Rum And Sargassum: Renewable Transport Solutions For The Average Bajan

MIT trained mechanical engineer Dr. Legena Henry has never backed down from a challenge. Failing advanced maths in her teens drove her to excel in the subject. In high school, undergraduate and graduate studies she was always one of the only females in her classes but that never phased her.  

As a Lecturer in Renewable Energy at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill, Barbados a new challenge presented by one of her students sparked her research into biofuel for transportation in the country.  

The results? An initial US$100,000 investment, a biomethane solution and startup called Rum and Sargassum, at least one patent already filed in the US and a team of students on an exciting entrepreneurial journey with her. 

The challenge: what if we can’t afford electric vehicles?  

In pursuit of its ambitious goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030, Barbados is focusing on using electric vehicles (EVs) in the transport sector to reduce carbon emissions. However, most will likely be running off electricity generated from fossil fuels.  According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the sole electricity provider in Barbados, BL&P generates power from 85% heavy fuel oil and 15% diesel. 

In addition, electric vehicles for private use are expensive. They currently retail between US $21,000 and US$112,500.  On April 1, 2022, the government instituted a two-year excise tax and value-added tax (VAT) holiday to incentivize purchase of these vehicles. However, electricity on the island is also expensive.  September 2021 figures by globalpetrolprices.com listed household electricity prices in Barbados as the sixth highest in the world.  

It is no wonder then that during one of Dr. Henry’s lectures a student challenged the idea of electric vehicles for Barbados as a solution.  Dr. Henry relates the incident,  

‘So I’m teaching an undergrad course in sustainable energy systems and somebody goes, “Dr. Henry, you’re saying what? This country is going 100% renewable by the year 2030? Who’s buying my electric vehicle for me because I can’t afford one.” And I stopped and I thought wow that’s true. I can’t afford an electric vehicle by the year 2030.’ 

That was 2019. In summer of that year she gathered four of her students to tackle the question,  “How can the average man in Barbados enter the renewable energy age without breaking the bank?” 

CNG engines and biofuel 

The small team looked at swapping out internal combustion engines in existing cars for compressed natural gas engines (CNG) run on biomethane. Dr. Henry says making the switch is just a four-hour process and notes that it’s already being done in Trinidad and Tobago. There however, fossil-fuel based natural gas is used. 

To create a biofuel alternative for Barbados they would need readily available biomass and plenty of water, without affecting the island’s main water supply. 

At first they considered using sugar cane as the biomass like Brazil does, however sugar cane production in Barbados is on the decline. But rum, produced from molasses (a by-product when sugar is extracted from sugar cane) provided one answer. 

Barbados is one of the top ten exporters of rum in the world. Thousands of litres of waste water are generated from rum production on the island and usually discarded into the ocean. This waste water would be ideal to use in hydrolysis, a critical step in producing biomethane.  

If not sugar cane, then what? 

Passing a sargassum-strewn beach one day, one of Dr. Henry’s student assistants had the idea that the team should test the alga as a potential feedstock for the process. 

Since 2011 massive floating blooms of the alga have crossed the Atlantic and ended up piled high on Caribbean beaches. UNEP reported that 20 million tonnes covered Caribbean shores in June 2018 alone and 27 million tonnes between June and August of 2019.  

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, sargassum was considered one of the most serious threats to tourism in the region. Toxic fumes from the rotting piles also caused serious environmental concerns. 

Sargassum influxes don’t seem to be going away so finding large scale productive uses is critical. 

A redemptive moment 

Luckily, the tests using  rum production waste water and sargassum proved very encouraging. Dr.  Henry was invited by the Solutions Development Network to present the work to the 2019 Global Solutions Forum at a side meeting of the 74th UN General Assembly. Her presentation was entitled “Alternatives to EV: Biofuels in Barbados”. 

In it she made the connection between rum, sargassum, and the triangular trade in which refined goods were shipped to West Africa in exchange for captured Africans, who were then shipped to the Caribbean as slaves in exchange for sugar, rum and other raw products which were then shipped back to Europe.    

Sargassum traverses the same Middle Passage, from West Africa to the Caribbean as did slave ships. Dr. Henry recalls the experience in the room at the time.  

“When I raised the story of the Middle Passage to a room full of Europeans it was a shocking story to them; there was sorrow on the faces…as West Indians we talk about the story all the time. That’s our story, that’s our history, that’s our past…but to them it was a new story.” 

At the end of that meeting she received the funding offer from the Blue Chip Foundation.  

Dr. Henry shared that,    

“If we do succeed in this solution, this will be us taking our resources and our crises and our problem of sargassum… and producing a solution from it. In my mind that’s a redemptive moment. That’s a moment of taking something that is painful and a problem and making it a victory.” 

Commercialisation  

Over the past two years life has changed significantly for Dr. Henry. Learning business terms; fielding investor meetings; networking for the right professional advice; and reducing her teaching hours to pay more attention to Rum and Sargassum are the order of the day.  

But how will vehicles running on Rum and Sargassum stack up against electric vehicles when it comes to carbon emissions and affordability? 

Dr. Henry summarises the intended impact this way,  

“…five years from now drive on our biogas and that will be 100% fossil fuel free transport fuel… to compare an electric car five years from now and a regular car driving on rum and sargassum biofuel it’s likely that the rum and sargassum car [is] doing better for the economy of Barbados, equally for the atmosphere, but also better for the average pocket of the average Barbadian.”