A message from our team

My main goal and drive is to improve people’s lives.

I started searching for the ‘ultimate sustainable business’ while working on Wall Street amid the global financial crisis of 2008-2011. Although I was able to keep my old job by producing good consistent financial results, or maybe it was just good luck, I saw many of my friends and colleagues at other institutions suddenly losing their  jobs, and even forced  to  leave  the country because they had lost their working visa status.

That struck me. It also fueled my desire of stop being ‘just a number’ and figure out a way of creating a “bullet-proof”, “recession-proof”, “consistent”, “unique”, job solution. I did not know how to call it, but I knew what I wanted.

I created a list of things humans need regardless of economic conditions. Humans need to eat and feed their families. When the food is scarce, family grows or there is a generalized crisis, we seek to find more food and bring it back home. We presume to live in good health and search for longevity. And we want to do all of the above more efficiently, thus increasing quality of life.

Those industries in priority order are: food, energy, health, technology, and then everything else. 

1. The agro industry required large capital and/or long payback periods, thus, not for me. 
2. Energy. I had no skin on it but wanted it to be renewable, clean, that wouldn’t interfere with the food supply chain as other renewables did, to date.
3. Health  and  Pharmaceuticals were off-bounds as it was architecture for me. I was reluctant to do anything that was family related. [10 years later I’ve come to realize how wrong I was, healthcare it’s so broad and deficient that cannot be ignored anymore].
4. Technology development have always caught my attention. 

So there it was: I wanted to create a technological company that would innovate with renewable energy solutions that helped create better jobs and produce without competing with food raw materials while caring for the environment profitably. I guess the word I was looking for finally came about by itself, “sustainable”.

The best description of our solution would be: "A clean, renewable energy district that works 24 hours a day to help lower the cost of food production with minimal carbon footprint".

I founded LatAm BioEnergy™ in 2008 with the objective of developing clean, renewable energy solutions in Latin American countries. The word ‘solutions’ played a critical role as the developing world has its particular complexities. If I wanted to do something “unique” I had to do it “turn-key”. In other words, I needed to sort out the prospect needs, the technology, the financing, logistics, commissioning, training, the human barrier and ultimately optimizing the operation. To date, I strongly feel that we need to constantly loop back to those points and fine-tune them in order to maintain the competitive edge. 

That's how I’ve transitioned from banking in the Dominican Republic, to Treasury on Wall Street, to become a specialized entrepreneur in this young and fast growing and changing industry. 

I left the bank in 2011.

By 2013, we have had completed the first 300kWp biomass-to-electricity power plant of Latin America through the controlled gasification of olive pruning and olive press residues (biomass), located in the province of San Juan, Argentina. I had also made of it a regional lab facility for any biomass testing in the country. Governors and agro industrials alike have come and visited our site, sending their biomass for testing and analyses.

San Juan is a remote place with desert-like conditions that proved this project to withstand extreme, sometimes unprecedented, climate conditions. After figuring out technology gaps and faulty suppliers, the most difficult task of developing this project was not its price tag nor the conditioning of the biomass, meeting syngas' specification of the genset, not even tars, but human. Organizing people from different backgrounds, countries and ambitions to meet the goals efficiently have proven me to be the most complex and yet rewarding of all tasks. As a result, the olive producer was able to generate its own clean, renewable electricity with the material that was once discarded and hence, making a more competitive produce without the need of government subsidies. Since it was publicly announced, our prove of concept has been recognized in the NYSE, Oil & Gas and other publications in both the U.S. and Argentina. 

Generally speaking, agro industrials and forestry activities can cover large extensions of land and its regional economic distribution is often low with a high dependency on very limited companies. However, these agro and forestry companies generate the residue that can be efficiently converted into electricity with our proven solutions. Thus, our clean energy district creates jobs diversifying the matrix away from traditional sources. Furthermore, the operation and maintenance tasks required by the energy district helps to improve the local economy as well.  

Our investment positively impacts its stakeholders. It dramatically lowers the cost of producing food, improves companies’ bottom lines and opens the door to better jobs, better sources of renewable electricity and clean fuels. It improves people’s lives. It is sustainable.

That’s why I love my job.

Written in 2018