By Jorge J. Muñiz Ortiz.
San Juan, Sep 9 (EFE).- State-owned utility AEE and the firm Bio-Lipidos on Thursday announced plans to build a plant in northern Puerto Rico that will produce a pure fuel based on tropical marine micro-algae.
AEE's executive director, Miguel Cordero, told a press conference that investment totaling $10 million will be needed to get the plant in operation, adding that the initiative will be a "future solution" for Puerto Rico.
"The goal is to produce fuel to generate electricity in Puerto Rico. We have the knowledge and the technicians, but the will to do it was lacking," Cordero said, acknowledging that the initiative should have been carried out earlier.
Cordero said the plant will be built in a roughly 8-million-square-meter (86-million-square-foot) area in Dorado and Toa Baja, towns on the island's north coast.
He added that plans are to produce close to 6 million liters (1.6 million gallons) of vegetable oil during the first year of operation, while the dry bodies of the micro-algae will be used as animal feed as part of a project to farm organic tilapia and shrimp.
Bio-Lipidos CEO Jorge Gaskins said micro-algae aquaculture has been used for years in countries such as Argentina, Australia, the United States, China, Peru, Guatemala and Mexico.
Community leader Rosa Hilda Ramos, meanwhile, said that after studying the proposal for the project she realized it is "the best long-term" solution for electricity production in Puerto Rico.
"The money raised will stay here. It will create 40,000 jobs. This oil is wonderful," she said.
She also said construction of the plant by the government will not take "any land" from any Puerto Rican, adding that the fuel "is not toxic" and that, if refined, "can be used for gasoline or diesel."
Marine micro-algae produce a clean, non-toxic, bio-degradable fuel that has an energy content similar to that of diesel and is totally compatible with all of AEE's existing infrastructure.
Ramos received the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Protecting the Environment in 2008 for representing the northern coastal town of Castaño in court in the 1990s in a lawsuit over contaminating emissions by AEE power plants.
Cataño's residents proved in that case that air pollution from the plants was causing them to suffer among the highest rates of respiratory illness and cancer in all of Puerto Rico. EFE
