This article appeared in Pacific Business News on August 13, 2010:

Biofuels have supporters, but
scale remains an obstacle

Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
– by Sophie Cocke

Three years ago, representatives of Hawaiian Electric Co. met with farmers on the Big Island to discuss growing feedstock that could be converted to biofuel and used in the company’s generators. But discussions grew quiet when local farmers calculated how much they would be earning.

There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, each container of which weighs 286 pounds. So oil, at $80 a barrel, would yield the farmers about 28 cents per pound.

“There’s hardly anything a farmer will grow for 28 cents per pound,” said Richard Ha, one of the local farmers who attended the meeting.

Profits decline even more given that the feedstock must be drained to obtain the oil. Four pounds of a crop can result in only one pound of oil, meaning farmers would be getting paid only 7 cents per pound for their crops.

“The farmers never went back to another meeting,” said Ha.

This story looks at biofuels, and their role in Hawaii’s push for energy independence…. (Read more)

It is no secret that I am very concerned about betting too much of our future on biofuels just because we feel that we need them desperately. The critical chokepoint is feedstock.

We need to take a deep breath and we need to talk to farmers. Read about when I asked HECO not to let us get flattened by the wild bull.