Progress 05/01/22 to 04/30/23

Outputs
Target Audience:There was a total of 212 attendees to attend the conference including 36 virtual attendees and 176 in-person attendees. The attendees were from ten countries of Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, India, Italy, Nigeria, Spain, and the U.S. in five continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. The attendees include university researchers, college graduate/undergraduate students, government agents, farmers, and entrepreneurs. Since the conference was intended to promote communications on sustainable energy topics between academia, business, and government, A hour-long discussion section between the panel and audience on each session was arranged for each of the individual technical sessions. Those discussions were broad, informative, and constructive. Different regional perspectives and corresponding potential technical/policy solutions were discussed. Farmers and business owners in coffee, pineapple, banana, and utility industries in Costa Rica and other regions attended the conference and engaged in the discussions in all five technical sessions. Besides the discussion section after individual technical sessions, two special meetings of the stakeholders meeting on Monday (October 24, 2022) and the academic leadership meeting on Tuesday (October 25, 2022) were held to enhance the communications between different parties. 55 and 40 people attended these two meetings, respectively. The stakeholder meeting was moderated by Dr. Ajit Srivastava from Michigan State University. The meeting panel included Mr. Kevin Pang (VP of Qnergy Co., U.S.A.), Dr. Craig Frear (Director of research and development, Regenis Co., U.S.A.), Mr. Cesar Roque Siles (Director of renewable energy, Instituto Costarricense de Electridad (ICE), Costa Rica), Dr. Peter Vadas (USDA ARS), Dr. Marty Matlock (University of Arkansas). The hour-long meeting covered the topics of government policies on renewable energy development, business perspectives and opportunities of global renewable energy development, community-adapted energy solutions, etc. The academic leadership meeting was moderated by Dr. David Jones from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The panel included academic leaders in agricultural engineering from Latin America and the U.S.A. The panel members are listed as follows: Edilson León Moreno Cárdenas Director Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering Associate Professor, Agricultural Mechanization Area National University of Columbia Medellín, Colombia elmorenoc@unal.edu.co María Eugenia González Dean Faculty of Agricultural Engineering University of Concepcion Chillan, Chile mariaegonzalez@udec.cl David Jones Professor and Department Head Biological Systems Engineering Department University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE USA david.jones@unl.edu Marta Montero Chair School of Biosystems Engineering Universidad deCosta Rica San Jose, Costa Rica marta.montero@ucr.ac.cr Manuel Garcia-Perez Professor and Chair Department of Biological Systems Engineering Washington State University Pullman, WA USA mgarcia-perez@wsu.edu Patricia Smith Professor and Department Head Biological and Agricultural Engineering Texas A&M University College Station, TX USA Patricia.Smith@ag.tamu.edu The topics discussed in the meeting were partnerships and collaborations between universities; student and faculty mobility; curricular and research partnership opportunities that address sustainable energy, food security, and climate change. Many academic leaders in the U.S. who were not able to be there in person attended virtually. ? Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As mentioned above, the conference covered a broad scope of renewable energy topics from new technologies to socioeconomic studies. Attendees gained knowledge on new sustainable energy strategies and solutions at local and regional levels. In addition, the conference designed 6 nice coffee breaks along with lunch outside of the conference plaza, which created a nice environment for attendees to communicate and network. For instance, many student attendees from the University of Costa Rica communicated with professors and graduate students from the U.S. and other countries to seek graduate study in the renewable energy area. Farmers from the coffee and pineapple industries in Costa Rica communicated with researchers and energy company attendees to study and develop renewable energy solutions to realize carbon neutrality for their operations. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?All presentation slides and video clips are collected and posted at the following link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13_mKAsITK2o5VQqsXjzJyv9zUFqzKRbt?usp=sharing. The conference attendees and other interesting parties who have the link can access the content. In addition, as mentioned in the previous section, the conference led to two follow-up efforts to develop renewable energy solutions in Costa Rica. The conference committee is also working with ASABE on a proceeding for the conference. The papers will be reviewed by peers and published as a special issue in the Journal of the ASABE. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The conference successfully fulfilled the goal of bringing together agricultural and biological engineers and peers from academia, government, and industry, including growers/farmers across the world, to enable an interdisciplinary conversation among various stakeholders to explore renewable energy technologies and innovations. The attendees came from 27 academic institutions, 8 companies, 6 government agencies, 4 agricultural associations, and 6 farms around the world. There is a total of 54 oral presentations to cover five technical sessions of agriculture and the circular bioeconomy in sustainable energy production, distributed renewable energy systems and global climate change, social/environmental/economic perspectives on energy security, innovative renewable energy production, and integrated food/energy/water systems perspectives on energy security. These sessions reflected and fulfilled the four objectives of the conference. The attendees also participated in an ecological tour to the upper basin of Reventazon River on Oct 27, 2023 (the day after the conference). Reventazon River is the longest and most important river in Costa Rica. The Reventazon basin covers 2,900 km2 or 5.5% of the national territory, with 475,000 inhabitants (10% of the national population). There are four hydropower projects on its mainstream and six on its tributaries, as well as six additional projects under preparation. The Reventazón river basin is a great laboratory for studies from the perspective of the Nexus. It is a strategic territorial space in terms of hydrological richness. Besides renewable energy generation, the basin produces a large number of agricultural products, including 85% of vegetables, as well as dairy products, sugar, coffee and meat, and meat. It also supplies drinking water for a quarter of the population in the area. The attendees visited four farms in the basin focusing on high-altitude fruit production, anaerobic digestion of agricultural wastes, organic fertilizer production, and worm farming program. Meanwhile, the Costa Rica government and the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica were interested in the topics presented at the conference. An ASABE delegation (Mr. Darrin Drollinger, Dr. Ajit Srivastava, Mr. Juan-Pablo Rojas-Sossa, Dr. Mauricio Bustamante, and Dr. Liao) met Vice President Dr. Stephan Brunner of Costa Rica and his staff members to discuss a renewable natural gas solution for the entire country. After the conference, a research team including the University of Costa Rica and Michigan State University was formed, and a roadmap proposal for renewable natural gas production in Costa Rica has been submitted to the Vice President's office in January 2023. The conference committee also met the officers at the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica and discuss socio-economic efforts on renewable energy that the U.S. Embassy is interested in. A proposal entitled "Techno-economic studies for enabling the production of bio-methane from pineapple residues in Southern Costa Rica" has been developed and submitted in May 2023 by the team of the University of Costa Rica and Michigan State University.

Publications