Category Archives: Renewable Energy Sources

Renewable Energy Sources

Turmoil & Resources

Lots of turmoil in the financial world today.

It’s a good time to think about how lucky we are to live here on the Big Island, where we have so many natural resources. We have lots of sun and water for growing food. We also have abundant sunshine, wind, ocean energy and geothermal to generate power. We have excellent education resources here and the opportunity to enhance them by bringing the Thirty-Meter Telescope here.

If we work together we can have superior food security, superior education and superior energy security. We need to cooperate with each other to work toward the best that we can be.

Renewable Energy Sources

Geothermal Is The Answer

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The answer here in Hawai‘i is to increase renewable energy.

The question? World oil supplies are decreasing at an increasing rate while demand is increasing at an increasing rate, so oil prices will keep rising and it will go to the highest bidder. What do we do, so that we don’t have to bid for oil against the rest of the world?

Solar power stops at night, and requires batteries to keep it steadily available. Wind is not dependable; it’s intermittent.

Geothermal, on the other hand, is steady and dependable.

I was the only person from Hawai‘i to attend the Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October. We knew then that world oil supplies would not keep up with the world’s oil demand.

The best renewable energy source for the Big Island is geothermal. If we cooperatively decided to research how geothermal could help us, we would see that we could make machines that run with electric motors, instead of fossil fuel motors.

In a world where energy supplies are running out, geothermal is not.

I wonder what the gods have planned for us.

Current Affairs, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

It’s Official: the Renewable Energy Farm Loan Bill

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June and I were invited to the Governor’s office yesterday to witness the signing of Bill 2261, a renewable energy Farm Loan Bill which I helped shepherd through the legislature.

In her remarks, Governor Lingle pointed out that the goal for Hawaii is to be 70% fossil fuel free by 2030. She also mentioned working with contacts in Israel to see if there is a way we can take advantage of Israel’s effort to be 100% converted to electric vehicles in three years. These are two huge initiatives. I am glad we are doing this.

There were several bills being signed, and four of us were invited to speak.  David Murdock, President of Dole Corporation, complained that the bill to streamline the process for his 400 MW project on Lana‘i, although helpful, does not go far enough.

He wants the Governor to declare an emergency. He believes that the airlines are on the verge of bankruptcy, that very few people will be flying in the near future and that Hawai‘i’s future will be bleak if we don’t do something now.

I happen to believe he is right. Office of Hawaiian Affairs administrator Clyde Namau‘u writes in the July edition of the OHA newspaper Ka Wai Ola that we are bracing for a rough ride and that “grants to community organizations could also shrink.” The most defenseless among us will be the first to feel the effects of the wrenching downturn in the economy.

There is a heartbreaking letter to the editor in today’s Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald titled “What Is Happening?” Abigail Fojas writes: “I know a few single moms who were laid off, asking me if I know anyone who will hire them because they can’t make the rent next month, and unemployment won’t keep them in their homes. These women have like three kids and no husband. These are driven people who have worked most of their lives.”

But though I believe  Mr. Murdock is right, I just don’t see that people are ready to act, especially since the TV stations and the news media don’t even think the passage of these bills was newsworthy.

I was so busy thinking about my own speech that I did not hear the other two speakers. At the last minute I was mentally changing my speech around. I wanted to describe how this bill came to be, how Dwight Takamine’s dad Yoshito introduced it at the Farm Bureau convention and to talk a little bit about what Hamakua Springs is going to do. Next thing I knew I was up. This is what I said:

Thanks to the Legislature, Senate Ag Committee Chairperson Jill Tokuda and House Ag Committee Chairperson Clift Tsuji, who introduced the bill into their respective chambers and the Ag Committees of both Houses. Special thanks to Sandy Kunimoto, the Director of the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture, and especially the personnel in the Farm Loan Department, Dean Matsukawa and Mark Yamaki in particular. They were the ones who put the bill together.

This bill went through the entire process without one dissenting vote. I guess everyone likes to eat.

I was the only person from Hawai‘i who attended the Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October. It was clear that world oil supply was not able to keep up with demand. And it was clear that fuel prices were going to be rising with no end in sight.

Rising energy costs affect farmers very quickly. You can call farming the canary in the coal mine. Fertilizer, chemicals, irrigation, packing, cooling and transportation costs are all petroleum related.

Returning home, it was apparent that since we import most of our food, we need to do something to help farmers grow more food. The question was: “How will we feed Hawai‘i’s people?”

The answer is not complicated. “If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.”

This renewable energy farm bill is a Farm Loan Program that will allow Hawai‘i’s farmers to make low-cost loans for projects such as hydroelectric, solar, wind and bio fuels. This will help farmers big and small, on all islands, at all elevations, wet side-dry side, conventional/organic, high elevation and low. All farmers will benefit.

As an example of how this bill can benefit farmers, take our case. Hamakua Springs farms 600 acres of diversified crops, including bananas, and hydroponic vegetables such as tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers, green onions, lettuces as well as others. We are planning to do aquaculture soon. There are 80-something workers, together with three generations of us, who operate Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Hamakua Springs is located in Pepe‘ekeo, 10 miles north of Hilo. As everyone knows, Hilo rains. One hundred forty inches of rain fall in an average year. We have three streams running through the property, as well as a flume that used to feed the sugar mill.

The renewable energy Farm Loan Bill will allow us to finance the borrowing of water from the flume in an 18-inch pipe, which we run downhill to a turbine that spins and makes electricity. We will then return the water that we are borrowing back to the flume.

Our monthly electric bill has gone from $9,000 a short time ago to $15,000 now. And there is no end in sight. But with this alternate energy farm bill, our monthly payments to make the hydroelectric plant will be less than half of the present electric bill.

After we install the hydroelectric project, we will have excess electricity. We are thinking of allowing our workers to plug their hybrid electric cars as an extra benefit for working for the farm. We are also thinking of using the banana waste to feed fish. We plan to take the ammonia from the fish waste, run it through a biofilter and send the usable fertilizer downstream to hydroponic vegetables. Then, we’ll pump the water back to the top with the excess electricity from our hydroelectric plant.

By temperature control we can fool plants into thinking its summer when it is winter. Chilling the plants in the summer will fool the plants into producing in the winter, when supplies are short. Small berries come to mind.

This is just one example. We could have hundreds of farmers taking advantage of this Farm Loan Program and implementing clever ideas we had no idea can be done.

Farmers are very resourceful and innovative people. This bill will help farmers grow more food. As we said before, “If the farmer can make money, the farmers will farm.

Help Hawai‘i’s farmers and feed Hawaii’s people. Buy local. We can do this!

I think it went over well. The governor said she liked that we’re proactive and many others told me that they liked the remarks as well.

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources

Foreign Oil, Domestic Hope

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M. Steven Grant, a friend who is the president of Junior Achievement on O‘ahu, sent me a bloomberg.com article yesterday. I found this very interesting:

Global food prices have spiked 60 percent since the beginning of 2007, sparking riots in more than 30 countries that depend on imported food, including Cameroon and Egypt. The surge in prices threatens to push the number of malnourished people in the world from 860 million to almost 1 billion, according to the World Food Programme in Rome.

Leaders of developing nations including the Philippines, Gambia and El Salvador now say the only way to nourish their people is to grow more food themselves rather than rely on cheap imports. The backlash may sink global trade talks, reduce the almost $1 trillion in annual food trade and lead to the return of high agricultural tariffs and subsidies around the world.

“Trade as the route to food security, that idea is on the ropes,” said Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “If the guy who is selling it doesn’t want to sell it overseas, then the guy at the other end is terribly exposed.”

The main point of this article is that free trade, as it applies to food, does not work for many poor nations.  Some who have depended heavily on free trade are now finding that their people cannot afford to buy food. They are coming to the conclusion that they need to take care of themselves and grow their own food.

Is it imaginable that one day we may not be able to afford oil? If the oil supply becomes short enough, won’t oil-producing countries cut off exports and take care of their own people first?

Wouldn’t we, if we were in their shoes?

Back in January, China had a big freeze. They stopped exporting coal in order to take care of their own people. Isn’t it safe to assume that oil-producing countries would do the same if they needed to?

It is starting to become very clear that we cannot depend on foreign sources of oil for security.

We are fortunate that there is so much going on today that aims to make us energy self-sufficient. Many of these innovations will be demonstrated at our E Malama ‘Aina Festival. Yesterday, Roland Torres of Kama‘aina Backroads, who is working/partnering with us on the festival, sent me this note:

Aloha Richard,
I’m running into Pahoa to meet the guy behind this.  I’m FASCINATED. http://greenpower-hawaii.com

Evidently, these generators come from India and are old technology from the days of Rudolf Diesel. The person selling them says that the small generator can power three houses and the large can do six. He says that in India, people use palm oil to run these generators and that one acre of nuts can power six houses.

Recently I heard of a person using a coil of 2-inch black plastic pipe and plumbing it in for hot water. Sounds really simple and effective.

On the 26th, Roland and I will go to Hakalau to see how hydrogen is made from electricity that is generated from water from a stream. Guy Toyama and the folks from H-2 Technologies actually have a scooter there that runs on hydrogen.

There are several wind options, as well. One spins like a top and it too is meant for small-scale power generation.

There are people doing things that are very hopeful and exciting. Not, no can. Can!!

We CAN free ourselves from foreign oil.

Community, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Festival Update

The Malama ‘Aina Festival is starting to get traction.

Roland Torres, executive producer of Kama‘aina Backroads, will be working with us. When I told him that the festival will focus on Hawaiian culture and then, in that context, alternate energy, food producing, recycling and waste management methods, he told me this aligned with his personal philosophy and that he wanted to get involved.

We cannot be more happy that he has agreed to join us. His Kama‘aina Backroads program on OC 16 is uniquely local Hawaiian style.

Since the Hawai‘i Island energy forum this past Friday, I’ve had many calls from people with alternative energy projects. One interesting wind energy project involves a wind energy machine that spins like a top.

I talked to the H2-technologies people yesterday and in addition to producing hydrogen for transportation, they can produce ammonia for fertilizer. If this works, it will be a big deal for agriculture in Hawai‘i. This will help some of us to continually produce food intensively.

We will be asking auto companies with alternative energy cars and trucks to come and put some on display. One car company committed to display and even volunteered to become a sponsor.

Roland Torres has a mock-up website he will use to keep everyone up to speed on the festival as November 7th and 8th approach.  We’ll keep you posted here, too.

Renewable Energy Sources

Starting on Our Hydroelectric Plant

It’s really true: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

We are now starting to construct our hydroelectric plant, which everyone thinks is a wonderfully new, fresh idea.

But Kapono uncovered this interesting bit of history that we posted here recently, in which we learned for the first time that people were evidently doing the same thing here more than 70 years ago.

Pepe`ekeo’s mill was located at the shore to make use of fluming to transport the harvested cane. For many years before 1935 the hydraulic head of mountain ground water (spring water) drove a hydroelectric plant that supplied all of the mill’s needs and also supplied power for housing.

We are making an access to the flume head so we can begin laying the pipe.

The rest we will do by hand because we don’t want to do anything that compromises the river.

If you look carefully, you can see the old concrete work. This flume source is a permitted use, according to the Water Resource Commission. Its personnel came by to look at the site and said we can proceed as long as we do not affect the river in any way. We’re being very careful.

 

Company News, Our Employees, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

What We’re Doing

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Oil went over $119 per barrel yesterday. Everyone knows that this is not good. We have to take action now.

Here’s what we’re doing at the farm: I have written before about the hydroelectric project that we will soon start construction on. This will stabilize our electricity costs, which are now more than $13,000 per month. In addition, we have talked about making biodiesel from french fry grease.  In two years we will be energy self-sufficient!

We plan to let our workers charge their plug-in hybrids as a benefit of working for us.

And we will continue to offer our workers fruits and vegetables to supplement their diet. Because of rising oil costs and their effect on food prices, we feel a heightened urgency to provide our people with food to supplement their families’ diet.

I mentioned here before that I was very concerned because a couple of our workers were asking to borrow money from me for gas to come to work. When we announced that we were winding down our banana operations, I told the people about to lose their jobs that they were still welcome to come to the farm every Thursday and pick up fruits and vegetables with the rest of our workers.

Only two of the original workers did not come back to see about available work. But I am very happy to see that one of those two still comes by to pick up fruits and vegetables.

When Chef Alan Wong came by recently to do a kalua pig cookout on our farm, and we could not bring all of our workers to the cookout, Kimo made sure that we made a container of kalua pig for every one of our workers who could not attend. 

Kimo and I talk about the effects of rising gas, electricity, water and food prices on our workers. If we could, we would raise our prices so we could give all our workers raises. But in this day and age, retailers do not want to raise prices at all. So we are caught between high farming costs and sales prices that are not keeping up.

We have decided to raise pigs on the farm so we can make smoke meat and kalua pig to help supplement our workers’ diets. We will use our banana and tomato waste as pig feed.

Soon enough, we will also be raising fish and shrimp.

In addition to the banana, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, bell peppers and other odds and ends, we will be able to give our workers fish and shrimp within the year.

It is definitely not business as usual and it is important that we take care of each other.

The basic idea is that as oil prices rise by “x” percent, we need to figure out how to lower our cost of living by “x” percent. Sometimes it takes a bit of innovation, but it’s what we have to do. I think our workers hope that we can figure out a solution. We don’t want to let them down. 

Government, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Where We’re At

An editorial in yesterday’s Hawaii Tribune-Herald reads:

Bill is Bad for Business, Bad for All Hawaii:

House Bill 2974, informally known as the “card check” bill, would have permitted labor unions to automatically be recognized whenever a majority of workers at a small business sign authorization cards. The bill also would mandate timelines for collective bargaining and impose binding arbitration in labor negotiations.

No secret ballot would be required, and there would be no independent supervision of the card check process.

Existing law requires a secret ballot election if 30 percent of the workers sign cards. The election, which is monitored by the government, determines whether the union is recognized.

When I first heard about this I was shocked to see that this bill targeted agriculture. Why in the world would our legislators want to target small papaya farmers and foliage growers? I am curious to see if the legislators choose to override the governor’s veto.

I’ve been writing in this blog that in the face of coming economic hardships, we need to make more friends and become closer to our families and community. We will need to help each other. This bill is disappointing because it will cause divisiveness, rather than togetherness.

It was another week of steadily rising oil prices, with crude moving from a low of $109 a barrel on Monday to a new high, over $117 a barrel, by Friday. By now the reasons for the continued climb are familiar – stagnant production, shrinking exports, increasing demand, a falling dollar, the flight to safety in commodities, declining U.S. stockpiles, and, of all things, the perception of an improving U.S. economy.

This week, several new factors contributed to the increase. Reports that Russian oil production slipped during the first quarter for the first time in a decade, coupled with assertions by senior Russian oilmen that Moscow’s production is not going higher, were troublesome.

Here is a link to a weekly report on the world oil situation. It is significant because it says that Saudi Arabia will be limiting its production of oil in order to save oil for future generations, which has serious long-term implications for oil importers. During the week the Saudis said they had trimmed output from 9.2 million barrels/day to 9 million.

We must be aware that their own middle class is growing and will want to use more of that oil internally, within their own country. So less and less will be available for export!

We need to move more decisively toward alternate energy. Geothermal comes to mind. HELCO needs to figure out how CAN. Not, “No can!”

Renewable Energy Sources

Wheelabrator

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The Houston-based company Wheelabrator recently gave a presentation about its “Waste-to-Energy” facilities to representatives of the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce, Japanese Chamber, Portuguese Chamber and the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board.

By my calculations, 86,000 tons/year of trash replaces 86,000 barrels of oil at $100/barrel. (86,000 divided by 365 equals 235 tons/day.) This equates to $8.6 million in oil cost savings per year, and even more as oil prices rise. And we all know that they will.

Wheelabrator convinced me that it has a technology that is proven. The most important thing is that their contract has several instances along the way where the County could terminate the contract at no cost. It has an escape clause so we would not be stuck with a bad project.

The objective of pushing this forward is to enable a quote from HELCO so we can get more information. There is no risk to moving forward at this point.

There are new, “miracle” proposals out there that are said to be faster and cheaper, but we have found over the years that it’s asking for trouble to buy first generation products. You end up being the guinea pig. Believe me, this is the voice of experience speaking!

Food Security, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

Selling Electricity

I’m starting to become a policy wonk, which was not in my plan!

Monday I testified at the legislature on behalf of resolution HR 254/HCR 504, which urges the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to rule that all Schedule Q contracts should receive the full “avoided cost” pricing.

It was important to me to testify about this because the PUC is changing its interpretation of how to pay for electricity that is sold to the electric company under “Schedule Q.”

Schedule Q applies to small power producers that generate less than 100 KW. One hundred kilowatts is enough power to continuously run approximately 15 refrigerated containers, each 40 feet long.

Schedule Q always paid “avoided costs” of oil—in other words, the oil costs that would have been used to generate the electricity.  For instance, if HELCO charges 32 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH) for electricity, and 23 cents of that cost was for oil costs, then HELCO would pay small power producers 23 cents per KWH for any electricity they bought.

Now the PUC says that the rate the utility pays should not be tied to “avoided costs” of oil. We worry that this will mean lower returns. If that’s the case, people will not want to undertake alternate energy projects.

Because the “avoided costs” in my example of 23 cents/KWH is much less that the 32 cents/KWH that HELCO charges customers, Schedule Q actually encourages innovation as people seek ways to maximize the use of the electricity generated. I know we ask ourselves everyday: “How else can we use the excess electricity from our hydroelectric project?”

I feel it’s important that Schedule Q continue to be interpreted as-is, because then we are keeping the money for electricity in our own economy. It does not end up making electricity cost more. And why pay foreigners for oil, when you can keep the money here with our own people? And if farmers happen to take advantage of this rate, maybe more people will farm, and then we will have the added benefit of becoming more food secure here in Hawai‘i.”

Electric Bills Stun

Just a couple days ago, the Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald’s front page headline read: “Electric bills stun isle residents; Fuel surcharge adds $76 to typical home’s cost.”

Electricity rates are rising, and food costs and everything else related to oil is also getting more expensive. A couple weeks ago I spoke about food and fuel to the Hilo Bay Rotary Club, and one person there told me that he owns a service station snack shop operation. His electric costs, projected to be $70,000 just a few months ago, are now projected to cost $100,000 annually. He told me that his profit margins are shrinking because he can only raise his sandwich prices so much.

If there is an opportunity for him, and others, to sell electricity under Schedule Q, it will benefit all of us. If not, we will just keep importing more foreign oil to generate the electricity he could have produced.

Recently I looked at a modeling exercise done by Dr. Makena Coffman at the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization. It was titled “Oil Price Shocks and Hawai‘i’s Economy.”

I told her of the Alternate Energy Ag Farm Loan Bill that we are pushing through the legislature. She said she was glad to hear there are “renewable energy for agriculture” bills going forward, because, she said:

“Initiatives like that are exactly what we need to mitigate a drawn-out recession. Oil price shocks historically have short-term effects that dissipate over time, largely because it induces some innovation and behavioral change. Getting local Ag through all this really depends on its ability to decouple the sector from oil as an input.”

Schedule Q plays a crucial part in enabling behavioral change.

Biofuels

More and more I hear that biofuels will play a big part in our energy future. First we need to realize that biofuel production is farming.

Here is a quick and dirty estimation of what a farmer can earn farming biofuel:

Say a barrel of oil costs $100 and each barrel contains 42 gallons; that means each gallon of oil is worth $2.38. Each gallon weighs approximately 8 lbs., so each pound of liquid oil costs 30 cents. If it takes three pounds of palm nuts, jatropha, kukui nuts, macadamia nuts or whatever to make one 1 lb. of oil, then the most the farmers could expect as a return is 10 cents per pound.

No farmer would farm biofuels, or anything else, for 10 cents/lb., or even 20 cents/lb. And the Big Island’s terrain and weather do not lend themselves to big agriculture.

I really don’t think biofuel could even take care of transportation, let alone generate electricity. So we really need to think about relying more on electricity for most of our energy needs.

Here is an analysis that says that when oil hits $162 per barrel we will go into a recession much like the recession of the 70s. http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2007/1003.html.

The exact price that will trigger this to happen is not important. What is important is that when we go into recession because of high oil prices, it will be very difficult to come out again – because demand will be outstripping supply by larger and larger amounts. And oil prices will continuously rise. How we fare will largely depend on how successful we have been in decoupling ourselves from foreign oil.

Schedule Q is one way to incentivize people to decouple from foreign oil.

As I have said before: “The kahuna not going save us.”