Category Archives: Renewable Energy Sources

Biofuel, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

Dept. of Ag & Dept. of Navy on Biofuels

I attended a U.S. Department of Agriculture/Department of
Navy forum yesterday called the Hawaii Renewable Energy and BioEnergy Industry Forum.

Goal of the sessions are to provide information to the public on the development of a biofuels industry in Hawaii, potentially utilizing the purchasing power of the USN as a “pull” for production.

This hearing was held at the Officers Club of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Kane‘ohe. It was a high-level meeting, where
speaker after high-level speaker emphasized how committed they are to supporting biofuel production in Hawai‘i.

The Navy folks emphasized that they would commit to
converting most of their fossil fuel J8 and J5 jetfuel and their ship fuel to biofuels because it is a national security issue.  Someone said that by the time a gallon of fuel gets to the front lines in Iraq or Afganhistan, the gallon cost $40. And that gallon sometimes comes from people who do not even like us. They emphasized how serious this situation was. They said that they would commit to buying from local sources – big numbers in the millions of gallons.

Speaker after speaker talked about the commitment to make
things happen. From 9 a.m. to noon, everyone talked about how they were committed to cellulosic ethanol as well as biomass to liquid. The objective was to get the kind of biofuel that could fuel fighter jets and war ships. The USDA talked about programs that would help farmers get financing, etc.

Toward the end of the day, someone asked about the price a refiner could expect to get and the speaker said about $1.95 per gallon. I thought: $1.95 times 42 gallons in a barrel equals $82 per barrel. That is pretty near what it costs in the market today. This sounded to me like oil prices need to go much higher to get this industry up and running. Right now, there isn’t any stage 2 or 3 biofuel on the market that I know of.

There were just two small and three large farmers in the audience. None of us farmers are going to run out to see how we start growing biofuels. In total, there were nearly 300 people present. It was larger than I had expected. But no one had an answer as to how much the farmer could expect to get paid.

It feels like something is going to happen, though. The government wants biofuels to be the solution. So it seems to me that they need
to figure out what it will take to get farmers to produce feed stock for the biofuels.

Tim O’Connell, Assistant to the State Director of Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helped organize this forum. In closing remarks, he said he detected a tension in the room between the desire to produce biofuels and the price at which this would happen.

I’ve said before: If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm. It is not easy to see just how farmers will make money in this scenario.

Biofuel, Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources

HECO: Don’t Let Us Get Flattened By The Wild Bull

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When I was growing up we lived in Waiakea Uka, close to the end of a gravel road that was maybe a mile long. Most of the parcels were fairly large – 40 acres in size – and four other families lived there on Alaloa Road, too.

We kids used to go exploring a lot. The land was mostly abandoned sugarcane, tall California/guinea grass with guava trees, waiawi and an occasional ‘ohi‘a or African tulip tree.

One day when I was in the 6th grade, my younger brothers and I overheard someone say there was a river in the pasture at the end of the road. And in that river, he said, there were gold fish red, black and whites, and combination of colors up to 12 inches long. It really got our attention—gold fish. Wow!

The four of us decided to go explore one day and see if we could find that river. We got a bucket, several fishing poles and some
earthworms, and we were off. We never thought to tell Mom and Dad that we were going.

We walked to the end of the road and came to a barbed wire fence. We could tell by the tracks alongside the fence that there were cattle inside. We assumed there was at least one WILD BULL in there, too.

From where we stood, we could see that this was a very large pasture and the far end, maybe two miles ahead, ran into the Waiakea forest reserve. By the description we’d heard, we guessed that the river was straight ahead, somewhere in the middle.

The grass was shorter in the pasture than it was outside, and there was a lot of fountain grass. The visibility for us small kids might have been 50 feet at best. So we had to figure out how we were going to find the gold fish and not get hooked or flattened by the WILD BULL.

 We could tell there was a series of rock piles on the left, where we could run from one to the other as we made our way to the river. Or we could go straight ahead to a rock pile that was quite a ways in the distance.

Nobody needed to tell us that we did not want to get caught out in the open by the WILD BULL. We didn’t see him, but we knew that when he got mad, he would paw the dirt and dust would fly. Steam would come out of his nostrils and his eyes would be red. Then he would charge and hook all of us on one horn, and then stamp us flat. We imagined the worst.

So we walked along the inside of the fence line to the left, until we came to the shortest distance from the first rock pile and we headed for it. We were very clear – if the bull came, we would either run back to the fence or forward to the rock pile, whichever was closest and safest.

So far so good. No shaking of bushes, snorting of steam or thundering of hooves. We climbed up the rock pile, which was maybe 6 feet higher than the surroundings. We looked all around, listened intently, checked for cow flies and even tried to see if we could smell him. No sign.

We continued on to the second rock pile, which was not straight ahead but took us diagonally closer to the river. From there, we
headed for the third rock pile, which had us going cross country, closer to the river but back to the center.

Someone thought he heard a noise, and we all froze and strained our ears. If the bushes shook, if we heard or felt hooves or even
smelled anything we would have been gone to the safety of the nearest rock pile.

Nothing, so we quickened our pace and scrambled up the rock
pile. We stayed there for a little bit, trying to get up the nerve to make it to the last rock pile. In a short time, we were on top of that rock pile looking back from where we came.

We decided we were doing the right thing. Had the WILD BULL
caught us out in the open, we were sure we would have been flattened.

On top of that last rock pile, we could see the river’s outlines. Once we were sure nothing was moving, we climbed down and headed for the stream. When we got there, we started to walk alongside and peer into the water.

One of us yelled, “Eh look, gold fish!” We all put our lines in. We had earthworm for bait and hooks we made from Mom’s pins.

Some excitement. As I recall, we caught about nine fish. Then we headed back with our live catch in the bucket.

That is the story of how the pond at the end of one of our chicken houses came to be stocked with gold fish.

And it comes with a simple lesson: Better to be safe than sorry. Don’t get caught in the open by the WILD BULL!

Do not take the dangerous, biofuel path to expensive electricity on the Big Island. We need to hedge our bets and use geothermal as one of our “rock pile-safe harbors.” If we do not hedge our bets, there is a good chance that we will be flattened by the WILD BULL.

Even small kids understand that.

Biofuel, Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources, Where We Live

Oahu Owns Us

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O‘ahu owns us!

In a HECO press release yesterday:

Hawaiian Electric Co. is looking for long-term suppliers of biofuels derived from Hawaii feedstocks for its generation sites statewide.

The company’s request for proposals includes land or water-based crops, waste animal fat or yellow grease feedstocks that can be converted to liquid biofuel for power sites on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and the Big Island.

“This call for proposals sends a clear market signal to landowners and agricultural interests that if they plant today they will be able to sell their products for a reasonable return on their investment and effort tomorrow,” said Robbie Alm, Hawaiian Electric executive vice president, in a prepared statement Thursday.

A reasonable rate of return on their investment? What about the goals of the ratepayer to get cheap electricity? Everyone knows that biofuels are expensive – more expensive than oil and way more expensive than geothermal. In New Zealand, geothermal electricity is produced for 5 cents per KWH.

Again O‘ahu is making decisions for the Big Island, and the people here resent it very much. Lots of folks I talk to feel that we would be better off with our electric company being a co-op, like on Kaua‘i. At least they make their own decisions.

The view from Bishop Street is very different than the view from Kino‘ole St.

I attended the first meeting of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI) steering committee Wednesday. I think that the HCEI steering committee will serve a good function. But I raised these concerns:

I said that I do not believe that we should use a one-size fits all approach – after all, each island has a different set of resources. I
said that I worried that the subsidies floating around would prevent the Big Island’s use of geothermal, which we know to be the cheapest source of electricity. The Big Island has the lowest median family income and it’s the folks on the lowest rung of the economic ladder whose lights will be turned off first.

We cannot afford to be separated into the haves and have-nots. If we go down that road, it will tear our society apart. Hawaiians complain all the time that the game is rigged in favor of those who have the money.

But choosing geothermal is not the same as giving charity to the rubbah slippah folks. Cheap electricity means people will have discretionary income to spend, businesses will flourish and folks will have jobs by which to raise their families. It benefits us all. And besides low electric cost, it is the only renewable energy source that gives royalties to Hawaiians.

I am not surprised by HECO’s announcement. I was just waiting for it to happen. And it happened before the HCEI steering committee was able to make decisions.

The world has changed. Now, when we have the ability to make the right choice, we must not go down that road where we separate into have and have-nots. If we do that, we put our society in danger of coming apart. In that case, we would be better off to be a co-op like Kaua‘i.

Biofuel, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

USDA & Navy To Meet About Hawai‘i Energy Initiative

On April 6, 2010, there will be an all-day forum about the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2010 – The U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Navy are co-hosting an all day forum in Hawaii on April 6, 2010, to share information about a recently announced collaborative energy opportunity. Among those providing remarks are
Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen A. Merrigan and Jackalyne Pfannenstiel, assistant secretary of the Navy for installations and environment. The program is taking place on the Marine Corps Base-Hawaii in the Kaneohe Bay Officers Club.

Earlier this year, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support President Obama’s initiative to reduce energy consumption derived from fossil fuels and increase energy production from renewable energy sources. This energy initiative in Hawaii is a direct result of that MOU.

Hawaii has been selected as the location for the initial collaboration between USDA and the Navy because Hawaii’s energy costs are among the highest in the nation and imported oil supplies 90 percent of the State’s energy. A viable agricultural sector in Hawaii can enhance Hawaii’s energy security, and energy projects like those anticipated by the Navy’s needs can help rural economies.

There may be some job opportunities associated with growing biofuels to supply the U.S. Navy.

We need to go into this with our eyes wide open, though. It will probably be expensive, or else it will be highly subsidized. Right now, biofuel does not make money on its own.

Two years ago there was a discussion about biofuels, and farmers decided then, “No sense lose money.” Here is how the economics look from a farmer’s point of view:

A barrel of oil consists of 42 gallons, and each gallon weighs approximately 6.8 pounds. Therefore, each barrel of oil weighs 286 pounds. At $80 per barrel, each pound of that oil is worth 28 cents.

Say it takes four pounds of stuff in order to squeeze out one pound of liquid. Then the farmer can expect to get no more than 7 cents per pound for the stuff. No sense, lose money.

If the farmer wanted to get 28 cents per pound to grow the stuff, then the price of oil would have to be 4 times $80 —or $320 per barrel.

There was an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin about the plant jatropha. In the article, the farmer said it takes 100 pounds of jatropha to make 1 gallon of biodiesel. At $80 oil, this translates to 2 cents per pound. To make just 5 cents per pound, oil would need to be $400 per barrel. If the farmer wanted 10 cents per pound, oil would need to be at $800 per barrel to give the proper price signal.

So the oil resulting from farmer-grown biofuels would either be very expensive or highly subsidized. I don’t have a problem with that, if the Navy will use all the biofuel for fuel. It would result in jobs, and that’s fine.

But we just cannot allow biofuels to find their way into HELCO’s oil-fired plants. None of us want higher electricity rates, especially when we have a stable source of geothermal power here. It’s as if we had Niagara Falls and cheap, abundant hydropower, but were asked to instead use expensive or highly subsidized biofuels to make our electricity.

I know there is lots of research going on around advanced biofuels. And that’s good. We can integrate new developments when they become proven technology. Wishing and hoping is not an energy policy.

The world has changed and we must be street-smart about what we do. We need to ask:

•    How much going cost?
•    Who going make money?
•    What is effect on future generations?

Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Listen To Richard on KIPO-FM Monday 2/1/10

Next Monday’s Energy Futures program on Hawaii Public Radio will focus on sustainable agriculture and its relationship to energy efficiency. Guests will be Richard Ha, president of Hamakua Springs Country Farms located on the slopes of Mauna Kea on the Big Island, and Jerome Renick of the Integrated Agriculture Network, also on the Big Island’s Hamakua Coast.

Energy Futures is broadcast live on Mondays 5-6 pm HST on KIPO-FM (89.3 in Hawaii) and is streamed on the Internet. An archive file of each week’s show is usually posted sometime on Tuesday at the Hawaii Public Radio website.

To listen to this program over the Internet via live streaming audio, click on your player (Windows Media, Real Media or iTunes).

We will be talking on the radio about ag and energy, both subjects that are dear to my heart. Here are some of the things I want to discuss.

Agriculture

For two years now, I have been the only person from Hawai‘i, where we are heavily dependent upon oil for our transportation and for the generation of our electricity, to attend the Peak Oil conference (in Houston 10/07 and Denver 10/09).

The world is not running out of oil – it’s running out of cheap oil. I believe that, in close consultation with the Hawaiian community, we should consider using geothermal for most of the Big Island’s electrical base power needs.

Geothermal breaks even at the equivalent of $57 per barrel oil and will stay steady for centuries. Fossil fuel oil prices will keep on rising, and bio fuels are even more expensive than fossil fuel oil.

We need to choose the alternative that is cheapest and that will not rise in cost, and that is geothermal.

We are busy reorganizing our farm so it will be relevant as oil and gas prices keep on rising. Last summer, when gas prices spiked, some of my workers asked to borrow money to pay for gas to come to work. Clearly, this is not sustainable.

We don’t think that importing foreign labor is sustainable, either. So we are reorganizing into units of small family farms. We call it the “family of farms.” The idea is to utilize our large-scale economy to the benefit of smaller, family-sized units.

For example, we have a local farmer growing all the Japanese cucumbers we used to grow. We provide free water and cooling and they do the farming. We hope to replicate this many times. The result is that all the family farmers will come from the immediate neighborhood, and this way we are not pressured to find workers, nor to provide labor housing.

Energy

I’m big on using Energy Return on Investment (EROI) as another tool to evaluate energy resources.  In the 1930s, to generate 100 barrels of oil took the energy equivalent of 1 barrel. In the 1970s that had declined to approximately 30 to 1, and now it is around 10 to 1. Clearly this trend is not good.

Folks who study these things, Professor Charles Hall in the forefront, estimate that an EROI of 3 to 1 is the minimum for a society to be sustainable. Biofuels, which are often discussed as the solution to the oil problem, have an EROI of <2 to 1.

On the other hand, geothermal has an EROI of 10 to 1 and it will be that way for centuries.

Plus, geothermal is the cheapest form of base power. And because the State owns the mineral rights to geothermal, it is a resource for the Hawaiian people: 20 percent of proceeds from geothermal goes to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

In addition, from the “off-peak” stranded power that geothermal provides, we can make ammonia, which can be used as a transportation fuel as well as a fertilizer source.

There’s a lot to like about geothermal.

Biofuel, Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources

Study: U.S. Should Reconsider Biofuel Policy

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Now there’s a study out saying it is basically wrong to pursue our present biofuel policy. I agree with it completely.

In the 1930s, you could get 100 barrels of oil with the energy from one barrel. In the 1970s, this had decreased to 30 to 1. Now, oil’s Energy Return on Investment (EROI) ratio has decreased to 10 to 1, and it will steadily decline as oil is more and more difficult to harvest.

To sustain our society, we must have an EROI of at least 3 to 1. Biofuels only have an EROI of 2 to 1.

Geothermal, however, is 10 to 1, and that ratio will stay steady for centuries.

Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy took a strong stance in the following article, and it goes against everything that is taking place in Hawai‘i today. Lots of the biofuel companies are benefitting from the new stimulus money, which is pushing biofuels that have ex-HEI folks in their organizations.

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)–The U.S. government needs to rethink promoting ethanol as a way to enhance energy security as production of the fuel is costly for taxpayers and poses economic and environmental risks, according to a study released Wednesday.

The report by the Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy notes that in 2008 the U.S. government spent $4 billion in biofuel subsidies to replace 2% of the U.S. gasoline supply. The average cost to the taxpayer of those substituted barrels of gasoline was roughly $82 a barrel, or $1.95 per gallon on top of the retail gasoline price, according to the study.

“We need to set realistic targets for ethanol in the United States instead of just throwing taxpayer money out the window,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow in energy studies at the Baker Institute and one of the report’s authors.

Here are the names of leaders in the Baker Institute for Public Policy. I especially trust Colin Powell, who seems balanced and credible to me.

Personnel
•    James A. Baker, III Honorary Chair,
•    Edward P. Djerejian, Director (former American Ambassador to Israel and Syria and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs).

Board of Advisors
•    William Barnett
•    David Leebron
•    Colin Powell
•    Madeline K. Albright

Renewable Energy Sources

Four New Saudi Arabias

Countries are using less oil due to the current recession. In the background, though, world oil supplies continue to decline.

The world oil supply is declining at a rate of six percent. This means that every year we have 5 million fewer gallons, due to natural decline rates. We are just not noticing it yet.

By 2030, just to keep up, we would need to discover four new Saudi Arabias.

“Peak Oil” is the point where new oil supplies exactly equal the rate that present oil fields decline.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Association (IEA), said that if we do nothing, Peak Oil will be upon us in 10 years. The IEA has been a very conservative advisor to the 28 most advanced economies in the world.

Many folks who are knowledgeable about the workings of oil fields feel that Peak Oil will be upon us in four to five years.

Others feel we have already hit Peak Oil. Regardless, Peak Oil will affect us much sooner than climate change. So we need to switch to renewable energy sources sooner rather than later.

Here on the Big Island, we have geothermal. We need to be smart and make the switch as soon as possible.

Renewable Energy Sources

Where Have I Been?

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A friend of mine sent me this link to A Vision of Bhutan in the Year 2020.

“Before you read,” he told me, “please just switch the word ‘Bhutan’ with ‘Hawaii County’ and ‘Hydro’ to ‘Geothermal.’ Then you may find this to be an ideal Vision 2020 for Hawaii County as well.”

It turns out that Bhutan sells hydro electricity to India, and so it has a strong basis for further GDP growth. Bhutan is a small developing country with aspirations to exist in the modern world while keeping the essence of who they are.

Another thing that struck me about this new democracy is the importance it places on Gross National Happiness (GNH), which it considers more important that its Gross Domestic Product. The country actually quantifies this concept so they can measure progress.

Click to watch a BBS video titled Bhutan in Pursuit of Gross National Happiness.

Coincidentally, there was an article in Friday’s Hawaii Tribune-Herald titled “Study – Living in Hawaii may make you a happier person.” Hawaii was rated second in the nation for happiness.

The happiness ratings were based on a survey of 1.3 million people across the country by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Economists Andrew J. Oswald of the University of Warwick, England, and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. compared the happiness ranking with studies ranking states on various criteria. Their report was published in the journal Science and found that the happiest people tend to live in the states that do well in quality-of-life issues.

Back to Bhutan:

While much recognition has been accorded to Gross National Happiness (GNH) there has also been much criticism, and most of which is directed on the difficulty of measuring GNH in quantitative terms. Bhutan’s determination to develop the GNH vision in concrete terms took a big step forward with the preliminary findings of rare GNH indicators.

The Centre for Bhutan Studies [CBS] had identified nine provisional GNH indicators that were used in the pilot survey to measure GNH in Bhutan. To avoid an isolated implementation of the study, and to arrive at a realistic measurement of GNH, the CBS had done extensive researching and assimilated lessons from “like-minded” organizations from as far as Canada and the UK.

The 9 provisional indicators which were used in the survey:

1.    Standard of living
2.    Health of the population
3.    Education
4.    Ecosystem vitality and diversity
5.    Cultural vitality and diversity
6.    Time use and balance
7.    Good governance
8.    Community vitality, and
9.    Emotional well being

I shared this link with my friend Jim, and he said: “My niece lives in Bhutan. I have always felt that the GNH should replace our GDP for us to live a more sustainable life.”

Leslie said, “I’ve always loved the Gross National Happiness goal in Bhutan.”

Where have I been?

Biofuel, Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources

Biofuels & Geothermal

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In Saturday’s Honolulu Advertiser, there was an article about a $25 million Department of Energy grant to UOP, LLC. That’s a Honeywell company that will test biomass feedstock at Tesoro’s refinery in Kapolei.

In Denver this past October, prior to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference, I asked my friend Gail Tverberg if she would introduce me to Robert Rapier. He is a well-respected chemical engineer and a frequent contributor to The Oil Drum blog. I wanted to ask him about next-generation biofuel projects.

Gail forwarded my email to Robert, and he wrote back that he was sitting in an office in Waimea, and that he had moved to Hawai‘i to work on just these kinds of projects.  It’s very fortunate for us, as he can explain these complex processes in a very clear way.

From his September 2009 post at The Oil Drum. There is a reference to UOP.

There are a number of companies involved in pyrolysis research. Dynamotive Energy Systems has been working on this for a while (I first wrote about them in 2007). UOP – a company that specializes in product upgrading for refineries – has teamed with Ensyn to form a joint venture called Envergent Technologies. The company intends to make pyrolysis oils from biomass for power generation, heat, and transport fuel (this is where UOP’s skills will come into play).

When I asked him about this specific project, Robert responded that: “…Pyrolysis is not too difficult unless you are trying to upgrade to transportation fuels. Then it gets expensive. But for stationary power generation, it is a pretty promising option in my view.”

And in this post he talks about pretenders, those technologies that are not working:

To summarize, the biofuel pretenders fall into several broad categories. The big ones are:

  • Hydrogen
  • Most would-be cellulosic ethanol producers
  • Most would-be algal biofuel producers
  • Most first generation biodiesel producers

This isn’t to say that none of these will work in any circumstances. I will get into that when I talk about niches. But I will say that I am confident that none of these are scalable solutions to our fossil fuel dependence. Frankly, I wish the algae story was true. I love the idea of getting renewable fuel from brackish waterways. But I try not to let a hope get confused with what I believe is realistic.

I agree with Robert that first generation biofuels, farmer grown, will not scale without major subsidies. If we were to give 20 cents/pound subsidies to grow biofuels, I would rather give the farmers a 20-cents/pound subsidy to grow food!

“Base power” is proven technology that is dependable 24/7 and makes up 85 to 90 percent of a utility’s power. There are only few options for base power. The first option is fossil fuels. The second is biofuels. And the third is geothermal.

Other options, like wind and solar, are nice to talk about. But they are only a tiny part of the mix. Biofuel, grown by farmers, doesn’t break even until approximately $320 per barrel; oil is in the high $70s today and we all know it will keep on climbing.

Geothermal breaks even at less than $60 per barrel oil. And it will stay that way for centuries!

On the Big Island, unless someone can show that the electricity cost to regular folks will be cheaper with biofuels than with geothermal, then we should go with geothermal.

Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources

Ammonia: The Practical Person’s Hydrogen

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Midwestern farmers seeking fertilizer security are now looking to ammonia as a way to make fertilizer and fuel.

As we all know, farmers are very practical. What works, works.

What they have figured out is a quicker way to get to the hydrogen economy. (See a brief discussion of the hydrogen economy here.) Ammonia is the short cut they have discovered. To farmers, ammonia is the practical person’s hydrogen.

Ammonia can be made from geothermal and it is a dual-use product. It’s commonly used for nitrogen fertilizer, and it can be used for fuel in internal combustion engines (diesel as well as gas). Ammonia was used to power the rocket powered X-15 aircraft a long time ago. Maybe it can be used as jet fuel, too? Here is a link to the Ammonia Fuel Network.

The problem with straight hydrogen (H2) is that the molecule is so tiny it leaks all over the place. So in a hydrogen economy, our whole infrastructure, from gas cans on up, would need to be retrofitted. Ammonia (NH3) is a larger molecule and can work with present propane containers and pipelines. And because ammonia is more efficient as a carrier of hydrogen than is straight hydrogen, it is cheaper to move around.

It can be made from many renewable energy sources at many locations. It can be made using unused geothermal energy, and then stored for later use. This makes geothermal power even more valuable.

Farmers use ammonia all the time when planting their crops, so they are familiar and comfortable with its uses.

It’s not a done deal and there are limitations – such as that ammonia has half the energy of gas. So a car with a 20-gallon tank would need a 40-gallon tank to travel the same distance.

But what I’m doing is raising the question. I’m saying: Since ammonia is a thinking person’s hydrogen, instead of having to change every single car and every single service station, why not use it until we figure out something better? At this point, it actually seems doable.

It could be created using the off-peak geothermal energy the utility does not use. That makes it cheap.

Geothermal is a great Hawaiian resource. We are having discussions about it with the community right now. Decisions about increasing our use of geothermal need to come from the bottom up and not the top down. I need to repeat this: “It needs to come from the bottom up. Not the top down!”