With all due respect, this "demonstration" appears to be largely hype, all too typical of
PR put out by penny stock companies. And we all know how often the Dominican press asks the hard questions about "technology quick fixes" that the government announces for any of the DR's problems (rarely!). How many miracle solutions for the DR have we witnessed in the past 10 years that never became a market reality?
I hope that this process does what it professes to do and with economics that make sense. Many agricultural goods and grasses can be utilized to make biofuels (agrofuels), but the carbon footprint, caloric value and production economics often make them impractical for large scale use. All this press release tells is that they have been able to produce biofuel (biodiesel? ethanol?) from 15 native feedstocks, but nothing of the quality of the resulting fuel, whether they are carbon-neutral or better (not all biofuels are), and whether they would make sense given global oil and gas prices, both current and projected (some biofuel projects only make economic sense if oil prices remain high -- say US$70 per barrel -- over an extended period).
Frankly, I expected a bit better from Doroteo Rodriguez, who in the past has himself said that the only feedstock that the DR might economically use to produce biofuel would be sugarcane, either from bagasse or molasses, along with co-generation from the waste biomass. This talk of soy as a biofuel feedstock is foolish in the Dominican context.
Even if the process produces 2-3 times the biofuel volume of other processes, and the quality is indeed good, the carbon footprint is fine and the economics sensible (particularly if it is not to be subsidized by the Dominican taxpayer), I share RonS's concern about the diversion of fertile Dominican farmland from food production to agrofuel production if they try any feedstock other than sugarcane. Does the DR want to condemn itself to being a net food importer, just to replace a fraction of its oil and gas import bill (since I seriously doubt
any non-sugarcane biofuel could replace even 1/3 of the DR's energy use? Talk about national vulnerability!
As ever, you have to ask yourself does it all sound too good to be true? If this process is so revolutionary, so economically sound, why is this company still a penny stock and its process not spreading like wildfire in its home market, the US?
First 100% Green Energy Independent Country in the World?
