Action Items

  • Next Meeting: Saturday, November 1, 2-4 PM @ MacGregor Seminar Room 
  • Ernest: Finalize questions for David
  • Clinton: Create team wiki
  • Ernest: Broadcast logistics of meeting with David
  • ALL: Find local Malawi contacts

Malawi

  • Malawi heavily investing in biofuels
  • No food shortage

Meeting with David

  • Friday, October 24, 2008, 4:30 PM 
  • Ernest to check if we can move meeting to Saturday (sometime between 11 AM and 3 PM) due to scheduling conflicts

 Macroeconomics (Greg)

  • Working on presentation
  • Large binding constraints to growth
    •  Land-locked country
    • Good network of road but they are not heavily used; some land shipping is routed through neighboring countries instead
    • Lack of availability/reliability of electricity may be causing a lack of investment
      • Where is electricity needed? Cities? Rural areas?
    • Limited access to financing
      • Constant interest rates but demand is low
    • Overvalued foreign exchange rate, dollar rationing, importers/exporters screwed, possible devaluation of Malawian Kwacha (MWK)
    • Donor assistance is one-seventh of GDP

Crops (Ernest)

  • Crops used are either high in starch or high in oil content
  • Starchy crops (soy, ethanol) need to be processed with chemicals, bacteria, etc.
    • There also efforts to use biomass/cellulose for additional energy. This involves processing with bacteria. Currently being researched in labs, low efficiency.
  • Some oily crops crops can be used directly in diesel engines with no processing other than extraction of the oil from seeds.
  • Long term: genetic engineering of algae
  • Rainy season: November to April, humid, 90° F
  • Dry season: cool, 10°-14° C (50°-57° F)
  • Brazil: 60,000 small farmers grow all of the country's sugar cane
  • Need a local/global market for jatropha and biofuels

Land (Clinton)

  • Chiefs own/allocate land, have the right to redistribute at leisure
  • Lack of ownership leads to overuse of land by workers
  • Need to further study land ownership, reforms, and agricultural use
  • Need an incentive for 2-3 year investment needed for Jatropha to mature

Other areas to look into

  • Calculate total cost of energy produced: unit of energy per dollar of investment
  • Need to make use of biomass and excess material from fuel processing
    • Clinton: create charcoal for cleaner cooking
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