Eleven days to Nate Hagens‘ talk at UH Hilo. 
His talk is called Energy, Resources, and Human Demand on a Planet Well Past Its Human Carrying Capacity, and it will be on Tuesday, January 12th at 6:30 p.m. in UCB 100.
Click for a short preview of what Nate will discuss.
I helped arrange for Nate Hagens, a well-known speaker on “big picture” issues facing human society, to speak at UH Hilo on Tuesday, January 12th. He’ll be at UCB 100 at 6:30 p.m. His talk will be about how we can cope. Here is a short preview of what he will discuss:
I want to share an article of mine that ran in the Huffington Post last April. It’s about the people I turn to regarding energy issues, and they remain the same.
Before I rerun it for you here, I’ll add that the fracking revolution, which no one saw coming, caused the oil price to plummet a year ago. But as Robert Rapier points out, we are very close to the bottom of the oil cycle, and we are likely going to repeat the cycle.
And here is that look back at the Huffington Post article (4/1/2014):
It is clear to me that the most important issue we face here on the Big Island right now is that of energy costs. There is a huge risk associated with the rising price of oil, it’s going to affect us all, and we don’t have the luxury of time to deal with it. We need to figure it out now.
We have resources here and ways to address this. It’s not rocket science. It’s all a matter of cost and common sense. What I find is that the rubbah slippah folks get it quickly.
It comes down to a matter of attitude. Instead of being the people who look for a thousand ways why, “No can!” we must become people who look for the one reason why “CAN!!”
Energy issues are completely interconnected with agriculture — together, they all lead to our food security, or lack thereof — and I appreciate all the supportive testimony from so many people re: my renomination to the state Board of Agriculture. Here is a full list of the testimony, which includes support from some of the very knowledgeable people I turn to to learn about and confirm information about energy issues.
If it sounds like I know what I am talking about re: energy, it is because I have spent a lot of time at conferences and also learning from these experts, whose testimony you can read at that link above:
#7 Mayor Billy Kenoi. Mayor Kenoi recognized early on that geothermal would play a crucial role in our energy future and that’s why he helped the Geothermal Working Group, authorized by SCR 99, accomplish its work. I was part of a delegation he took to see geothermal operations at Ormoc City, Philippines. We visited a geothermal plant sited on the flanks of a volcano that last erupted 100,000 years ago. (In comparison, Mauna Kea last erupted 4,000 years ago and so is likely an even hotter spot for geothermal.) The mayor also formed a task force to evaluate the health effects of geothermal on the community.
#204 Henk Rogers. Henk is founder of the Blue Planet Foundation and understands and appreciates the potential of geothermal base power energy. He operates his own grid at Pu’uwa’awa’a Ranch. He also has a fully functional hydrogen refueling station on site. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are coming to the Big Island. Henk is a doer more than a talker. When he does talk, it’s likely to be with the King of Bhutan or Sir Richard Branson about energy issues.
#89 TJ Glauthier has operated at the highest level of our national government. He was second in command in the Department of Energy in the Clinton Administration. His list of accomplishments is so long that when I introduced him to the senior assets managers at Kamehameha Schools, I did it like this: TJ has an extremely long list of accomplishments but let me just describe him this way: He is a “good guy.” That’s all I needed to say. Here in Hawai’i, we all know what that means. He is a good friend and we are in constant contact.
#257 Robert Rapier. Like Mayor Kenoi, Robert Rapier is a “scrappah.” His was the lone voice that opposed Vinod Khosla’s biofuel projects because the net energy did not add up. Several hundred million dollars of subsidies later, Robert proved to be right. He knows his stuff. He has actually operated industrial-scale chemical plants, and yet he can explain scientific concepts in a way that is easy for the layman to understand. I can call him at all times of the day or on weekends. We have become good friends.
#82 Nate Hagens. Nate was editor of The Oil Drum blog, where academics, oil industry professionals and investors came to see what was new. If you participated, you had better know what you were talking about. These folks did not suffer fools lightly. The Oil Drum did not stop publishing because Peak Oil was dead; I think it stopped because we know all we need to know. Now it’s time to do something about it.
Charlie Hall. (See his testimony at this post.) Charlie Hall is a world-renowned systems ecologist. He does not speak about biology from an individual silo but talks about how it involves energy and its effects on real people. Environmentalists who are not systems-oriented sometimes forget about the effects on people. Charlie is known as the father of modern day Energy Return on Investment (EROI). I helped arrange lectures for him to speak at UH Hilo as well as UH Manoa. His wife Myrna, Charlie and myself have become good friends.
#84 Gail Tverberg. Gail is a former insurance actuary whose job was to price risk. She has a stark view of the future. Although I cannot find fault with her view of things, I am the eternal optimist and spend my time looking for workarounds. Gail wrote in support of our Big Island Community Coalition’s efforts to lower electricity rates. (As it turned out, we were successful in defeating the Aina Koa Pono biofuel project, which would have cut off options for lowering our electricity rates.) I helped bring Gail to Hilo for a presentation at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel and spent a whole weekend taking her family around the Big Island. I asked her a million questions.
I wrote this in November, and it’s still true. From Let’s Adapt to Change and Survive: “Charles Darwin said it’s not the strongest nor the smartest who survive, but the ones that can adapt to change. Let’s survive, and more.”
A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Here’s to a great 2016.
Young people, or anyone concerned about the world we live in and about leaving it better than we found it, should attend Nate Hagens’ talk next month.
Nate Hagens is a well-known speaker on “big picture” issues facing human society.
He’ll be speaking at UH Hilo on Tuesday, January 12th, in UCB 100 at 6:30 p.m.
Nate, who is on the board of the Post Carbon Institute, sent me the following. Have a look to learn a little bit about him and get a sense of where he’s coming from, and what he talks about.
Fifteen years ago I walked away from Wall Street. It was a fun place—I learned a lot, made a good income, and met fascinating people. But as I began to learn that the financial narrative about humans and our planet was a hollow facsimile of the real story, and therefore counterproductive to our real challenges, I quit.
Today I still meet fascinating people—in ecology, neuroscience, paleobiology, atmospheric science, biophysical economics circles, etc. And the collective story they’re telling suggests that we’re in a hell of a pickle. We dominate the planet’s sources and sinks, supported by a virtual army of powerful fossil slaves, who perform about 90% of the labor in our human system. With their help, we have grown our economies (and our impacts) exponentially over the past two centuries.
The largesse that spins off from this subsidy of ancient sunlight provides our wages, profits, jobs, cheap stuff, as well as the ability to do science, strategize about our future, and fund social and environmental initiatives. But, these fossil slaves are tiring (and they poop and breathe, which is of great concern regarding our oceans and biosphere).
The real stock market is our air, our soils, our forests, our oceans, and the biodiversity we share the planet with. This stock market has been in crash mode since I’ve been alive.
Two stock markets—one focused on the agenda of the gene, and one potentially focused by sapient minds. Which one should we focus on?
I currently teach a class called Reality 101 at the University of Minnesota. My students—bright, curious, pro-social 19 year-olds—are coming to understand this broad ecological backdrop. They are aware of—and incredibly concerned about—the loss of our natural world, the end of the kind of economic growth and opportunities that existed a generation ago, and the social angst percolating in our society. They want to make a difference, and somehow avoid the standard conspicuous consumption trajectory, which is to get a salary, follow the rules, pay the bills, and buy more gadgets. So, I struggle with questions like these daily:
I have been on the Board of Post Carbon Institute since 2009. PCI uses a small budget and a big heart to achieve significant impact. Of the environmental NGOs, it is the only one that I know that focuses on the challenges our societies will face as our fossil slaves leave us before we might succeed in firing them.
The staff, Fellows and Board Members who comprise the Post Carbon Institute do not offer prescriptions, Instead, we use a systems approach to provide information, analysis, examples, inspiration, and community that remains ahead of the curve of those promoting singular “answers” to societal challenges.
The monetization of the human experience—and its impacts—has metastasized through modern global culture. Anything of value can and is parsed into dollars. And this sets up an irony: there is no financial profit in working on changing the system to something more sustainable, less finance-centric, and more tethered to biophysical realities. The people doing this work depend on those who have some surplus, and who care enough to support these efforts. A pro-social virtuous cycle.
When I was 19 (and naive), I thought “finance” was the key to the future. But I now see that it is ecology. What do today’s 19 year-olds see as their future paths? How will tomorrow’s 19 year-olds define “success” in life? The answer to that begins with education, synthesis, and new stories that we start to tell, today. PCI is poised to expand its reach, with the specific goal of engaging young people to prepare them for the world they will inherit.
If the 20th century was the Century of Self, then perhaps the 21st can be the Century of a Livable Future, which will require sacrifices and creativity from broad swaths of human populations. Please consider personally engaging in this battle of values and vision in the years (and decades) ahead. Choose an issue you feel passionate about, take a deep breath, and get involved.
Put Nate’s talk on your calendar. January 12th. 6:30 p.m.
The greatest thing is happening down in Keaukaha.
It started because a lonely, double-hulled voyaging canoe – the type that could travel across the ocean from Hawai‘i to, say, Tahiti – had been bobbing in Hilo Bay, untended, for ten long years.
Keahi Warfield, who teaches kids to paddle canoes at an afterschool program he runs on the beach there, and Patrick Kahawaiola‘a, president of the Keaukaha Community Association, had been watching it for years.
“The tide would change and it would turn this way, that way,” says Patrick. “It’s like it was waving, ‘Hey, what about me?!’”
The canoe, called the Hokualaka‘i, was owned by the Hawaiian immersion preschool program Aha Punana Leo. Keahi says their plan had been to take students traveling between the islands, visiting different communities and promoting the Hawaiian language. That program never got off the ground, though, and the canoe stayed in the ocean for a decade.
“I think they wanted to donate it to an organization that could use and take care of it,” says Keahi, a former Hawaiian immersion school teacher now working on his Ph.D.
And that finally happened: He and Patrick have just signed an agreement with Aha Punana Leo to take ownership of the voyaging canoe.
It all fits. Keahi says he started his afterschool program after working in the school system and seeing students so caught up in testing and missing out on other things he thought they really needed. Keahi, who trained on the Kawaihae-based Makali‘i when he was in high school, sees the canoe as an incredible learning tool.
Patrick talks about how Keaukaha School was in “corrective action” for 25 years. “We lost four generations,” he says, until Kumu Lehua Veincent became principal and turned it all around. Changes since then have been amazing, everyone agrees, but there’s still ground to make up.
They both talk about how the Keaukaha community acts as surrogate parents for its kids. And that’s where the voyaging canoe, the Hokualaka‘i, comes in.
They are helping lead the effort for the Keaukaha community to restore and use the Hokualaka‘i for its kids and families to regain a relationship with the wa‘a (canoe), the island, the ocean, and the culture.
Keahi and Patrick have also just signed an agreement with the Department of Transportation for a more formal arrangement regarding the land at Palekai where Keahi’s afterschool program meets – and where the canoe is now firmly on land, awaiting repairs after all those years in the water, waiting to become seaworthy again.
Now there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s the earliest stages now, but it’s such a great project.
Big Island electric customers are estimated to save much more money with the Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative (HIEC) than they are promised with the proposed sale of the Hawaiian Electric companies to NextEra Energy.
Read more below, as well as in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Pacific Business News, and in the Hawaii Star-Advertiser (behind their paywall).
The difference in the business model of a co-op model, such as HIEC, is that it’s non-profit. At a for-profit utility, such as NextEra, revenue goes to shareholders. That’s not the case with a non-profit co-op, and that’s one reason for the significant savings.
Also, co-ops, by definition, cooperate. HIEC can call up the electrical co-op on Kaua‘i, and they will share information. Hawai‘i Island’s co-op can call up the national headquarters and they will share information. Avoiding mistakes saves money.
It’s all very practical. The co-op model is a better model to help ratepayers prepare for the future.
Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative’s Press Release:
Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative would deliver transformation better, faster and cheaper
(HILO, HAWAII, DECEMBER 9, 2015)—Conversion of the electric utility on Hawaii Island to a nonprofit cooperative is expected to deliver greater savings than those promised with the proposed sale of the Hawaiian Electric companies to NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida.
Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative (HIEC) analyzed financial information filed by the Hawaiian Electric companies (HE) and NextEra Energy (NEE) with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (HPUC).
By lowering the cost of capital, eliminating federal income taxes and the profit margin built into Hawaii Electric Light Company’s rates, the financial analysis found that Big Island customers could save as much as $113 million on the existing HELCO rate base and up to $234 million including investments to modernize the grid over a four-year period. This compares to $60 million in savings estimated by NEE for customers on all five islands served by HE over a four-year period.
In proceedings now being held on the proposed sale by the HPUC, NEE has asserted that the primary question the Commission should ask itself is whether the customers of HE and the State of Hawaii are better off with or without the sale going through.
HIEC has argued that the Commission should also consider the merits of the cooperative ownership model for Hawaii Island.
In addition, HIEC makes the case that a cooperative has the ability to accelerate the island’s clean energy transformation faster and with more focus than a mainland-based investor-owned utility.
“For Hawaii Island, the reality is that the 190,000+ residents of the island would be better served by a cooperative. Beyond the lower cost of capital and the lower electric bills that follow, the benefits of a coop include local, democratic ownership and control of one of the most important infrastructures on the island,” said Marco Mangelsdorf, HIEC director and spokesperson.
Other advantages of the cooperative business model
■ HIEC would be able to access low-cost debt capital.
• Traditional cooperative lenders include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Utilities Service, National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC), and Co Bank.
• The combined borrowings of electric cooperatives from these sources is over $85 billion.
■ The cooperative network of 900 utilities has equivalent, and perhaps better, buying power and economies of scale for technology, administration, pensions and insurance. Many companies that support the cooperative program, including CFC and CoBank, are owned by their electric cooperative customers.
• National Rural Electric Cooperative Association provides a multi-employer pension plan on behalf of electric cooperative employees that is fully funded.
• Through national programs the electric cooperative network has led the utility industry in the deployment of smart grid technologies.
■ Cooperatives can be more nimble and quick in integrating more and cost-effective renewable energies. Emulating the example of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC), HIEC should be able to move faster to provide the advantages of renewable energies to Hawaii Island consumers.
• KIUC has gone from approximately 10 percent renewable in 2011 to almost 90 percent during prime sun hours today through a portfolio of utility-scale solar, biomass generation, distributed solar and legacy hydropower.
• KIUC’s smart grid initiative, which enables customer choice and is a key to the efficient integration of renewable energy, was completed nearly two years ago.
•Over the past two years, KIUC has built the two largest solar arrays in Hawaii, generating electricity cheaper than similar arrays proposed on Oahu. As well, KIUC is in the approval process for the nation’s first utility-scale solar array with dispatchable energy storage, moving solar energy to the nighttime hours and displacing millions of gallons of oil.
Noted HIEC president Richard Ha, “HIEC is able to focus on only our Hawaii Island and its unique needs, desires and resources. The single island focus and urgency created by a customer-elected board of directors to set the strategy is KIUC’s greatest strength and the reason they have been so successful in the transformation of their island’s utility system.”
About Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative:
HIEC is a non-profit cooperative association that seeks to establish a member-owned electric utility and encourage non-petroleum-based transportation for Hawaii Island. HIEC presents a unique opportunity for all electricity consumers to “Own the Power.” For more information, visit www.hiec.coop. HIEC is on Facebook and Twitter @HiEnergyCoop
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This is a fascinating visualization of how electric cooperatives have grown since 1914 and changed America.
Click the link below and click the button to watch how electric co-ops have lit up the country, and you’ll see it’s really a very widespread solution.
This short whiteboard animation explains really well just what an electric cooperative is and how it works. The 3-and-a-half-minute video is well-worth watching.
You’ll see how electric co-ops started in this country, back during the Roosevelt era when farmers and ranchers put in $5 each for membership and equity in a cooperative to bring electricity to their rural areas.
And you’ll see how the not-for-profit electric co-ops operate in ways that really align with how we think and live here in Hawai‘i. Members elect local directors to represent them. Co-ops work with other co-ops (they cooperate) for financing and research, to help after storms, and other times when needed. Profits are returned to members.
A co-op model is also better positioned to accomodate zero or negative economic growth than an investor-owned model.
Forty-two million people in the U.S. currently get their electricity through an electric co-op.
With a co-op model as our electric utility, we would not be all by ourselves. There’s no need to worry that it would just be us out here against the world. Watch this short video and you’ll see there is a robust association of more than 900 co-ops in the U. S., all helping each other. No one is left behind.
We were so young. I was 25 and I was actually one of the older soldiers, because I went to Officer Candidate School.
That year changed me forever. The unspoken rule was that we all came back or nobody came back. Everybody came back from Vietnam, but some didn’t come back alive. This is where I learned that it’s about all of us, not just a few of us.
It is in honor of their memories that I believe in the rule of law of the U.S. Government.
We went to Kaua‘i on Saturday to attend the blessing of the Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) Anahola Solar Array. The mood was one of exhiliration and great pride. Here’s a short video clip.
The 60-acre photovoltaic system, coupled with a six-megawatt lithium-ion battery system, was a collaboration between KIUC and Anahola Hawaiian Homes. It will generate clean energy on the island as well as decrease fossil fuel imports from the mainland. The system will generate 20 percent of the island’s annual energy needs during the daylight hours, and will save nearly $250,000 a month on operating costs alone.
I met many of the directors and key people involved in KIUC over the years. Key members of the Hawaiian community were in attendance, as well.
It is amazing what KIUC has been able to accomplish in a short time. Its costs have risen the least of all the electricity producers in the state despite its having the least number of available options. It does not have geothermal, for instance, and cannot use wind power due to bird kills.
It goes to show what a lean and mean utility co-op can accomplish.
