Appropriate Technology (AT)
Overview & Resource Directory
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AT Primary Applications:
Combating Global Warming & Resource Depletion
Supporting Global Development
Table of Contents
Appropriate Technology (AT) Overview
ATs' Role in Global Development
AT Industrial Revolution 2.0 launches in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
AT Solutions to the Worlds' Greatest Problems, Global Warming & Resource Depletion
Appropriate Technology (AT) Overview
AT is nowadays aka Alternative/Renewable/Green Energy/Technology. ATs' development and implementation was pioneered, in my lifetime, in the 1960s by the Peace Corps, and later the Whole Earth Catalog and its' Berkeley, California store. The Catalog was developed by Stanford University alumni Stewart Brand, both in response to the then burgeoning awareness of the significance of ecology, and to provide AT engineering support to humanities' response, a global "back to the land movement". The movement was our initial response to a recognition of the negative impact we were beginning to be seen as having upon the planet, and was an umbrella covering our first attempts to lower our carbon and energy footprints, by global application and implementation of AT, which movement was the predecessor of, and spawned, today's "green tech" revolution.
AT is a spectrum of the following technologies: Water/Waste Management, Sustainable/Bio-Intensive Agriculture, Natural Building, Renewable/Alternative Energy, Bio-Fuel/Gas, Solar Photovoltaic (PV)/Solar Thermal/Wind/Micro-Hydro Electric Power, Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Solar Water & Space Heating/Cooling & Cooking, Geothermal Heat Exchanger & Hydronic Heating, Solar/Wind Water Pumping, Solar powered/Satellite connected Communications & Computers, Healthcare & Remote Diagnostics, Education & Distance Learning; and Electric Vehicles & Micro-Enterprise.
The core resource and optimal starting point for the relevant subset of AT spectrum technologies, is, for “refresher inspiration” and historical perspective, the former Whole Earth Catalog, (all editions of which are now available online), and it’s descendant offspring, what we use today, the combination for-profit/non-profit organization in Hopland, CA, the Real Goods store/Solar Living Institute (RG/SLI), and their comprehensive “today’s version of the Whole Earth Catalog”, the “Solar Living Sourcebook”, as well as their ongoing “full AT spectrum covering“ bootcamp workshops (whose textbooks are among the best), and finally their annual October 3-day weekend “AT Expo” called “SolFest”. The Real Goods store offers a generally no-or-low-cost consulting desk for help spec’ing and selecting AT projects and gear. The “Solar Living Sourcebook” offers very approachably presented tutorials and “do it yourself (DIY)” procedures for the various technologies, providing everything you need to configure/install/maintain/upgrade Solar/Wind/Micro-Hydro and the like systems (Google Books offers a free earlier version of the book online, albeit with a few pages missing for copyright purposes). The Solar Living Institute handles all the AT workshops, generally presented by their actual network of AT installers and teachers in the area (the workshops are slated to go online circa 2009-2010). “SolFest” trots out all the AT technologies in “up-and-running” exhibits, includes a vendor exhibit area, and offers a free set of 1-hour overview conference seminars covering the AT spectrum technologies, presented under tents on their 12 acre site.
A companion core resource to Real Goods is a spinoff by its founder, of that subset of its products & services that are especially suited for, & tailored to meet the needs of, developing countries (featuring, for example, "jungle-rated" gear), the organization called "The Sustainable Village", a social enterprise driven by applied AT with an emphasis on AT project spawned micro-enterprise.
Two additional primary resource candidates for “today’s version of the Whole Earth Catalog” are the books+websites “WorldChanging” & Architecture for Humanitys' “Design Like You Give A Damn”. Additionally, for ways to build the optimum AT model home, there’s the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s annual "Solar Decathlon", which “joins 20 college and university teams in a competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house" – in 2009 they exhibited the homes on the National Mall, Washington DC, and, on the "Solar Decathlon" website, you can find links to each of the team’s web sites, as well as find, in the “Team House Designs/Technical Resources“ section, the “Drawings and Specifications” of each of the homes. Another great resource is the book “Habitat for Humanity: How to Build a House”, also available in a Google Books Online Edition. Additionally of value, to keep up with current developments across the AT spectrum, are the industry-standard magazines+websites “Home Power“ and “Mother Earth News“, as well as the website “Treehugger”, made up entirely of user contributions, mostly from which I have gathered below a set of links to alternative shelter designs.
An alternative resource for DIY AT spectrum technologies, should the cost of buying state of the art, off the shelf gear prove prohibitive, as is often the case for developing nation villages I work with, is what's commonly referred to as the Peace Corps AT Lib, the collection of all the technologies they’ve developed and implemented over the years, now available on CD/DVD as a set of searchable PDF files. Though the disc set costs a few hundred bucks, they’ve set up an online site where you can scan the list of contents on the AT Lib disks and get the name, title, disk number and file name of the construction plans pdf document. The groups I work with, aimed at helping developing nations with AT projects, namely the organizations “Paths of Native Africa (PONA)“, “Friends of African Outlet (FOAO)“ & “VillageTech“, over time obtained a copy of the AT Lib, so if any desirable construction plans are found from the online search, I can pull the files off the disk and e-mail them to wherever needed.
For a top down, comprehensive engineering plan for what industrial nations in particular can do to implement AT to resolve the global climate and energy crisis, as identified in his earlier work, "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gores' 2009 book "Our Choice" lays out an effective set of strategies. Similarly, Stewart Brands' 2009 book "Whole Earth Discipline" addresses climate change, urbanization, biotechnology & the greening of cities, nuclear power, genetic engineering & geoengineering. For a bottom up, inspirational account of what a developing nation villager can do with the barest essentials to implement AT for the benefit of his village, William Kamkwamba's book, "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind", along with "Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World", are must reads.
For a recommended starting point, take a couple of “Quick Start” overviews, then begin with the “Solar Living Sourcebook”. The Quick Starts begin with, and focus on, Solar PV, and are: (1) VillageTech “Solar Power Exhibit”, a PONA fundraiser “science fair project” style exhibit and slideshow I did showcasing solars’ many applications (2) VillageTech “Solar Power for School PC”, a summary look at the typical scalable Solar PV system the RG/SLI recommends for their northern California clients and workshop attendees seeking to solar power their rural homes, the info having been gleaned from all the solar power workshops they offered that I attended from 2007–2008, with photos and overview notes (3) “FOAO Hidden Villa Sustainable Building Tour”, a report I did on a visit to a Green, fully “AT-loaded“ model home located on the “Hidden Villa Farm” in Silicon Valley, the home named the “Wolken Education Center”; also profiled is a visit to a neighboring Sunset House Green-Idea House. After the Quick Starts, the ”Solar Living Sourcebook” can be previewed through the “Google Books Online Edition”. All of these resources are collected in a “Getting Started“ section at the bottom of the links below.
Whole Earth: Whole Earth Catalogs online
RG/SLI: Real Goods, Solar Living Institute (SLI), Workshops, SolFest / Conference Schedule / Exhibitor Map
RG Books: ”Solar Living Sourcebook"
SLI Workshop Textbooks: “Photovoltaics”, “Quick Card: Electrical Solar Essentials”, “Wind Power”, “Solar Water Heating”, “Microhydro”
Sustainable Village: Website
WorldChanging: Book, Website
Architecture for Humanity / ”Design Like You Give A Damn”: Book, Website
DOE "Solar Decathlon": Website, Team websites, Technical Resources/Team House Designs/Drawings and Specifications
Habitat for Humanity: How to Build a House, Google Books Online Edition
Magazines: Home Power, Mother Earth News
Treehugger: Website
Alternative Shelters:
(Note: These shared public folders of shelter links are a bit cumbersome to use.)
To view a link in one of the folders below:
(1) Click on the link below to get to the folder
(2) In the folder Files list, click a listed url of interest
(3) In the url page that appears, click in the upper left box the “Download ~ www.(url name).url” link
(4) In the File Download “Do you want to open or save…” dialog box, click the Open button to launch the webpage
PreFabs, Compact, Low Cost, Off Grid, Shipping Container, Mobile, Kit
Peace Corps: AT Lib DVD/CD, Online
Al Gores' 2009 book "Our Choice"
Stewart Brands' 2009 book "Whole Earth Discipline"
William Kamkwamba's book, "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind": Blog, Website, Silicon Valley "Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference" presentation
"Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World": Book, Friends of website
Getting Started:
VillageTech “Solar Power Exhibit”
VillageTech “Solar Power for School PC”
“FOAO Hidden Villa Sustainable Building Tour”
(Note: the relevant paragraphs, containing links to photos, describing the “Wolken Education Center” model home, are paragraphs 2 (begins with the text “The Hostel's hillside location…”) and 3. The description of the “Sunset House Green-Idea House” is in paragraph 4 (begins with the text “(2) Open for viewing…”). Report
“Solar Living Sourcebook (Google Books Online Edition)”
ATs' Role in Global Development
After-hours the last several years I've been working as Appropriate Technology Evangelist with NGO "Paths of Native Africa (PONA)", assisting developing nation villages with Appropriate Technology (AT) Projects. AT began as the original "Green Tech" way to deliver modern Western-style technology to remote areas, & do so sustainably with an Energy & CO2 environmental footprint of essentially Net-0. AT comes in 2 forms - in developing/emerging nations without the infrastructure of a utility grid, as AT "Off-Grid", & in industrial nations with grid, as AT "Grid-Tie" - otherwise AT is the same set of universal technologies. Because of this universality & footprint, industrial nations, due of their profound impact on global climate change & resource depletion, are being charged with massively converting to AT, while developing nations are being directed to adopt AT at the onset of their growth towards emerging nations. In fact, Al Gore, after making "An Inconvenient Truth" & joining Silicon Valleys' primary Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), partnering there with Green Tech investor John Doerr, has said he believes that AT is the way out of our global climate & energy problems. Consequently, AT has gone mainstream as "Green Tech" & is the basis for what's being hailed as the 2nd Industrial Revolution.
To develop AT skills, I recently completed a years' worth of Solar Living Institute (SLI) bootcamp engineering workshops focused on the whole AT spectrum including Water Management, Bio-Intensive Agriculture, Natural Building, BioFuel & Solar/Wind/Micro-Hydro Power & Electric Vehicles. As the NGO continued to get requests for help with AT projects, patterns appeared – the requests were always for a varying combination of the same kinds of things. Eventually, from the collection of patterns emerged a spectrum of primary human needs: water, food, shelter, utilities, communications, transportation, healthcare, education, microenterprise & environment. This lead to a discovery, that the human need spectrum rather perfectly matches the AT spectrum - for every necessity/problem in the human need spectrum there is a resource/solution in the AT spectrum. This in turn lead to an inspiration - instead of repeatedly solving the same "one-shot" AT problems, stand back & solve for the big picture: across the spectrum, determine the levels of a persons' actual needs, by asking, "how much water, food, biofuel, solar power, etc., does a person actually need to achieve to survive comfortably?", then provide a set of economical AT resources, scaled according to actual human need. There will be some variation due to factors like culture, family unit size etc, but for people struggling to survive, all that's really needed initially is to get to a "base camp" of comfortable existence, where you are out of danger & your head is above water – anything beyond that is a "gravy" land where people can next choose options to further themselves to achieve prosperity & to flourish.
To "provide a set of economical AT resources scaled according to actual human need", I became aware of the contextual background & scope of the problem by visiting the United Nations in New York several times and learning of various United Nations reports which typically point out that ⅓ to ⅔ of the global population is continually coming up short in various areas of the human need spectrum & living around the poverty line, for example Kenyan subsistence farmers annually earning $400. This suggested the most effective engineering & business model would be inspired by MIT's "$100 laptop", so to get the ball rolling, after my original SLI AT training, I began working with my instructors, & on my own, to start to develop standard, generic, off-the-shelf, potentially assembly line mass producible, "reference design" AT systems, then advance to next-generation designs characterized by an "order of magnitude" reduction in cost, beginning with developing a range of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems to generate electricity for our NGO's on-going village school rebuilding & computer lab project in Nigeria. To report on developments, I've recently launched a new website, "VillageTech", which currently profiles the 1st 3 Solar PV systems for the village school, a large "Solar Power for School PC" system, a small "Solar Power Mini-PV" design & a portable "Solar Powered OLPC $100 Laptop" setup.
Recently my wife Toni, who works at Google in Engineering Education, emailed me of a Google 10th Anniversary special "Project 10100", which Google described as "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible". Google additionally noted, "We'll help bring these ideas to life...We're committing $10 million to implement these projects, and our goal is to help as many people as possible". Google Project 10100 FAQ further noted, "Q: What do I get if my idea is chosen? A: You get good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people...Once we've selected up to five ideas for funding, we will use an RFP process to identify the organization(s) that are in the best position to implement the selected ideas. We will be providing funding to these organizations to implement the ideas". Since my efforts are focused on addressing problems across the spectrum of human needs by applying matching solutions from the AT spectrum, & the United Nations reports identify the greatest of these problems & their scope, this call from Google appeared to me as a direct solicitation to describe my ideas, so I submitted nearly a dozen, arranged roughly in descending order of fraction of global population helped, the first affecting 100% (a global warming CO2 extraction AT), the 2nd affecting 60% (a water contaminant extraction AT), the 3rd affecting 40% (a food bio-intensive agriculture AT), & so on. Google further added, "Thank you to everyone who submitted an idea. We received over 100,000!...We'll post a selection of one hundred ideas and ask you, the public, to choose twenty semi-finalists. Then an advisory board will select up to five final ideas". I have taken all the ideas I submitted & placed them on a VillageTech "Project 10100" page.
KPCB Greentech "The Green Gold Rush"
SLI Workshops PONA Blog (SLI Workshops taken listed at bottom)
Village Tech Village Tech Google Project 10100 page Google Project 10100
AT Industrial Revolution 2.0 launches in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
Silicon Valleys' local weekly newspaper "Metro Silicon Valley", recently ran articles featuring Al Gore on the cover & banners proclaiming "The Future… from the people who brought you the Internet…Silicon Valley's big money and big brains try to build post-petroleum Utopia", as well as 2 cover stories, "The Green Gold Rush...Silicon Valley marshals powerful innovation and big money to fuel an exploding clean-tech revolution" & "Tech to the Rescue...Clean-tech innovators break out a new batch of world-saving, fortune-making ventures". The stories mentioned "last week's GoingGreen conference...600 entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and venture capitalists gathered in Fort Baker all believe they're riding the tip of a huge wave, perched on the crest of a new industrial revolution—one that will remake the world even more profoundly than the last one (the creation of the Internet) and the one before that (the personal computer)", as well as "At West Coast Green this weekend, the big news will be the big money...Gore's colleagues at Kleiner Perkins were in attendance, as were players from KPCB's neighboring VC firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Morgan Stanley sent the head of its green fund. There were probably a dozen or more players from around the world. They and others will be in San Jose this weekend...We used to call these events 'alternative-energy' fairs, or 'appropriate technology' forums; they've been with us since the first Earth Day in 1970. But there have never been people quite like these guys there. Venture capitalists didn't hang with the eco-hippies. Nobody had figured out a way to monetize environmentalism...That's changed...Raj Atluru, who heads up Draper Fisher Jurvetson's green fund, has been in the game since he left Stanford...Draper has invested a half-billion dollars in 57 green businesses worldwide. That makes it the category leader. And it seems to be feeling bullish...Atluru says he has witnessed an explosion in the appropriate-technology space...'My first year at DFJ, we got 30 business plans,' Atluru says. 'This year that number will be in the thousands...This really is the next new thing,' he says." The stories also profiled several cutting-edge new Appropriate Technology developments on display at the West Coast Green event at the San Jose convention center last weekend, including Water Machines that "extract drinking water from thin air"; a "pedal powered vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water for the developing world"; a highly efficient Air Conditioner that "can cool a 2,500-square-foot home using less energy than a cheap hair dryer" using only 600 watts; a windmill alternative, quiet and compact Vertical Wind Turbine; compact & densely packed Green Roofs & Living Walls in which "...quite a few customers...[are]…successfully growing lettuce, herbs, beets, radishes & carrots"; & Home kits & Prefabs including a bamboo house kit & a home built from shipping containers. My wife and I attended the event, which opened with inspiring talks from keynote speakers Governor Jerry brown and Vice President Al Gore. Included below are links to the newspaper stories, the event websites, & the new technologies.
Metro paper stories, "The Green Gold Rush", "Tech to the Rescue"
GoingGreen conference
West Coast Green (WCG), Exhibitor Directory, Guide, Conference Recordings purchase
WCG Keynote speakers' video: Gov. Jerry Brown, VP Al Gore
WCG Exhibit highlights: (Note: 110/220 volt devices below can be solar powered)
Water Machines ("WaterMill" & "Skywater" extract drinking water from the air)
WaterMill (up to 12 liters per day)
Skywater "Island Sky 14", (capacity starting at 4 gallons per day (where humidity 40%, temp 70's F)
"Island Sky 300", (capacity 300 gallons per day)
Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle
"The Aquaduct ("pedal powered vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water for the developing world". -- Aquaduct Blog)
Air Conditioner (600 watt)
Coolerado ("...can cool a 2,500-square-foot home using less energy than a cheap hair dryer." -- "Tech to the Rescue", Metroactive)
Vertical Wind Turbine
Windspire ("Ultra Quiet...30 feet tall...[1.2 kW model produces]...Annual Energy ~2000 kWh...Grid-Ready" -- vendor website)
Green Roofs / Living Walls
"...quite a few customers...successfully growing lettuce, herbs, beets, radishes & carrots in their walls. Some ... using extensions for ...plants with deeper root base...the walls [are] watered...[via] panels...[that] allow water flow from cell to cell within each panel and then from panel to panel in a complete wall. For direct mount wall installations...a drip irrigation line between every row or every second row of panels...For...indoor living walls kits...manual irrigation is contained in the stands. Simply pour water into the top drip tray of the stand... panels are warrantied for 15 years...manufactured with UV protection for extra life expectancy."-- ELT FAQ
ELT, Green Roof, Living Wall, Irrigation Details
Shelter (Home Kits / Prefabs)
Bamboo Living (bamboo house kit)
Home built from Shipping Containers
SG Blocks "Harbinger": Showhouse, floorplan
Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) next gen
KAMA ("high-performance building panels for floors, walls and roofs...a simple system of interlocking monolithic panels, comprising a poly foam core sandwiched between two engineered wood panels" -- ICSEC 2007)
AT Solutions to the Worlds' Greatest Problems, Global Warming & Resource Depletion
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and US Vice President Al Gore, both awarded & jointly sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on Global Warming, have identified global warming as the greatest threat facing humanity.
After Global Warming, organizations like US President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative have coined the phrase Global Resource Depletion to describe the spectrum of the next most pressing problems facing humanity, issues over water, food, etc. This spectrum essentially matches both the earlier mentioned UN Reports, (which lists these problems in descending order of percentage of global population affected), and the spectrum of human needs, but by being a global resource depletion spectrum of problems with shortages in meeting those human needs.
Al Gore, as mentioned previously, has said he believes that AT is the way out of our global climate & energy problems.
Googles' recent 10th Anniversary special "Project 10100", as noted earlier, was described by Google as "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible". In response to this call, I wrote above, "Since my efforts are focused on addressing problems across the spectrum of human needs by applying matching solutions from the AT spectrum, & the United Nations reports identify the greatest of these problems & their scope, this call from Google appeared to me as a direct solicitation to describe my ideas, so I submitted nearly a dozen, arranged roughly in descending order of fraction of global population helped, the 1st affecting 100% (a global warming CO2 extraction AT), the 2nd affecting 60% (a water contaminant extraction AT), the 3rd affecting 40% (a food bio-intensive agriculture AT), & so on…I have taken all the ideas I submitted & placed them on a VillageTech "Project 10100" page". This suite of technologies, if efficaciously & globally applied, could effectively eliminate these greatest of human problems in a relatively short time.
VillageTech Google "Project 10100": Webpage
Proposals:
Submitted
01) End Global Warming & Climate Change Now
02) End Global Lack of Clean Drinking Water Now
03) End Global Starvation & Extreme Hunger Now
04) End Global Homelessness Now
05) End Global Lack of Access to Electricity Now
06) End Global Lack of Access to Healthcare Now
07) End Global Lack of Access to Education Now
08) End Global Poverty Now
09) End Global Isolation & Communication Lack Now
Un-Submitted (too late for idea development/submission by deadline) "Stubs"
10) End Global Sub-Standard Housing Now
11) End Global Lack of Transportation Now
12) End Global Lack of Sustainable Living Now