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the flow

MEMBER PROFILE: SIBAT, A FILIPINO PEOPLE'S NETWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY AND LIVELIHOODS

9/9/2015

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In the realm of integrated approaches to community-based micro hydro, we take inspiration from SIBAT, a country-wide Filipino network and people's organization advancing community-based renewable energy applications, sustainable agriculture techniques, and water access solutions.

Organization Evolution
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SIBAT's Filipino name, Sibol Ng Agham At Teknolohiya, translates as a wellspring of science and technology.   In 1984, several non-government organizations, including science and technology leaders  of the country, synergized to help alleviate the struggles of rural communities with the use of appropriate technology   The endeavor established SIBAT as a network to coordinate capacity building for organizations that develop technology for rural areas.  Over the next decade SIBAT led the country's movement for sustainable agriculture, in empowering communities to return to organic farming with improved techniques.  In 1994, SIBAT began capacity building work on rural energy and water solutions.  
Achievements

With a relatively small staff (~25 persons), SIBAT's achievements have been impressive: 
  • Its progress in sustainable agriculture is rooted in its participatory guarantee system (PGS), assisting farmers to transition to organic farming; the Sibol People's Place, helping farmers to sell organic produce; and the Mangarita Organic Farm, serving as a regional center for hands-on learning. 
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Sibol People's Place in Manila.
  • It achievements in community-based renewable energy systems (CBRES) in micro hydropower include the installation of 30 projects in 5 regions of the Philippines, ranging from 2 - 30kW of output.  A total of ~450 kW of micro hydropower is being generated for ~2400 households.  SIBAT also implements community-based solar PV and wind projects.  In addition, SIBAT facilitates access-to-water projects involving hydraulic ram pumps, gravity flow, and solar PV.
  • Building upon its CBRES experience, SIBAT has established CREATech, a center to support CBRES initiatives on the ground through training, research, and local fabrication.  The research and innovation helps to develop optimal technical processes and services for CBRES.  Fabrication is aimed at building local capacities to develop renewable energy technology products.  These integrated components have the overarching goal to ensure reliability and sustainability of CBRES.

  • At the core of its technology work, SIBAT has nurtured a local network of exceptional community-level change agents, passionately skilled in collaborating on sustainable solutions within their communities.
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SIBAT Executive Director Victoria Lopez and Project Manager Shen Maglinte with CREATech member.
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Members of SIBAT's networks of community-based change agents.

Challenges

With 30 years of commitment to rural communities, SIBAT's work faces the following challenges and opportunities:

Practice-to-policy

In the late 90’s and onward, SIBAT joined efforts for policy development on sustainable  agriculture.  It participated in the crafting of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Organic Agriculture Law which took effect in 2012. While the law is in place, it lacks mechanisms to strengthen the small-scale, organic farmer.  SIBAT faces a similar uphill in reforming the country's renewable energy law, so that small and community-based power producers are part of the national strategy. To scale community-based energy projects, SIBAT seeks to change the current Renewable Energy policy. Towards this goal, it has taken the lead in facilitating partnerships and exchange events among practice, policy, advocacy, and academic stakeholders.
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SIBAT's 2015 CBRES strategy event held with GreenPeace and the Climate Action Network.
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SIBAT's workshop venue at the Mangarita Organic Farm.
Rehabilitating from typhoon-damage

With increasing climate change, devastating typhoons frequent the Philippines, particularly SIBAT's focus regions.  While funding for new projects comes easily, support for rehabilitating already commissioned projects is a challenge.  SIBAT is working to better document the need for and approach to rehabilitating CBRES projects, by reaching out to appropriate donors and finding ways to work within each community's financial strengths.

Want to be Involved?

Over the years, SIBAT has nurtured many visiting volunteers to firsthand learn from rural communities and make meaningful contributions.  SIBAT continues to accept volunteers.  Details can be found here.



By HPNET members Victoria Lopez, Shen Maglinte, and Dipti Vaghela
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CONTEXT PROFILE:                                                                     THE MICRO HYDRO LEGEND OF NEPAL

9/9/2015

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PictureMicro hydro village in Nepal. Photo: UNDP
Four months ago, our hearts went out to the people of Nepal, when two devastating earthquakes uprooted life within minutes.  While the nation walks the long road of rehabilitation ahead, we continue to take great inspiration from Nepal's legendary role in advancing micro hydropower.

Brief History

Home to the majestic Himalayas, Nepal's terrain along with its tumultuous political history set the backdrop for people-powered infrastructure solutions.  Remote communities nestled among the peaks, perennial streams, and fertile terraces form the fabric of the landscape.  The DNA of these and other mountain peoples' communities reaps of resilience.  Generations have long utilized water to reduce drudgery, e.g. water mills for agro-processing and gravity flow to irrigation. 

Electricity was introduced in the country in the early 1900's, but decades later most of the country remained without it.  Staring in the 1960's, European aid groups initiated micro hydro technology transfer, including refurbishing water mills to generate electricity.  This effort planted the seeds that evolved into Nepal's capacity to generate over 30MW from pico, micro, and mini hydro projects that serve ~300,000 households.

PictureHPNET's fact sheet on Nepal's micro hydro evolution.
Factors for Success

In today's era of SE4ALL and other initiatives with ambitious rural electrification targets, let's take a hindsight look at the factors that led to Nepal's ability to scale hydro mini-grids.

Long-term and Appropriate Funding

Often, multi-lateral donors  for energy access work are forced to spend large funds in a relatively short period of time.  This structure and culture of funding is perhaps inherited from the developed world's notion of infrastructure development, e.g. large projects that require big money, fast.  However, in the world of well-established decentralized renewable energy, the pace of funds utilization exponentially grows.  If in the initial phases, funds are carefully invested into developing local capacities, then later the implementation progress climbs fast. 

This has been the case in Nepal.  Exponentially over the last 20 years, multi-lateral donors have supported Nepal's micro hydropower development with $54 million.  As shown on the HPNET Nepal fact sheet, the initial funding came in lesser amounts and with longer duration. 

PictureTraining of local practitioners. Photo: Nepal Micro Hydro Development Association
Strengthening the Local Private Sector

Nepal's scaling up of its micro hydro sector can be attributed also to the capacity building of local practitioners (e.g. a local companies or community organizations that design, implement, and sustain the project).  Both the government and donors took time to understand the local private sector and identify ways to strengthen it, over the long-term with appropriate financing.  The government established the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) as the central agency to facilitate energy work among government, non-government, and private sector 
organizations. Practical Action, an international NGO with rich perspective on local technology, works closely with AEPC to develop appropriate local capacities.  Local groups, such as the Center for Rural Technology, People, Energy, and Environment Development Association (PEEDA),  and others also have supporting roles.  

In this way, technology transfer has led to a professional local industry that can produce quality turbines, civil works, transmission lines, and electronics, in order to implement many projects in parallel.  In fact, the local private sector became strong enough to organize itself into a vibrant association to called the Nepal Micro Hydro Development Association (NMHDA).  Running efficiently with low overhead costs, NMHDA helps the local private sector to continuoulsy find ways to address its knowledge needs.

Iterative Policy Design

With each wave of funding dedicated to micro hydropower, AEPC has examined the results of the previous policy, in order to identify modifications for the next iteration.  Rather than a one-off policy design not amenable to changes, Nepal's program designers continue to create better financing mechanisms for improved micro hydropower.  With each iteration and its challenges, new partners have been established, such as Energising Development (EnDev) Nepal's work on developing debt financing, and the Clean Energy Development Bank's (CEDBL) support for grid-connected micro hydro.  Further, the iterative process of policy design has made it possible for the government and private sector to innovate technology, e.g. connecting multiple projects into a mini-grid.

PictureMicro hydro community member transporting turbine. Photo: Nepal Micro Hydro Development Association
The Road Ahead -- Resilience in Action

Among other factors, Nepal's impressive ability to organize multi-actors to give life to a professional, rural energy private sector -- and iteratively improve it as the context requires -- reflects it is more resilient than ever to overcome the vast devastation left behind by the earthquakes, as well as contribute insight towards development of the region.

Rehabilitation

The earthquakes caused nearly 100 micro hydro projects to be shut down, with nearly 250 others being impacted.  The well-established organizations (mentioned above) are identifying and addressing near and medium term rehabilitation needs for micro hydro projects.  This rapid assessment of damaged projects also include a failure analysis to recommend changes for future micro hydro projects.  This work is in addition to their immediate relief work.  With basic needs for food and shelter, impacted communities in coming months will start re-building their micro hydro systems with support from AEPC and partners. 

Regional Exchange

The highly experienced practitioners, policy makers, and program administrators  in Nepal are committed to exchanging with regional contexts -- to both contribute and learn from them.  In 2010, US AID established the Regional Centre for Excellence in Micro Hydro (RCEMH) to strengthen the sector both in Nepal and regionally.  HPNET also serves as exchange platform to bring in the hindsight of the Nepal micro hydropower context to less developed regions, e.g. practice-to-policy exchange in Myanmar.  For more on Nepal's micro hydro progress, check out UNDP's video here.

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HPNET members from Nepal, (left) Krishna Prasad Devkota, Nepal Micro Hydro Development Association; Sanjay Sharma, Regional Centre for Excellence in Nepal; Vishwa Bhushan Amatya, Practical Acton; Madhusudhan Adhikari, Alternative Energy Promotion Centre; and Bikash Pandey, Winrock International. Photo: Patrick Pawletko

By HPNET Members Madhushudhan Adhikari (AEPC) and Dipti Vaghela
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