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Zayed Future Energy Prize Winner ‘Positive and Aggressive’
ABU DHABI - At 2 am on Tuesday morning, Dipal Chandra Barua’s phone started ringing. The calls were not about pressing business – his wife calls him a workaholic – but congratulations for the $1.5 million Zayed Future Energy Prize for his 13 year-old Bangladesh-based solar energy company.
The Bangladeshi economist used the same diffused approach to solar energy production that Muhammad Yunus, who earned the Nobel prize for peace in 2006 for microfinance, brought to business loans. Barua’s company employs 3,000 engineers and several thousand more women who work from home, staying in their native villages with their families.
Barua gestures widely when he talks about his company, moving his left hand in a circular motion to represent the women who earn an average of USD 100 per month soldering components for photovoltaic components in their homes. His right hand circles at the same time, representing the Bangladeshis who now pay the same price for clean solar energy they would pay for kerosene.
His engineers are all electrical engineers, but he said he likes to call them “social engineers.” They train women to the technical work.
“They have to be careful to train women, preserving cultural values,” he said.
While developed countries with high labour costs are not necessarily suited for Barua’s business model, he said he is working on developing it for other markets in
By 2015, he said he wants to reach 7.5 million people with solar energy, one million with bio-mass projects and another million with improved cooking stoves. “This is what I am dreaming,” he said. “I am positively aggressive.”
Sitting next to him, his wife Sikaha, Barua shook her head.
Yeah, one hundred per cent. Oh my god.”
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