Reimagining Resilience
Through decentralised renewable energy solutions, rural entrepreneurs see growth, especially in the face of human-induced climate change.
Bajju, a small Rajasthani town in Bikaner district receives a meagre 230mm of rainfall every year. Needless to say, providing fresh fodder to livestock is a huge challenge for farmers here. Twenty-seven-year-old, Pramila Kumari, a resident of Bajju whose main source of income is selling the milk from her camel and cows is no exception. Earlier my cattle used to get only dry fodder for most of the year and that affected the milk yield,” says Kumari.
In 2021, SELCO Foundation in collaboration with Rajasthan-based, NGO, Urmul Trust, setup a decentralised, solar-powered hydroponic fodder station at Kumari’s homestead. Ever since, Kumari has been able to provide green fodder to her cattle through the year. As she says, “Now with this hydroponics system, I’m able to give them fresh fodder every day and the milk yield has doubled. It has also opened up time for me since I don’t need to go to the market to buy fodder. This hydroponics system has completely changed my life.”
Similarly, in Dudda village located in Mandya district, 160 kilometres from
Bengaluru, 39-year-old, S Chandrashekar, has benefited hugely from simple, solar-powered innovations. Since the SELCO Foundation helped him install cool-roofs for his cattle shed as well as a solar-powered milking station, Chandrashekar is not only seeing increase in his earnings but his cattle are healthier too. “The cow shed has improved a lot. Earlier, many calves used to die because the shed was too hot for them. The cows were also unable to eat properly because of the heat and this affected their milk yield,” says Chandrashekar. He adds, “After installing the cool roofs, the
cows are much happier and this has resulted in good yields. The solar milking station allows me to collect milk without much labour or relying on electricity from the grid. The pandemic affected us also like everyone else but these changes have reaally helped us recover.”
These innovative, decentralised, and usually solar-powered solutions are all part of the Sustainable Energy led Climate Action Program (SELCAP). They are changing the lives and livelihood for thousands of families like that of Chandrashekar and Kumari who are facing aggravated stress in all walks of their life due to increasing heat, driven partly by human-induced climate change.
As Rachita Misra of the SELCO Foundation says, “We want to create a positive feedback loop that works at all levels both from a climate and development perspective. Activities around climate change are mostly focused on mitigation and high polluting industries.
While we do that, 2 things are being missed out:
- needs of the people who are being affected by climate change and provide them with solutions,
- design those solutions in a manner that they don’t become a cause of
climate change in the future.
For example, when we did some initial calculations for the program, we realised that meeting the agricultural cold storage gap in the country would require approximately 29 new power plants to come up. Instead of doing that, SELCAP proposes that we meet that need by using DRE, and do it in a manner that not just mitigates future climate risks but also has other co-benefits of food wastage, income improvement and ownership by farmers etc.”
The various faces of SELCAP
From decentralised, solar powered cold storage units to powering remote hospitals using decentralised solar power, the SELCAP program has made decisive interventions in various walks of rural and urban life. Broadly working to innovate in the fields of agriculture, animal husbandry, health, and providing various cooling solutions, among the most successful innovations and interventions by SELCAP include but are not limited to hydroponics systems, vaccine storage systems, food processing units, and innovative cooling solutions for homes, schools, and hospitals.
All SELCAP innovations are decentralised and powered by solar energy.
Instead of providing stop-gap solutions, the program focuses on creating an ecosystem based-approach, so the benefits from the innovations can organically be passed on to the community rather than just be restricted to one individual or family.
As Misra says, “When we speak about an ecosystem based approach, it is really about trying to see how a solution gets absorbed in a manner that is sustainable. By sustainable, we mean that the problem is solved and doesn’t need us to repeatedly intervene.” The solutions under SELCAP also go beyond just presenting solar powered technologies. As Misra adds, “It is about setting up the conditions under which the solutions we bring forward make sense — economically and socially. So it is not just setting up a solar-powered hydroponics system for cattle feed. It is also about financing the system, training the farmers to use the system, and eventually scaling up the system so others in the community benefit from it.”
A counter to centralised, large-scale renewable energy
The Government of India has made it clear that they have an ambitious target of producing 450 GW of Renewable Energy by the year 2030. While these ambitions are commendable and essential for India to make a meaningful contribution in the fight against climate change, they also often ignore how the end-user, especially in large tracts of rural India is benefiting (or not) by the country’s purported ‘green transition’ in the energy sector. For most small entrepreneurs and small business people spread across rural and semi-urban India, inconsistent and unstable supply of energy is still a real risk that jeopardises their business on an everyday basis. This is the gap that SELCAP seeks to fill.
“The grid, unfortunately, is not reliable in many parts of India. And where it is reliable, it’s slowly becoming expensive for many. This affects rural lives and livelihoods disproportionately. Power cuts can cost a lot of business damage as well. If you are not able to supply the goods on time or if a customer comes in and I don’t have power right now, they will go to the next person and that is a customer that is lost forever.”
Rachita Misra, SELCO Foundation
SELCAP addresses these systemic issues by innovating and designing customized solutions for each end user. As Misra adds, “In terms of RE, the moment you change the idea to lean towards the end user, your way of innovating changes and you can think of decoupling growth from energy. This is because your focus is the need of the end user- need from technology, financing and in the context of their aspirations. A Centralized grid pushes the conversation on increasing supply and increasing consumption. With decentralised renewable energy, people have the autonomy on generation and consumption. This pushes the sector towards efficiency and affordability. Energy provision can be done in varying different ways- DRE can play a huge role in improving lives and livelihoods of our most vulnerable populations in a more affordable and sustainable way.”
Mandya-based farmer, Chandrashekar, and thousands of other benefactors of SELCAP are testimony to this. As Chandrashekar says, “Earlier, I had to pay for labourers and that cut into my profits. I’m able to do the work myself now. SELCO also helped me get a loan through a micro-finance company to set all this up. Even though it was a large investment for me in the beginning, I feel it was completely worth it. I am thinking of expanding now, getting a few more cattle. More people in my village are also asking me about solar power as well. I think this is the future for farmers like me.”
The inception report for the ‘Sustainable Energy led Climation Action Program’ can be accessed here.
Contact: Rachita Misra, rachita@selcofoundation.org or write to info@selcofoundation.org
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