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Articles by Kelly Hearn

Kelly Hearn is a writer in South America. He is a former UPI staff reporter and a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications.

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Even by Argentine standards, Ricardo Carlstein can talk a blue streak.

Ricardo Carlstein.

I met with the founder of Biofuels SA, an Argentina-based maker of small-scale biodiesel plants, in the posh environs of Buenos Aires. Carlstein sat at his desk and explained how any person can be a fuel plant by using his invention, a technology protocol he calls “high-temperature pressurized” (simply put: a way to cook biofuels at abnormally high temperatures, one that cuts effluence by rendering obsolete the need to “wash” the fuel).

A massive, bearded man in T-shirt, slacks, and New Balance running shoes, he reminded me of my high-school football coach, pointing through charts and graphs, his playbook for debunking South America’s increasingly hyped biofuels revolution. For him, getting out of the climate mess means upending the traditional energy matrix of multinational energy firms. “The key is small-scale, decentralized processing, based on individually owned and operated small-scale plants,” he says. “We have over 200 units in the market, worldwide, proving this strategy works.”

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