[Terrapreta] Hello, I am an investor

[Brian Hans]

Well I would offer a mix of Co-op and 'micro lending model' as a way to distribute TP technology, fight GHG, food security, agricultural disease fighting, deforestation, desertification... a whole bunch of bad stuff. 
   
  Build a centralized plant that gathers a central $ revenue stream of Carbon Credits / sequesteration from the 1st world polluters to help pay for operations and logistics. The char is then distributed to 'partners' who are taught how to utilize the material in a Co-op fashion. The partners will then slowly payback the small amount of cost (plus interest) of char thru the increased revenues they receive from improved agricultural techniques. 
   
  Growth would come in addition to scalability of this TP distribution model & the ever increasing value of carbon sequesteration but also on the logistics that is built thru this relationship. Other business can develop along this logistical pathway going bothways, like the buildout of PV and wind energies infrastructure as well as the reverse pathway of bringing much needed food/agriculturally grown/organic products to market. Conductivity is productivity, with TP laying the basic roadwork. 
   
  I think this buildout can also be married to gasification/G2L buildout. TP first, build the logistics and ag production until the area can afford to build out a second G2L facility. 
   
  Last selling item is that TP can bring low production land into higher production land. This means that growth can move to the huge number of landscapes where there is virtually no production presently. TP offers a way for other technologies to come in, basically laying the initial groundwork for these market logistics to happen. I believe it was Lorenzo that offered that impressive list of open ag land acrage that was completely unutilized around the world. TP lays the infrastructure for that land to become the next breadbaskets of the world. 
   
  But before this can happen, TP has to be made from not only woody biomass but all biomass including algae, grasses, waste ag... TP feedstocks have to almost have a negative value for the whole of the economics to work. 
   
  Let me know when you have a check ... 
   
  Brian
  
Jan Sorensen <j.sorensen at newenergysystems.no> wrote:
  Lorenzo, 


I am willing to join you in this exercise. 


Jan Sorensen
New Energy Systems AS
Oslo, Norway
www.newenergysystems.no





Message: 6
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 18:02:24 +0200
From: "Biopact" 
Subject: [Terrapreta] Hello, I am a major investor
To: "terra Preta" 
Message-ID: <614374219F554C4396390C4846F1A3A6 at PCvanLaurens>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I wanted to do this exercise. Suppose I am a major investor, willing to green up my act.

I have $1 million at my disposal. And I'm looking at many different, competing options: launching a reforestation project in some developing country, investing in cellulosic biofuels, protecting an existing patch of tropical rainforest, or investing in biochar to offset emissions (of my company) or to trade as carbon credits. 

How would the biochar people convince me to put my money into their concept?

I know we've repeatedly listed many reasons as to why TP is interesting. But we have not made a real comparison of competing concepts. Moreover, I think we should begin to design concrete proposals and routines to convince investors willing to engage in the "voluntary" carbon market (since biochar is not yet included in formal carbon trading systems). 

For Terra Preta we shouldn't underestimate concrete implementation costs, the complexity of biochar production, the competing uses for a farmer's biomass, monitoring and verification costs, and so on. 

Anyone willing to make a basic comparison of options (let's say we start with an overview of the economics of different bioconversion technologies, then compare with less related concepts like reforestation or rainforest protection)?

Lorenzo


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