Category Archives: Renewable Energy Sources

Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Envy Of The World

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Here is an easy-to-understand video that explains Peak Oil, and it’s well worth watching.

It isn’t a theory of when oil will run out. Rather, it’s a description of what happens to oil wells as they age, and it makes simple collective observations and assumptions about all the oil wells in the world. It is simple and easy to predict that oil will become more and more costly.

When that happens, we will need to get out of the line of fire. It’s not complicated.

We are incredibly lucky here on the Big Island, because we have a geothermal resource beneath us at many locations all around the island. The State owns this resource. They should go map it out and contract out the energy production to the highest bidder. Part of the rents and royalties would go to the Native Hawaiian people, on whose land it sits, and the actual energy would benefit all of us.

Geothermal energy can also be used to make hydrogen. In the future we will run our cars and trucks on hydrogen, using the internal combustion engine. Here’s a clip of a hydrogen car that was shown on Good Morning America.

The electric utilities are using internal combustion engines — just larger  than most. Could we run it all on hydrogen? If hydrogen can be used in regular car engines, could it be used in the diesel engines that the electric utilities use to generate electricity?

Can you imagine it? The biggest and the best telescope in the world located on the Big Island. And most of the state’s electricity needs powered by geothermal wells on the Big Island. Rents and royalties would go to Native Hawaiian people and the rest of us would have the benefit of being free of Middle East oil.

We would be the envy of the world.

Not, no can. CAN!

Renewable Energy Sources

Extra! Extra!

A letter of understanding was published yesterday. It was signed by most of the world’s major auto makers — Daimler, Ford, GM/Opel, Honda, Hyundai/KIA, the Alliance Renault/Nissan, Toyota — and encourages governments to develop a uniform hydrogen transportation infrastructure by 2015.

From the letter:

…In order to ensure a successful market introduction of fuel cell vehicles, this market introduction has to be aligned with the build-up of the necessary hydrogen infrastructure. Therefore a hydrogen infrastructure network with sufficient density is required by 2015. The network should be built-up from metropolitan areas via corridors into area-wide coverage….

Let’s get on board!

Most people know that hydrogen is feasible using renewable, stranded power. It does not work when the power comes from fossil fuels.

Geothermal works! It can power up electricity as well as support a hydrogen transportation system.

Biofuel, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Following In The Footsteps of Easter Island?

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If we keep chasing after oil as the price keeps rising – if we keep at it long enough – we will end up like Easter Island, unable to sustain ourselves.

I have been asked to be a board member of the Hawaii Biofuel Foundation, a HECO nonprofit that is tasked with exploring biodiesel production for Hawai’i. We are trying to determine if biofuels will work here in Hawai’i.

From the Wall Street Journal:

US Biofuels Boom Running on Empty

BY ANN DAVIS AND RUSSELL GOLD

The biofuels revolution, which promised to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, is fizzling out.
       
Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.
       
The global credit crisis, a glut of capacity, lower oil prices and delayed government rules changes on fuel mixes are threatening the viability of two of the three main biofuel sectors – biodiesel and next-generation fuels derived from feedstocks other than food.

Biofuel production is farming and it requires farmers. As we all know – “If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.”

As a board member, I will tell the rest of the board that when oil is $200 per barrel, that’s the same as 70 cents per pound liquid. It would likely take at least 4 pounds of stuff to squeeze out one pound of liquid. It does not matter if it’s mac nuts, kukui nuts, jatropha or palm nuts. If that’s the case, a farmer can expect to get no more than 18 cents per pound for his or her crop. No sense. Lose money. Better to grow cucumber or eggplant.

And since the input cost to grow, squeeze and transport the stuff is all oil-related, the price the farmer needs to get also rises as oil price rise. It’s kind of like chasing the mechanical rabbit at the dog race track. The dogs never catch the rabbit.

One way of evaluating an energy source is by analyzing the Energy Return On Investment (EROI). In the 1930s, the EROI ratio for a barrel of oil was 100 to 1, meaning it took one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels. In the 1970s, it  dropped to 30 to 1. A few years ago it was only about 10 to 1.

Professor Charles A. S. Hall, of State University of New York, is the leading expert on EROI analysis. He estimates that the minimum EROI needed to maintain a sustainable society is 3 to 1.

Experts say that biodiesel production is less than 2 to 1. The excess energy that results is not enough to maintain a functioning society.

On the other hand, the EROI for geothermal energy must be higher than 10 to 1. And it will not decline in the near future.

We are incredibly lucky to have this resource here on the Big Island. In addition to its energy-producing potential, it can be a valuable resource for the betterment of the native Hawaiian community. Sited on Hawaiian Homes or OHA lands, the benefits of rents and royalties go to the Hawaiian people.

Film, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Richard in Documentary Film at Palace Theater Sat. & Sun.

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When I called photojournalist Catherine Bauknight to talk about her new documentary Hawaii A Voice for Sovereignty, she was sitting in her Pasadena home where she could see the flames of
California’s Station Fire burn the closest ridge of the mountains a
mere couple miles away.

She tells a very different story of the land in her Hawai‘i-based documentary, which plays at Hilo’s Palace Theater tomorrow (Saturday, September 5, 2009) at 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Richard was interviewed for and appears in the movie. He told me he was going to go look for his plastic nose and bushy eyebrows so he could go see the movie this weekend but stay anonymous. I’d love to see that.

From Catherine Bauknight’s website:

Hawaii A Voice for Sovereignty, is a documentary about the native Hawaiian’s journey to sustain their culture, spirituality, and connection to the land. This modern epic documentary, filmed over four years, contains rare interviews with Native Hawaiians in their homes, at sacred sites, in mountains and the rain forests. Along with the voices of these “people of the land”, Professor Haunani-Kay Trask, Senator J. Kalani English, Grammy nominee Willie K and other Hawaiian leaders, take us into rarely seen ancient lifestyles where spirituality, culture, and care for the land form a sacred bond between humankind and the natural
world. They reveal their quest to secure their Hawaiian rights as the host  culture, and their economic, social, and ecological future. By bridging their ancient knowledge with modern technologies such as wind, solar, and wave renewable energy and agricultural land systems they move towards their goal of sustainability.

Here’s the film’s trailer.

Catherine is a seasoned photojournalist whose work has appeared in Time, Newsweek and People magazines, as well as in the New York Times, USA Today and Rolling Stone. She was one of five international journalists who covered the Tiananmen Square massacre.

She says Hawai‘i was someplace she came to relax, but after awhile she started looking around. “I started trying to figure out why the Hawaiians weren’t visible in their own environment,” she says, “and that led to this four-year documentary.”

She says she started asking questions and went from person to person getting recommendations on people to speak with who were knowledgeable about the Hawaiian culture. “They all told me, You cannot discuss the culture without discussing the relationship between the land and the people and the spiritualism and the sovereignty we are seeking.”

She also kept hearing about the need for Hawaiians to have their land and live sustainable lives, and then she heard about Richard.

“I asked Woody Vaspra, who is part of the Sundance ceremonies, if he knew of anyone who was living off the land and making a living off it and also including the Hawaiian people,” she says. “He suggested Richard, and when I spoke to Richard I realized he was exactly what I was looking for – that he is going back to the land and working on becoming sustainable, and also working toward using renewable resources. It was perfect.”

(“I have no idea how we fit into the story line,” says Richard. “I just gave my standard explanation of what we do at the farm.”)

Catherine calls the film an “oral history of Native Hawaiians.”

“These are the kupunas, the scholars, people who are grassroots,” she says. “It’s a combination of Hawaiians from all walks of life, and one of the most interesting things is that their message is the same. No matter what their background, from the most grassroots to the most highly educated. The message about the Hawaiian future, the land and spirituality is the same.

“And it’s the story of the Hawaiian people all the way back to the takeover,” she says, “in their own voice – but not presented with anger, it’s presented as facts. And it leads up to the renaissance of the Hawaiian people with hope and unity.”

She says they’ve sent information to the schools here and she especially hopes people will bring kids to see this story. “I’ve been told that children as young as 7 years old have sat down and watched this film from beginning to end, and it’s 84 minutes.”

It sounds like, in addition to the oral histories by native Hawaiians, there’s a lot to catch a child’s attention. “There’s hula,” she says, “and an ancient, very spiritual style of drumming and nose flute by Willie K. He doesn’t really do that publicly, but he did it in the rainforest especially for this film. He also does this amazing live rendition of ‘Spirits in the Wind.’”

Other musicians appear in the documentary, such as Lono from Molokai, George Kahomoku, Cyril Pahinui, Richard Ho‘opi‘i and
Makana. Catherine says the film’s soundtrack will be available on CD in a couple weeks. Watch for information about that in about a week at her website.

On Wednesday the film became eligible to be nominated for an Academy Award, and so it will open at the Coliseum Cinemas in Manhattan on September 15th, and the Laemmle Theater in Hollywood on September 23rd.

And then the film will travel and screen across the Pacific islands, following the route early Polynesians took on their voyage to become Hawaiians until it gets back to New Zealand.

Now Catherine says she is looking for business sponsors, who will have their logo on the film “from now until eternity.” She says there is just a little more than a week left to sign up sponsors, and interested parties can contact her here.

Palace Theater Tickets are $7 general, $6 for seniors and students, and $5 for Friends of the Palace. Call 934-7010 for more information.

Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

The EROI for Geothermal

Here is another good take on EROI (Energy Return On Energy Invested). This video is very interesting and enlightening.

EROI equals the energy it takes to get that energy. That net energy that results, less the energy it takes to produce food, equals our lifestyle.

I wrote the other day that in the 1930s, the EROI (the amount of oil it took to extract more oil) was 100 to 1; it took one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels. A few years ago it was 10-15 to 1. This number is steadily declining because oil is increasingly becoming more difficult to obtain.

When it gets to 1 to 1 there is no sense in continuing. Some folks estimate that in 30 years, most exporting countries will no longer be exporting oil. Maybe we should plan now for the worse.

We don’t need to be engineers to know that the EROI for geothermal is high and that it will stay high. And it will be stable for as long as we can possibly imagine. The odds are much better that oil will become unaffordable much sooner (in less than 30 years) than lava will run over the geothermal wells.

We have an obligation to move toward geothermal now. What will our grandkids and their kids think of us if we don’t?

It is in the best interest of the stockholder that the utility switch to geothermal, too. As all types of oil prices rise, there will be a point of no return when individual alternate energy will be cheaper than oil. When that happens, the electric company’s customers will leave in droves. And they might not have the capital to recover.

The utility customers need a stabilizing force for electricity generation. So it is in the best interest of all of us that the utility protects us from high oil prices.

Food Security, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Changing World, Changing Farm

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When I used to go visit Uncle Sonny at Maku‘u, I was just starting to farm bananas. My goal was to capture a sizeable amount of market share. I was thinking hundreds of acres, while Uncle Sonny was farming just a few acres.

It was very interesting for me to see how he produced his exceptional-quality watermelons, which were consistently sweet. It took tender loving care, very close observation, quick appropriate reaction and good old common sense.

Although Uncle Sonny had a fresh water spring on his property, and 10 acres of deep soil, he chose to operate with the bare minimum of inputs. Instead of setting up an irrigation infrastructure around a water pump, he decided that if there was a drought he’d haul water for irrigation. I couldn’t disagree; after all, he was sending money back to the Philippines every month to support a family there. Operating at that scale worked for him.

If a farmer makes money, a farmer will farm. Uncle Sonny farmed at the scale appropriate for him and it worked.

His yard was immaculate. He kept it mowed a good distance down the beach. It wasn’t only work for him; a large part of it was quality of life.

What I took away from visiting Uncle Sonny was a keen respect for small farmers. It is not about the size of your farm—it’s about quality and performance. Uncle Sonny helped me develop a good eye for that.

Our farm, Kea‘au Bananas, went on to become the largest banana farm in the state at 300 acres. About 15 years ago, we moved to Pepe‘ekeo in order to diversify geographically and also to protect against a banana virus. To diversify our production, we transitioned into hydroponic farming.

It was because of water resources that we chose Pepe‘ekeo. There are three springs and three streams at our Pepe‘ekeo farm. We have so much water that we’re now developing a 100KW hydroelectric system.

In order to refocus our marketing, we changed our name and became Hamakua Springs Country Farms. We supply Chef Alan Wong with various hydroponic products. As a result, the Hamakua Springs brand has become known for its good-quality hydroponic vegetables.

In the last five years we have been noticing an escalation in farm input cost while at the same time there has been a squeeze on customers’ discretionary income. We anticipate a future of steadily declining oil supplies; consequently, input costs will escalate and discretionary income will further decline.

Last summer, when oil hit $147, I was convinced that the world had changed forever. Business as usual was not going to work in this new world. How would we adapt? How could we change and still produce significant tonnage to feed Hawai‘i’s people?

I kept asking myself – how could we put the skills and resources of the small farmer together with the resources we have, so that the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts? And in such a way that this organization will be relevant for the future? And could we make this fun, as well as productive?

(To be continued. Coming soon: “The Family of Farms.”)

Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

How To Boil A Frog

Go to the How to Boil A Frog website and click on EROI.

“EROI” equals “Energy Return on Invested.” It means: how much energy one obtains from getting that energy. It’s a very important concept.

In the 1930s, the EROI for oil was around 100 to 1. Today, it’s around 15 to 1 and declining. When it’s down to only 1 to 1, there’s no sense going any further.

But geothermal is a resource available to us here on the Big Island, and one we know will last a very long time. Longer than oil, for sure.

It’s not rocket science!

Renewable Energy Sources

Peak Oil Anxiety

Prior to this past year, the International Energy Association (IEA), which represents the developed countries outside of OPEC, took a very conservative approach to reporting on the world oil supply situation.

A few months ago, it finally woke up. Now Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, is saying that all is not fine. Although he is trying to stay cool, I can feel the anxiety in his speeches. He is talking about “10 years to Peak Oil.”

Many, many observers think we have already passed Peak Oil, including me.

This article, Proof Positive Peak Oil Is Here, talks about the factors at work.

by Bill Powers,
 Editor, Powers Energy Investor, 
July 31, 2009

Peak oil would be irrelevant if not for our continued and extreme thirst for it. Dr. Colin Campbell, petroleum geologist, is credited with quantifying that we find one barrel of oil for every four we consume and that the discovery of new oil reserves peaked in the 1960’s (The World Oil Supply). Published in 1995, Dr. Campbell’s work could not have anticipated the expanding consumption required to catapult the economies in developing China or India. Nor did it contemplate our current worldwide economic slowdown.

What Dr. Campbell’s work does shed light on is this: we are on an oil usage treadmill that is unsustainable. In 2008, while the world did consume .6% less oil than it did in 2007, it consumed 21% more than it did in 1995 when Dr. Campbell’s research was released (Source: BP.com historical statistic review from governmental and public sources). In light of this information, the importance of peaking worldwide oil production is difficult to overstate. Despite all the rhetoric with respect to alternative energy sources, oil literally makes the world go around and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future…. (Read the whole article here)

Yesterday the UK newspaper the Independent published an article titled Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast.   It is based on an interview with Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Association.

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world’s top energy economist
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 3 August 2009

“One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day,” Dr Birol said. “The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously,” he said.

“The market power of the very few oil-producing countries, mainly in the Middle East, will increase very quickly. They already have about 40 per cent share of the oil market and this will increase much more strongly in the future,” he said.

There is now a real risk of a crunch in the oil supply after next year when demand picks up because not enough is being done to build up new supplies of oil to compensate for the rapid decline in existing fields…. (Read the whole article here)

We need to move determinedly toward geothermal energy here on the Big Island. We cannot be talking about 10 years from now. World oil supplies soon will not keep up with demand, so we need to move and move fast. This is not business as usual!

Biofuel, Food Security, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

The State of the Future

Two reports of note appeared recently.

The first is the 2009 State of the Future.

This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month.

Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing “invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society.”

…Jerome Glenn, director of the Millennium Project and one of the report’s authors, said: “There are answers to our global challenges, but decisions are still not being made on the scale necessary to address them. Three great transitions would help both the world economy and its natural environment – to shift as much as possible from freshwater agriculture to saltwater agriculture; produce healthier meat without the need to grow animals; and replace gasoline cars with electric cars.”

This is very interesting for us here, trying to live sustainable lives out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The idea about shifting to salt water agriculture has to do with limited amounts of fresh water worldwide. In Hawai‘i, we have the option of doing both.

The second idea, about producing meat without having to raise animals, is driven by anticipated grain shortages worldwide. In Hawai‘i, we can use the sun’s energy to grow grass for feed to make protein. That reduces our dependence on imported feed grains.

And the third idea has to do with decreasing fossil fuel energy and transitioning to electricity. On the Big Island, we have the opportunity to bring geothermal on line as base power so we can utilize maximum amounts of renewable energy.

The sooner we get away from thinking that we must depend on liquid fuel for transportation, the better.

The second article I found of interest, written by Lester Brown, was in the May issue of Scientific American. Brown founded the World Watch Institute, and headed that organization for many years. It was an article in the World Watch Magazine many years ago that led us (Kea‘au Banana) to become the first banana farm in the world certified by the Rainforest Alliance as ECO O.K.

In this article, Brown points out that the rise in grain prices is now trend-driven. For example, Saudi Arabia just announced that it will be decreasing its grain production by 1/8 each year. This is because they would use up the water in the non-rechargeable aquifer. So they are leasing land in other countries to grow grain for their population. Similarly, 120 million Chinese and 165 million of India’s population depend on grain growing on non-recharge aquifers. Many countries are making deals to protect their populations right now.

Those countries with rapidly rising middle classes want to eat higher on the food chain, putting further pressure on grain prices. People just cannot wait to jump in a car and drive to McDonalds.

If global warming detrimentally affects China’s mountain glaciers, which provide water for summer crop production, it is likely China will go on the open market and compete with the U.S. for its own grain supply. Knowing that is possible, we need to see about growing our own cattle and fish food. Fortunately, we can.

The prospect of peaking oil production has direct consequences for world food security, as modern agriculture depends heavily upon the use of fossil fuels. Most tractors use gasoline or diesel fuel. Irrigation pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer production is also energy-intensive. Natural gas is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in nitrogen fertilizers. The mining, manufacture, and international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil.

But surprisingly, the most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the kitchen. Much more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare food in the home than is used to produce it in the first place. The big energy user in the food system is the kitchen refrigerator, not the farm tractor. While oil dominates the production end of the food system, electricity dominates the consumption end.

In Hawai‘i, farmers need to get out from under the dominance of oil in the production end of agriculture. The grass fed beef cattle industry is doing just that. Avoidance of petroleum-based packaging wherever possible helps, too.

Legislation and incentives that help farmers move toward renewable energy sources are very helpful. It is very important that Ag and energy policies be coordinated. We need to address questions like: “Should we plant trees for transportation fuel, instead of grass for cattle feed?” We need a detailed analysis of the consequences. We know for sure that grass equals beef at any scale. At what scale will trees make biofuels?

How about someone figure out how to convert internal combustion engine farm tractors to ones that are battery driven? Can our Community College folks do that? Can we make our own nitrogen fertilizer from renewable sources? How about it, U.H. Engineering School?

The 2009 State of the Future report suggests: “Replace gasoline cars with electric cars.” Absolutely, and use our geothermal resource to produce that electricity.

We on the Big Island have exciting opportunities ahead of us if we just focus on the future. Not, no can. CAN!