An hour per day of cycling is a lot. I know it seems like good fun exercise to us decadent westerners but as Tom Sawyer would point out it quits being fun when you have to do it.
None of the projects seem so innovative or compelling; save perhaps for the geothermal concept. I particularly don't think a bunch of guys fooling around with tools can come up with great solutions for those basic problems (energy, desalination); the disregard for scientific more basic research seems myopic. That approach works best for niche problems that were overlooked. If there were a silver bullet of energy or a simple way to desalinate I'm pretty sure we'd have found it already. Just looking at the basic physics (thermodynamics, minimum energy to overcome osmotic potential) would give a hint. If they do come up with something useful though, all the better.