The Problem
The purpose of the OMEGA International Youth Council is to unite teens all over the world to research possible locations for the OMEGA system. OMEGA is an ocean-based “life-support” system that transforms waste water into drinking water, increases local food production, and produces alternative energy in the form of electricity, heat, and liquid fuel. It could produce liquid fuel that would be carbon neutral; meaning that the amount of CO2 that cars produces would equal the CO2 absorbed by the algae. OMEGA could potentially solve the carbon crisis.
As teens, we have few opportunities to make an impact in the global community. However, on the OMEGA international youth council, teens have the ability to find locations for this innovative project. At OMEGA, we are not waiting for the future, we are creating it.
Our Plan
The OMEGA system uses natural and artificial bays that are common worldwide and will become more common with sea-level rise. Overall, OMEGA provides food, water, and energy and simultaneously improves the coastal environment by eliminating pollution. It also increases awareness of alternative energy and promotes a sustainable blue-green economy.
OMEGA consists of large flexible plastic tubes, called photobioreactors. Floating in seawater, the photobioreactors contain freshwater algae growing on wastewater and concentrated carbon dioxide. These algae are among the fastest growing plants on Earth.
If an OMEGA system was used in San Francisco Bay, it would occupy less than 1 percent of the Bay and it would produce at least 2 million gallons of fuel annually or about 20 percent of the diesel San Francisco's fleet of municipal vehicles consume. The water from the algae cultures is not released into the ocean, but further treated with a process developed by NASA for space exploration that makes it clean enough to drink. On the surface, the OMEGA system transforms solar energy into electricity and heat from solar panels and into biofuels from the algae.
