Quetsol Life

The Global Village Energy Partnership has announced winners of 26 grants of $200,000 each. The grants have been made to companies throughout Central America and the Caribbean with the intention of jump-starting socially responsible businesses with innovative solutions to the most pressing energetic challenges in the region. Grants were made for companies with products ranging from algal biofuels to pico-hydroelectric generators. The idea of creating algal biofuels from algae blooms caused by eutrophication is especially interesting to us as we are located on Lago de Atitlán which has recently been host to enormous blooms of cyanobacteria which have had a number of malignant effects including reducing fish populations (thereby impacting fishermen and villagers who depend on fish for high quality protein), causing rashes to develop on those who enter contaminated areas, and, of course, despoiling the immense natural beauty of the lake. One of the grantees from the IDEAS competition was a team of researchers in Guaetmala who plan to develop a means for converting algae into liquid fuels for transportation and other uses:

Amid the valleys, mountains and volcanoes of the highlands of southern Guatemala lies one of the country’s largest lakes, Lake Amatitlan. Located just 16km south of Guatemala City, the unique landscape surrounding the lake means it is used by many people as a recreation area. However, the proximity of Lake Amatitlan to the capital means the western basin is contaminated with dissolved waste and fertilizers from the city which are fed into it via the Villalobos river. Fertilisers can cause increases in the level of nutrients in the water resulting in the proliferation of algae which in turn deplete oxygen levels essential to other aquatic organisms.

But algae do have a potentially useful function as a new source of green fuel and one of the winners of the 2009 IDEAS Energy Challenge is already assessing the energy potential of the particular species of micro-algae currently polluting Lake Amatitlan. A team from 2 universities, La Universidad Galileo and Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, is researching and developing the processes for filtering micro-algae from the water, extracting their oil and converting the oil into biodiesel.

A laboratory and pilot plant will be established near the lake. 655 industries based around Lake Amatitlan and about a million Guatemalans stand to benefit from this new source of green fuel. And then there are the environmental advantages: removing the algae will, of course, clean up the lake. And there are plans to replicate the project in other parts of Guatemala once the methodology has been refined.

As GVEP’s CEO, Sarah Adams, explains, “If a successful commercial model can be established this can be replicated to other contaminated lakes and rivers in Latin America which are suffering from the same problem, transforming waste into locally-produced clean energy”. A local source of biofuel and improved water quality – two benefits for the price of one project! Click here for full project description.

While we laud the effort to develop new methods of mollifying an environmental disaster while producing economic benefit, we have to comment that it seems unlikely that a $200,000 grant will produce any breakthroughs. If oil giant Exxon’s $600 million dollar investment in algal biofuel technology has yet to produce any considerable quantity of fuel, then we doubt that this grant will result in much. Nevertheless, if there’s a chance that the research leads to a healthier lake we welcome it!

Other promising grant winners include two micro-hydroelectric ventures in Honduras, one of which is described by Mily Cortez in the video below:

All in all it’s an exciting time to be a cleantech entrepreneur in Central America!

This brief video produced by the Climate Works Foundation provides a fascinating glimpse into the belly of the Chinese Manufacturing Behemoth. We will refrain from commenting here on the recent cyberattacks on western IT and software firms operating in country, suffice to say that these events are outside the purview of our expertise. Click below to peer into the present:

Interesting notes from Dr. Wang Wanxing:

• China produces 35-45% of global photovoltaic products, exporting 95% of them
• Solar needs economies of scale and reduced costs, as well as realistic pricing of fossil fuels (as opposed to current externality-laden subsidization) in order to become a serious source of global energy generation
• Current solar PV pricing estimates of 1 yuan ($0.14-15 cents) per kW/hr

Here we have to ponder the wisdom of the current bias toward large-scale installations in the global market. The ongoing financial crisis has had a deep impact on the finance and demand side of photovoltaic installations, as expounded upon last year in a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which concluded that:

The financial crisis has had a significant impact on the PV industry, primarily through increasing the cost and reducing the availability of investment into the sector. These effects have been more immediately experienced by PV installations than by production facilities, due to the different types and duration of investments, and thus PV demand has been reduced by a greater proportion than PV production. More expensive financing is also directly reflected in PV module and system price declines, as other constituent costs have had to decline to maintain necessary rates of return for PV installations.

Production of commodities creates, and is the one and universal cause which creates a market for the commodities produced.

We apologize for our delay in posting on the utterly heartbreaking tragedy that has ensued after a series of earthquakes essentially destroyed the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding areas. We would like to ask for your help in supporting organizations that are on the ground providing relief services, as well as for the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), an organization with which Quetsol has a special relationship. The AIDG will be providing longer term aid in rebuilding the country. Please see the updates and videos below, reposted from the AIDG’s blog:

Dear AIDG Supporters,

At approximately 4:55 pm Eastern on Tuesday Port Au Prince experienced a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, with aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.7. There is widespread damage to infrastructure with numerous collapsed buildings. It is anticipated there will be a high casualty rate

Additional photos can be found here: twitter.com/photomorel

Here is what we have learned:

The National Palace has collapsed (eyewitness photo)
The UN headquarters has been seriously damaged (source: UN)
The Hotel Montana has sustained collapse with 200 missing (source: associated press france)
A Hospital has collapsed (source:NYtimes)

We will provide more information by twitter. www.twitter.com/aidg and our blog www.aidg.org/blog as it becomes available.

We are currently developing opportunities for AIDG to aid in reconstruction with the help of partners. We will make another announcement on this shortly.

As you all know we are a small organization. We require some basic additional budget resources immediately to help run an assessment that will determine this longer term response aimed at infrastructure and reconstruction. If possible mail checks to:

AIDG
P.O. Box 104
Weston, MA 02493

We will actually receive these funds faster than online donations. We will be running a larger campaign in concert with our reconstruction announcement.

For those wishing to have an immediate direct impact on populations in Port Au Prince we are recommending supporting the medical response teams of Partners In Health. www.pih.org They are working with a field hospital set up by the UNDP that immediately needs pain meds, bandages and other medical supplies.

We ask you all to hold Haiti in your hearts and prayers as this tragedy unfolds.

Sincerely,

Peter Haas
Executive Director, AIDG

Please also see this interview with AIDG’s Deputy Director, Catherine Lainé who has been in Haiti for the past couple weeks running AIDG’s operations there:

See the original post on BoingBoing here: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/15/haiti-earthquake-upd.html

Other organizations to whom you can donate to help in immediate relief include:

http://www.yele.org/

http://www.foodforthepoor.org/

http://oursoil.org/

Our thoughts and prayers are constantly with the people of Haiti.

Spot on the local TV station/corto de televisión local:

Reposted from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group’s blog:

http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,1561/

Quetsol is a new business that will provide high efficiency, low cost solar technologies that aim to increase access to basic illumination, electricity generation, and water pumping in Guatemala. Their mission is to help their clients save money and improve their quality of life through the use of appropriate technology.

Hoy tratamos sobre un informe producido por la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe acerca del papel que la energía desempeña en el cumplimiento de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio. El documento calcula que en todo América Latina hay unas 30 millones de personas que caracen de acceso a energía eléctrica, basado en datos de las Naciones Unidas, representando un 5.5% de la población total. De igual manera, el documento resalta la ineficiencia de los servicios existentes de energía eléctrica, los cuales cuentan con un servicio intermitente y con tarifas exorbitantes. Los gastos en energía son aún más sesgados para familías de escasos recursos económicos, como acota el informe:

…Dentro del grupo de países analizados, el gasto energético para el quintil de ingreso más bajo oscila entre 5 a 18% de su ingreso mensual medio; mientras que para el quintil más alto sólo representa entre 0.5 al 3% del ingreso mensual. Al interior de los países se registraron grandes diferencias entre el mayor consumo y gasto energético del quintil superior, respecto del inferior. Llegando a ser el primero entre 3 a 21 veces mayor que este último, todo lo cual refleja y acentúa la inequidad social en la región.

Marta Ortega de Wing en su terreno natal, cortesía del New York Times

An (already outdated) article published in the Journal of Light and Visual Environment tracks the rapid advances made over the past 6 years in LED technology, predicting even greater efficiency in the lighting sector for the future. The article, written by George Craford of Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, outlines some of the more notable trends and accomplishments in LED lighting in recent years, including:

• Luminaire efficacy of 80 lumens/watt in commercial applications as of 2007 (up from 30 in 2004)
• A move toward combining red, blue, green, and amber LEDs in order to produce white light, as opposed to using white phosphor
• Projected luminaire efficacy of 150 lumens/watt

Also noted are some of the barriers to LED penetration of the lighting market, including its high cost (LEDs currently cost about 10x more than compact fluorescent or incandescents) and the “cold” or bluish quality of the light they emit. Nevertheless, as mentioned in a report submitted to the Department of Energy, LEDs are likely to compose up to one third of the lighting market by 2027.  This conclusion seems plausible in light of the passage of stringent new energy efficiency rules for televisions sold in California, a timely mandate as TV makers are already implementing LEDs in their products, as well as a broader increase in the demand for LED lights which have witnessed compound annual growth rates exceeding 37% in recent years with a projected total market of $12 billion in 2012.

There has been some chatter lately about India’s ambitious plan to install 20 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity by 2020, as well as achieving a manufacturing capacity of 20 gigawatts annually by the same year and installed capacity of 100 gigawatts by 2030 and 200 gigawatts by 2050. The plan is outlined in a government report from April 2009 published in its entirety on the Greenpeace International website, and notably calls for the establishment of a national Solar Energy Authority, microfinance initiatives to deliver household and village scale electrical generation, heating, and lighting systems to 20 million individuals, grid parity with rural diesel generators and coal thermal power plants by 2020 and 2030 respectively, a feed-in tariff, and mandates for the integration of solar photovoltaic and thermal power generation to fossil fuel power plants.

The plan won’t be cheap, as noted in a post on the New York Times’ Green Inc.:

Total costs would be 85,000 and 105,000 crores ($18.5 billion to $22.8 billion) over a 30-year period. To help finance the project, the plan foresees a significant tax on gasoline and diesel — fuels the government currently subsidizes.

Despite these costs the plan would be a smart investment in the long run as a hedge against rising coal, natural gas, and diesel fuel costs, while also markedly reducing environmental and health externalities and increasing productivity and employment. Ultimately photovoltaics could become a considerable export-driven industry for India, much as it has in China which currently manufactures between 1/5th and 1/2 of the world’s photovoltaic cells and panels and announced its own goal of 20 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2020. This would go a long way toward easing China’s current energy constraints caused by a cold snap that has slowed transportation of coal and led to a government ration on fossil fuels used for electricity generation in order to ensure adequate supplies for heating purposes. This competition is sure to benefit ancillary developing nations as costs continue to fall and supply increases.

In a high-profile spectacle exposing the deplorable working conditions that are at the base of Brazil’s sugar and bioethanol industry, the largest conglomerate in the sector was placed on a government black list of companies whose employees work in slave-like conditions. BNDES, the state development bank, froze all accounts (amounting to some $411  million dollars) with Cosan after the Labor Ministry added them to a black list of approximately 163 companies in the country whose conditions are likened to that of slavery. A BusinessWeek article notes that the Labor Ministry “liberated” 42 workers from their debt-based servitude to the company, and an article from Yahoo!News Brazil mentions that the company is facing 13 labor law infractions including use of laborers under the age of 18, lack of adequate housing for employees, lack of potable water at work sites, and finally, a commercial relationship between Cosan and its employees in which employees were issued credit which ultimately led to them becoming indebted and forced to work in order to service those debts.

Cosan alone is responsible for roughly 5% of global sugar production as well as 4% of global ethanol production and as a result of the Labor Ministry’s actions Petroleo Brasileiro (better known as PetroBras) has announced plans to review its purchase of ethanol from the company. The developments come in the face of a polemic trend toward mechanization of sugarcane harvests, with states like São Paulo now rendering 50% of the crop with heavy machinery instead of manual labor. Only two decades ago nearly 100% of the crop was harvested principally by migrant laborers from the country’s poverty stricken northeastern states.

Biofuels have become one of the largest nightmares for Brazilian and international environmentalists who find themselves caught between government policies which have resulted in the country becoming essentially self-sufficient in energy production (see page 30 of report, >10% of total energy consumed is from external sources), and the myriad NGOs and community based organizations who are crying foul of the destruction of pristine forests in the Atlantic rainforest, cerrado, and Amazon basin to make way for more sugarcane, African palm, and soybean plantations. The United States has recently surpassed Brazil in ethanol production in a political boondoggle of its own, producing some 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year almost entirely from corn based feedstocks (total annual US consumption of gasoline is approximately 135-140 billion gallons annually) despite mounting evidence that the net environmental impact of combusting corn ethanol is null to negative, as noted by Harvard professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Michael McElroy:

The balance in terms of emission of greenhouse gases is close to a wash for the United States: the reduction in net emissions of carbon dioxide obtained by using corn rather than petroleum as a “feedstock” for motor fuel is largely offset by additional emissions of the several hundredfold more potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, formed as a byproduct of the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow the corn.

Not to mention a report by the National Taxpayer’s Union which estimates that “every dollar of ethanol profit costs taxpayers $30.” And so the recent news from Brazil will add fuel to the raging debate over the social, economic, and environmental costs of biofuels.

La permacultura es un sistema de diseño ambiental que trata de armonizar la relación entre los seres humanos y el medio ambiente, creando una cultura que pueda durar indefinidamente – una cultura permanente en contraste con la que tenemos ahora, una cultura basada en el consumerismo de recursos limitados y no renovables (como el petróleo y el carbón). El interés en los métodos de permacultura ha ido creciendo en los últimos años, especialmente tras el éxito en aumentar la producción de alimentos que  han tenido en Cuba tras el Período Especial. En 1991 se acabaron las importaciones de petróleo, comida, y máquinas industriales de la Unión Soviética y Cuba tuvo que regresar a métodos casi completamente orgánicos para alimentar a su población. Poco después un equipo de Australianos, liderados por Bill Mollison, vino a enseñarles a los Cubanos cómo adoptar métodos de policulturas, micro-huertas urbanas, pesticidas y abonos orgánicos. El éxito ha tenido resultados profundos para todos con el promedio de calorías consumidas por persona subiendo un 50% desde el comienzo del programa, y ahora la gran mayoría de las verduras y frutas en el país se cosechan dentro de 25 kilómetros de los consumidores finales.

Los fundamentos de la permacultura forman una guía apta para individuos, comunidades, y compañías que buscan operar y vivir en una manera más sostenible. Son 12 principios en total y los listamos abajo (para leer más sobre ellos vea el libro digital de Davíd Holmgren – La Esencia de la Permacultura, y para os nossos amigos brasileiros veja Os Fundamentos da Permacultura)

1. Observa e interactúa
2. Capturar y almacenar energía
3. Obtén un rendimiento
4. Aplicar la autoregulación y aceptar la retroalimentación
5. Usar y valorar los servicios y recursos renovables
6. Deja de producir residuos
7. Diseño de los patrones a los detalles
8. Integrar más que segregar
9. Usa soluciones lentas y pequeñas
10. Usa y valora la diversidad
11. Usa los bordes y valora lo marginal
12. Usa y responde creativamente al cambio

Quetsol toma estos principios como una guía para la visión de la compañía y nuestros productos ayudan a individuos y comunidades integrar recursos renovables como paneles fotovoltaicos en su entorno. Para aprender más sobre la permacultura, vea también el sitio de Permaculture TV (español y portugués).

I have been blessed with opportunities to see talks and lectures from truly revolutionary thought leaders of our time, from Amory Lovins to Vinod Khosla. I am further blessed to live in an area of the world where a good idea can emerge from a garage and evolve into a 20,000 person company that reinvents everything from maps to communication. It was, then, a true honor to be in attendance at an event called the Clean Tech Open at the end of November where I got to see some of the most innovative clean tech start-ups compete for incredible prizes of cash and in-kind services, and more importantly, for the attention of venture captalists and philanthropists.

The entrants ranged from social enterprises like Drip Tech which aims to commercialize low-cost drip irrigation systems in the developing world, to HydroVolts, a company designing and installing small scale hydroelectric generators for use in both developed and developing nations. Then there was the National Prize Winner EcoFactor, recipient of $100,000 in seed capital and $150,000 of in-kind services from Silicon Valley firms) which has developed a simple software program that parses data from your home thermostat and makes adjustments for optimal efficiency. Finally, I was impressed by Alphabet Energy, started by Matthew Scullin (PhD, Materials Science, Physics, and Energy Resource Analysis from UC Berkeley). Their product is a thermoelectric material that can transform waste heat from coal, natural gas, and other power generating facilities into electricity, and they have a claimed total addressable market of over $1 trillion (there are a lot of dirty and inefficient power plants out there). You can read more about the contest from the Clean Tech Open Blog. All in all the event was a tour de force exposé of myriad solutions to the structural problem of our profligate use of energy resources, and a real source of what Amory Lovins likes to call “applied hope”.