Meet Our Team

Lijau understands that energy poverty is one of the greatest handicaps to equitable development outcomes. We also acknowledge that man-made climate change is one of the biggest risks facing humanity. Lijau addresses energy deficiency while not making man-made climate change worse.

First comes the Needs Assessment. Lijau will work with communities, donors and  governments national and local to define the challenges and opportunities for individual locations. Is there an endemic health issue related to poor quality drinking water? Are there significant quantities of under-utilised and neglected coconut trees? Is there a market for various coconut products? If the answer is ‘yes’ ….

Then comes the project plan. How about a steam engine that burns coconut husks to produce sufficient electricity to both run a small coconut processing facility, and run a water purification unit? Such a suite of equipment would be a community owned and operated asset. It would provide an economic incentive for the maintenance of the coconut trees, generate livelihoods and income deriving from the sale of coconut products. And it would provide community level health outcomes due to access to clean water. All made possible by unlocking the energy contained within under-utilised biomass resources.

Once approved and funded, Lijau will commission the manufacture and import of any necessary equipment not available within country. Lijau will conduct community mobilisation and awareness raising and training. Eventually, Lijau will oversee installation, and conduct follow-up Monitoring and Evaluation.

Follow-up field visits to communities and the cooperatives is an important tool to ensure that feedback can be fed back to manufacturers, governments and Lijau itself on how improvements can be made, greater efficiencies achieved and opportunities realised.

Important! Lijau believes that energy for energy’s sake is not the solution. That is, it is not the energy per se that we seek to deliver, but its smart, targeted application. Lijau understands that solar energy, a biomass boiler, mini-hydro system and battery storage systems are platforms for the generation and delivery of energy. The positive impact is in the application of that energy. Hence, Lijau partners with ‘apps’ like crop driers, absorption refrigeration units, water desalination units among others to ensure that whatever locally available energy available to a particular community is most efficiently delivered to the most high impact purposes.