importance of the results in Tallinn also stems from the fact that no comprehensive analysis was made to truly evaluate the impact of the experiments made so far in providing free transit (mostly in small cities in Europe), which left us mainly with anecdotal evidence. So basically this is the first time where we can truly evaluate the value of this policy tool.

Last but not least, this study adds to the body of research analyzing how sensitive people are to various price changes when it comes to changing their mode of transport. It actually provides a similar conclusion to what many studies reached in the past, which is that reducing public transit fares is a second-best pricing scheme. In other words, more people would shift from car to public transport if the price of the former is increased (congestion charge, higher tolls, etc.) rather than if the latter is reduced to the same extent.

Still, a word of caution--we need to remember that this study is based on only four months of data so we should wait for further analysis based on a larger dataset to get a better understanding on the effectiveness of such a scheme in a setting of a large city. Until then, the jury is still out there, probably taking a free ride on the bus.

Image credit: my Life, the Universe and Everything, Flickr Creative Commons

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School of Design. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

Soccer rules--with the possible exception of one enclave in North America known as the United States. As Erik Distler writes in a June 2012 TriplePundit article, soccer (“football”) goes far beyond just sport and athletics. It is a unifying force that drives community and social change, two essential ingredients for sustainable development.

The stardom and celebrity of sport--of a Pelé or Beckham--grabs the spotlight for a time and sells product, but it is in the dry, dusty fields of the developing world where perhaps the biggest and most lasting impact of soccer happens--where kids learn the joy of play, even in the harshest of circumstances. Their daily lives may seem to offer few solutions for a better life, but the simple love of a game and a joyous sense of play offers solutions in unexpected ways.

Take the Soccket ball. At first glance it looks pretty much like any other soccer ball. As far as a kid playing soccer with his or her friends in an empty field after school, it is like any other soccer ball. But Soccket is different.

Soccket, the flagship product of New York City-based startup Uncharted Play, harnesses the energy of play to literally light the path of a child’s education in the developing world. In fact, 30 minutes of play translates into three hours of light from the Soccket's companion LED light.

The idea is at once startlingly simple and eloquent; kinetic energy is stored for later use as an electrical source to power a light. Critics may--and have--assert that poverty or the energy crises can’t possibly be solved by “kicking a ball around,” and they’d be right. They’d also be entirely missing the point.

The conversation shouldn’t be how Sockket solves the energy crises, but rather what it can contribute to a single village or even a single child. And that is where the idea of Soccket goes beyond a product--becoming a process, an approach, a first step of many that will solve real problems and have real impact in people’s lives. To really understand what all this means, let's start at the beginning.

Class project

It all began as a Harvard class project for Uncharted Play cofounders Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman. Harvard may seem a long way from the fields and empty lots of a village in the developing world, but it is a path familiar to both Matthews, born in Nigeria, and Silverman, who volunteered on various occasions in regions of Kenya and South Africa with a focus on sustainable development. As part of their Harvard course focusing on design for non-engineers, the two social science majors were tasked with devising a multiplayer online game. The pair took their experience on a different path for the project, inventing the initial idea that would eventually become the Soccket.

Understanding the needs of these communities “they quickly put two-and-two together,” says Uncharted Play’s VP for Product Development Victor Angel. Play is universal, and so is the need for education.

“We have seen so many kids play with balls,” or whatever they could find. “Sometimes,” says Angel, “all they have to play with is trash.” So Matthews and Silverman asked themselves “what if we could capture this motion and use it for something useful for these kids?”

“The common denominator among [all these kids] is that they go home and do their homework or their tasks with kerosene lights,” Angel continues. And so the concept of the Soccket was born, and for Matthews and Silverman the play had just begun.

When the big boys say no

The idea is simple; stored kinetic energy generated in the motion of a ball to use later as electricity. Execution wasn’t so easy.

After securing some seed money from Harvard, Matthews and Silverman took their idea to a large product development firm in California. It took all that seed money for a working prototype, but a general consensus from the development firm was that their idea was possible but wasn’t really feasible.

The first requirement of a soccer ball is that, within reason, it do no harm. But for Matthews the idea was just too good to give up on. There was a lot of work to do to make Soccket a reality, so in 2011 Matthews launched Uncharted Play and brought on board a small team of inspired young professionals, including Angel.

The team was in place, all with a conviction to bring the idea to fruition. All they needed were the tools necessary to carry out their mission.

“I remember playing with those prototypes,” says Angel, “they would hurt your foot, they would eventually crack and they were very expensive to produce. We started to think ‘how can we move forward? We can’t distribute this to kids, we have almost no money to develop anything, we can't afford another round with a product development firm.’ So we decided to do it ourselves.”

As the guy in charge of product development, Angel searched for the path forward. That’s when he came across the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner program.

“I have no idea how I came across it,” says Angel, “but I came across the Clean Tech Partner program and I realized right away that it was a good investment. I think it’s one of the best purchases we ever made”

Once the team had the Autodesk Inventor software to work with “we were able to get the design started.”

The eventual result became the Soccket: A durable, airless ball weighing the same as a standard soccer ball.

The engineering hurdles were the first step. Next came devising a program to bring greatest impact from the underlying concept. It isn’t about dumping nifty power-generating soccer balls on villages, but taking what Soccket represented and making a real difference in people's lives; the joy of play, the power of education, and the connection between the two.

Education is key for Soccket

"One thing we don’t want to do is simply drop off merchandise in a foreign country and then leave. We actually want to monitor the usage, we want to make sure the ball is being used in a way that’s educational above anything.”

Working through corporate backers, individual funders and on-the-ground NGOs, Uncharted Play connects with local communities and schools in need. Soccket teams of five children each share one Soccket “station” that include one Soccket ball, five portable LED lamps and an interactive STEM curriculum (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The Soccket ball is kept at school and play time is supervised by the teacher.

After the kids play with Soccket, each team member can charge their light to take home. With the LED light they can do their homework without the noxious and unhealthy fumes from a kerosene lamp. Every morning they bring their lamp back to school for more play and charge time--and more learning.

Soccket is the tactic, health and education is the strategy, improved odds for a better life and more sustainable community is the goal.

“It’s a way to keep the students engaged with the educational program,” says Angel. “At the end of the day education is really our sustainability model. We’re not really about the energy we produce, but we’re more about educating people about creative thinking and innovation; taking matters into their own hands.”

After all, it’s by taking matters into their own hands that the Uncharted Play team made Soccket a reality in the first place.

Still scrappy after all these years

“So you want to be in show business”

What does show business have to do with  any of this? It seems like a glamorous life--until you try it. Some succeed and most fail. It’s arguably the same thing for social entrepreneurs. Young, talented idealists want to devote their lives to changing the world. Then the world intrudes on their best intentions and tells them it isn’t possible.

But with perseverance, a playful mindset and the right tools, some actually succeed. That’s Uncharted Play. Inspired by an idea that the established product development firm said wasn’t realistic they carried on, maintained a positive outlook and availed themselves of the tools they needed to bypass the naysayers and make their vision a reality.

"We're still pretty scrappy. Something we've learned along the way is that we can make really great prototypes and really advance our ideas with very, very low expenses. We work with anything that's around the office, we go to the hardware store, we go to the dollar store. We have a very playful, very organic [approach] that has saved us a lot of money and allowed us to explore ideas."

“I think it was definitely the way to go to design it ourselves.” says Angel. “I think it’s also the fact that a lot of product development firms, although they do have the framework and tools, and the capability obviously, I think when designing for developing countries specifically there’s a big gap in understanding who your end user is.”

This is key, Angel says, to the success of the Uncharted Play. “Most of our team has had significant exposure to these communities. It’s been a lot more organic for us to design for developing continents rather than trying to do it from the bubble that is New York City or California.”

Currently Soccket programs are active in Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil and Haiti. As Uncharted Play continues to grow, they have “a little more bandwidth to explore” worldwide. There are plans for adding some “smartness” to the Soccket. “A lot of people are keen on knowing how much energy is being generated or being able to track the location of the ball you donated is at, so we’re adding a few bells and whistles to the ball,” says Angel.

Along with improvements in the Soccket and continued outreach in communities in Latin American and Africa, Uncharted Play has plans for developing other "energy harvesting sports products," including the Pulse, now in Beta release. Pulse is a jumprope that, like Soccket, stores kinetic energy and converts it into electricity.

Uncharted Play demonstrates that the power of change sometimes comes in small packages, that a playful outlook is often the road to success, and if you can light the path of learning one child at a time, the world is a better place.

Stay scrappy!

Image credit: Uncharted Play

By Linda M. Lowson, Esq.

In this age of transparency and accountability, negative issues can't hide for long. And so it has been reported by all the major news media: We have a dark and gruesome cloud hanging over the traditional celebratory atmosphere of the Sochi Olympic Games—the brutal mass extermination of stray dogs in Sochi.

Thousands of dogs have been killed. Despite promising there wouldn't be a street cull in preparation for the Olympic Games, the Sochi local government hired a private exterminating company to kill "as many as possible" for the Olympic Games, referring to the dogs as "biological trash." The International Olympic Committee has done nothing to stop it.

These innocent animals are shot with poisoned darts that cause them to suffocate, and then thrown into waiting trucks to be disposed of as garbage, at a cost of $25 to $35 per dog. Many of the strays were pets, or the offspring of pets, abandoned by families whose homes with yards were demolished over the past few years to make way for the Olympic venues. The stray population also increased due to being fed by construction workers in the Olympics construction projects.

Despite the global outrage and negative media publicity, the killing goes on. A few dogs have been spared, in a rescue effort on behalf of a charity called Volnoe Delo (“Good Will”), who was told, “Either you take all the dogs from the Olympic Village, or we will shoot them." The charity is being funded by Oleg V. Deripaska, one of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs, and one of the major investors in the Sochi Games, who paid for several huge projects. His modest $15,000 contribution has been used to construct a shantytown of doghouses on the outskirts of Sochi that now houses about 200 dogs. He also pledged $50,000 per year for operations.

The Sochi Olympics are costing Russia an estimated $51 billion, four times higher than the $12 billion cost Russia originally projected in 2007, and more than all the previous Olympic Games combined. Sochi’s government budgeted a paltry $54,000 "to catch and dispose of" the strays, according to the official Russian website for open tenders. This amount could have funded the cost of several modest dog shelters for hundreds of dogs. Is it comprehensible that the Russian government cannot spend $200,000--0.004 percent of the total cost of the Olympics—for proper dog shelters and a sterilization/vaccination program, not only to save the stray dogs and effectively address the problem, but also to save the image and reputation of Russia that Putin has strived to cultivate, that of a civilized and welcoming country?

This mass animal killing is not a new issue, but this time it is receiving significantly more media attention and global outrage. Some may remember that both the Athens and Beijing Olympics caught bad press for their handling of the local stray animal populations. In 2004, the Greek authorities ordered the poisoning of 15,000 stray dogs ahead of the Olympic Games in Athens, desperate to show the world that their country is “modern and civilized." Of course it showed just the opposite. On a more egregious and insidious scale, in 2008, for the Beijing Olympics, China's leaders convinced Beijing inhabitants that cats were a serious urban health risk, and ordered a cull of an estimated 500,000 cats, an extreme measure by communist leaders to ensure that the capital city appeared clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics. This time, the animals were thrown into overcrowded shelters with no food or water, and left to suffer a slow, agonizing death.

The real paradox and senselessness of this unspeakable brutality is that this kind of “extermination” does not solve the problem, even in the short-term, and does nothing to address the long-term problem. Humane Society International (HSI) and other well-known and well-funded animal welfare organizations have worked with thousands of organizations and governmental agencies worldwide to address this issue in a scientific, humane and cost-effective way--using mass dog sterilization and vaccination programs that very successfully control the stray population and eliminate rabies risk, over both the short term and long term.

The Russian government knew this expert assistance was easily available and could have collaborated with HSI or other organizations, with the cost potentially funded in whole or in part by private donations. Why do the Russian and Sochi governments refuse to take a moderate, proactive approach?

Worse, will we see a repeat in Rio de Janeiro in 2016?

The time to act is now. What is at stake are the integrity and respect of the Olympic Games, the lives of thousands of innocent dogs and cats, and the dignity of the human spirit, very large stakes indeed. The International Olympic Committee and Rio de Janeiro’s governmental officials need to hear from all concerned citizens.

Linda M. Lowson, Esq., is CEO and Chief Counsel for the Global ESG Regulatory Academy.

By Tess Riley

Our food system generates roughly a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions, in large part due to agriculture’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels. But far from demonizing farms, many see them as part of the solution. One reason is farm-generated renewable energy.

In the U.K., more than 70 percent of the land area is in the agricultural sector. In China and the U.S., two of the world’s largest food producing nations, this figure is 55.7 percent and 45 percent respectively. Large amounts of land combined with significant volumes of animal or plant waste make farms an obvious place to turn to, not just for food but also for biofuel, solar and wind energy. If we’re going to move towards a decentralized, sustainable energy system, farms and rural communities will play a significant role.

Take Nigel Joice, the award-winning Norfolk poultry producer whose farm generates 8,500 tons of manure a year. Three years ago, Joice invested a $3 million (£1.8 million) bank loan into an on-farm biomass plant to help meet his goal of turning the farm’s manure into an asset, and–with the addition of solar panels–to become energy-positive. An Environment Agency licence to use poultry litter rather than woodchip to heat the chicken sheds is now bringing Joice closer to realizing that vision. Over the last year, Uphouse Farm has cut its gas consumption by 92 percent and solar panels are expected to reduce its (grid) electricity use by 80 percent during daylight hours. What’s more, the anticipated eight-year return on investment has been cut in half, thanks to improved feed conversion from the poultry litter. Joice is now earning money through the Renewable Heat Incentive and Feed-in Tariffs.

With an increasingly unpredictable climate for crops and question marks over agricultural subsidies, such diversification will only become more important to farmers. For Tobi Kellner, renewable energy consultant at the Centre for Alternative Technology, clean energy generation offers a tremendous opportunity: “In some cases, additional income from renewables may be the only way for the next generation to make a farm financially viable.”

Individual farmers play a crucial role in developing farm-based energy schemes, but they can’t do it alone – not yet, and not at scale.

The National Farmers’ Union has called on the U.K. government to broaden its scope of community energy support criteria to include rural businesses that demonstrate a significant level of community benefit.

Almost 40 percent of U.K. farmers are investing in renewable energy compared with just 5 percent in 2010–but they are doing so in spite of the system rather than because of it, says Iain Watt, an energy specialist at Forum for the Future: “While pockets of government are quite supportive, the overall message seems to be that small-scale renewables will only ever play a role at the margins, while all the effort goes towards big centralized solutions. We need to change this mindset by demonstrating that smaller, community-scale energy can play a substantial role in the energy system.”

One organization doing just this is the National Trust, one of Britain’s largest landowners, which has committed to generating 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020, and has installed around 250 small- and medium-scale renewables on its land. It is collaborating with Good Energy on a $5.8 million (£3.5 million) pilot renewables program which, if successful, will see 10 times that amount invested. The trust also works further afield to help communities develop renewables elsewhere, such as the Anafon Community Hydro Scheme in North Wales.

Tim Crisp, director at Sustainable Charlbury CIC, is adamant that such programs must direct as much financial and social benefit back to the local community as possible. Sustainable Charlbury CIC was established in 2007 to reduce the carbon emissions of this Cotswolds town. In partnership with Cornbury Estate, which (subject to planning permission) the organization has provided 30 acres of land on a 20-year lease, and the Low Carbon Hub, which works across Oxfordshire on carbon reduction projects that benefit communities, it is developing Southill Solar, a 5-megawatt solar farm which members hope will be complete by mid-2014. The Feed-in tariff and the revenue from the power purchase agreement will provide approximately $142,000 (£85,000) annually for the community (that’s $2.5 million over the life of the project). The projected IRR for investors is 5 percent, but this could be enhanced through the Enterprise Investment Scheme to 8.5 percent, and to 12.5 percent through the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

“By making large-scale energy projects community-owned, and returning a financial benefit to the shareholders and to the community at large, Sustainable Charlbury CIC sets a framework for a sustainable local energy future," says Crisp.

It’s clear that some farmers and rural communities already have the skills, land and access to subsidies to enable them to invest in on-farm renewables, thanks in part to support from organizations like the Low Carbon Hub and the National Trust. What they lack is the infrastructure to help them take on-farm energy production to scale, as farmer Peter Thompson points out:

“I don’t see much stopping farmers becoming energy neutral. The real challenge is enabling farmers to become major generators for their communities and beyond. Buying new plant and machinery is second nature to farmers, so the first step is pretty easy. Supplying others is far more challenging.”

This is what we need to work towards.

Image credit: Loraks/iStockphoto/Thinkstock, Uphouse Farm/National Farmers Union

Tess Riley is a freelance environmental journalist and communications consultant.

More information: www.forumforthefuture.org/farmpower