In the Sahel, 40% of people do not have access to drinking water; we can use solar to help.

Solar panels perched on the roof of Tanghin Dassouri's medical clinic have lit two decades of births and deaths for the 60 000 people in this cluster of villages just outside of Ouagadougou.
"It's feeble but it's better than nothing," said Sister Georgette Ilboudo, one of the nurses who tends to patients in the mud-walled clinic with the faint buzz of the solar current in the background.
Weak or not, energy experts believe that with better investment in the informal private sector that engages the majority of Africans, panels like these could breed a revolution in renewable energy for the world's poorest-- and many believe sunniest continent, new24.com reported.
Mindful of rising prices for fossil fuels and Africa's shrinking forests, as well as the growing population of unemployed, African heads of state have begun to take a closer look at the feasibility of developing the alternative energy sector.
Creating jobs in renewable resource management was among key recommendations earlier this month at an anti-poverty summit of some 20 heads of state who gathered in Ouagadougou under the aegis of the African Union.

Making the Most
"If the states take concrete action to support evolving activity in the sector there will come a time that we can use local materials and artisanal labour to harness the sun," said Issa Bikienga of the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS).
"Here we are with this ample resource and we are not using it to our advantage," for pumping water, lighting and refrigeration, he added.
"In the Sahel, 40% of people do not have access to drinking water; we can use solar to help."
Advances in technology have helped bring the price of photovoltaic panels substantially lower, helping to light villages across the continent where grid electricity is a distant promise for one-tenth of their 1980s-era cost.
Still, at 600 dollars for a pair of 40-watt panels, they remain beyond the reach of rural Africans, most of whom survive on less than one dollar a day.
Add in the cost of import tariffs and pages of pedantic regulations, "and you are looking at a perfect way to squander something that could be of such benefit," said Malakilo Diasso, who in 1979 was the first solar panel dealer in landlocked sunspot Burkina Faso.

Courage Needed
"If you have a centralized, high-powered system you can light up a village of 20 000 people. What is needed is the courage from government to say that this is feasible."
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) champions microcredits to develop the sector as a way for rural landholders to pay for their solar energy in instalments.
"Right now it means that Africans have to finance 20 years of electricity up front," noted Eric Usher, a UNEP renewable energy expert.
"Why should a poor farmer in Mali have to do that while someone in California does not?"
Cutting tariffs, which in the nine CILSS countries average more than 100%, is the easiest ways to boost the sector, says Lincoln Dahl, whose US-based African Energy company distributes panels wholesale to small and medium-sized companies around the continent.
"Solar materials are duty-free in Kenya, the market is competitive, the margins are thin and it is working well," he said by telephone from the extremely sunny US state of Arizona.
"Renewables are good energy for countries--if they make it easy and let it roll."
Such enthusiasm for solar energy may be lost on Tanghin Dassouri, where electricity poles were knocked into the ground two months ago.
"It might be two years until the cables are installed, so for now we will be happy with the panels," said Pastor Etienne Kabre.
"But as soon as we get electricity, well, I think the panels will have to go."

When Bill Mitchell looks at the world of portable computing he sees beyond the array of powerful new features that are showing up in notebook PCs, handheld computers and mobile phones. Instead, he sees an energy crisis.
"It's even worse than the fossil fuel crisis," says Mitchell, vice president of mobile platform solutions at software giant Microsoft.
Consumers want an array of features that use a lot of power--bigger and brighter display screens, DVD players and recorders, high-bandwidth Wi-Fi radio. But they also want their devices to get smaller, and power source space is one of the first things to get cut from a new product design to make that happen. New chip designs are easing the crunch now, but with battery chemistry reaching its limits, perhaps only a new power source will truly make it go away. And that might be an opportunity for fuel cells to overtake batteries and plug-in chargers, forbs.com reported.
Direct methanol fuel cells, which combine methanol and water to produce a lot of energy, can fit in the palm of one's hand. That makes them seem like a natural for small devices. Companies like MTI Micro, a unit of Mechanical Technology, and Neah Power, which includes Intel among its investors, have started specifically to build fuel cells for mobile electronics. MTI Micro says its Mobion fuel cells, unveiled earlier this year, will last two to ten times longer than a standard lithium based battery on a single charge.
But the fuel cells face plenty of obstacles, from the technology itself to its marketing. Atakan Ozbek, an analyst at ABI Research of Oyster Bay, N.Y., who follows fuel cells, says batteries are likely to rule the portable power roost for at least a decade or more. In his most recent forecast he argues that only 13% of the world's laptops will be powered by fuel cells by 2012.
One of the hurdles will be consumer acceptance. Consumers are used to buying batteries anywhere or charging them with cheap and convenient AC power. "If you live in a developed country, where power is plentiful and convenient, then batteries in their current form are still pretty compelling," says Alan Nogee, a market analyst with InStat/MDR in Boston. And even if a fuel cell lasts longer, when the methanol/water mixture runs out, so does the juice. Some part of it will have to be replaced.
Alan Soucy, chief operating officer of MTI Micro, views it as a minor inconvenience. "Consumer behavior will be easy to change when they're no longer waiting to get their product recharged," he says. "You'd be going from carrying cords and a brick of a power supply to carrying a few cartridges in your briefcase."
To make fuel cell cartridges as readily available as batteries are now, MTI Micro and others are teaming up with battery makers like Gillette, which owns the Duracell battery brand, to create a manufacturing, distribution and retail structure. MTI Micro says its also on track to deliver by the end of the year a working fuel cell to Intermec, a unit of Unova that will be used in a radio frequency identification tag reader that should hit the market sometime next year.
Then there's the issue of safety. The US Department of Transportation is pretty finicky about the kind of materials it allows on commercial airliners. Methanol happens to be flammable, so fuel cells will to take a lot of time to jump through regulatory safety hoops.

An EIA report indicates that Nigeria's oil revenue earnings will be $25.8 billion, behind that of Saudi Arabia which is expected to drop to $80.9 billion.

Nigeria is expected to rank the 3rd highest revenue earner amongst member nations of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) from oil sales put at $27 billion, behind Saudi Arabia expected to earn $91.7 billion, and Iran which is expected to earn $27.5 billion by the end of this year.
However, Nigeria's earnings from crude oil sales are also expected to become the second highest amongst members of the cartel in 2005, even though earnings during the period are expected to be less than that of the preceding year.
An EIA report indicates that Nigeria's oil revenue earnings will be $25.8 billion, behind that of Saudi Arabia which is expected to drop to $80.9 billion.
The forecast from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) also indicates that the United Arab Emirates will earn $26.3 billion from oil revenues this year, while Venezuela is expected to earn $25.8 billion during the same period under review, allafrica.com reported.
It is also expected that Iraqi oil export revenues will fetch the country over $17.7 billion indicating an 85 per cent increase from the previous year's figure put at $9.6 billion.
If all goes according to projection, OPEC could earn a whooping $286.4 billion indicating a 19 per cent increase over that of last year.
The EIA report also gave indication that OPEC's overall oil exports this year will increase by 4.6 per cent, to reflect strong global petroleum demand, especially from China, the United States and India.
In a related development, it was gathered that west Africa's sweet crude has had another strong month of buying for October delivery despite lower US demand.
The key driver for strong purchases of west African sweet crude has been rising demand for middle distillates following the approach of winter. This has helped keep west Africa's lighter grades at hefty premiums.
Energy Intelligence disclosed that after a flurry of buying in the week ending September 10th nearly all West African grades sold f.o.b have cleared, except one of Bonny Light, and a couple of cargoes of Angolan Palanca and Girassol.
Asian refiners which cleared up a substantial amount of the lingering heavy sweet crude late last week are also expected to load up to 1.6 million barrels per day in October, despite Brent's hefty premium over Dubai which will normally render brent linked grades uncompetitive.
However, refiners have focused on the high price and scarcity of Asia's sweeter and lighter grades, which have been trading at hefty premiums to Dubai and Brent, bolstering the relative attraction of West African crude.
The Energy Intelligence also disclosed that Chinese imports of West African crude which averaged 450,000 barrels per day last year disclosed that volumes are expected to rise substantially in the future owing to rising demand for motor fuels and Beijing's plans to cut sulfur in gasoline and diesel next year.
It was disclosed that China's provincial refineries have limited desulphurization capacity so they will need to run more sweet crudes--which typically have a low sulfur content to meet the new specifications which call for a 0.05 percent sulfur limit on gasoline from July 2005.

While experts have debated the costs associated with developing advanced nuclear power generation, the first exhaustive study examining the economic competitiveness of nuclear power has been completed by the University of Chicago and it shows that the future cost associated with nuclear power production is comparable with gas and coal-based energy generation.
The principal findings of the Chicago study demonstrate that future nuclear power plants in the United States can be competitive with either natural gas or coal. Whereas the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for coal is $33 to $41 per MWh and $35 to $45 per MWh for gas-fired production, new nuclear plants would have costs of $31 to $46 per MWh once early plant costs are absorbed, yahoo.com reported.
Currently, nuclear power accounts for 20 percent of the nation's energy mix, second only to coal at 50 percent. Natural gas is a close third by meeting 17 percent of America's energy needs. The LCOE is the amount invested to cover operating costs plus annualized capital costs of operating a nuclear generating facility.
"This study shows that nuclear power can be a competitive source of energy production in the future and will help meet our environmental goals," said Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow. "We appreciate the University of Chicago's exhaustive analyses."
Expansion of nuclear power in the United States is a major objective of the Administration's National Energy Policy. In addition, the Department of Energy initiated the Nuclear Power 2010 program, a joint government-industry cost-shared effort involved with identifying sites for new nuclear power plants, developing advanced nuclear plant technologies, evaluating the business case for building new nuclear plants, and demonstrating untested regulatory processes.
The study notes that the principal economic barrier to nuclear power will be the ability to address the elevated costs associated with building and operating the first few nuclear plants. Those early plant costs, which can include "first-of-a-kind" engineering costs and the elevated construction and financing expenses expected for the first U.S. nuclear plants initiated since the 1970's, disappear by the time a third or fourth plant comes online.
The study also notes that the costs estimates for generating in the US compare favorably to the cost of generating nuclear energy worldwide.
This independent study, sponsored by the Department of Energy, was performed by professors and students of the University of Chicago's Department of Economics with support from DOE's Argonne National Laboratory and reflects considerable contact with the investment community, the electric utility industry and other experts.

The North-East is ideally placed to become the center of the UK's renewable energy industry, the director of environmental group Greenpeace will tell a major conference in the region.
Stephen Tindale, one of the world's leading authorities on renewable energy, says the region has the skills and the infrastructure to become a prominent force, potentially bringing thousands of jobs to the North-East.
The Greenpeace executive director will outline the prospects for the region at a two-day Renewable Energy conference on Teesside next week.
Tindale told northern business daily: "We are particularly interested in the North-East because of the skills base the region has and it would make a particularly suitable place to develop a big renewables industry. The North-East has a long industrial past and has expertise in the offshore oil and gas industries and the renewables industry will use a lot of the same skills, icnetwork.co.uk reported.
"Also, much of the east coast is suitable for offshore wind farms because it is quite shallow and the sea bed is quite flat."
The North-East already has an offshore wind farm at Blyth in Northumberland while Middlesbrough's Marine Projects International, formerly Mayflower Energy, operates the world's largest offshore wind farm installation vessel. A further wind farm is planned off the coast of Redcar and regional development agency One NorthEast has set up a regional center of excellence in new and renewable energy (NaREC), which is at the forefront of technology testing facilities for wind, wave and solar power research.
Greenpeace has commissioned a detailed report due to be published next month into the potential economic and environmental benefits of building up the North-East's renewable energy sector.
A previous study conducted in 1999 estimated that between 25,000 and 30,000 jobs could be created in the UK by 2010, the date the Government has earmarked for 10pc of the country's energy to be produced by renewable means. Simon Reddy, of Greenpeace, who has been involved in the commissioning of this October's report, said: "Over 70,000 people are employed in the European wind industry. Two thousand are in the UK, but we have one of the most ambitious renewable energy schemes in Europe.
"The North-East is very well placed to be a centre of excellence for offshore wind technology."
The Renewable Energy conference will take place at Gisborough Hall on September 15 and 16 and will feature a range of UK and world experts in renewable energy addressing the economic and environmental impact of the industry.