for ‘geoengineering’ as Global Warming abatement, this plan can pay its own way as a straightfoward commercial development project based on the vast food, industrial, and energy production of OTEC, its potential for carbon credit exchange, and the potential of its marine communities as a host for tourism. Additionally, Luz Azul will develop the world’s first fleet of hydrogen based commercial ships for the delivery of its products to the world. Recent EU studies have concluded that there are no technical obstacles to this development given off-the-shelf technology. The large scale of commercial marine vessels affords greater opportunity for this sooner than other forms of transportation while at the same time it offers a very convenient means of delivering Equatorial renewable energy to the cities of the world with no initial new infrastructure investment. One simply plugs a hydrogen transport vessel into the power grid at port, treating it and its generators as an enormous self-mobile battery –something already commonly done with naval vessels to provide emergency power to urban centers. Luz Azul’s marine settlements would also serve as model communities, demonstrating and disseminating through its tourism activity the rational sustainable lifestyle and habitat architecture that would ultimately provide the definitive solution to these three great problems long–term. Luz Azul’s ultimate goal is the deployment of as many as 10,000 100MW Equatorial OTECs within one generation whose combined operation and production would stop Global Warming, produce all the civilization’s energy, and produce as much food as 4 times the arable land area of the planet.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

Luz Azul is at the proposal stage of development. It’s initial project would be the creation of a quarter-scale prototype settlement based on a single OTEC plant and employing three prototype commercial hydrogen ships of modest scale, one dedicated to hydrogen transport, one to containerized cargo, and one as a multi-purpose packet vessel supporting primary passenger transit. The plan is cost-effective at any scale but, owing to initial high structural costs, will need to expand incrementally in structural area to support full utilization of mariculture potential. Total project cost is estimated at three billion dollars.
The project will be based on the creation of a conventional commercial real estate development venture but assembling a consortium of companies in marine construction, engineering, shipping, and investment. This initial venture company will be transitioned to a Kelsonion Community Investment Corporation owned by employess and residents of the settlement upon completion of the prototype settlement, its transition of workers to permanent residents, and repayment of initial debt, freeing the community to exponential growth and replication. Proceeds of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge would be used to found the initial venture company and its marketing and to conduct an international architectural design competition for the design of the prototype settlement. The media produced through this competition would be used as its primarly marketing material when seeking investment and consortium partners, as is common with large real estate development projects.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

Global Warming, energy crisis, and hunger are all problems intrinsic to the physical architecture of civilization and its adaptation to the logistics of fossil fuel. No brute force solution is possible owing to scale but marine transportation represents a weak link in the chains that bind us to fossil energy. Impacting more of the global economy than any other form of transportation, it is the easiest to retrofit to alternative energy. Through OTEC-based industrial mariculture one creates the economic incentive for the development of an initial hydrogen fleet with global deployment and the competitive advantage of owning its own energy source. Development driven by food and energy demand can leverage this advantage into a means of global renewable energy deployment while directly impacting the physics and social effects of Global Warming itself, buying time for the evolution of habitat for which its newly created sustainable communities set the example.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

Self-made entrepreneur dealing in areas of publishing and international trade. Decades experience as writer/researcher in futurist, technology, computing, eco-tech, post-industrial, and architectural subjects. Current writer for TMP2, an extensive wiki project performing a contemporary revision of the 1980s futurist work The Millennial Project by Marshal Savage. (tmp2.wikia.com)