The Maldives has been officially rebranded with a new marketing slogan, ‘always natural’, and a fingerprint logo consisting of islands, corals, turtles, sharks and herons that transitions from blue to green.
The objective, said CEO David Keen of agency Quo, was to create a brand “in which Maldivians around the world can be proud.”
Speaking at the unveiling of the rebranding at the The Maldives Marketing and PR Corporation (MMPRC) today, Keen said the brand “should talk to the Maldivian people, about industry, sustainability and environmental challenges and successes the Maldives has had.”
“The slogan ‘always natural’ emphasises the huge influence the natural world has on the Maldives,” Keen added.
The new logo and slogan replace the Maldives’ existing 11 year-old branding, ‘The Sunny Side of Life’.
“The old tag line was more targeted towards the tourism industry,” said State Minister for Tourism, Thoyyib Mohamed Waheed, explaining that the new branding broadened the brand to attract investment in industries such as energy and fisheries.
The former national branding targeted tourism
“The last slogan was great for the European market,” added Managing Director of the MMPRC, Simon Hawkins, as visitors from countries such as the UK considered the sun a key drawcard. “But the number one market is now the Chinese, who don’t like the sun [as much]. We have to adapt to the market.”
Keen noted that the broader national branding would allow cross-marketing opportunities, such as stamping the logo on Maldivian products such as tins of tuna.
“A can of Maldivian tuna sold in Marks&Spencer or Waitrose is reaching exactly the market we need to reach for tourism,” added Hawkins.
The new branding was approved by the Cabinet today.
The Tourism Ministry has meanwhile published figures revealing an almost 15 percent increase in tourist arrivals in September 2011, compared to the previous year, and a 17.7 percent increase in arrivals for the first nine months of the year.
Tourist arrivals from traditional European tourism markets for the Maldives dropped in September, including the UK (10.3 percent) and Italty (16.6 percent). Chinese arrivals meanwhile increase 54 percent.
Visitors stayed an average seven nights in the country’s 24,480 beds, while the average occupancy rate was 71.5 percent across the country.
The United Nations (UN)’s Maldives office today marked the 66th anniversary of the UN’s founding with a ceremony and reception held in the UN’s Male’ compound.
Speaking at the ceremony, Vice President of the Maldives Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan observed that the UN “is as relevant today as it was when it was first founded.”
Dr Waheed, himself a former UN employee with the UNICEF agency, noted that he had himself witnessed the organisation’s work in 16 of the 190 countries in which it had a presence.
In countries such as Yeman and Afghanistan, Dr Waheed recalled that he had seen friends “risk their lives to deliver food, medicine and books to remote parts of countries that even government officials rarely visit. I’ve worked with warlords who fear the UN because of the human rights it stands for.”
The UN had a mandate to protect people from their own government, if the government turned on its own population, he said.
“The world does not want another Bosnia or Rwanda. Libya was saved thanks to the work of the UN Security Council,” he noted.
Locally, new problems such as transnational crime, drug addiction, human trafficking, piracy, human rights challenges, climate change, “cannot be solved in isolation. Some are international issues – global problems needing global solutions,” Dr Waheed said.
Also speaking at the ceremony, acting UN Resident Coordinator Zeba Bukhari observed that despite a perception that the UN dealt primarily with peace and security, “most of its efforts and resources are actually devoted to improving the conditions of vulnerable population groups, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development.”
Concrete examples in the Maldives, Bukhari noted, will include the support of electrification of islands through more efficient means and alternate energy, cost effective solutions to coastal management, water and sanitation, land use and resource management, reef systems management and waste management.
“All these efforts will be tied to better livelihoods and agriculture and fisheries opportunities, ‘green’ healthcare-related activities, disaster preparedness and mitigation measures, and greater environmental awareness especially at the community and school level,” she noted.
On October 26 the UN is due to launch a report marking the date the human population reaches seven billion. According to the report, the figure has implications for sustainable human development including climate change, food security, water and waste management, employment, and conflict and peace building.
“Some say our planet is too crowded. I say we are seven billion strong,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, in his UN Day address.
“We are living longer. More of our children survive. More and more of us live at peace, under democratic rule of law. As we have seen in this dramatic year, people everywhere are standing up for their rights and human freedoms,” he said.
“And yet, all this progress is under threat. From economic crisis. Rising joblessness and inequality. Climate change. Around the world, too many people live in fear. Too many people believe their governments and the global economy can no longer deliver for them. In these turbulent times, there is only one answer: unity of purpose.”
The Libyan National Transition Council (NTC) has confirmed the death of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.
The NTC told several news sources, including Reuters and Al Jazeera, that Gaddafi had died of wounds sustained during his capture near his hometown of Sirte, which has been besieged by the rebels for several months, and his body taken to a secure location.
Pictures that appeared to be of the bloodied body of the former dictator were initially published on Al Jazeera. His death was subsequently confirmed by the leaders of several countries, including UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told news agency Reuters that the NATO warplanes had attacked the convoy in which Gaddafi was attempting to flee.
An NTC fighter in Sirte meanwhile told Reuters that he had seen Gaddafi shot after he was cornered and captured in a tunnel near a roadway.
“He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head,” Mlegta told Reuters. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”
Gaddafi’s spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim was captured by the NTC near Sirte, while the chief of Gaddafi’s armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr, was reported killed in the fighting.
Following the announcement of Gaddafi’s death by the NTC, celebrations broke out in the capital city of Tripoli and the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
Colonel Gaddafi was only 27 when he took control of Libya after a military coup in 1969. His 42 years of power brought wealth to Libya, but his reign was also characterised by erratic policies and terrifying punishments, based on a political platform of socialism and Arab nationalism condensed in his ‘Little Green Book’.
Minivan News obtained a copy of Gaddafi’s ‘Little Green Book’, entitled “The Solution of the Problem of Democracy”, copies of which were reportedly gifted to a generation of Maldivian school students under former Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
At the time of his death, Gadaffi was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a systematic campaign of violence to try and put down a popular uprising, which led to Western military intervention.
Diplomatically, the Maldives was meanwhile among the first countries to formally recognise the NTC rebels as the sovereign representatives of the Libyan people, and helped organise several UN Human Rights Council resolutions that increased pressure on Gaddafi and legitimised Western military intervention.
“The Maldives took these steps because of our conviction that men such as Muammar Gadaffi should not be allowed to check, through violence, the recent march of democracy and human rights across the Muslim world – the Muslim Awakening,” said Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem in August.
“For decades, the government of Muammar Gadaffi has ruled through a system of patronage, repression and fear. The Muslim Awakening brought hope that this system could be dismantled peacefully, through dialogue, reform and free and fair elections. However, instead Muammar Gadaffi chose to use his security forces to attack and kill civilians.
“With the imminent fall of Gadaffi, the Muslim Awakening lives on, and the Maldives looks forward to welcoming a new, democratic Libyan State into the international family of nations,” Naseem said.
President Mohamed Nasheed has appointed his former member on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), Aishath Velezinee, to the position of Deputy Home Minister.
As a member of the JSC, Velezinee was an outspoken whistle-blower who campaigned against the reappointment of sitting judges in what she contended was a violation of article 285 of the Constitution and part of a “silent coup” to seize control of the judiciary.
In early 2010, she set about publicly exposing the independent institution she claimed was operating “like a secret society” and serving as a “shield” for a judiciary that was “independent in name only”, and had tabled only several of the hundreds of complaints submitted against judges.
Using her access to court documents, Velezinee revealed that almost a quarter of the sitting judges had criminal records – ranging from theft to terrorism – and that an even greater number had not even completed grade 7 education. The only qualification of many was a ‘Diploma in Judging’ presenting to them by the former Ministry of Justice, Velezinee contested.
For the past 30 years judges effectively worked as the employees of those “hand-picked” by the former government, Velezinee explained – to the extent that failures to extend a particular ruling as required by the Ministry of Justice resulted in a black mark on the judge’s file.
“The only qualification it appears was a willingness to submit to the will of the government at the time – to follow orders,” Velezinee told Minivan News in a previous interview.
“Not everyone has the mindset to follow orders and serve in that kind of capacity. I believe it has excluded people with independent thinking, or the necessary legal knowledge – such people would take it as an insult for someone to order them how to decide a case.”
She also presented documents and recordings that implied the JSC had forged documents for a hearing over High Court appointments, accused the commission of embezzling state funds by awarding itself a ‘committee allowance’ contrary to Article 164 of the Constitution, and criticised it for abolishing its Complaints Committee in the name of “efficiency”. The previous year the JSC received 143 complaints concerning the conduct of judges, none of which were even tabled at the commission.
In January this year Velezinee was hospitalised after she was stabbed three times in the back in broad daylight on the main tourist street of Male’, “right outside the Home Minister’s door.”
Many international organisations, including Transparency International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), at the time expressed “grave concern that the attack may be politically motivated.”
Velezinee told Minivan News today that her new role at the Home Ministry will see her focusing on “international affairs and projects in planning and development, and monitoring of agencies.”
“Many international conventions were signed in 2005 but were not incorporated into the domestic system,” she noted. “The Home Ministry should be a very strong Ministry, as it has a huge mandate, and should ensure it complies with the conventions the Maldives has signed.”
The remit of the Home Ministry includes police and the Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Services (DPRS), as well as juvenile justice, civil society and decentralisation.
Velezinee speculated that one of the reasons she may have been offered the role was because of her focus on justice, as “the Home Ministry is very much concerned with justice and the rule of law.”
She expressed surprise and delight at the welcome she received from her team at the Ministry, observing that it was “completely unlike the experience of the JSC where I felt I was unwanted the entire time.”
The Iranian government has secretly executed hundreds of prisoners at the notorious Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, according to an interim report to the UN by Special Rapporteur on Iran, Dr Ahmed Shaheed.
Dr Shaheed was the former Maldivian Foreign Minister under both the current and former Presidents. As the Iranian government refused to allow him to visit the country in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur, the report relies heavily on first-hand testimonies, “the preponderance of which presents a pattern of systemic violations of fundamental human rights.”
“The most urgent issues that have been brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur include multifarious deficits in relation to the administration of justice, certain practices that amount to torture, cruel, or degrading treatment of detainees, the imposition of the death penalty in the absence of proper judicial safeguards, the status of women, the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, and the erosion of civil and political rights, in particular, the harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders and civil society actors,” writes Dr Shaheed.
“Several personal interviews revealed that individuals were often held in solitary confinement for long periods during the investigative phases of their cases. All of those interviewed with regard to their detention reported the consistent use of blindfolds when being transferred from solitary confinement, as well as during their interrogations.”
Human rights defenders, civil society organisations and religious actors had been charged with offences including acting against national security, insulting the Supreme Leader and “spreading propaganda against the regime”, Dr Shaheed noted.
“The majority of reports also highlight exorbitant bail requirements, reportedly totalling between US$10,000 and US$500,000, to guarantee the appearance before the court of those arrested for activities pertaining to civil, political or human rights.”
The report goes on to detail interviews with dozens of victims of the Iranian regime, including lawyers, students, artists, journalists and environmentalists as well as political activists.
In his report, Dr Shaheed raises particular concern over the use of the death penalty in cases where due process was denied to the accused, especially within the prison system.
“Secret group executions inside prisons, which reportedly occur in alarmingly high numbers, are often carried out without the knowledge and presence of families and lawyers,” Dr Shaheed notes.
“Capital punishment was also applied to cases regarding Mohareb or ‘enmity against God’, rape, murder, immoral acts or acts against chastity and kidnapping,” he added.
The report concludes with an appeal to the Iranian government to allow Dr Shaheed to visit the country so as to “develop dialogue with the authorities and either substantiate or lay
to rest allegations of human rights violations committed within its sovereign territory.”
In July, Iran’s secretary general of the country’s ‘High Council for Human Rights dismissed “the western-engineered appointment” of Dr Shaheed as Special Rapporteur as ”an illegal measure,” according to the Tehran Times.
“Iran has no problem with the individual who has been appointed as the special rapporteur, but the appointment of a rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran is unacceptable and Iran will not accept the decision,” Mohammad Javad Larijani was quoted as saying.
Dr Shaheed is to present his findings to the UN General Assembly on October 19.
Spokesperson and Deputy Leader of the Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (DRP), Ibrahim ‘Mavota’ Shareef, has alleged that the breakaway opposition party of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has been offering cash incentives and development funds to island groups, in a bid to persuade them to join the Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM).
“There are many social clubs in the Maldives with the purposes of developing islands. Many have been offered cash incentives and funds for development activities if members join the party. Even individual members have been offered,” said Shareef, who has made similar claims to local media this week.
PPM Spokesperson Ahmed Mahlouf was not responding to refute the allegations at time of press.
“We’re not about to file a court case, but this is happening on a wide scale. If the clubs involved need funding, members are inclined to accept. We couldn’t afford to lodge so many cases,” Shareef said, when asked if the party had any evidence to back the claims.
Prior to the PPM’s inaugural convention on October 15, the EC verified and approved the membership forms of 3,019 party members.
Several thousand people attended the convention at Dharubaaruge, including at least one prominent ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) activist.
The 971 delegates present elected Gayoom interim leader unopposed, while his half-brother MP Abdulla Yameen was elected acting parliamentary group leader.
Yameen’s party, the People’s Alliance (PA), recently split from the main opposition DRP which remains under leadership of Ahmed Thasmeen Ali. The relationship between the PPM, formerly known as the Z-DRP faction of the opposition, and the DRP leadership remains strained.
Shareef expressed surprise at the large numbers of people who attended the convention, and acknowledged that support for Gayoom’s party had the potential to affect the DRP’s membership base.
“This was a 30 year regime and we have to accept that there are pockets of support everywhere. During Gayoom’s time he did a lot a lot of work and has many supporters, and we have to recognise this,” Shareef said, but questioned the PPM’s “ability to work together as a party.”
“I don’t see any future for PPM. They are saying that 99 percent of [DRP members] are joining the party but we don’t see any such thing happening. At the same time there are a lot of people who have remained steadfast and believe the DRP has a future, and that the leadership has the experience and qualifications to run the country,” Shareef said.
The breakaway faction consisted of Gayoom’s immediate family and “former DRP members who failed in elections while they were in the DRP,” Shareef said. “PPM is a family enterprise, promoting a private hidden agenda in the name of the national interest.”
Gayoom had capitalised on growing dissatisfaction with the government, Shareef contended.
“At the grassroots level, people are very unhappy, and the swing voters have been moving away from the government. This is why Gayoom chose now to form his new party. In 2008-2009, and even midway through 2010, there was no political space.”
The division was as much ideological as it was acrimonious, Shareef explained.
“Many people do not believe the DRP is able to hold the government accountable, because we do not create violence or street protests. Many people think the opposition should make the country ungovernable, even the media and opinion leaders. I’m not sure if they understand it themselves, but it makes it very dangerous, as it risks the whole society falling and becoming a failed state,” Shareef said.
“We believe we are a responsible opposition and we oppose the government’s polices where they are wrong, and support them when they are right. There is nothing personal and we are not out for revenge, and we do not see the ruling party as personal enemies.
“Gayoom’s family and his inner circle view them as personal enemies and are out for revenge, using chaos and anarchy to try and stop the government from doing any work. We are clear we want a stable government, and to change it through elections, but the immediate family of Gayoom has a different idea. They want street action, so that every day the government is under pressure, while we voted for a presidential system of government that gives the President a free hand to run the country [while he is elected].”
Beyond the poaching of its member base, the DRP faced new financial challenges with the departure of the former President, Shareef said.
“Finance is a great challenge. The current DRP leadership is not as rich as PPM’s top leadership. It presents a challenge, but I like to believe money is not everything.”
Road to 2013
Shareef was a founding member of the MDP, Deputy Parliamentary Group Leader in Nasheed’s shadow cabinet, then later a deputy to Gayoom, and now a deputy to Thasmeen.
With the split in the opposition, and the collapse of all the MDP’s coalition agreements, Shareef predicted that “given current trends” the 2013 presidential election would effectively be a replay of the 2008 election in which Nasheed won power in a run-off election against the incumbent Gayoom, due to the support of coalition partners.
The MDP would need to gain 51 percent of the vote in the first round to secure a clean win, while “none of the opposition parties will secure enough votes to reach the 51 percent mark,” Shareef said. “Meanwhile the MDP has chased away all its coalition partners, and they cannot now turn around and say ‘We can work together’, because nobody will believe them.”
Faced with a run-off, the disparate opposition groups would temporarily unify over the common ground of ousting the MDP, Shareef predicted, giving power to the largest opposition party.
“Look at the last three elections. In the first round of the 2008 Presidential election Gayoom got 40 percent, while the rest of the then opposition got 60 percent. In the second round the opposition totaled 54 percent. The MDP lost ground in the parliamentary elections, and the majority of the islands voted for the DRP in the local council elections,” he claimed.
“The incumbent government has the resources of the state to get votes, and can get at least 20-30 percent just by being in power. At present trends, the 2013 will be a replay of 2008, and as things stand now, whoever is in opposition will go to the second round. But we need a leader who is not out to take revenge.”
The Supreme Court has issued a writ of prohibition and taken over a defamation case against it filed in the Civil Court by Ibrahim ‘Ibra’ Ismail.
The Supreme Court order issued today states that it had learned that the Civil Court had accepted a defamation suit filed by Ibra. It ordered the lower court not to take “any action regarding the said case” and to send “all the documents in the case file, including all actions taken since the case was filed as well as the minutes” to the court before 3:30pm this afternoon.
The writ of prohibition was signed by Chief Justice Ahmed Faiz.
Ibra, a member of the Constitution Draft Committee of the former Special Majlis, longstanding Male’ MP and founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), had filed the case against the Supreme Court after it reprimanded him for calling on the public to “rise up and sort out the judges”.
In response to Ibra’s calls, the Supreme Court and the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) demanded authorities investigate the former MP, claiming that “making such statements in a free, democratic society under lawful governance goes against the principles of civilisation”.
Ibra responded by filing a defamation suit in the Civil Court against the Supreme Court.
But today, “The documents and everything have been handcuffed and taken to the Supreme Court,” Ibra told Minivan News.
“Initially [the Civil Court] was of the opinion that the case was not in their jurisdiction, because it involved the Supreme Court. But I appealed to the registrar, outlined my argument, and the second time they agreed they could and should accept the case,” Ibra said.
“I paid my fees, and was waiting for them to hold the first hearing. Then today I had a call from newspaper Haveeru asking me to comment on the Supreme Court’s taking over the case – I replied that no one had told me about it and I was not in a position to comment. Later my lawyer called and said the Supreme Court had published the writ on their website.”
As a result, Ibra said, “I now have to go before the Supreme Court and say to them ‘You have defamed me, now please decide in my favour.’”
Ibra has previously observed that the act of an appellate court taking over the jurisdiction of a trial court was unprecedented “in any democratic country, anywhere in the world.”
“Even in cases of a mistrial, the instruction is to retry the case. Appellate courts don’t sit on trials. And they are systematically doing it – at least three cases so far. What they are effectively doing is influencing the independence of the trial court. The significance of that is that if trial court judges cannot be independent of the higher court, there is no room for appeals. Because the decision is going to be the Supreme Court decision,” Ibra told Minivan News.
“I don’t see how they can sit in judgement on themselves,” Ibra said today. “Every single defamation case until now has been tried in the Civil Court. Just because the Supreme Court is involved doesn’t mean the Civil Court should not hear the case – the Supreme Court is obstructing the process of justice.”
The fact that the decision to take over the case from the Civil Court implied that a majority of the seven Supreme Court judges had elected to do so, Ibra said.
“This means the majority of the Supreme Court judges are not cognisant of the principles of natural justice, and are clearly trying to obstruct the provision of judge to a citizen claiming his fundamental right as guaranteed in black and white in the Constitution.
“This is not about Ibra. If they can do this to Ibra they are setting a precedent to do it to just about anyone.”
He suggested that the Supreme Court’s action today “establishes what I originally claimed. We as citizens – the public – have to do something. We can’t let seven idiots hijack the justice system of the entire country.”
New forms of air travel have the potential to revolutionise the sector’s ecological impact, said UK entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire.
Speaking at the Slow Life Symposium held at the Maldives’ Soneva Fushi resort, Branson said engineers currently working on his carbon composite Virgin Galactic spacecraft were itching to get started on a high-speed passenger aircraft that would fly out of the atmosphere, fire its rockets harmlessly into space, and re-enter the atmosphere angled at the destination.
“Intercontinental flights that leave Earth atmosphere and pop back down won’t damage the atmosphere while they are outside it,” Branson said. “It will only work if it is economic, but I hope to see it in my lifetime. Once we’ve got Virgin Galactic ticked off, we’ll look at carbon-fibre intercontinental planes. They’ll effectively be spaceships.”
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft already created less carbon output per passenger than a return ticket from New York to London, he noted.
“That compares with two weeks of New York’s electricity supply to send up a space shuttle. We’ve realised that we could put satellites into space for a fraction of the existing cost and carbon output. Schools and universities would be able to afford their own satellites.”
Virgin Galactic would be up and running in 12 months, Branson predicted, offering acceleration of “0-3000 miles an hour in eight seconds. It will be the ride of a lifetime.”
A significant breakthrough, he noted, had been avoiding the need for a precisely-angled re-entry.
“Our spaceship turns into a giant shuttlecock which slows it down and avoids much of the G-force. The pilot can be asleep as you re-enter.”
On the podium with Branson was Jose Mariano, a former Boeing aerospace engineer and founder of zero2infinity, which is currently developing a commercially-viable near-orbital balloon for scientific purposes.
Mariano’s balloon and uniquely-shaped pressurised capsule reaches 36 kilometres, high enough for passengers to see the curvature of the Earth. Virgin Galactic reaches 100 kilometres – the definition of space according to the US Air Force – while the International Space Station is located at 400 kilometres.
“There is no physical boundary or line to define ‘space’,” says Mariano. “What matters is planetary awareness, and what matters to scientists is having a vantage point from where they can clearly see the planet as an island amidst the cold, vast emptiness.
“If it is useful to have a scientist in a space station at 400km, I think it is useful to have a scientist in-between. NASA is realising this and asking companies like ours what we can do there – this region above controlled airspace has not really been explored.”
Mariano recalled a series of interviews with astronauts who had reached the boundries of space where the shape of the planet was clearly visible.
“The writer gave an overview of how each felt before and after the trip – they became much more aware of global problems, specifically ecological ones. Imagine flying a balloon high enough that the sky turns completely black and sun brighter and lighter than ever before, where the line of the horizon bends to a perfect curve and the Earth is blue below you. Up there it is obvious everything is interconnected – a powerful thing for a human to experience.”
Mariano expressed frustration with the slow pace of aviation over the last 50 years, and the lack of support for entrepreneurial companies with unconventional ideas, at least for machines “other than predator drones.”
“Our project is a large scientific balloon that carries a pressurised pod to 36 kilometres, stays up for two hours and comes back with parachutes. There is no rocket or high speed re-entry, making it a lot less attractive for high acceleration thrill seekers. But the whole operation has zero carbon emissions – there is no engine, just helium and stored electricity. Parachutes improve the landing tremendously, and our test flight landed where we expected. People can be waiting for you there with a coconut.”
That unmanned test flight successfully reached 33km, while a manned flight was forthcoming, Mariano said.
Branson outlined his own ballooning career, in which he funded and flew a balloon with the goal of reaching 35,000 feet and crossing the Atlantic. At the time the ballooning record was 600 miles at 8000 feet.
“I was initially quite sceptical, but I find in life it is more fun to say yes rather than no,” he said. “So I went off to Spain to get my ballooning license, and two weeks later I not only had my license but was trying to fly the balloon in a jet stream with 140 mile and hour winds, on my own, with three or four hours of lessons. “The highest we reached has 44,000 feet. It was a great adventure, and the first of six times I was pulled out of the sea by helicopters while trying to break ballooning records.”
A week after the Slow Life Symposium, Branson will open the world’s first commercial spaceport in New Mexico.
“We’re also working on underwater – building a manned submarine that can go to the bottom of the ocean at 37,000 feet and come back up. 80 percent of the species on Earth have yet to be discovered because we can’t explore the oceans properly.”
The submarine is due for its pressure test next year, Branson said, in which it would have to contend with 16,000 times the pressure a plane has to cope with.
“You can do it in a solid block of metal, but that doesn’t give you a good view. We are going to try using carbon fibre, and the plan is to go to the five deepest places in the world. Nobody has been more than 20,000-30,000 feet – I will take it down the Porto Rican trench, which goes to 28,000 feet, deeper than Everest is high. Someone else will take it down the Mariana trench, which is 38,000 feet.
Mariano meanwhile observed that most of the world’s technology, from telecoms to medicine and aerospace, had been “a product of war”.
“Hopefully we are now a more aware species we can move on and create things not out of fear and war. Many good ideas have become casualties for lack of funding – for instance a type of hybrid airship that mixes aerodynamic lift with lifting gases. This kind of airship is very slow and can be used for cargo, but if you have a nice room and can be productive and comfortable on board then I’m sure that has its market.”
Branson had a last word for the skeptics: “People say such things will never happen. Dream – and then make your dreams a reality.”
President Mohamed Nasheed’s energy advisor Mike Mason has unveiled the technical and economic justification for transforming the Maldives into a solar-powered nation.
“I have the oily rag job,” said the former mining engineer, speaking at Soneva Fushi’s Slow Life Eco Symposium about the government’s ambition to generate 60 percent of the country’s electricity needs through solar. “It’s a bit like trying to build a complex aircraft while the captain’s trying to fly it.”
Last year the Maldives spent 16 percent of its GDP on fossil fuels, making the country staggeringly vulnerable to even the tiniest oil price fluctuations and adding an economic imperative to renewable energy adoption.
Mason evaluated available renewable alternatives to diesel and concluded that solar was the most abundant, cost-effective and realistic resource to exploit.
“We can forget ocean currents for now,” he said, explaining that as the currents were wind driven and therefore seasonal, marine current generators would only generate significant electricity for half the year.
Ocean thermal was “very exciting”, Mason observed, although he noted that Soneva Fushi bore the scars of a failed ocean thermal project: “I suggest we wait for someone else to pioneer this,” he said.
Biomass generation “fits us rather well”, as even if the most expensive form of biomass was imported from Canada it would represent 50-66 percent the current cost of diesel.
“It is cheap but can only be used at scale, such as Male’ and possibly Addu,” he said.
Wind and solar
That left wind and solar, the potential for which was “fascinating”.
The challenge with wind, however, was that it was inconsistent, and there were large periods of the year with little resource available.
“What do you do in the eight months without enough wind?” Mason asked, displaying wind data collected in the country’s north.
“What you do is put up solar. In that case, why bother to put up wind at all? With solar the sun rises every day – it is wonderfully predictable.”
The trick was going to be to transform solar from a green, niche, “subsidy hungry creature, to something so obvious that the current government of the time sees it as a sensible and intelligent thing to do. The reality is that it is easy to get to 30-40% emission reduction, but getting beyond first stage to the 80-90 percent that has been proposed by cabinet will be more difficult.”
Mason collected data concerning the cost of generating electricity using diesel at 100 of the country’s inhabited islands, “as I felt there was not enough data available”, and found staggering levels of inefficiency.
The numbers, he said, “are really scary. At best it costs 28-29 cents to produce a kilowatt hour, but at the top right of the graph it is costing 77 cents per kilowatt hour. Anything beyond 28-29 cents for a big island and 32-33 cents for a small island is just money being burned.”
The Maldives could quickly and easily save US$0.5-1 million dollars a month “simply by fixing power stations by doing boring, sensible stuff.”
“Diesel engines are designed to work at their rated power – they like going flat out. The moment you back off by half, you end up with a less efficient engine. Many islands have power stations with engines out of proportion to the size of the island’s energy needs – in some cases they are running at 15-25 percent capacity. That is a real cost we have.”
Mason then displayed a graph detailing the cost of providing solar, and observed that the cost plummeted quickly when it came to providing 30-40 percent of the country’s energy needs but sharply increased thereafter to a point where it was less competitive.
The challenge, he explained, was storage – how to retain electricity to operate devices such as lights, fridges and air-conditioners at night.
“Energy storage is the big hole in our story here. The key for me is to reach that 80 percent goal without the [cost] graph rising beyond where it is today,” Mason explained.
Using data detailing the energy use patterns of the island of Maalhos in Baa Atoll, Mason observed a high variability in power demand. Introducing solar without storage – “from panel to fridge” – would complicate that by requiring more flexibility from the existing power plant.
Energy Advisor Mike Mason
“Stick a solar panel on [Maalhos] and you can generate 29kw at midday with zero demand [on the powerplant]. But the maximum you need from the powerplant [without solar] is 42kw. This is a fundamental problem – the more solar you get, the more we have to get the power stations right.”
The cost of providing solar electricity straight from the panel was far below the cost of using diesel on any island, including Male’. On Maalhos, by pointing the solar panel in the same direction all day, “you can meet midday demand easily. But between 6-11 am in the morning, and after 2pm in the afternoon, you still need to meet the cooling load of fridges and air-conditioners.”
Mason had two suggestions – the first was to use (more expensive) tracking solar panels that would follow the sun and extend the daytime period in which demand could be met using solar. This would also generate the maximum yield from each panel, mitigating another problem – space.
“The challenge will be getting tracking to work in a hot, humid, salty environment,” he acknowledged, particularly if the panels were mounted in shallow lagoons.
The cost of providing electricity from solar in conjunction with current commercially available battery technology was not much different from existing diesel arrangements on many islands, Mason observed. “You lose 20 percent of the electricity putting it in and taking it back out, and it is expensive to fix. It’s not good enough.”
However on Maalhos, Mason noted, 28 percent of the electricity demand was for cooling.
“I had a think about storage. We could use really cold water refrigerated during the day, and use that to drive air-conditioning and fridges at night. This applies as much to resorts as it does home islands.”
This innovation would drop the cost to the level of the country’s most efficient diesel generators, Mason explained. For those powerplants currently running at 77 cents a kilowatt, “this is an opportunity to print money – and there aren’t many of those available to the government.”
Challenges
The major problem was obtaining the capital, Mason said, estimating that such an overhaul for the nation would cost US$2-3 billion, “although half of that would come from the tourist industry.”
“With renewable energy, on day 1 you buy 25 years of electricity. It might be cheap, but you still need enough cash on day 1.”
Attracting the investment in a country such as France or Germany would be “a no brainer”, Mason said, however because of the Maldives turbulent political history and fiscal deficit, it had a very weak credit rating.
“There is a shortage of knowledge and skills as well,” he said. “We need an energy technology support unit, and an energy finance corporation that can for this project provide guarantees and get countries to underwrite us. We do not want to be reliant by subsidies.”
In response to a question regarding the planned Gaafaru wind farm, Mason acknowledged the build, own and operate agreement STELCO had signed with Chinese wind turbine manufacturer XEMC to develop a 50mw wind farm at Gaafaru was a potential commercial pressure for adopting solar.
Under this agreement, a backup liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant would also be built, capable of providing up to 30 megawatts on windless days, or when there is not enough wind to meet demand.
Minivan News raised concerns in an article published in April 2010 that according to figures published in a 2003 report by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), North Malé Atoll had an annual average wind speed of 4.9 m/s (17.7 km/h), while a 2005 report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) described the minimum average wind speed needed to run a utility-scale wind power plants as 6 m/s (21.6 km/h).
Mason described the contract as crafted with “more enthusiasm than technical involvement”, and noted that an LNG plant put out 92 percent of the emissions of a diesel plant “of the kind that STELCO already run very well.”
“A single cycle gas turbine of the kind described is very efficient but does not have the flexibility [required]. There is a technical challenge. We need to think about how we integrate things before we sublet the parts, so my instinct is that the contract will not be enacted in form presented.”
Speaking of the solar plan, now backed at least by data if not the finance, a senior government official remarked that the plan to turn to solar was “no longer froth. There’s a shot of espresso in the cappuccino now.”
The Maldives has meanwhile become the first country to crowdsource its renewable energy plan on the internet.
Forum topics in the comprehensive crowdsourcing project include solar and wind technology, energy storage, system control and demand management, novel technologies (including marine current and ocean thermal), biomass power generation, and finance.
Under each topic the Maldives appeals for expert assistance on several technical questions, around issues such as the use of solar panels in corrosive environments, the economics of tracking or fixed solar panel systems, and the viability of low velocity wind turbines.
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