Elaine Forde

The aim is to assess possibilities for the implementation of hydrogen as an energy innovation and accessibility solution for sustainable development in Africa. Hydrogen as a fuel presents opportunities for tackling climate change. Continuous refinement and advancement of existing inventions and materials for reducing greenhouse gas emissions towards carbon neutrality should therefore be guaranteed. Findings from the remote Mkaratigwa Village corroborated the observation that there existed intense depletion and disruption of forests and ecosystems, revealing the need to embrace green hydrogen energy technologies for reducing carbon footprint and prevailing energy poverty mostly already afflicting girls, women and children. Work has to continue to ensure hydrogen energy satisfies the Sustainable Development Goal 7 criteria that encompasses affordability, reliability, sustainability and accessibility. Much more work remains on reducing barriers and motivating opportunities and enablers for improved embraceability of the technology in Zimbabwe and developing countries across the world. Production of hydrogen has nevertheless been reduced due to public policy shifts amid intermittent power supply and acute outages. Cost of grid power supply was impacting negatively on hydrogen production and more-so on its greening. Worldwide, renewable cleaner energy technologies including for hydrogen, are proved to be largely concentrated in the global North. Ironically to the contrary, critical mineral resources and materials that constitute the bulk of feedstock for brands original equipment manufacturers and suppliers, originated from Africa.

Living Off-grid in Wales examines the new policy context for off-grid rural development by contrasting the policy approach with the activist version of going off-grid. The examples examined in the book feed into much broader debates about the possibility of planning for sustainable development. This book brings clarity to the notion of off-grid by examining two main case studies (supplemented by other ethnographic data) that do off-grid very differently to each other. The policy context that is examined in the book is distinctive to Wales - it is novel to see a planning policy that not only incorporates, but insists on off-grid. The book pivots on this contradiction: if planning (as is thought) is about the spatial reproduction of society, then why should it encourage autonomy from these systems? The ethnographic case studies also comprise an ethnography of rural Wales, and the book's focus on alternative communities brings a fresh perspective to the anthropological literature on community by considering off-grid as a new form of radical social assemblage.