Wild Card Blog - Energy of the Future to Combat the Global Poverty of Today

    In keeping with this past week's LEAP Conference themes, I wanted to devote this Wild Card Blog to energy technology that is aimed at alleviating (and, in the long term, eliminating) poverty in peripheral regions and nations.


First, however, I think a visual is necessary to demonstrate the inequality of access to electricity around the world:

Territory size shows the proportion of all people with some electrical power in their homes.

One is able to to observe that electricity access is highly concentrated in the Global North, whereas it is almost nonexistent in regions such as Central Africa.


Another interesting perspective, in terms of electricity use, is found in satellite imagery of the Earth:

Map of the location of permanent lights on the Earth's surface.  It is an image that was compiled using data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

In particular, the following image exemplifies the stark contrast between the developed world and the developing world:

It is important to note, however, that these images do not suffice in completely illustrating the vastness, or the intricacy, of the inequality of the availability and use of electricity globally.

Yet, these images are able to provide a foundation in understanding why millions of children live in unimaginable conditions, such as these children in the slums of Angola.






Within the past few years, there has emerged promising technology that may present a viable solution to combating poverty in regions of the world like Ethiopia and India.  Inventor Shawn Frayne presents his exploitation of aeroelastic flutter phenomena as a renewable, small-scale energy resource with large-scale implications:


http://video.popularmechanics.com/services/player/bcpid1214137061?bctid=1233395616






To the left is a collage of images displaying the capabilities of such technology.










For more information about this technology, you can visit the Humdinger Wind Energy (founded by Frayne) website here.


As we are all aware, technology is dynamic; it is constantly progressing.  Thus, it is exciting to imagine where technology such as Frayne's Windbelt is headed, and what this could possibly mean for those who lack access to electricity. 


This article gives an update on Shawn Frayne, and the status of Windbelt innovation.  I believe that one line from the article illustrates the future of this technology: "[In twelve months time] the current generation of Windbelt technology is 100 times more efficient than the original".  Bear in mind that the article was posted on December 18, 2009; imagine the improvements since that post date.


Consider the implications for the Global South.

Like many children in the Mathare Valley slum of Nairobi, Kenya, this boy is doing his school homework by candle-light due to a lack of electricity.