GIZ / TH Köln: PAEGC MOOC 2016: Powering Agriculture – Sustainable Energy for Food

The GIZ project “Powering Agriculture” is offering a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), within the framework of the global initiative “Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development (PAEGC)” and in cooperation with TH Köln – University of Applied Science. The topic of our MOOC is “Powering Agriculture – Sustainable Energy for Food” and will run from Feb. 1 – March 27, 2016.

Background

Around one third of the energy used worldwide goes into the production and processing of food from field to table. Given the current energy system mix, the agrifood industry sector is however heavily dependent on fossil fuel inputs for production, transport, processing and distribution, and contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. With a continuously growing world population the need for food and for energy to produce it is increasing. At the same time millions of farmers and processors in developing countries and emerging economies lack access to clean energy technologies for irrigation, drying, cooling, storage and other processes.

How can these needs be met sustainably?

We have to produce more food with less energy, make energy use more efficient, and introduce and upscale more clean energy technologies.

About the Course

This MOOC will introduce participants to the Energy-Agriculture Nexus and introduces approaches for sustainably providing energy throughout all stages of agricultural value chains. Challenges but also solutions will be analyzed, concrete technologies will be examined focusing on their utility to promote access to clean energy. Participants will further be familiarized with relevant external influences such as market conditions, politics, and financing schemes of “powering agricultural” projects. Learning materials, developed by well-known experts, will be available as texts as well as videos on a week-by-week basis and are accompanied by assignments that will require the application of the newly learned skills.

About the global initiative PAEGC

PAEGC is a joint global initiative involving GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a US government agency, and Duke Energy, a US-based energy company. The initiative seeks to identify and support new and sustainable approaches to accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy solutions for increasing agriculture productivity and/or value in developing countries.

The registrations are open

Source: Notification from GIZ from 24.11.2015The GIZ project “Powering Agriculture” is offering a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), within the framework of the global initiative “Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development (PAEGC)” and in cooperation with TH Köln – University of Applied Science. The topic of our MOOC is “Powering Agriculture – Sustainable Energy for Food” and will run from Feb. 1 – March 27, 2016.

Background

Around one third of the energy used worldwide goes into the production and processing of food from field to table. Given the current energy system mix, the agrifood industry sector is however heavily dependent on fossil fuel inputs for production, transport, processing and distribution, and contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. With a continuously growing world population the need for food and for energy to produce it is increasing. At the same time millions of farmers and processors in developing countries and emerging economies lack access to clean energy technologies for irrigation, drying, cooling, storage and other processes.

How can these needs be met sustainably?

We have to produce more food with less energy, make energy use more efficient, and introduce and upscale more clean energy technologies.

About the Course

This MOOC will introduce participants to the Energy-Agriculture Nexus and introduces approaches for sustainably providing energy throughout all stages of agricultural value chains. Challenges but also solutions will be analyzed, concrete technologies will be examined focusing on their utility to promote access to clean energy. Participants will further be familiarized with relevant external influences such as market conditions, politics, and financing schemes of “powering agricultural” projects. Learning materials, developed by well-known experts, will be available as texts as well as videos on a week-by-week basis and are accompanied by assignments that will require the application of the newly learned skills.

About the global initiative PAEGC

PAEGC is a joint global initiative involving GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a US government agency, and Duke Energy, a US-based energy company. The initiative seeks to identify and support new and sustainable approaches to accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy solutions for increasing agriculture productivity and/or value in developing countries.

The registrations are open

Source: Notification from GIZ from 24.11.2015