Here is a brief history of the ongoing Light A Billion Lives (LaBL) campaign. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) North America has joined hands with TERI India to brighten the lives of the power impoverished across the world through Lighting a Billion Lives campaign.

According to the statistics available at the campaign website, over 1.6 billion people in the world lack access to electricity and roughly 25% are in India alone. A commitment to this effect was made at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, held in New York during 26–28 September 2007. The campaign is inspired by TERI’s commitment to global sustainable development and creation of innovative solutions for a better tomorrow. Through the campaign, TERI plans to take solar lighting devices around the world to rural communities that lack quality lighting systems and have to depend on traditional resources like dung cakes, firewood, crop residue and kerosene for their various energy needs.

Inadequate lighting not only is an impediment to progress and development opportunities, but also has an adverse impact on the environment and health of billions of people. TERI aims to provide 200 million solar lanterns to rural households across the world, touching one billion lives, which presently use kerosene or biomass for meeting their most basic lighting needs.

The campaign aims to bring light into the lives of one billion rural people by replacing the kerosene and paraffin lanterns with solar lighting devices. This will facilitate education of children; provide better illumination and kerosene-smoke-free indoor environment for women to do household chores; and provide opportunities for livelihoods both at the individual level and at village level. The solar lanterns will also provide better illumination and eliminate the health problems associated with kerosene lanterns, such as pulmonary diseases and poor eyesight. In terms of physical targets, it translates into 200 000 000 solar lanterns in use, assuming that each solar lantern benefits five members of a family.

The campaign targets all communities across the world that lack access to modern and clean sources of lighting. Through this campaign, local entrepreneur-driven delivery channels are created for distribution and servicing of solar lanterns to rural communities, for whom kerosene is the predominant fuel for lighting—not only in households but also in small enterprises such as shops, local bazaars, tuition and coaching centres, and cottage industries. The campaign, which would help mitigate carbon emissions and the threat of climate change, will cover - besides India and Africa - less developed South-east Asian countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, said Dr R.K. Pachauri, chairman of The Energy Research and Resources Institute (Teri).

The campaign uses solar lanterns that have CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) as well as LEDs (light emitting diodes) for dual purposes. While CFL provides bright illumination for tasks such as studying and cooking; LEDs provide general low-level illumination during the whole night. The solar lantern, specially designed for the campaign, lights up for 4–5 hours daily using CFL and another 6–7 hours using LEDs upon full charge of its battery.

The campaign offers local and global environmental benefits. Each solar lantern in its useful life of 10 years displaces the use of about 500–600 litres of kerosene, thereby mitigating about 1.5 tonnes of CO₂. However, since a solar lantern provides a much superior quality of illumination as compared to kerosene-based devices, it is prudent to compare it with lighting devices powered by grid-based electricity. Accordingly, each solar lantern is capable of saving about 180–200 kWh (kilowatt-hour) of electricity annually at the user-end, which translates into 280 kWh at the generation end, taking into account high technical and commercial losses. Thus, in its useful life of 10 years, each solar lantern mitigates about 2.8 tonnes of CO₂.

A recent check with the LaBL website on the progress of the campaign shows that there are currently a total of 122 latterns made available at 15 villages.

Indian Bollywood film actors Ritesh Deshmukh, Priety Zinta, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan pose with a Solar Lanterns as they pledge their support to the ‘Light a Billion Lives’ campaign during a press conference to announce the ‘Unforgettable’ world tour, in Mumbai on July 11, 2008.

Source: Vettri .Net Photo Gallery, LaBL, TERI (India)