India's win-win energy solutions

London, or little Siberia as it is now known, was a bit of a shock after two months in India. Now I've had time to dig out the woollen socks I can write a bit about what I was doing there.

For most of the time I worked with the media team in Delhi, but ended up travelling around quite a bit. I was supposed to be 'helping' an ongoing project in Bihar, a state in the north of the country, but I'm not sure how much I did apart from ask a lot of questions and enjoy the local food (not actually all that spicy, it turns out). The experience helped me to understand a lot more about how the guys there are trying to help tackle climate change in the great nation of India.

Bihar was, until recently, a pretty miserable place to live. One of the poorest states in the country, it also lacked the infrastructure needed to put it back on its feet. Roads cracked, hospitals crumbled and schools closed. In the last five years things have improved, but one item still remains on everyone's wishlist - reliable electricity. When you're trying to bring power to over 80 million people (more than the population of little old Germany) it takes time, effort, and good ideas.

One of these good ideas is decentralised, renewable energy. For small villages that are many miles from the nearest town, it makes no sense to run pylons and cables all the way to the front door. Instead, small kits can provide reliable electricity from the sun, or the wind, right next to where it's used. The government is pretty keen on this technology but right now it's only available in a few areas. Greenpeace India thinks it could be a solution for the whole of the country, and was using the local elections as a way of starting the ball rolling.

By the end of my time there, the team had won promises from all the major parties in the state to expand these kinds of projects rapidly. For the local people the issue was less about climate change and more about reliable access to power, but for the wider international community it's a win - win situation. Energy access is a vital precursor to eliminating poverty, and if it can be done without polluting the atmosphere then you're laughing. The expensive suits at the UN climate talks in Mexico could benefit from a hefty dose of this kind of thinking.

After leaving Bihar I travelled back to the office to help with a bit of strategy work, so I know a little bit about what's going to be grabbing the headlines for Greenpeace in India next year. It's pretty exciting stuff too. I would tell you, but where's the fun in that?