(Photo from Syscor)

One of my readers sent along a link to this company, PowerSource. Because of a start-up project the foundation I work for is involved with using biomass energy in rural Sri Lanka, it was great to get this e-mail and actually see something along the same lines that has worked. It seems they've developed a rural community electrification program in the Philippines over the last several years in order to provide electricity to around 700,000 households through microelectrical grids. According the the website, the electrification program:

*Employs conventional generation technology that runs on environmentally compliant low-sulfur diesel fuel.

*Power generators are noise attenuated to minimize audial impact .

*Configured for 24 hours dispatch availability with redundant capacity.

It's also great that they put everything out there on the site, easy to see, including their hybrid funding structure. As with the project I'm involved with, community selection criteria are very important. One difficulty we've seen is some villages aren't interested in the biomass gasifier technology because they think it will postpone them from getting on the government run grid in Sri Lanka even longer. Even though the grid may be a couple of kilometers away, and has been so for a few years, they are still holding out hope that it will come 'one of these days'. Other times local politicians promise they'll bring the grid to the village. It never comes. Building up strong village societies is another important part of the project, and seems to be a part of the PowerSource project as well. It's a great model, and six years in now, could give us something to shoot for.

In other news ...

*Nextbillion wonders if the U.N.'s $100 laptop program is exploiting the poor.

*Razib Ahmed at South Asia Biz looks at Nepal's examples to follow in implementing biogas technology, as well as how greener fuels are the only eventual answer for India's polluted cities.

*Architecture and Environment: Is Sustainable Development Feasible? will be the theme of a discussion wtih John Mutter on June 5th in New York.

*Iowa company Hydrogen Engine Center Inc hopes to make gasoline obsolete.

*From Green Building, news that eco-villages are springing up all over the world.

*Framing climate change issues in a new way, at Open Democracy.

*The Neoliberal 'Rebirth' of Development Economics, at the Monthly Review.

*Is Global Capitalism Morally Defensible? Check in at St. Maximos Hut.