AWG allows industrial growth

A2WH allows industrial growth essential for job growth

Air to Water Harvest technology

The rule for killing poverty

There is a simple rule. To decrease poverty new job opportunities are required. To increase job opportunities new businesses need to start in or move into the area. For new businesses to move into the area they must be able to obtain the land, power and water supplies required to operate. A lack of any of these requirements will force businesses to avoid or leave the area which eliminates badly needed jobs and continues the poverty cycle.

An example of Water shortage limiting industry

In India today it was recently proven that a local Coke plant was drawing so much water from the local aqua quiver that the level of toxic elements had increased in surrounding residential wells while other residential wells had dried up all together. The Coke plant was forced to dramatically curtail its use of fresh water which forced the plant to reduce production which lowered profitability and cut staff levels of the plant which is also a major local employer. Now the company is considering relocating the plant all together which means the local community will loose the economic input of the plant which would normally be considered a good neighbor.

A water limited area will not attract new jobs

An important question for local leaders is how likely is another company which needs substantial water to choose to locate in the area.

It is rather obvious to that companies which need substantial amounts of water will choose to avoid an area that can not provide the water and that area. As a result the area will experience the long term negative impact on employment opportunities and the overall local economy.

This Coke plant has been idled for months tying up a large amount of capital and lost production. Now the company is now looking at relocating the plant to another city where more water is available.This means they will be taking their taxes and jobs and entire secondary support industry with them leaving Pallakad all the poorer.

Pallakad didn’t have much choice except to force this issue because the cost to local families and farmers exceeded the benefits from the plant but there will still be a substantial economic cost for the people living in that region who needed the jobs.

We don’t have the exact number but our estimate is that direct and indirect jobs lost in the Pallakad area if Coke pulls out will exceed 1,000 most of which are above average incomes.

A2WH A2WH gives Pallakad the option of allowing the Coke facility to remain in place while not impacting the local ground water. They could have retained the jobs and all the associated economic benefits without the environmental impact.

Using Technology to allow industrial growth

We felt that this was a tragic thing to happen in an area that was already rife with poverty and lack of adequate job opportunities so we set out to see how we could help and our answer is relatively simple.

A2WH technology can produce all the water the Coke plant needs without requiring any ground water or power from the electricity grid. It can allow the Coke plant to run at full capacity without having any adverse effect on the surrounding community. As a result the community gets to keep the jobs and attract new employers while also preserving their ground water resources.

The A2WH A2WH technology produces water by extracting the humidity from the local air and converting it to liquid water. It is powered by solar thermal energy and the sun evaporates an average of 2.8 billion gallons of water per second so humidity in the air harvested using solar energy is the ultimate renewable resource.

The A2WH A2WH solution is unique because it requires no water input, and no energy from the local grid and no fuel and yet is able to produce incredible amounts of water that are pure enough that most industrial users will pay a premium. Past approaches have uses large amount of electricity that have made the resulting water too expensive for most uses but the A2WH patent pending technology bypasses those problems.

How much land is needed to keep Coke in place

Depending on who you believe the Coke plant in Pallakad was drawing between 0.5 million and 4 million liters per day with 3.5 million liters or 924,602 gallons per day the most commonly accepted answer.This is a lot of water almost 3 acre foot per day but well within the capability of the A2WH system.

The A2WH A2WH technology would require between 100 and 223 acres of land equipped with our A2WH (Air to water harvester) to deliver 924,600 gallons per day where the 100 acres is the best case and the 223 is the worst case depending on local environmental conditions. We think it is closer to the 100 acres since it is easier for us to extract water from high humidity air and the Indian humidity tends to stay high. The official coke estimate is only 0.5 million liters per day in which case they would only need between 15 and 32 acres.

If the Pallakad government invested in keeping the Coke plant the A2WH solution would likely produce excess water on many days and this excess water could be fed directly into the local aqua quiver to help it start recovering even before the monsoons come again.

The alternative to loosing major employers

The cost of land in Pallakad is unknown as is the taxes required to import the A2WH technology into the area so we can’t do a full economic analysis in this instance our guess is that Pallakad will loose so much in jobs and taxes when the Coke plant moves out of the area that they could easily have purchased the 223 acres and equipped it with the A2WH A2WH units which would have provided all the needed water.

India has had a tremendous growth of opportunities over the last 15 years driven by the tech industry but it is our perception that while this has helped a lot of people it has also left a lot of people who didn’t have the opportunity to gain 4 and 6 year college degrees behind. It is essential that the local governments be aware of the options they have to retain good employers like Coke and the A2WH A2WH technology provides this option.

In parts of India Coke is paying as much as 0.2 Indian rupee (20 paise) per liter of water. At 3.5 million liters per day this would equate to 255,675,000 rupees per year. The current exchange rate as of Feb 2006 is 44.2150 Rupee per US dollar so this amount of water could be sold back to Coke for 5,782,540 per year. Which would go a long ways towards paying for both the land and the A2WH A2WH technology and that is not even including the other contributions the coke plant makes to the local economy.

I am sure Coke wouldn’t initially be happy at paying for water they previously got for free but in reality their executives have already agreed to pay 20 paise in other parts of India so they would likely agree again especially if it helped eliminate some the animosity currently being directed against the brand.

Qualifying questions

Do you have any industries in dry areas that are limited in growth by insufficient access to clean water? If so :
Which companies and industries are they
What is the economic impact of this growth limitation in both GDP and jobs?
How much water does each need per year.?
How much would it increase the company value if they had that water?

Resources and Links

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/coke/0505/29cokeindia.html – Coca-Cola using up water, foes in India contend by ajc.com – Wells dropping by over 100 foot are blamed on Cokes water use. The problem may not be related to Coke but you can pretty much bet that no other industry that needs significant amounts of water will move in.
Coca-Cola system in India includes 25 company-owned bottling operations and another 25 franchisee-owned bottling operations. Coke has invested over a billion dollars in India and uses less than 0.002% of the total water while directly and indirectly employing over 125,000 people. These statistics look good for Coke which is already using rain water recovery systems but the shear volume of water used in some plants when the stored rainwater runs out actually is fairly likely to cause at least local problems. These may not be visible when there is plenty of rain, hence plenty of ground water recharge but when a drought limits water recharge a large user’s impact will be felt. Even if the situation continues to degrade after the large user stops drawing it is difficult to prove that the degradation would not have been even faster had their draw continued.
Coke plant asked by supreme court to stop drawing water for the plant in Pallakad which was drawing in the range of 3.5 million litres or 924,602 gallons per day for a facility that occupied 39 acres.The A2WH A2WH technology would require approximately 223 acres of Air to water collectors which could be as low as 100 acres due to the local humidity. The Coke site claims they where only using 0.5 million liters per day in which case they would only need between 15 and 32 acres.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/jan/env-cokesaga.htm – The Coke saga in Kerala took a new twist towards the end of 2005 when the company expressed its interest to shift out of Plachimada to a nearby industrial estate where water consumption may be less contested. Meanwhile, the tussle between Coke and the Perumatty Panchayat awaits resolution at the Supreme Court, reports P N Venugopal. In effect Cokes license to operate was extended but they are not allowed to draw any ground water. How exactly they are supposed to run a plant without water remains to be seen.
http://onlypunjab.com/fullstory2k5-insight-news-status-25-newsID-28230.html – Coke Plant to close.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Epr/Epr1_ss9.htm – Part 1. The Economic Costs of Ecological Deficits ASSESSING THE FOOD PROSPECT: The Fast-Growing Water Deficit. Includes difference in production output between water used for agriculture and industrial uses. 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain,
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/EPRNotes.pdf The Economic Costs of Ecological Deficits – includes extensive set of reference links to related documents.

Questions:

We are writing an article on the Coke water issue in the Pallakad area. We know of a technology that would require 230 acres to supply 3.5 million liters per day of water the the coke plant needs. It could do so during the worst drought and would have zero impact on the local ground water.

What we need to know is:

A) How much 230 acres of land would cost in the Pallakad area?

B) How much Coke spent to build the plant where it is.

C) How many jobs both direct and indirect Pallakad stands to loose as a result of the Coke plant moving.

D) Net economic loss to the Pallakad area that would occur as result of Coke plant moving.

Our assertion is that it may be worth it to the Pallakad regional government to consider a long term bond to fund the development of the 230 acres worth of the A2WH water harvesters and then sell that water back to Coke at favorable rates. Our guess is that Pallakad would gain more benefit in year one than the entire cost of the project.

If you know these answers please contact Us.

Contact us for more information

Call 206-601-2985. or Send our sales department an email.

This discussion contains forward looking statements which are based on current expectations and differences can be expected. All statements and expressions are the opinion of management of A2WH and are not meant to be either investment advice or a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold securities. Many of these statements are based on sound economic reasoning, however actual response of the economy is heavily influenced by politics and large business and so the outcome could end up substantially different.