Reginald Joseph Noel grew up at a time in Haiti when talk of deforestation wouldn’t be the norm for a few more decades. He enjoyed great summer vacations on the countryside of Haiti and loved the serenity of woods, trees, and forests. Noel left Haiti for the United States in his youth to go study in New York. Initially, he was set to go in the dentistry field, but left New York for Miami, where he earned a Business Administration degree from Miami Dade College.
So much for a career in dental medicine. Mentally, Noel had detoured towards his love for nature, and more importantly the preservation of natural things in Haiti, like forests.
Noel returned to Haiti—where he currently resides—and founded Les Biocarburants d’Haïti in 2006. In addition to creating jobs in rural Haiti, the company is changing the way many see alternative energy in Haiti. Besides running Les Biocarburants d’Haïti, the environmentalist owns a car body shop. He also serves as a biofuel consultant to firms and organizations in Port-au-Prince.
Above: Reginald Joseph Noel sits in his office in Port-au-Prince, holding up a bottle of biodiesel fuel that his company Les Biocarburants d’Haiti produced.
Q&A
At which point, did you have the idea to launch a company like that?
It was by pure hazard that I became accustomed to renewable energy. A customer while waiting for his car at my shop mentioned the word” biodiesel”. I did some research on the subject and started with the help of my wife to experiment in our kitchen at home. The first try was not successful and we worked for weeks until we obtained something that looked like the pictures we saw on the internet. Once we had produced three gallons, we had to test it; my wife had a brand new car then and it was not the first choice! We put the fuel in my pickup truck…I live about 15 miles away from my workplace; she was monitoring me throughout the journey to make sure the truck wouldn’t stop! From that day on, this truck has been running on straight biodiesel—B-100.
When you started this company, you no doubt came across some skepticism. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Fear not failure. One must have the strength to follow his or her dreams. At the beginning, most people I talked about making biodiesel in Haiti did not believe it was possible. Soon after that, with the support of family members and friends, we decided to launch the company. We began collecting used vegetable oil from hotels and restaurants in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, and thanks to a grant from the WINNER project funded by the USAID, we set up two experimental farms on 50 hectares and employ 125 people.
There’s always been this talk about deforestation in Haiti. What have you observed?
In 1924, Haiti was 60% covered with forest. Twenty years later, it went down to 20% and today we have less than 1% of forestry—which translates into chaos each hurricane season or during the rainy season of April to October. Last year, we cut 40 million trees to satisfy 75% of our energy needs in term charcoal and we are not planting any. As the local population is growing at an alarming rate 2.5% per year, we will need more charcoal. This has got to stop. It is easy to shout stop cutting trees, but what alternatives do we offer the charcoal workers to provide the basic to his family? Wood is a renewable energy. We need to set up nurseries and farms to have a constant source of such raw materials.
Do you have any counsel for other ecopreneurs, aspiring or otherwise?
Yes, renewable energy is a broad field where there is room for several other entrepreneurs. Let us take the plant that I am working with: jatropha curcas known here as “gwo medsin”. The oil content is thirty-five percent; there is ten percent humidity and the remainder is a rich seed cake that can be transformed into organic fertilizer, animal feed, briquettes to substitute [for] charcoal. There will be a growing need for chemists, nutritionists, industrial mechanics and engineers, welders, plumbers etc. We import on a daily basis two million eggs from the Dominican Republic. This seed cake can be a local and affordable source of animal feed such as chicken, tilapia and with one stone strike two birds—food and energy security. Solar energy still has a lot potential in Haiti and wind power is underutilized. The northwest of the country has a potential of 150 megawatt in wind energy. I wish my fellow Haitian-Americans would come visit, and invest in this field in order to develop our motherland. Energy is a key factor in development and is a lucrative market.
For those of us who are not too sure about biodiesel is, can you define it for us in lay folk term?
Biodiesel is an alternative fuels to petro-diesel made of vegetable oil or animal fat which can be used in any diesel engine such as tractor, trucks, boats, generators without any major modifications. It is cleaner than petro-diesel. Haiti has 600,000 hectares of dry to arid land which is perfect to plant gwo medsin without interfering with traditional agriculture. We decided to use this plant as our raw material because of [its] resistance to drought, its long life span of 30 years. But it does requires some care during the first two years. Gwo medsin has always been part of the Haitian farmer rituals as protective barriers from goats and other predators because the leaves contains a toxin that prevent them from being eaten by animals. Most of us who grew up in Haiti can remember the cuillère of huile—[spoonful of oil]—medsin we used to receive as laxative!
Above: Workers at a Les Biocarburants d’Haiti at one of the experimental farms in Haiti.
What are the benefits of using biodiesel?
One, we import 13 million gallon of diesel from Venezuela every month through the Petro-Caribe treaty. Haiti pays 40% of that fuel cost 60 days after the delivery. The remainder will be paid 20 years later at 2% interest rate which will be a hefty load to the future generations. We must start thinking of ways to reduce this burden which sums up to half a billion U.S. dollars per year! Why not try to produce 20% of the energy we need over the next ten to fifteen years? Two, biodiesel emits 70% less CO2 [carbon dioxide]. It reduces metal friction inside the engines which prolongs the life of any investments. Three, planting jatropha to have the raw material for biodiesel production will also create jobs in the rural parts [of Haiti] and reduce the flow of migration to the big Haitian cities. I am currently the Project Manager of a study funded by the IADB’s [Inter-American Development Bank] local branch and the OAS [Organization of American States] on the work on the legal framework for biofuels in Haiti in order to set some rules and standards to that industry.
You have a degree in Business Administration. Did it help you get to where you are?
Yes and no. Yes, academically speaking I was prepared No, because most of what I have learned in business was on the field. Books and articles are filled with information but are lifeless!
Initially, you dropped out of a dental program, to pursue the auto-mechanic trade.
As far as I can recall, I was curious. I used to break my toys and my younger brother’s the day after Christmas to see how it works and was agile with my hands. I have always showed interest in the field of mechanics, but it did not please my mother at all because the Haitian mentality to be successful one should only be lawyer, medical doctor or engineer! I did enroll in a pre-dentistry program at New York Tech in the Fall of 1983. My heart was not and was never in it—realizing that I would have been miserable the rest of my life doing something I did not like or pretending to be someone else just to please someone. We are eight in the family. Six of them are in the medical fields as physicians and nurses and psychologists. I am very happy and proud of myself even though there are long ways ahead and I’m seeking more challenges.
