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