Hope: a renewable resource

The journey to a more sustainable future can feel long and arduous sometimes. Every piece of good news seems to be overshadowed by several pieces of bad, and it’s hard to remember that hope is a renewable resource.

Fortunately, I know that each year I will get a little booster shot of optimism in the form of the Ashden Awards.

The 2016 Awards were announced recently, and I thought I’d have a look and see what inspirational lessons we can draw from this year’s winners.

The UK Awards winners this year were:

• Cosy Home in Lancashire – a fuel poverty partnership between 14 local authorities. Here we can take the lesson that sustainability and social issues are not respecters of borders – it can feel frustrating that national or local boundaries can affect the ability of an individual to get the help that they need. Working across borders ensures better support for people and – I hope – economies of scale and reduced project costs for the partners.
• Low Carbon Hub, Oxfordshire – another partnership approach here, bringing together architects, professionals, practitioners and householders who want to create low and zero carbon homes. A real hub of good practice, bursting out of a local community that housed both expertise and passion.
• Open Energi and Tempus Energy – Open Energi helps large power users to shift demand in real time. This is the smart future happening now. Tempus Energy uses smart equipment to connect customers with the cheapest available energy prices. We often talk about the smart future and not knowing how it will look and feel, or how people will participate in the market. Companies like these are doing the exploration for us. 
• RE:FIT London and Repowering London – I’ve bundled these two together, even though they won separate awards. What interests me here is the interplay between a London wide, Mayoral scheme (RE:FIT) and a community led renewable energy scheme in Brixton and Hackney. The top down and the grassroots living side by side and making London’s energy system more resilient and more dynamic because of it.

The International Award winners represent amazing effort, creativity and persistence, often in the face of weak institutions and other crushing social priorities.

• Bridges to Prosperity - Remember last year’s floods in the Lake District? Numerous old bridges were washed away, leaving communities cut in half and facing long journeys to get to essential services. That’s everyday life in many parts of the world. Bridges to Prosperity not only builds bridges but also teaches communities how to build and maintain these connections to healthcare, education and employment.  In total the organisation has completed 180 bridges in the past 14 years, serving more than 800,000 users.
• Frontier Markets and Greenlight Planet (link is to Linked In page as a glitch on their main website today) - Alongside connectivity, the provision of light can have a transformative effect on society, development and education. Two international awards reflected this. In India, Frontier Markets provide high quality solar lamps and systems to hard-to-reach villages, using a network of trained women called Solar Sahelis. The organisation has sold over 100,000 in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, Greenlight Planet has reached more than four million households in remote regions of the world with its reliable solar products and are well on their way in their mission to deliver light that everyone can afford. 
• Nazava - Access to clean water remains one of the biggest challenge for too many people. Nazava water filters enable lower income households in Indonesia to purify their well or tap water without the need to boil it by burning wood or using electricity. This reduces disease and sickness, lowers household costs and reduces CO₂ emissions.
• On a larger, more corporate scale, award winners Shanghai Landsea Planning & Architectural Design Co.Ltd is a leading practitioner of green buildings in China, boasting more than 40 projects totalling 2.5 million m². And SunFunder in Tanzania is unlocking reliable continuous capital for beyond-the-grid solar companies by providing investors the opportunity to lend to solar businesses and has so far provided over $8 million of finance in ten countries. 

So the lessons I’m taking from this year’s Ashden Awards winners?

• Partnerships matter. We can achieve more together than we can apart.
• The grass roots alongside the grand. Ideas can come from anywhere and sometimes it’s the upstarts that have more resonance and greater success with people than the top-down policy initiatives. We need to be open to both and encourage a system where they can work alongside each other.
• We need to connect with people. People face any number of challenges every day, from "first world problems" to significant battles for health and wellbeing. Environmental sustainability in itself may not be a priority for many people, but we should work to ensure that it is wrapped up within whatever solutions we are offering.
• Sometimes it’s about the basics. Too many people struggle every day for the basics (in whatever terms). We can discuss another day whether food banks and fuel poverty should even exist in the fourth richest economy in the world… Helping people to access – and then to own or manage – the basics brings dignity and opportunity, not to mention a fairer balance for all.
• Keep looking forward. It is easy to look back and lament – if only we still had that policy or that funding stream… Perhaps the harder, but more important thing, to do is to look forward, to have the vision to see what a sustainable future looks like and to have the passion and commitment to do something to make it into reality.

#itshappening

Share your thoughts - and your inspirational ideas - via Twitter: @se2limited