CHARLIE PATON has spent six years working on a method of irrigating coastal deserts that could transform food production in dozens of arid countries round the world. It began on 1 November 1992 with a research grant from the European Union's (then still known to its friends as the European Community) third Framework programme. The brief was to build the world's first greenhouse irrigated by seawater on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. The project was contracted to run for three years.
Now, three years after the successful completion of the project, Paton's London-based Light Works company, which ran the propct, is still trying to get the European Commission to make the approved final payment for the third year. And there are indications that Commission officials have been discrediting the project when people ask for further information.
After Paton filed a complaint, Jacob Soderman, the European Ombudsman, concluded that Commission officials failed to supply Paton with reasons for refusing to meet his costs. But the Commission has ignored the ruling anti continues its campaign of non-payment.
Paton's Seawater Greenhouse received a good press five years ago (Technology, 29 May 1993, p 20, and Technology 26 November 1994, p 26) and also On TV science shows such as Britain's Tomorrow's World. It was "manufacturing" freshwater and growing lettuces on land where water for irrigation ran out a generation ago.
The trick was to pump seawater into a cavity in the greenhouse roof where it evaporated in the Sun. The hot humid air then passed into a condensing unit, kept cool by seawater, where freshwater condensed out. Meanwhile spare water wetted a cardboard lattice in the front wall of the greenhouse, cooling incoming wind. The result was ideal growing conditions, with cool air, plenty of sunlight and abundant irrigation water-- and most of the energy came directly from the Sun. The greenhouse could irrigate an area ten times its own size.
Today, it stands abandoned and vandalised. But the real vandals, claims Paton, are in Brussels. Some Commission officials disliked the project, insiders have told him. But they were arm-twisted into backing it by the enthusiasm of an independent research committee. He believes that they set out to kill the project. The Ombudsman foundl no supporting evidence for this, but notes that the Commission classified the project as "doubtful".
A Commission letter, copied to Paton by a sympathiser, claims that "the project, after a period of initial success, had to be stopped due to technical problems and questionable economic sustainability". Yet by this stage the project was already complete, and within months the Commission had accepted the findings of its independent reviewers that the project had fulfilled its objectives.Why would it do this? And why does it still owe Light Works some £97 000, three years after it should have been paid? The answer seems to be political, and there are rumours that the project fell foul of the Common Agricultural Policy, but how is not clear. The technology demonstrated in Paton's seawater greenhouse offers the chance for desert countries such as ~Morocco and Egypt to grow their own food and end their reliance on imports. Major southern European countries have long served these markets.
"I've lost a great deal of money, a talented research team and three years of my life," says Paton, who gave up a lucrative career building innovative lighting systems for British TV studios to develop the greenhouse. How many other researchers have suffered in silence after such treatment, fearing that if they speak out they will never get any more money from the Commission?
Paton no longer cares. Recently he went to Oman, where an internationally funded research centre wants to fund a new seawater greenhouse, using the model he developed on Tenerife. It should bring to life a desert coastline so blighted by lack of freshwater that even the palm trees are dying.
It could be the start of something big. More fool the EU for missing out. But, as Paton advises, in the politically charged world of EU research, "independent scientists should be very careful before signing up for EU research funds. I wish I hadn't".
p50 5 December 1998 New Scientist www.newscientist.com