Glasspoint 's boss , rod macgregor , thinks that taking capital costs and the lifetime of the plant into account his firm can produce steam at $ 3.78 per million british thermal units ( btu ) , which is $ 3.58 a gigajoule .
The bad news was that the gas tax would promote less energy conservation than the btu tax ; the good news was that it would cost middle-class americans less , only about $ 33 a year .
And the company has now signed a deal with petroleum development oman for 7 megawatts of plant-a 16000-square-metre greenhouse providing some 57 billion btu of steam a year .