Even the hardest of household surfaces can be damaged and dirt will build up over time. That's when it's time to call Monterey Bay Refinishing and its subsidiary All American Stone, Tile and Grout Restoration and Maintenance.

"We've always been the go-to people for getting surfaces like bathtubs back to factory specifications," said Cathy McCoy, who along with husband, Ernie, have owned and run Monterey Bay Refinishing for 15 years. Ernie is well-known among local contractors for his ability to fix chips, cracks and other flaws in porcelain, marble, acrylic and more that can happen during construction.

"Rather than replace a new unit that has been damaged, Ernie makes invisible repairs to factory specifications," Cathy said. "He has an artist's eye, and can match color, swirls and everything."
They added All-American's surface cleaning in 2007, and still operate both with Ernie in the field and Cathy in the office.

"As construction slowed, we looked to add services in a related area. After researching the restoration of stone, tile and grout, we agreed that this was the direction we wanted to go," Cathy recalled.

All-American uses high-pressure water heated to 240 degrees and applied with specialized equipment that contains and recovers the water, allowing work on both horizontal and vertical surfaces with minimal mess. By adjusting cleansers and pressure, Ernie can clean tile, brick, travertine, flagstone, concrete and more, both indoors and out.

The new side of the business involves much more than mere power washing. It required learning about the specific characteristics of different surfaces."

"The way that we can use high pressure without damaging the surface is to know just how much pressure to use for each type of surface, and the specialized tools we use in conjunction with our power unit that prevent gouging," she explained. "This type of powerful cleaning is not the only tool we need, however—there is often chemistry involved, as well as a lot of elbow-grease, especially with heavy mineral buildup and staining. We also do honing and polishing of stone."

To help keep the surface clean once it has been restored, they can apply a sealer.
And All-American stays current with advances in cleanser and sealing offerings.

"Ernie is always testing new products as they become available, to see which ones provide the best repellency and cleaning, and have low v.o.c.'s (volatile organic compounds)," Cathy said.

Applying the Golden Rule
to Business and Life
When Ernie visits a potential customer to inspect and bid on a job, he looks for the best long-term solution and protection for the investment a homeowner has made. And if he thinks the surface should be replaced, he'll say so even it means he loses a cleaning job.

"Our clients are our neighbors. It's a big responsibility when someone invites you into their home. We're going to see them on the street next week or at church," said Cathy.

That approach has paid off in strong referrals, and they get most of their business by word of mouth, she said.

Understanding the importance of community support and awareness got them involved in Think Local First. Ernie has been a member of the Lion's Club since 1985, and currently serves with the Santa Cruz Host chapter, along with Michael Olson, a Think Local First Board member. He invited the McCoys to that non-profit. The idea of supporting other local business owners matched their long-time practice of referring work and buying products locally.

"We went to a meeting and said, that's it, we're in," Cathy recalled.

The McCoys "do unto others" approach extends beyond their business. A tradition of going to Mexico's Baja peninsula each year after Christmas to build modest homes and distribute shoes and food grew into the non-profit Club Dust. Last year it involved about 200 people, with Ernie serving as chef for the several days of work. Locally, the McCoys regularly volunteer for the Elm Street Mission.

And the Lion's Club work took a personal turn with its emphasis on providing glasses and helping the blind. Not only did Cathy know where to turn to get someone she knew glasses, Cathy herself has learned she has a degenerative sight disorder.

"Our business not only allows us to support our family, it supports our long-term goal of caring for our community and caring for the world," she said. "It all comes back to the same golden rule."

View post:
From Repairs to Cleaning, All American Makes Hard Surfaces Like New

Dusan Stojanovic and Monika Scislowska The Associated Press Published Thursday, Feb. 02, 2012 12:34PM EST Last updated Thursday, Feb. 02, 2012 12:52PM EST

At least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia's mountains, authorities said Thursday, as the death toll from Eastern Europe's weeklong deep freeze rose to 122, many of them homeless people.

The harshest winter in decades has seen temperatures in some regions dropping to minus 30 C and below, and has caused power outages, traffic chaos and the widespread closings of schools, nurseries and airports.

More related to this story

The stranded in Serbia are stuck in some 6,500 homes in remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads with banks reaching up to 5 metres. Emergency crews were pressing hard to try to clear the snow to deliver badly needed supplies, and helicopters were dispatched to some particularly remote areas in Serbia and neighbouring Bosnia.

On Bosnia's Mt. Romanija, near Sarajevo, a chopper thumped down in the small hamlet of Ozerkovici, where a single nun lives in a Serb Christian Orthodox monastery surrounded by just a few village residents.

Wrapped tight in a black jacket and a scarf, Sister Justina greeted aid workers at her monastery: “I live alone here,” she said, but noted “God will help me.”

In Serbia, relief efforts are concentrated on evacuating the sick, on food delivery and gasoline distribution.

“We are trying everything to unblock the roads since more snow and blizzards are expected in the coming days,” Serbian emergency police official Predrag Maric told The Associated Press.

He said “the most dramatic” situation is near Serbia's southwestern town of Sijenica, where it has been freezing cold or snowing for 26 days, and diesel fuel supplies used by snowplows are running low.

Most people in the villages will have enough food supplies stored up for the winter, Mr. Maric said, but he warned those who are stranded not to try to go anywhere on their own and to call emergency services if they need help.

Newly reported deaths on Thursday because of the cold included 20 in Ukraine, nine in Poland, eight in Romania, and one more each in Serbia and the Czech Republic. In Western Europe, one person was reported dead in Germany.

Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said her country's victims were mostly homeless people under the influence of alcohol who had sought shelter in unheated buildings. Officials appealed to the public to quickly help anyone they saw in need and homeless shelters were full.

In Warsaw, where the temperature Wednesday night was minus 22 C, the narrow corridors of the Monar homeless shelter were filled with drying washing, and the residents crammed into a small dining room with bowls of soup.

Martyna, pregnant and unemployed, said she was grateful to find a place there after her family rejected her and her partner.

“This is the only safe place for me, where I can live and hide — from this sudden cold, too,” the 22-year-old said. “I have nowhere else to go.” She refused to give her last name, saying she didn't want anyone to know she was staying there.

Brothers Robert, 32, and Wieslaw, 27, arrived last week from Inowroclaw, in central Poland, saying they were promised full-time jobs that never materialized. They would have been left in the cold, but someone told them to go to the centre, which currently houses 278 people.

“We don't have to worry anymore where we will spend the night,” said Wieslaw.

“It is so cold outside that you don't want to leave here,” his brother agreed.

Firefighters in Poland say that eleven people have died since Friday from asphyxiation with carbon monoxide, when they were using charcoal heaters to warm their homes.

In Ukraine, 63 people have died from the cold in the last week. Nearly 950 others were hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite, and more than 2,000 heated tents have been set up with hot food for the homeless.

About 180 schools were closed in Romania because of the freezing cold. Three ships were blocked on the Danube River — one German, one Dutch and one Romanian — and efforts were made to unblock them from ice.

In Bulgaria, where 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago, 1,070 schools across the country remained closed Thursday and large sections of the Danube were frozen, hampering navigation. Some villages in Bosnia have had no electricity for days and crews were working around-the-clock trying to fix power lines.

Temperatures in parts of Germany were as low as minus 11 Celsius Thursday afternoon. In the eastern city of Magdeburg, police said a 55-year-old homeless man who apparently had frozen to death was found Thursday morning.

While the weather has yet to cause any significant disruption in the country, ferry services across the mouth of the Elbe river in northern Germany were suspended due to ice on Thursday.

However, the cold wave wasn't causing hardship everywhere.

Dutch authorities banned boats from some of Amsterdam's canals and waterways in the hope the big freeze gripping the city would turn the still water to ice and allow residents to go skating. They also turned off mills and pumps that regulate water levels in the low-lying, flood-prone nation to improve the chances of canals freezing over.

Speed skating is a winter obsession in the Netherlands and hopes are high about the possibility of holding the Elfstedentocht — or “11 Town Tour” — skating race being staged for the first time since 1997.

The 200-kilometre tour route takes skaters over frozen canals and lakes linking 11 towns in the northern Netherlands. The tour, which is also a race for elite skaters, has only been staged 15 times since the first official event in 1909.

The rest is here:
At least 11,000 trapped in Serbia by snow as Europe’s deep freeze continues

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — At least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia's mountains, authorities said Thursday, as the death toll from Eastern Europe's weeklong deep freeze rose to 123, many of them homeless people.

The harshest winter in decades has seen temperatures in some regions dropping to minus 30 C (minus 22 F) and below, and has caused power outages, traffic chaos and the widespread closure of schools, nurseries and airports.

The stranded in Serbia are stuck in some 6,500 homes in remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads with banks reaching up to 5 meters (16 feet). Emergency crews were pressing hard to try to clear the snow to deliver badly needed supplies, and helicopters were dispatched to some particularly remote areas in Serbia and neighboring Bosnia.

On Bosnia's Mt. Romanija, near Sarajevo, a chopper thumped down in the small hamlet of Ozerkovici, where a single nun lives in a Serb Christian Orthodox monastery surrounded by just a few village residents.

Wrapped tight in a black jacket and a scarf, Sister Justina greeted aid workers at her monastery: "I live alone here," she said, but noted "God will help me."

In Serbia, relief efforts are concentrated on evacuating the sick, on food delivery and gasoline distribution.

"We are trying everything to unblock the roads since more snow and blizzards are expected in the coming days," Serbian emergency police official Predrag Maric told The Associated Press.

He said "the most dramatic" situation is near Serbia's southwestern town of Sijenica, where it has been freezing cold or snowing for 26 days, and diesel fuel supplies used by snowplows are running low.

Most people in the villages will have enough food supplies stored up for the winter, Maric said, but he warned those who are stranded not to try to go anywhere on their own and to call emergency services if they need help.

Newly reported deaths on Thursday because of the cold included 20 in Ukraine, nine in Poland, eight in Romania, and one more each in Serbia and the Czech Republic. In Western Europe, one person was reported dead in Germany and one in Italy.

Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said her country's victims were mostly homeless people under the influence of alcohol who had sought shelter in unheated buildings. Officials appealed to the public to quickly help anyone they saw in need and homeless shelters were full.

In Warsaw, where the temperature Wednesday night was minus 22 C (minus 8 F), the narrow corridors of the Monar homeless shelter were filled with drying washing, and the residents crammed into a small dining room with bowls of soup.

Martyna, pregnant and unemployed, said she was grateful to find a place there after her family rejected her and her partner.

"This is the only safe place for me, where I can live and hide — from this sudden cold, too," the 22-year-old said. "I have nowhere else to go." She refused to give her last name, saying she didn't want anyone to know she was staying there.

Brothers Robert, 32, and Wieslaw, 27, arrived last week from Inowroclaw, in central Poland, saying they were promised full-time jobs that never materialized. They would have been left in the cold, but someone told them to go to the center, which currently houses 278 people.

"We don't have to worry anymore where we will spend the night," said Wieslaw.

"It is so cold outside that you don't want to leave here," his brother agreed.

Firefighters in Poland say that eleven people have died since Friday from asphyxiation with carbon monoxide, when they were using charcoal heaters to warm their homes.

In Ukraine, 63 people have died from the cold in the last week. Nearly 950 others were hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite, and more than 2,000 heated tents have been set up with hot food for the homeless.

In Italy's financial capital of Milan, officials said a homeless man died from exposure Thursday.

About 180 schools were closed in Romania because of the freezing cold. Three ships were blocked on the Danube River — one German, one Dutch and one Romanian — and efforts were made to unblock them from ice.

In Bulgaria, where 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago, 1,070 schools across the country remained closed Thursday and large sections of the Danube were frozen, hampering navigation. Some villages in Bosnia have had no electricity for days and crews were working around-the-clock trying to fix power lines.

Temperatures in parts of Germany were as low as minus 11 Celsius (12 Fahrenheit) Thursday afternoon. In the eastern city of Magdeburg, police said a 55-year-old homeless man who apparently had frozen to death was found Thursday morning.

While the weather has yet to cause any significant disruption in the country, ferry services across the mouth of the Elbe river in northern Germany were suspended due to ice on Thursday.

However, the cold wave wasn't causing hardship everywhere.

Dutch authorities banned boats from some of Amsterdam's canals and waterways in the hope the big freeze gripping the city would turn the still water to ice and allow residents to go skating. They also turned off mills and pumps that regulate water levels in the low-lying, flood-prone nation to improve the chances of canals freezing over.

Speed skating is a winter obsession in the Netherlands and hopes are high about the possibility of holding the Elfstedentocht — or "11 Town Tour" — skating race being staged for the first time since 1997.

The 200-kilometer (125-mile) tour route takes skaters over frozen canals and lakes linking 11 towns in the northern Netherlands. The tour, which is also a race for elite skaters, has only been staged 15 times since the first official event in 1909.

___

Monika Scislowska reported from Warsaw. Radul Radovanovic and Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alina Wolfe Murray in Bucharest, Romania, Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, Frances D'Emilio in Rome and Mike Corder in the Netherlands contributed to this report.

Go here to see the original:
Serbia: 11,000 trapped in remote villages by snow

KWADUKUZA, South Africa—A Zulu crowd's ululations welcomed Jacob Zuma, president of the Republic of South Africa, back to KwaZulu–Natal, his home province. He had come to tell them of his commitment to bring them, and the rest of the nation, better access to energy—as well as to announce the distribution of solar-powered hot water heaters and LED lighting systems as well as clean-burning cookstoves.

"One of South Africa's major challenges in poor and rural areas is access to energy," Zuma told his constituents at this rally last month, standing on stage with Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), who had helped pay for the modern energy devices installed in iLembe District homes, health clinics and schools. "People have to burn wood and coal to get some form of heat but with soot that produces [tuberculosis] and asthma."

And then, as if staged to illustrate the urgency of the need, the tent on the soccer field went dark—the diesel generators powering the lights had stopped.

View a slide show of efforts to alleviate energy poverty in South Africa.

South Africa is hardly the only country launching efforts to redress a lack of access to modern energy, such as electricity. The U.N. has declared 2012 the "year of sustainable energy for all," which in practice means that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is starting a concerted effort to extend universal access to "modern energy services" to everyone on the planet by 2030, including the more than a billion people who have no electricity.

On January 16, in a speech to launch the initiative at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, Moon declared, "It is neither just nor sustainable that one person in five lacks access to modern electricity. It is not acceptable that three billion people have to rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating"—forms of energy that are highly polluting and pose health risks. Recalling how electricity transformed his own young life in South Korea decades ago, he said, "We need to turn on the lights for all households."

"Energy is central to everything we are trying to achieve on the development side of the equation," says Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for strategic planning and policy coordination. "There are 1.3 billion people who don't have access to [modern] energy. If you hook them up to the most polluting, damaging forms of energy you are doing significant damage to the planet."

One of the U.N.'s first steps will be to craft an "agenda for action," not unlike the Millennium Development Goals, intended to set out measurable steps that would ensure that everyone gets access to modern energy, while also doubling rates of energy efficiency improvement in the developed world and doubling the share of energy derived from renewable sources globally. "With the developments in solar, wind and storage devices, such as batteries, there are a lot more options on the table for powering villages and households," Orr notes.

Africa south of the Sahara is one of the places where energy poverty is greatest. Seventy percent of all households in the vast region lack modern energy technologies, whether electricity or fuels other than wood and dung for cooking fires. Even in the region's richest country—South Africa—roughly 30 percent of households lack access to electricity.

To help extend electricity and other energy services as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from existing electricity producers, Zuma's government launched a renewable energy initiative during the recent climate change conference in Durban. With the help of the U.N. and other international donors, South Africa will develop more wind and solar power. Given South Africa's abundant coal and heavy reliance on the most polluting fossil fuel for modern energy services, the idea is to harness equally abundant sunshine and wind to diversify energy supplies enough to meet the country's commitment under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord to reduce emissions 34 percent by the end of this decade.

In that, South Africa hopes to mimic other African nations that started down this road to renewables earlier, such as Kenya. With the help of the UNDP and U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP), that East African nation—where only 18 percent of households have access to electricity today—is developing its renewable resources, such as geothermal power in the geologically active Rift Valley, wind farms and solar-powered battery systems in remote villages. "Kenya is on track with investments brought in to produce all its electricity from renewable sources by 2020," Orr says.

But the simple truth is: if the most affluent country in sub-Saharan Africa cannot boost its use of renewables while also extending modern energy access to those who still lack it, what hope do much poorer countries have? "The intervention announced today will ease energy poverty," Zuma said of the U.N.-backed clean energy program, which also saw 500 homes outfitted with solar hot water heaters and 200 homes given LED home lighting systems powered by solar photovoltaics. "Let us change, instead of burning, making more smoke."

That, of course, is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to cooking.

The power to cook
Netherlands-based Philips's smokelessn cookstove looks like it is fashioned from a metal pail that gleams atop a black plastic saucer, albeit a pail with a roaring fire inside it. Tongues of flame lick the top of the combustion chamber where twigs are added or a pot rests—but no smoke wafts out. Wood, dung—the stove can burn "pretty much any biomass," as a suited Philips executive stoking it in KwaDukuza notes during my visit the city formerly known as Stanger. The key to the new cookstoves is gasification—the stove gasifies the biomass of whatever type with heat before burning it. Traditional cookstoves burn the biomass in the pail—and emit clouds of sickening soot in the process. Even worse, most households simply employ an open fire.

But with this new cookstove, any ash settles to the bottom rather than wafting out as smoke. The saucer beneath conceals the stove's secret weapon: a battery-powered electric fan.

Like many developing countries, much of South Africa smells of smoke. The open flame of indoor cooking adds the taste of fire to home-cooked meals for roughly three billion people around the world—as well as killing more than 2.5 million people prematurely via soot, also known as black carbon, inhalation, according to the World Health Organization. Others simply suffer from chronic lung ailments; the soot that escapes into the atmosphere from all these cooking fires is also helping to cook the planet.

The solution has been obvious for decades: cleaner cooking facilities—whether advanced cookstoves, biogas flowing from tanks where microbes digest sewage and trash, or other modern alternatives. But the mismatch between the care or skill needed to tend cookstoves or biodigesters and the daily lives of those who would use them have doomed most initiatives to establish such devices in homes. For example, the technology for solar cookstoves works but the stoves do not function after sunset, when the evening meal is prepared in many countries. Or the price of more advanced stoves, such as those that burn biofuel instead of wood or dung, rapidly outstrip such households' ability to pay.

That hasn't stopped ongoing efforts, such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves from the U.S. State Department, which hopes to distribute cookstoves to 100 million households by 2020 (although the design has yet to be decided). Thirty households in KwaDukuza received Philips's stoves as part of the event with President Zuma, and 170 more households got them in the surrounding iLembe district.

The Dutch multinational may also build a factory in the nearby country of Lesotho to produce 300,000 such smokeless cookstoves a year, with funding help from UNIDO. Doing so may help to solve the cost problem for South Africa and other neighboring countries.

The new stoves also cut soot emissions by 90 percent, according to Philips, although it requires electricity to do so. A fan blows air into the combustion chamber, enabling more complete burning that eliminates smoke, but at the cost of requiring a rechargeable battery to power it—and thus the need for an electricity source.

Night light
A satellite photo of Earth during the nighttime reveals large swaths of black across much of the African continent whereas tendrils of light create glowing webs that connect cities and communities in North America or Europe. To light the night, countries such as South Africa need to generate electricity for modern lights to replace kerosene lamps and paraffin.

That is where LED solar lighting systems can play a key role. Such systems, which combine the efficiency of a light-emitting diode with electricity derived from sunlight and stored for the night in small batteries, can turn on the lights in rural households. In addition to avoiding the expense of running lines to conduct electricity to these homes across Africa, such solar-powered solutions would bring modern energy services to the poor without contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

The hurdle here is simple: cost. Every element of such a system—LEDs, solar panels and batteries—are too expensive for such households to afford on their own. Many people therefore pay (at higher costs per unit of energy) for small increments of kerosene for lamps or buy candles and recharge their now ubiquitous mobile phones from the grid where it is available. U.N. funding helped clear that financial hurdle for the 200 iLembe District households that received such systems.

"The numbers are not going to impress anyone," says Francois d'Adesky, UNIDO's interim representative in South Africa. But the project may be extended to all of KwaZulu–Natal, then all of South Africa, if it proves successful here, because it might then garner World Bank funding. But there is not enough money currently to extend the program to the hundreds of millions more in the rest of Africa and Asia who also lack access to electricity and such lighting—a problem the U.N. declaration of a push for sustainable energy for all aims to solve.

At the same time, there is the problem of cleaning existing electricity sources for those who do enjoy a grid connection. Although Durban's metropolitan electric utility has a wind turbine spinning briskly in the sea breeze blowing over its roof, grid power in South Africa means coal power (as does much of the diesel fuel for trucks and jet fuel for planes)—the dirtiest fossil fuel—and all too often used for things like electrified security fences around homes. Such power is not precluded as part of the new U.N. initiative, although the goal is to ensure that such energy is used for economic development and that environmental consequences, including climate change, "can be managed as best we can," Orr says. "We're not trying to create utopia in 20 years. We will work with the existing [energy] mix and try to move it in a positive direction."

Zuma's rally provides an example: a tall smiling puppet woman with a witch's shoes, striped stockings and a red-brimmed hat with smoke coming out from the top known as Mrs. Coal calls on her equally tall friend—a floppy, green, walking wind-turbine puppet known as Mr. Wind—for help. And for those not lucky enough to be connected to the grid that Mrs. Coal and Mr. Wind can combine to power, the LEDs and the photovoltaic panels that turn sunlight into electricity to power them keep getting cheaper.

Health and education
There is another use for solar power of course—heat. Hence the 19 clinics and two schools getting solar hot water heaters courtesy of UNIDO in iLembe District. The most basic reason to want modern energy services for all—as the U.N. proclaims—is human health.

More than a million children in Africa and Asia die from diarrheal diseases each year, according to the World Health Organization, including hundreds even in relatively prosperous South Africa. The problem is a lack of hygiene.

Something as simple as hot water allows much better hygiene as well as offering hot meals for the poorest students, notes UNIDO's Nokwazi Moyo. "Soft hands, soft hands," the beaming children of Aldinville Senior Primary School in the iLembe District shout out as I tour the grounds. My hands are clean, too, thanks to access to soap and hot water, and that's something the sun can now provide to these children as well, cutting the risk of spreading infection for them and for workers at the 19 local health clinics similarly outfitted. "Kids now have chance to wash hands before lunch, which is hygienic," says Mikhail Evstafyev, a UNIDO spokesman. "It's the same for the clinic."

The generic hot water heaters the project uses are assembled in South Africa from parts made in China, according to Moyo, but so far have not seen wide uptake in the sunny country. Wealthier South Africans' homes are more likely to sport satellite dishes than photovoltaic panels or solar hot water heaters, although the government has established incentives as part of its new renewable energy initiatives.

Each heater can hold as much as 400 liters of hot water, enough for hand-washing and hot meals on even a cloudy day when the sunlight is not strong. And then there's harnessing the sunlight for use at night with the LED solar home-lighting systems handed out to 200 local households.

The vision is to eventually install solar hot water heaters and LED solar home-lighting systems in the same community, as is being done throughout iLembe District. With lights, the Aldinville students can study at night or their mothers can supplement income with such businesses as mobile phone charging from the photovoltaic panels. Multiple forms of new economic development become possible.

That opportunity will be vital because simply providing modern energy—in whatever form—to the poor is not a panacea. "Energy services are often not affordable for the rural and urban poor and, on their own, have little impact," said Martin Krause, leader of UNDP's Asia–Pacific regional climate, environment and energy team, in a statement releasing a report calling for an "Energy Plus" approach, which pairs the delivery of modern energy with measures to generate cash income. "The poor need support to generate income so that energy becomes affordable."

It's not just the poor. For any such sustainable energy efforts to thrive, money will be needed—along with a better understanding of specific communities' energy needs. For example, it may not make sense to build wind farms in Kenya given the fact that most households lack any connection to the electric grid. It may make more sense to set up village-size grids connected to cheap solar panels or mini-hydropower technologies. And cleaner cookstoves may employ technology improvements, but at the hazard of quickly being tossed aside when they cannot be maintained locally at low cost. Finding new sources for the money to make this possible—ideas range from carbon credits to microfinance—remain a key focus of international climate negotiations like those just held in Durban as well as for the Year of Sustainable Energy for All.

Nevertheless, the potential benefits of bringing modern energy to the rest of the world—health improvements, economic development and even environmental remediation—cannot be overlooked. "What a difference bringing energy to our homes means," UNDP Administrator Clark noted at the Zuma rally. "Something like this [project] brings hope and light and heat to not only homes here but right across this great continent of Africa."

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Here is the original post:
Can Cleaner Cooking and Solar Power Help Solve Energy Poverty in Africa? [Slide Show]

We are seeing a shift of power away from the
companies to the customers: Naresh K Malhotra

Interview with Regents' Professor, DuPree College of
Management

Rajarshi Bhattacharjee / Jan 30, 2012, 00:53 IST

Consumers in India and
around the world have become more value conscious post a
protracted slowdown, says Dr Naresh Kr
Malhotra, Regents' professor, DuPree College of
Management, Georgia Institute of Technology. Malhotra is
also a visiting consultant for business, non-government
and government organisations in the US and around the
world. During a recent visit to India, he spoke to
Rajarshi Bhattacharjee about the relevance of
marketing research during economic uncertainties.

How can marketers leverage marketing research to
reduce the risk of product/ business failure during a
slowdown?
Marketing research is all about the things that help in
making better decision that does reduce — if not
completely eliminate — the risks associated with decision
making. So even during an economic slump, marketing
research is important. There are systematic procedures
for determining what kind of research should be
undertaken during specific market conditions.

If you look at more innovative and more creative firms,
what they try to do is, use the ‘down period’ or ‘slump
times’ to actually increase their market share. They come
out stronger with what they are doing because other firms
or weaker competitors cut down. And the easier things to
cut down are the activities that have long-term impact and
are not immediately felt. So they tend to cut down on
marketing research because the impact of it is long term.
But the more innovative firms actually increase their
marketing and marketing research expenditures during slow
periods so that they cater to the customers better and
capitalise on the weaknesses of the competitors and grab a
bigger share of the market.

In a globalised era, how important is it for
companies to adopt a cross-cultural marketing research
projects that go beyond states/provinces or ethnic
groups?
Because of globalisation, cross-cultural marketing
research, sometimes called international marketing
research, has become extremely important. The growth in
the marketing research industry is coming more in
cross-cultural research compared to domestic marketing
research. The successful entry of Procter & Gamble
(P&G) in China can be an appropriate example for
this. When P&G was trying to enter the Chinese
market, it was said that P&G will face a big
challenge as its products are more expensive than the
Chinese ones or its other counterparts and that it caters
only to the affluent consumer segments.

But P&G, being a good marketing firm, and realising
the value of marketing research, chose to ignore the
advice and did detailed marketing research. They spoke to
the Chinese consumers, tried to understand their values,
how they go about making decisions, their challenges in
life etc. One of the important challenges for Chinese
consumers that was largely unaddressed was dandruff.
Chinese people have jet-black hair and so the dandruff
stands out. Different shampoo brands were available in
the market at that time in China, but with a substantial
focus on the middle-class segment of the market. P&G
found that the Chinese are quite willing to spend up to
six times the price of local brands for a shampoo that is
effective in fighting dandruff.

Based on all this information, P&G chose shampoo as
the entry category and used Head & Shoulders as the
entry brand in China. The launch was very successful and
today P&G has managed to capture around 70 per cent
share in the shampoo market in China.

Another example can be the entry of Unilever in Japan.
Unilever aimed to enter the market through the detergent
category and had information that the Japanese are
convenience oriented and freshness and fragrance were
important to them. Based on the information they had,
without undertaking systematic marketing research at all,
Unilever launched a detergent in tea bag-like sachets
that can be put into the washing machine and cloths will
come out fragrant. But the product failed because they
didn’t take into account the fact that the Japanese use
low agitation washing machines and the detergent doesn’t
dissolve adequately in such machines. The fresh-fragrance
positioning also failed because the Japanese people
prefer hanging cloths out on a clothesline than using
driers.

On the other hand, before entering the Japanese market
Johnson & Johnson did extensive market research with
Japanese housewives, about their problems, issues and
challenges. Johnson & Johnson found that women are
sensitive to their environmental issues and the disposal
of tempura oil (used for cooking) was an issue. The
feedback that they got from the housewives was, if it
could be solidified somewhere it could be disposed as a
solid waste like other garbage. Johnson & Johnson
developed a product which, if added to tempura cooking
oil, solidifies the oil and can be disposed like any
other solid waste. And the product was very successful.
So the same market in the same country delivered
different results for the two companies — the right kind
of market research being the deciding factor.

How has the integration of social media in recent
times redefined the basics of market research
globally?
Let me put it this way: it is rapidly changing. To make a
statement that social media had no impact on marketing
research is not true, and to say that social media has
radically changed marketing research
technologies/procedures will also be incorrect. Marketing
research is about obtaining information from the
respondents. Typically what researchers do is prepare
questionnaires, give it to respondents and analyse the
responses. But social media is a domain in which
conversations are taking place naturally. There is a
wealth of information out there in social media and it
can complement standard market research procedures, which
I also expressed in the recent edition of a marketing
research book.

Social media can be a good additional source of
information for marketing research professionals. What
one can do is monitor the conversations that are taking
place in the social media — all the blogs, micro blogs,
Facebook etc. Researchers can also develop and refine the
expertise to analyse qualitative information available in
the social media. In the near future we will see that
social media as a domain in which to conduct marketing
research is becoming more and more important.

What are the latest technologies global companies
are adopting to win a marketing edge over
competitors?
We are in a technological age. Social media is only one
among the many gifts of technology. Together with the
consumers, companies also update themselves with the
latest in the technological domain to be on par with the
market demands. We have seen Philips, for example, that
had in the past made many technological innovations that
excelled and successfully introduced those to the
marketplace. The key is one needs to know how to cash on
technology in a marketplace that can meet the needs of
the consumers. In order to do that one has to rely on
marketing. I would say that marketing research can give
the guidance on how to translate technological
developments and available technologies in production and
business processes that will cater to the needs of
consumers in a competitive marketplace.

Have you identified any structural shifts in the
urban consumption patterns in India as a result of the
economic slowdown?
What has happened is, consumers have become more value
conscious. What we have seen in recent years is that
consumers have become more knowledgeable and have also
become more demanding. Now you can go on the internet
anytime and get information about products, stores,
compare prices and so on. What we are seeing is a shift
of power away from the companies to the customers. But
the most distinct change that we have seen is that
consumers have become more value conscious. This is true
in many parts of the world including India. If you look
around now, how many ‘sale’ offers do you see around in
the retail stores across markets? Almost throughout the
year the ‘sale’ phenomenon continues. This is because
marketers have realised that if they want to cater to the
value-conscious consumers, they will have to increase the
value of their products and services.

Link:
We are seeing a shift of power away from the companies to the customers: Naresh K Malhotra

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