Small farmers in St.Croix will be able to help their homeland to produce local renewable energy and create social and environmental benefits. Even if small you can make a world of difference.

Tibbar Energy biomass project launched a program with the Virgin Islands Department of Agriculture to provide free valuable services and partner small farmers in St.Croix. This program will create  employment, produce local cheaper and cleaner energy for 25 years. We expect it will give a great opportunity to farmers to improve their income and create top soils while they can get organic fertilizers from the anaerobic digester that will produce methane and power.

Small farmers usually have less possibilties to create income than big farms. Producing silage with dedicated grasses for methane and power in St.Croix will become an outstanding opportunity and they will be able to use worse lands in the Island and even degraded lands creating beautiful landscape managed grasslands.  Therefore, small farmers will be able to collaborate with Tibbar Energy creating a new business and producing local green energy at the same time helping their own homeland and economy to avoid fossil energy imports.

Too good to be true!?… Possibly, but the island needs small farmers.

Biomass was used for energy since millions of years ago; but now new technologies can give an outstanding incremented efficiency transforming solid biomass into power with extremly high social, economic and environmental benefits. Let’s check what is the baseline scenario and what are the opportunities now.

Living in a small island means paying a ridiculous high price for any kind of energy used everyday. Air conditioning, petrol, gas, industrial power and household energy are all imported sources from mainland. They are generated abroad and tax payers only give their income to increase environmental impacts and risks while creating fossil energy dependence. You can see some of the recent environmental consequences and costs here.

The US Virgin Islands easily could be the first islands in the Caribbean to produce all its electricity from renewable energy resources.

At  the same time many local industries have high costs because of energy. One example are fertilizers conditioning costs and yields for agriculture (urea is imported). Any power or diesel used will be always expensive and energy prises will only rise in upcoming years.

Different from so many projects we know, producing biogas (methane) to power St.Croix will have sinergies with:

* Local economy: it will create jobs, new farming opportunities and income and reduce energy costs for everybody

* Environment: Bioenergy crops in the Island will be perennial pastures with high benefits for soil (increase in organic matter and fertility). Farming techniques will reeduce erosion, runoff and pollution to coral reef. Overgrazed and desertified areas will become into greener lands as we show in this post.

* Food sinergy: the project will supply organic fertilizer (digestate) from the anaerobic digester and farmers will be able to produce more and cheaper highly value-added organic products.

Tibbar Energy project is an amazing result of two years of extremely hard work using most recent and best technology available worldwide. Our company, based in Europe, supports this program and the vision and values behind this project.

Learn about similar European projects (cultivating perennial grasses to save the world)

Read more about bioenergy crops.

Read more about Low-Carbon development strategies in the Caribbean.