The Future Is Antigua

Antigua, Guatemala is a small city which enjoys a robust tourism industry and hosts innumerable Spanish language schools for foreigners. Buried in the colonial architecture (which earned the city status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site) lies all the trappings of modern civilization. The relative wealth of the Antigua amidst the poverty and violence of Guatemala has afforded the city opportunities to modernize, and the government seems open to all ideas which may propel Antigua into the 21st century as assuredly as any western nation.

Towards the end of last year the municipality introduced a free wireless zone in its central park, earning it status as the first digital city of Latin America. The novel concept of free wi-fi for all has been championed by consumer advocates the world over but in San Francisco the process has been bogged down by negotiations with competing providers and to this day there is no such service, but in Antigua they just decided to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. When one thinks of Guatemala they probably don’t imagine internet cafes and people using their laptops in the park, but access is available to all who would wish to make use of it.

As encouraging as that development is the people of Antigua are preparing to lay the ground-work for another first, and possibly becoming the first city of its kind in the entire world. According to Rudy Giron’s excellent La Antigua Daily Photo, a group of dedicated people are busy laying the framework for an alternative fuel project for the city. Biopersa organizers went from restaurant to restaurant collecting spent cooking oil with the intention of reprocessing it into biodiesel for municipal vehicles and the local hospital. If the initial steps are successful and the idea takes hold Antigua, Guatemala could be the first city which operates its city vehicles entirely on reprocessed biodiesel.

Years and years (and years) ago I stumbled across a documentary playing late at night on KQED. It was called Fat of the Land and it followed a group of women driving a van from New York to San Francisco powered by biodiesel. They stopped at fast food restaurants and greasy spoons along the way, asking managers for their used grease, mixed the oil with lye and washed the result to produce their own gasoline. It was an amazingly revealing and infectious movie which I encourage you to see, not simply because of the science involved but the spirit of the women involved.

Years and years ago my friend worked for the post office, driving the rural routes outside of Olympia, Washington. I remember talking about the possibility of converting the engines of postal vehicles to run on biodiesel. His objections were logistical, mostly due to the lack of centralized amenities in the Olympia area, but conceded that the concept could work in other places. Since he delivered mail in his Volvo wearing whatever he happened to be wearing that day I guess he had a point.

But what about a city such as San Francisco, which prides itself on ingenuity and environmental purity? Could this town create a sustainable network of fuel producers, processors and refueling stations to support the fleet of official city vehicles? I’m not exactly sure how the politics work out but it seems that between kitchens in public schools, public hospitals, city and county jail kitchens and assorted cafeterias a fair amount of cooking grease must be in use every day. The grease has to be changed frequently and it disappears somewhere, probably taken away by a private company paid to clean out grease traps.

So why not redirect this spent grease to a city reprocessing plant where it can be mixed with lye, washed and drained, and shipped to city vehicle pools for refueling? The most obvious stumbling block is that a standard engine can’t process biodiesel without being converted which would require an initial set-up cost, but as the price of producing the fuel would undercut the price of gasoline derived from crude the money would be reclaimed over time. If the problem is more a matter of having access to enough cooking grease, then local restaurants would probably prefer having their traps emptied by a city collection than paying for the service. Economically, without any pesky facts to dissuade me, it sounds good and the benefit ecologically seems unimpeachable.

Perhaps there was a reason this wasn’t already being done. Scratching my head a little I wondered if there had ever been an attempt to evaluate the logistical possibility of converting the city’s vehicles to run on biodiesel. Curiosity continued to nag with no answers to satiate its persistent gnawing so I figured I should write Ross Mirkarimi, my local district supervisor, to see if this idea had been run into a wall before.:

Mr. Mirkarimi or Relevant Staff Member:

Hi, I’m a resident of District 5 in San Francisco, although this

doesn’t pertain specifically to my neighborhood. Recently I read a

brief article about efforts in Antigua, Guatemala to revolutionize how

city vehicles operate. A small group of people is attempting to

develop a sustainable fuel supply to eliminate the need for gasoline

by establishing a network of oil reclamation, re-processing and

distribution. Instead of relying on the growing bio-fuels industry,

which has been widely criticized for producing more Co2 (through

manufacturing and deforestation) than could be offset by consumption,

the Antigua model would have spent cooking oil removed from

restaurants to provide the raw materials needed to process bio-diesel.

The ecological benefit of removing gasoline-powered cars from the

streets is obvious; the economic gains from creating a cheap and

sustainable gasoline supply could possibly be significant. Antigua is

a small town in a poor country so I’m curious what a large city in a

rich country can do when it comes to taking steps to ensure a better

tomorrow.

What I’m interested in knowing is whether a feasibility study has ever

been conducted examining the possibility of replacing conventional

crude-derived gasoline with an alternative, specifically bio-diesel

(reprocessed, not manufactured) but also electric or other, and if so,

what the results of that study suggested. If there has been no such

study I wonder if one has ever been discussed, how it might be

conducted and what sort of time-frame is to be expected. I suppose

that ideally the city and county of San Francisco could produce enough

cooking oil from civic buildings (i.e.: General Hospital, San

Francisco City and County jails, SFUSD cafeterias, City College,

various governmental cafeterias) to provide an ample supply of raw

material to be processed and distributed centrally, but some collusion

between local businesses could also be quite beneficial for the entire

city.

Any information that you or your staff could supply regarding this

issue would be greatly appreciated. I understand that you all must be

very busy and I thank you for taking the time to read this and respond

if you can.

Twenty-four hours have passed and I’ve yet to receive word, but I’m quite sure that the good people down at City Hall have a lot on their plates. This is the first time I’ve ever considered writing an elected official for anything, let alone for information which would probably require a little research and writing me back. Hopefully my naive notions of government won’t be shattered by the harsh realities of modern politics.

Mucho gracias to Rudy for allowing me to use his photograph as well as for his original posting about Biopersa’s work. The second image is a still from Fat of the Land which doesn’t seem to be available for rental but you can negotiate a purchase from a couple of the women who made it– it’s a good documentary.