TCP + MIT = Harvesting Waste for Energy & Poverty Alleviation

“Waves are not measured in feet and inches, they are measured in increments of fear.”

— Buzzy Trent, big wave surfing pioneer.

 

Even though 2013 looks to be the size of that wave, we say, bring it on!

Why is that? Because, in the words of Bodhi, played by Patrick Swayze in Point Break, “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.”

Let’s just say that after almost 40 months since we paddled out sea, the big waves are finally starting to form on the horizon.

Consider our latest project.

One of our first blog posts back in 2009 was about Amy Smith, the leader of MIT’s D-Lab whose Ted Talk and vision emboldened us to pursue our dream.

And here we are, more than three years later, entering into a collaborative agreement we’re calling the Harvest Fuel Initiative, or HFI.

We call it “harvest fuel” because we are extracting (harvesting) energy from all sources of discarded solid biomass available, from crop residues, charcoal dust, sawdust, even waste paper. We are effectively making solid biomass fuels (briquettes) from basically anything that can be burnt and is not being used.

The initiative is a collaboration with D-Lab’s newly launched Scale-Ups division, which is, “was launched in 2011 to help poverty alleviating technologies from MIT reach the developing world at scale for significant social impact.”

It’s been incredibly rewarding and exciting to work with Scale-Ups director Saida Benhayoune and her team in putting togther the framework for HFI. Saida brings the rigor of a world class institution with the precision of an engineer, which she is!

So  what is HFI? The short answer is that it is a joint effort to accelerate the replication and scale-up of early-stage social enterprises working on efficient technologies and renewable fuel solutions for people who depend on wood and charcoal for their daily cooking and heating needs. That’s the elevator pitch.

HFI is now up and running in two countries in East Africa: Uganda and Tanzania. Over the coming years we plan to invest financial resources and provide technical support to entrepreneurs that are taking a market-based approach to getting better stoves and better fuels into the hands of the energy poor. And although our focus is on East Africa right now, we hope and expect to expand to other geographies soon.

So who are our grantees? Our first group of social entrepreneurs includes Betty Ikalany in Uganda (who we first blogged about over a year ago) and ARTI in Tanzania(also the recipients of much digital ink on our website.)

These are entrepreneurs doing excellent work. By the way, if you are a social enterprise working on better stoves and better charcoal briquettes, drop us a line at info (at) charcoalproject (dot) org

The Scale-Up program has committed $100K to HFI and TCP is on the hook to raise that and more over the coming year.

We’ll be blogging a lot more and dedicating real-estate on our website to HFI over the coming weeks and months, so do check back in to track our progress.

If you’re interested in becoming an investment partner in HFI, please drop us a line at info@charcoalproject.org.

It’s a BIG wave!

While HFI is real, here, and ambitious, we also have two other big projects in the work. But we’ll talk about those in our next blog, so stay tuned!

So wax your boards, slap on some sun block, and join us in the water because as Bodhi says,

“Look at it! It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, man! Let me go out there and let me get one wave, just one wave before you take me in. I mean, come on man, where I am I gonna go? Cliffs on both sides! I’m not gonna paddle my way to New Zealand! Come on, compadre. Come on!”

Wishing you all the best in 2013!

Kim, Sylvia, Nina, and Christina