Integration and Development Brazilian-style

Solar Energy Transforms Villages in Argentina’s Puna Highlands

By Daniel Gutman
"On moonless nights it was very difficult to walk around this town," says Celia Vilte, a teacher from San Francisco, a highlands village of just 54 people in the extreme northwest of Argentina whose centre is not a town square but 40 solar panels, which provide one hundred percent of its electricity.

Combining Biogas and Solar, the Best Energy Deal in Brazil

By Mario Osava
"Biogas is the best energy, it has no contraindications," and if you combine it with solar it becomes "the best energy business," at least in Brazil, says Anélio Thomazzoni.

In Southern Brazil, Need Becomes an Environmental Virtue

By Mario Osava
The state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil is the largest national producer and exporter of pork and this year it also leads in exports of chicken, of which it is the second-biggest producer in the country.

Biogas Makes Pig Farming More Sustainable in Southern Brazil

By Mario Osava
Biogas has the potential to provide 36 percent of the electricity consumed in Brazil or replace 70 percent of diesel if purified as biomethane, according to the Brazilian Association of Biogas and Biomethane (Abiogas).

Producing Energy from Pig and Poultry Waste in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Romário Schaefer is fattening up 3,300 pigs that he receives when they weigh around 22 kg and returns when they reach 130 to 160 kg - a huge increase in meat and profits for their owner, a local meat-processing plant in this city in Brazil.

Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Meals

By Emilio Godoy
Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico.

Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Pigs, already the main source of income in this small municipality in southwestern Brazil, now have even more value as a source of electricity.

Using Renewable Energy and the Circular Economy to Fight Poverty in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
On the outer edges of Buenos Aires proper, where the paved streets end and the narrow alleyways of one of Argentina’s largest shantytowns begin, visitors can find the En Haccore soup kitchen.

Solar Collectors and Solidarity Change Lives in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
"This is the best thing ever invented for the poor," says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina.

Chilean Schools Recycle Greywater to Combat Drought

By Orlando Milesi
Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region.

Indigenous Communities Head Towards Energy Self-Sufficiency in Guatemala

By Edgardo Ayala
Because the government has never provided them with electricity, indigenous communities in the mountains of northwest Guatemala had no choice but to generate their own energy.

Renewables to Become the Norm for the Caribbean

By Desmond Brown
Jamaica and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are embracing renewable energy as part of their plans to become decarbonised in the coming decades.

Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemala

By Edgardo Ayala
In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

The Amazon Seeks Alternatives that Could Revolutionise Energy Production

By Mario Osava
A large steel wheel, 14 meters in diameter and 1.3 meters wide, could be the energy solution of the near future, generating 3.5 megawatts - enough to supply a city of 30,000 people, according to a company in the capital city of the state of Amazonas in northwest Brazil.

Militarised Government Attempts to Resume Mega-projects in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Two military-inspired initiatives are leading Brazil's new government, which includes a number of generals, down the path of mega-projects, which have had disastrous results in the last four decades.

Access to Water Is a Daily Battle in Poor Neighborhoods in Buenos Aires

By Daniel Gutman
"Look at this water. Would you drink it?" asks José Pablo Zubieta, as he shows a glass he has just filled from a faucet, where yellow and brown sediment float, in his home in Villa La Cava, a shantytown on the outskirts of Argentina's capital.

Local School Is a Model for Energy and Water in Rapa Nui

By Orlando Milesi
A school in the capital of Easter Island (Rapa Nui, in the local indigenous tongue) gives an example of clean management with the use of solar energy, rainwater recovery and an organic vegetable garden, as well as rooms and spaces built with waste materials.

Solar Energy Provides Hope for Poor Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires

By Daniel Gutman
Solar panels shine on the rooftop terraces of 10 neat buildings with perfectly straight lines and of uniform height, an image of modernity that contrasts with the precariously-built dwellings with unplastered concrete block walls just a few metres away, with rooms added in a disorderly manner, surrounded by a tangle of electric cables.

Mexican Village Wants to Turn Thermoelectric Plant into Solar Panel Factory

By Emilio Godoy
Social organisations in the central Mexican municipality of Yecapixtla managed to halt the construction of a large thermoelectric plant in the town and are now designing a project to convert the installation into a solar panel factory, which would bring the area socioeconomic and environmental dividends.

Solar Energy Begins to Light Up Favelas in Rio de Janeiro

By Mario Osava
“We can’t work just to pay the electric bill,” complained José Hilario dos Santos, president of the Residents Association of Morro de Santa Marta, a favela or shantytown embedded in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

Local Innovation Facilitates Solidarity-Based Biogas Networks in Cuba

By Ivet González
Black plastic pipes, readily available on the mainly empty shelves of Cuba’s shops, distribute biogas to homes in the rural town of La Macuca, buried under the ground or running through the grass and stones in people’s yards.
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