OnIslam.net

Sustainable energy is the need of the hour especially with fossil fuels being spoken about in negative tones today, with the fear of rising Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. So, to meet the UNEP Sasakawa Prize winner for 2009/2010 in Bali, Indonesia was a great honor.

The Sasakawa prize is given in recognition to a project where lives are changed through sustainable innovations. The UNEP Sasakawa Prize, worth US$200,000, is given out annually to applicants who have invented sustainable and replicable grassroots projects around the world.

The winners are selected by an illustrious panel of four including Nobel peace prize laureate and UN messenger of Peace, Wangari Maathai. Others in the jury included UNEP executive director Achim Steiner, Nobel chemistry laureate and 1999 Sasakawa winner Professor Mario Molina, and Ms. Wakako Hironaka, member of Japan’s house of Councilors. The UNEP Sasakawa prize is sponsored by the Japan-based Nippon Foundation.

Sameer Hajee, one of the two winners, engineered his winning design through his company Nuru Designs which he founded in 2008. He worked as a microprocessor design engineer in Silicon Valley, California and as a telecom engineer for Afghanistan’s first mobile phone network provider, Roshan, in Kabul.

Hajee has a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from McMaster University in Canada and an MBA from INSEAD, one of the world’s leading business schools. He also studied at the Wharton School in the US through the INSEAD-Wharton Alliance. He is a Canadian national with native roots in Kenya.

Charging Employment

Young and handsome, Hajee said that he had successful trial runs of his invention in Gujarat, West India and in Kenya.

“I am totally committed to social enterprise and the technology I develop is to help the poor rural population. Two billion lack access to energy sources across the developing world. In India I visited them and found they spent a quarter of their monthly salaries on kerosene,” he told OnIslam.net.

Although the government subsidizes kerosene, still it forms a significant part of people’s tiny income. Kerosene also has a very harmful impact on the environment. Hajee wants to remove kerosene from these rural households.

“You see kerosene is also carcinogenic and that hits so many women and children who breathe these kerosene fumes in their closed, tiny huts.”

What Hajee has invented is off-the-grid energy. The concept is being replicated in Kenya and India and is spinning off employment opportunities.

Hajee's invention empowers the locals to avoid their dependence on fossil fuels, which causes GHG emissions and helps to alleviate their poverty.

When asked what he was going to do with the US$100,000-prize, Hajee smiles and says, “I want to use it to scale up my operations in Rawanda, Kenya and India. I have used local bicycle parts to make the machine.”

The machine looks like two cycle pedals fitted on a box and is raised on a stand to pedal on. The machine charges a set of pod light bulbs which can be used for task-based lighting. For instance, studying, looking after a baby at night, and the toilet. It can charge five light bulbs to provide to forty hours of light. To charge the bulbs, a person pedals it with their feet at a comfortable speed and not necessarily faster than one rotation per second.

Hajee was proud that his invention tries to use human-power efficiently.

“That is not a tiring speed for a normal man. The machine costs US$150 which is bought by an entrepreneur with micro-finance. The rental is 20 cents per light bulb and the entrepreneur can pay back his loan in six months. In India, there are five entrepreneurs in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.”

Jury member and Nobel laureate Wangaari Maathai said to the gathered audience at the Prize giving ceremony that the panelists judging the winners looked at various parameters before choosing the winners. The main point is that the invention had to be inexpensive to build and can be replicated in different countries.

The innovations had to respond to the needs of the marginalized who are most often dependant on basic resources to live. These projects also empower the locals to avoid their dependence on fossil fuels, which causes GHG emissions and helps to alleviate their poverty.

As for Hajee, he was very proud of his innovation.

“It is one thing to develop an idea, but it is quite another to be there to see its success, [and to help] overcomeme poverty with a simple tool.”