Energy for people wants to popularize clean energy in Togo

While the world is riveted on Paris for the United Nations Conference on climate change, the COP 21 initiatives multiply throughout the world to try to act at the local level. This is most noticeable on the African continent, where Governments have little to offer. An example of positive and effective initiative this week: the case of Energy For People, who tries to promote access to renewable energy in Togo.

Social project launched by a young Togolese company, Energy For People is designed to provide solutions for access to renewable energy, especially in rural areas.

Photovoltaic lamps, solar water pumps, biogas, substitutes for wood heaters or charcoal for cooking, the project is helping to publicize and disseminate new cleaner energy technologies in Togo.

Most of the villages where Energy For People operates lack access to basic energy and even more to the so-called green energies. The social start-up hopes to provide them with solutions but also contribute to create community and rural groups in order to spread information and training to communities, schools and directly into homes.

The goal is to help rural people to learn to produce their own energy; for example to produce charcoal, not with wood but with peat, with sawdust from wood or cardboard, locally available materials and less valuable than wood, to fight massive deforestation.

The biogas, which is obtained by the fermentation of organic matter of animal or vegetable origin in the absence of oxygen, can allow to heat the family kitchens at a lower cost and without having recourse to wood combustion, more polluting and less protective of natural resources.

Daily solar radiation in Togo is then ideal for the production of electricity from the sun.
Energy For People began to sell and install solar panels to individuals in the country. The company hopes quickly to install solar kits (solar panels, batteries, regulators, converters) in schools, hospitals and farm cooperatives.
An example of sustainable and lucrative initiative at small scale, Energy For People should quickly inspire many other initiatives in Togo and in west Africa.

Image courtesy of Energy For People