With the price of oil spiraling ever higher, the search is on for alternative fuels and energy sources. One of the many fields now being explored worldwide is the use of biofuels, including biodiesel.
Costa Rica is particularly interested in exploring the possibilities, as the country intends to replace 25 percent of its oil imports with renewable sources by 2010 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2021. According to Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho, senior renewable energy specialist for the Inter-American Development Bank, “Central America is in a very good position to accelerate its biofuels movement.”
The Compañía Nacional de Bio Combustibles (“National Bio Fuels Company”), created early last year, has plans to build a biodiesel plant in the Pacific port town of Caldera, and Pan-Am Biofuels Inc. has acquired 1000 acres of farmland in Guanacaste to establish what the company is calling an “oil field” of Jatropha trees.
Jatropha is hardy, fast-growing, drought- and pest-resistant. The perennial plant, native to Central America, produces oil-bearing seeds within a couple of years, and can continue producing for up to 50 years.
The plant is not edible – in fact, it is toxic, and is considered invasive and undesirable in some places, since it can thrive in poor soil but does not yield food for humans or animals. However, it has potential as an alternative fuel, with an estimated cost of just $43 a barrel.
Investors and, indeed, the Costa Rican government, are proceeding with caution but the topic is a compelling one in today’s world, and over time we may begin to see Jatropha fields alongside Costa Rica’s traditional expanses of coffee, sugarcane and bananas.
See this article in Biodiesel Magazine for more information on biodiesel development in Central America.
