The Barrier Removal to Achieve the National Energy Road Map Targets for Vanuatu (BRANTV) project was awarded the National Energy Globe Winner in 2021.
There were more than 2,500 projects aimed at protecting our environment have been submitted by more than 180 countries to the Energy Globe Award, which is the most significant environmental award worldwide.
The BRANTV project submitted its application for entry into this globe energy competition by the Project Manager, Ms Doreen Leona in the month of January 2021. The submission included photos and the project documentation.
According to the Globe Energy Award committee, both the quality as well as the diversity of the submitted projects was overwhelming.
“Our jury of experts is enthusiastic. However, it was a very difficult task to choose the best from the best,“ they said.
“That is why we are proud and happy to inform you that your project – BRANTV has been selected as National Winner. Our most cordial congratulations on this national Energy Globe Award!“
In the submission for the award, Ms Leona gave a summary of the projects information on its objectives and implementation activities that gave success to BRANTV winning this global energy award.
“The Government of Vanuatu through the Ministry of Climate Change are taking concrete actions to mitigate climate change by promoting the use of Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) technologies. These will help contribute to achieving sustainable energy, energy access, energy savings and greenhouse gas reduction and with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Department of Energy is implementing this energy project called ‘Barrier Removal for Achieving the National Energy Road Map Targets of Vanuatu (BRANTV),” she said.
“Since November 2019, BRANTV has installed community-scale Photovoltaic (PV) solar systems types with capacities ranges between 1100 W to 4950 W in 17 communities, these communities have a total population of 6828 of which 47% are women-With co-financing from Government, the BRANTV project is providing incremental costs so that the baseline activities achieve their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. So far, the Government has achieved 84 tons CO2 emissions reductions annually and 30,046.8 litres of diesel fuel savings from PV solar systems installed in these 17 communities.”
These RE contributes to green electricity made readily available for productive uses in the community such as use of deep freezers, copra and kava processing machines, coconut grinding tools, sewing machines, computers and printers for subsistence and commercial purposes. BRANTV has also provided means of additional income earned from productive uses which are set aside to cater for operational and maintenance costs.
The BRANTV also provided technical training on operations and maintenance of PV solar systems that have been delivered to 66 local operators of which 15 of these training participants are women. These local operators are responsible for daily operations and maintenance of the solar systems giving support to the Management committee. Management models differs from each community and are selected based on their visibility, economic strength, organization setup, affiliations to national registered entities, period of their existence and are also chosen by the Chief councils. The management of each project sites have signed Memorandum of Agreement (MoA’s) with the Vanuatu Government with clear set of responsibilities for the management of these RE Off-grid systems.
BRANTV is initially supporting 40 communities with solar Photovoltaic (PV) and pico hydropower systems in Vanuatu.
All national winners are published on the Energy Globe website: www.energyglobe.info/national
