Kerala, K'taka projects in Ashden finals

Kerala-based Biotech and Karnataka-based SKG Sangha will compete with contenders from Bangladesh, China, Ghana , Laos PDR, Nepal, Peru, Philippines and Tanzania at the finals of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, which will get underway in June.

The contenders will vie for five awards and more than 200,000 pound of prize money earmarked to help project expansion and replication in other communities both locally and nationwide, a statement from Ashden Awards said.

The Ashden Awards for sustainable energy is the world's leading green energy prize and has selected ten renewable energy pioneers from across the globe to enter the final stage of the competition, which takes place in London next month, the statement said. Former US vice-president Al Gore will present the prizes at the awards ceremony to be held at the Royal Geographical Society in London on June 21.

Kerala-based Biotech has been selected for tackling the problem of dumping of food waste in the streets through the installation of biogas plants that uses the waste to produce gas for cooking and, in some cases, electricity for lighting. The company has already built and installed as many as 12,000 domestic plants, 220 institutional plants and 17 municipal plants that use waste from markets to power generators. Of the 12,000 domestic plants, as many as 160 of them use human waste from latrines in a bid to avoid contamination of ground water.

Biotech was set up in 1994 in a bid to end the dumping of waste in public places and looked at ways of managing organic waste to produce alternative sources of energy. Four years later, Biotech launched its innovative biogas programme, which uses unwanted food waste and other organic waste to produce gas for cooking and, in some cases, to produce electricity.

Karnataka's SKG Sangha has been selected for improving the lives of thousands of rural families in Karnataka by supplying them with both dung based biogas plants for cooking.