ARCHIVED March 9, 2006 12:00:00 am

Envirofit secures funding for Philippines project

By BizWest Staff

FORT COLLINS – Envirofit International Ltd. has secured financial backing from the Fort Collins-based Bohemian Foundation and the Swiss government to launch a pollution-reduction program in the Philippine city of Vigan.

Envirofit is a nonprofit company based on engine retrofit technology developed at Colorado State University. The company specializes in converting heavily polluting two-stroke engines into more fuel efficient machines.

In January Envirofit signed a formal memorandum of understanding with Vigan, located in the northeastern Philippines, to retrofit the city’s entire fleet of about 3,000 two-stroke engine powered tricycle taxis.

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The taxis are popular in densely populated Asian and African cities.

The Vigan retrofit project is estimated to cost about $1.5 million, Envirofit CEO Brock Silvers said today. Taxi drivers will have access to low-cost loans to pay for their retrofits. The funding from Bohemian Foundation – run by Fort Collins philanthropist Pat Stryker – and the Swiss Embassy in the Philippines, will help to launch the program until it begins to generate revenue.

The funding amount from the Bohemian Foundation and the Swiss government was not disclosed. Bohemian’s funding is in addition to a $500,000 grant to Envirofit in 2004 that supported a field test for the retrofit technology.

Envirofit, which has 10 employees in Fort Collins, plans to hire up to 25 Philippine workers to carry out the program; the program is expected to start this spring. Completion is scheduled for August 2007.

Meanwhile, Silvers said Envirofit is negotiating “a couple of other promising follow-on projects in the Philippines. They represent a larger scale. We hope in the next couple of months to begin to make public announcements on initial agreements.”

Company officials expect to reduce annual emissions in Vigan by about 3,000 tons, and cause Vigan taxis to reduce annual gasoline consumption by 1.6 million liters, or 416,000 gallons.

Envirofit’s previous field testing in the Philippines showed that the retrofits reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 75 percent and hydrocarbon emissions by 88 percent. Additionally, the engines improved fuel efficiency by 30 percent and oil efficiency by 50 percent.