by Rod Hughes

Playa Manzanilla– Although rampant development on the country’s Pacific Coast has been under some fire in the past few years, not all building is controversial. A competition last Sunday at Playa Manzanilla on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula sponsored by Banco Nacional definitely encouraged construction–of sand castles.

The top two teams actually won with ecology-themed sculptures, instead of buildings, It was not until the third-place Taj Mahal that castles became rewarded. But the sculpture that perhaps gained the most attention was of two frogs, painted bright green, lying on the white sand of the beach.

But even this may have had a strong element of ecological criticism in it. One of the frogs had a bright red tongue protruding from its mouth. Could they have been dead from global warming? Only Alajuela artist Andres Miranda could tell us.

But one kind of heat in this volcanically active country has attracted Costa Rica’s Electrrical Institute (ICE)—that energy generated deep in the ground. According to the daily La Nacion, ICE is currently looking for global financial partners to help turn geromagnretic energy into electricity. The solution is neat, avoiding destruction of the environment with dams or sending carbon gases into the atmosphere.

The technique is not geothermal generation, such as exists on the slopes of Rincon de la Vieja Volcano where superheated steam from vents is passed through turbines. As explained by ICE’s director of its Energy Control Center, Salvador Lopez, holes are drilled 50 to 100 meters into the earth, where the temperature is at the boiling point of water, 100 degrees Celsus. Then a liquid is pumped down where it is turned into steam conducted to generators. (With geothermy, the holes are up to 2,000 meters deep and temperatures at 250 degrees.)

While petrolum-fueled generators produce a kilowatt hour of electricity at a costly $.30 US, the new technique costs barely three-hundredths of a U.S. cent. Research is under way in Italy, Japan and the United States and “some people say they have prototypes,” said Lopez. ICE is seeking partners to explore the scientific breakthrough in non-polluting generators, he added. ICE has conducted some conversations with a US company named Power Tube but as yet have no agreement, La Nacion reported.

It is obvious that more Costa Ricans than just the builders of sand castles are sensitive to dangers of global warming…