Pete Davis

I got into campaigning with People & Planet and Amnesty whilst at studying engineering at university. In 2009 I volunteered at Amnesty International before moving on to start my own campaign 'Part-Time Carnivore'. I'm now a Campaign Assistant at Practical Action. I work on energy access – raising awareness and support for ending energy poverty.

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Posts by Pete

• If only bonfire night was every night

  November 4th, 2011

  Collecting wood for a bonfire once a year can be a lot of fun, but imagine having to collect enough firewood to fuel your home all year round. And imagine if all your neighbours had to do the same. You wouldn’t be able to rely on picking up broken branches off the ground.  Chopping down trees would be your only option.

   

  This is the reality for around 2.5 billion people who still rely on traditional fuels for cooking and heating their homes. And on top of the burden of collecting fuel, many of these people ultimately pay for such basic energy provision with their lives.

  The smell of smoke that permeates the evening air on the 5^th of November is an evocative part of the bonfire night tradition. But imagine your kitchen filled with smoke from a basic three stone fire every day. Lung disease caused by indoor smoke kills more people than malaria, most of them women.

  Practical Action works with poor communities to solve these problems. We help people make more efficient stoves that require less wood. We help people build smoke hoods that reduce indoor air pollution. We work with small business to turn agricultural waste into clean burning fuels for cooking and heating.

  We are helping millions of people in this way, but we are also campaigning to help the billions that we cannot reach directly.

  As partners of 2012 UN Year of Sustainable Energy for All we are raising awareness of these problems and calling on world leaders to commit to ending of energy poverty by 2030.

  So before you lock your pets in the house, light the bonfire and write your name with a sparkler, we would like you to join our campaign: Make Your Point in support of Energy for All.

  

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• Make the Call: Energy for All

  August 22nd, 2011

  Would you like to help us end energy poverty?

  There are positive signs coming from the European Commission that they genuinely understand the importance of energy access in enabling development.

  This gives us an opportunity. With public support, we can translate this understanding into a substantial commitment to get energy to poor communities on a scale that makes a real difference to global energy poverty. The European Development Commissioner, Mr Piebalgs, controls the biggest development budget in the world and we need people to call on him to commit to energy for all by 2030.

  We have made a short and simple video to show how access to modern energy makes daily life easier – something that many of us take for granted.

  Please make the call and share this video:

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• Energising MPs

  June 23rd, 2011

  Practical Action is all about getting things done, so chatting with politicians is not something you might expect us to be doing. However, to enable us to get more done in the future, it is worth making sure there is political support for the type of work we do.

  To this end, I recently accompanied Ernest Mupunga, Director of our Southern Africa Office in Zimbabwe, to Portcullis House in London where he met with four UK MPs to talk to them about energy access in sub Saharan Africa. He spoke to Joan Walley, Ian Davidson, Pauline Latham and Jeremy Lefroy – MPs with a particular interest in sustainability, poverty and Africa.

  Ernest explained that energy access is essential to improving health, education and economic opportunities.  He described how Practical Action involves communities in the implementation and maintenance of technology that provides them with sustainable local power supplies. He told stories of the transformational effect that energy can have on a poor community.  He also described the severity of energy poverty in Africa, where more than 70% of people live without electricity.

  

  Ernest Mupunga with Joan Walley MP

  It was clear from our conversations that, even amongst these international-development-savvy MPs, energy access is not a well understood issue. However, after hearing what Ernest had to say the MPs were very supportive. This is a good sign and the more politicians that understand the importance of energy access, the more support we will get.

  

  Ernest Mupunga with Pauline Latham MP

  These meetings were just a first step in raising awareness of the problem and the solutions in the UK parliament. Elsewhere, we have made more progress. The goal of energy for all by 2030 is one we share with the UN and, with your help, we are encouraging the EU to commit to it.

  Practical Action has been working with hundreds of poor communities to improve their access to energy for decades. We have the technology. If we can get political will on our side, it is possible to end energy poverty.

  

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