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Le rinnovabili e l’innovazione per fornire energia sostenibile a tutti

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” - Milano, 17 giugno 2015

INNOVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT UNDER CLIMATE CHANGEENERGY, FOOD, WATER

Claude HENRY

Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

Why should we muster the best of our resources both human and material

in order to implement a more sustainable and equitable form of development?

• because billions of our fellow humans live in unacceptable poverty

• because the condition of our planet worsens at such a pace that all forms of life, including ours, will come under the most serious threats during the present century, be they biodiversity erosion, water and fertile soil scarcity, energy obesity and climate change. Current generations are – at an unbearable pace - squandering the heritage of natural capital in their hands.

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

It will not be easy, to say the least, to switch from the present development trajectory to a significantly more sustainable one.

Success requires mobilizing the resources and strengthening the will of human societies: scientific, technical and managerial resources on one hand,behaviors and institutions on the other hand.

More of the required methods and instruments than currently appreciated are available; and among those that are not, some of the most critical ones might be developed in time (electricity storage, carbon capture from ambient air, biological rather than chemical technologies in agriculture, etc.).

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

This I will illustrate for three different resources in three different countries:• energy in India • food in Kenya• water in Cambodge

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

Husk Power Systems: providing electricity in rural India

• Bihar, one of the poorest states, > 80% of households deprived of access to electricity

• Husk, byproduct of the rice crop: 75/80% of the 2M tons/year were rotting in landfills

• Husk Power Systems: small husk-fed gasifiers, gas is then burnt to drive a turbine, from which electricity

• Training: Husk Power University

C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

Push - pull systems: protecting crops in Kenya

• a biology-based method of protecting maize • first target: maize stemborers; they reduce yields by 20-40%, even up to 80% • second target striga hermontica, a weed that parasitizes the maize, losses ranging

from 30 to 100% in the infested fields• research led to identifying a tree, silverleaf Desmodium, for the push, and two

varieties of grass, Napier grass and Sudan grass, for the pull • push: Desmodium, intercropped with maize, repels female moths of stemborers; Its

roots emit in the soil a chemical substance that checks the growth of the striga weed • pull: Napier/Sudan grass, planted along the borders of maize-desmodium parcels,

emits volatile chemical substances that attract female moths and make them lay their eggs there, and is home to various predators of the eggs and of the larvae coming out of these eggs

• one million adopters by 2020 a realistic objective

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

Mille et une fontaines: drinking water in Cambodia

• provision of safe drinking water in rural Cambodge

• technology is characterized by innovative sobriety

• production is centered on preexisting communities of consumers

• local plants run by local technicians-managers recruited from the local communities, trained in the Mille et une Fontaines «Academy»

• a central body for dealing with problems that cannot be solved at local level and for geographic expansion (from 60 plants in 2011 to 250 in 2015-6)

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C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change: energy, food, water

Conclusion

• entrepreneurship is a driving force, embodied in small teams of pioneers or in local R&D organizations

• technology is “as simple as possible, but no simpler” (to paraphrase Albert Einstein)

• implementation is centered on preexisting communities of consumers or producers and on underused locally available human and material resources

• duality between the running of the local means of production and the impulse and supervision from the core of entrepreneurship