Most countries have now ratified the Kyoto Accord and have introduced mandatory legislation that establishes GhG emissions reduction guidelines and initiatives for the use of transportation biofuels that can be a viable alternative to the increased dependence on fossil fuels. The feasibility of enacting programs to achieve these initiatives can be prohibitive mainly due to the high cost of enacting the legislation in all facets of the economy especially in the wake of the international financial crisis.
GOALS of the Program are comprised of these main areas:
- Economic Development and Employment for both Urban and Rural Communities
- Production of large amounts of potable water suitable for drinking, sewage disposal and irrigation
- Production of Value Added Products for the local consumer and for export
- Generation of environmentally friendly electricity for local and countywide consumption
- Reforestation in areas that meet this requirement
- Reduction of GHG and other harmful environmental emissions
- Creation of Carbon Emissions Credits as an additional source of revenue
This mass scale employment program will help eliminate poverty in Project Countries by creating valuable commodities including; ethanol, grain, pulp & paper, feedstock for electricity production, and fabricated panel boards that can be used as alternative green building materials.
Effectively this program will employ and feed the people while providing building material for housing in the Project Countries and other developing countries of the world.
The process is essentially a labour intensive program that will provide employment opportunities to the local population. The objective is to organize the local farmers in the Project Country into an Agricultural Energy Cooperative (AEC), which will empower the people to become energy self-sufficient and provide large economic benefits to the local economy.
The Program will be based on using all the available marginal agriculture lands in the Project Country for growing the agricultural components for the TERRALENE® Family of Environmental Fuels without taking land away from the growing of important food chain agricultural crops.
A Project Countries’ agricultural sector may also find benefits by finding increasing demand for specialized crop production to support a developing fermentation industry. There is also the distinct possibility of franchising production facilities tailored to local needs, which could provide jobs, security, and debt relief without affecting the food chain production for that country.
Various non food chain agricultural crops will be utilized that are suitable for the growing environment in the Project Country especially in marginal soil conditions that are not suitable for growing food chain agricultural crops.
In many areas of the world, contamination of ground water sources and increased global warming has created severe potable water shortages. Production of large amounts of potable water suitable for drinking, sewage disposal and irrigation will also be produced as a by-product of the distillation of the components from the cellulose plant based processing facility that will be set up in the Project Country to produce some of the components for the TERRALENE® Family of Fuels. The inclusion of a desalination plant to process potable water to help ease the water shortage in certain areas of the Project Country could also be feasible.
Some value added products could be produced such as wood fibre for housing panel boards and other sustainable by-products in the production of some of the components from cellulose based plant material for TERRALENE®. This will create additional employment in more sustainable jobs especially in rural areas of the Project Country with additional revenue streams to the operations thereby reviving the agriculture sector and saving the forest industry.
The harvested stocks and leaves will be used for the production of the agricultural components for the TERRALENE® Family of Environmental Fuels and then using the Biomass from the harvested stocks and branches and leaves for building components or for use in a small scale Carbon Neutral Cogeneration Plant for use in the oil extraction and ethanol processing facility.
On a larger scale could be a Carbon Neutral Electric Power Co-generation Plant (Combined Heat and Power) for the TERRALENE® component production processes but also the extra electrical generation could be sold to the local power grid to significantly decrease the use of imported fossil fuels for electric power generation for the Project Country. The larger scale plant would use other biomass products such as;
- Other agricultural residues from straw, pruning from vineyards and fruit trees etc.
- Livestock waste from wet and dry manure.
- Industrial residues from industrial waste wood, sawdust from sawmills and fibrous vegetable waste from paper industries.
- Dry lingo-cellulosic from residues from parks and gardens (e.g. pruning, grass)
- Contaminated waste from demolition wood, organic fraction of municipal solid waste, biodegradable landfilled waste, landfill gas and sewage sludge.
Using cellulose based plant biomass and other waste biomass for electrical generation in a CHP co-generation plant will help to offset the use of fossil fuels for electric power generation thus reducing GhG emissions in the Project Country and thus having less of a reliance on foreign oil imports and in the same time creating Carbon Trading Credits.
Some of the components for TERRALENE® can be produced using closed structures called Photobioreactors in Small Greenhouses. The land area is greatly reduced because these small greenhouses can be set up to work as individual privately owned processes in a co-operative setting generating income for the private homeowner or can be used on a larger scale where huge volumes of oil can be produced in limited spaces.
Also in this process, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is captured from the biomass CHP co-generation processing plant and pumped into the closed greenhouses to help generate the CO2 requirement for enhanced growth. Other areas of CO2 by-product production in the country that are mainly from nearby coal fired and diesel electrical generation plants can also be captured for use in the greenhouses thereby generating additional CER’s (Certified Emission Reduction Credits).
TERRALENE® is proven to reduce GhG emissions significantly. The use of TERRALENE® in the transportation market will allow the Project Country to significantly reduce GhG’s and other harmful emissions in major metropolitan areas. This will allow the creation of emission reduction credits called Mobile Emission Reduction Credits (MERC) generated within the transportation sector that can be traded internationally creating additional revenue to offset the high cost of importing transportation fuels and for other infrastructure costs.
These Carbon Trading Credits (CER’s and MERC’s) are very valuable now, will continue to rise in the international market place, and are highly sought after by the international community. As more and more stringent GhG emission standards are mandated throughout the world, the value of these fully tradable carbon credits will also continue to rise in value.
These carbon trading credits not only have cash value but can be used as “offsets” to areas in the country that are producing GhG emissions such as in the coal fired electrical generation plants and in heavy industrial areas. These carbon trading credit offsets will be invaluable as the Project Country transitions to more environmentally friendly and economically feasible sources of alternative fuels.
The use of the TERRALENE® Family of Fuels can expand the time frame of the depletion of the existing oil fields for use by 20% or more because a majority of the components in the fuel blends comes from non fossil fuel sources.