All photographs courtesy of Bryony Livingstone

Our chairman, Lord Stone of Blackheath, launched an initiative last year to help Palestinian farmers access the UK fresh food market. This initiative, ‘Moon Valley’, has already achieved notable success. West Bank farmers’ produce (initially fresh herbs, but to be expanded to peppers, tomatoes and more) is now available at Sainsburys, M&S and the Co-op.

Lord Stone asked us to spend some time with the Moon Valley farmers to investigate opportunities for helping them with resource management (particularly water and power) and sustainability. We made this trip towards the end of August, and the following is a very condensed summary of our findings.

Palestinian communities in the West Bank have low living standards and poor life opportunities. Their main source of earnings is farming, helped by a favourable climate and very fertile soil. Serious problems however are faced in the shape of limited access to water, restricted ability to export their goods and a high cost of energy.

The Jordan Valley region is unusual in that it combines fairly well developed ‘economic’ infrastructure (roads, communications, access to grid electricity) with severe levels of poverty and poor ‘social’ infrastructure (notably schools, clinics). A major issue is the cost of electricity, which at roughly 33 US cents per kilowatt hour, is twice the European norm and three times the American.

The cost of energy – be it grid electricity or petrol (which is also expensive, roughly £1 per litre) – affects all aspects of the farmers’ lives. It raises overall cost of living; it lowers their competitiveness versus the Israeli settler farmers (who reportedly receive large discounts on utility costs); and it affects schooling and healthcare. Classrooms are baking hot ovens most of the year round, resulting in high drop-out rates, which cannot be good for long term peace prospects.

Can we help? Many NGOs are active in supplying small scale wind and solar solutions to the communities in the West Bank (we met with some of them). This is good and suitable technology for healthcare and schools, and we will look for ways to support these efforts.

The big opportunity we spotted, however, was in the area of biomass waste. This is something we are very interested in, and we are of course conducting pilot projects in this field in the UK, Africa and India (more on these later).

Farmers in the West Bank are burning off thousands of tonnes of agricultural waste which – as per the Indian model – is potentially a valuable source of power. During our visit we examined large quantities of maize, palm, tomato and vine waste, any and all of which could be directly pelletised and burned in 100 kw gasifiers to produce low cost electricity.

Photograph of tomato stalk waste taken on our trip to the Valley

The main issue affecting any potential siting of a biomass power plant in the region is Government authorisation and planning permission. Lord Stone has already started work on this, and feedback so far has been very positive on the Israeli side.

Our next step will be to collect samples of the principal kinds of waste and have them chemically analysed at Ben Gurion University. We aim to do this by the middle of October. None of the biomass waste available is ‘unusual’ – most types have already been converted into solid fuel elsewhere in the world. We therefore expect, with the assistance of SSR India, to begin preparing a project plan that will aim at delivering low cost electricity to farming co-operatives and many households.

Examination of other kinds of waste with Fahdi, local farmer

At the moment we envisage a pilot project of around 500 kilowatts, which is fairly small. As a proof of concept, however, it would be enormously significant for the people in this region.

Tags: Ben Gurion University, Biomass, Lord Stone, Palestine, West Bank

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