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The Plan to Turn the Caribbean’s Glut of Sargassum Into Biofuel
With record-breaking quantities of the seaweed set to hit Mexico’s beaches, experts propose converting it into biogas and construction materials, as well as using it to underwrite carbon credits.
A study by the Inter-American Development Bank estimates that sargassum drives down local GDP by 11.6 percent in Quintana Roo, the coastal state home to the tourist hot spots of Cancun and Playa del Carmen. “By processing 500 tons of sargassum, 20,000 cubic meters of biogas is obtained,” says Aké Madera, who is the founder and director of Nopalimex, a Mexican company pioneering generating gas and electricity from biomass and farming waste. On February 28, the governor of the state of Quintana Roo, Mara Lezama Espinosa, announced the formation of the Sargasso Comprehensive Sanitation and Circular Economy Center, whose aim is to shift the macroalgae from being considered a pollution problem toward it being used as an economic and environmental resource.
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