History & Foundation

Atlantis Energy S.A. is a Costa Rican corporation dedicated since 2006 to the development of alternative energy sources. Initially, our goal is to research and develop vegetable oil for biodiesel, principally from cultivations of Jatropha curcas, a small tree native to Costa Rica and Central America.

The company is also developing the plants that are best suited for intercropping with Jatropha (also called Tempate in Costa Rica). The content of vegetable oil and potential byproducts of this plant has made it the focus of alternative energy sources in many countries of the world.

Although our company is primarily interested, at this point, in growing as many hectares as possible of Tempate, it has other interests. In a second stage, when seeds of Tempate become available, it will participate in the production of biodiesel. It also foresees becoming involved in other alternative sources of energy.
We discourage the cultivation of any form of plants for biofuels that competes with the production of food or has strong negative effects on the environment or on human well-being.

Location

The Costa Rican experiments were initially focused in climates and on terrains similar to those found in the Puriscal region (20 miles west of San Jose), but right now we are expanding our experiments to lower lands with other agro ecological characteristics.

MISSION of the Company

In the present times of oil crisis, Atlantis Energy S.A is entering the business of alternative biofuels, developing solutions to the environmental and social crisis among farming communities by motivating sustainable cultivation, research and production of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas and other plants that might be cultivated with it.

Philosophy

We will try to avoid competition between oil and food crops. Both energetic and alimentary security must be achieved without difficulty, because you can grow Jatropha for oil on marginal lands and grow food on the better lands of any farm. Or you can do intercropping with many advantages.

Jatropha Plant with fruit	Jatropha plantation in San Isidro del General	Jatrophga with maize, picture from ¨Handbook on Jatropha Curcas 2006

Jatropha is a crop that does not compete with food crops. It is not a food crop normally and it grows on land that is not usually good enough to produce food. Many other biofuel crops such as Corn, African oil palm and Sugar cane are food crops and their use as a source of fuel drives up the price of both related food and of the produced fuel. These crops, when used as fuel sources, take good agricultural land out of food production. Most of these also use large amounts of fossil fuel to produce and process the crop. It is paramount that each farm land be analyzed to determine where plants for vegetable oil could be grown and where the land is apt for food growing