The Ashden Awards were unveiled here on Thursday at a ceremony the winners of the world's leading green energy prizes.
India's Technology Informatics Design Endeavor (TIDE) won the title "Energy Champion" and a prize of 40,000 pounds (some 80,000 U.S. dollars).
The TIDE develops and adapts wood-saving stoves for small businesses in South India. To date, 110,000 workers enjoy better conditions thanks to the 10,000 products the company has supplied, saving around 43,000 tons of wood each year.
Six other international pioneering renewable energy schemes were awarded 20,000 pounds each by the Britain-based Asheden Awards for Sustainable Energy, to promote replication and expansion of sustainable energy projects.
The six winners were Brazil's Cooperativa Regional de Eletrificacao Rural do Alto Uruguai Ltda which uses mini hydro to increase electricity supply on local grid, China's Renewable Energy Development Project which brings affordable and high-quality solar lighting to rural China, Ethiopia's Gaia Association which provides clean and safe ethanol stoves for refugee homes, India's Aryavart Gramin bank in Uttar Pradesh which helps customers to buy solar home systems, Tanzania's Kisangani Smith Group which develops two types of efficient biomass stove, and Uganda's Fruits of the Nile which helps small rural farmers harness the power of the sun to dry and export fruit that is surplus to local demand.
While Bangladesh's rural development bank Grameen Shakti won the 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award and a prize of 15,000 pounds. Grameen Shakti is a not-for-profit company that promotes, develops and popularizes renewable energy technologies in remote, rural areas of Bangladesh. It has installed 150,000 solar home systems and is adding around 5,000 new systems each month and has an ambitious goal of installing one million solar home systems and10 million improved cooking stoves by 2015.
Meanwhile, eight British projects also won the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.
The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy was founded in 2001 by the Ashden Trust, a Britain-based charity that works to increase the use of local sustainable energy worldwide.
The competition is held annually to identify and reward outstanding and innovative projects in Britain and developing countries which tackle climate change and improve quality of life by providing renewable energy and energy efficiency at a local level.
Source:Xinhua
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