Category Archives: Renewable Energy Sources

Government, Renewable Energy Sources

Farm Loan Program

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I’d like to tell you about a Farm Loan program for sustainable alternate energy projects, which we are introducing in this session of the Legislature. It will help Hawai‘i farmers become less dependent on fossil fuel. The money it saves will also make local farmers more competitive with imported produce.

This bill will help to answer the question: “How can we get more farmers to farm?” The answer is: “If farmers make money, more farmers will farm.”

The rapid increase in world population occurred in parallel with the discovery and use of oil in agriculture, all in the last 150 years. Oil provides power to, or is a component of, tractor fuel, fertilizers, synthetic chemicals, plastics, irrigation, cooling, packaging and transportation. Oil provided the food for the world population explosion. If world oil supplies decline, it is reasonable to assume that food production in Hawai‘i will also decline.

We are now starting to realize that oil is a finite resource and that we have reached the point where oil supplies have entered a period of permanent decline. This has serious implications for those of us living in Hawai‘i, out in the middle of the ocean. We import more than 80% of our food.

Although the decline in world oil supplies will likely not occur overnight, we need to start producing more food for ourselves now. If we start now and the worse never occurs, we will have lost nothing. But if we don’t start and the worse does occur and we run out of food, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will never forgive us for our shortsightedness.

Here are the essential elements of the Farm Loan program for sustainable alternate energy projects:

1. It is meant for full time farmers

2. It is limited to $1.5 million dollars per project

3. The term length is 40 years

4. Downpayment is 15%

5. The interest rate is 5%

6. It is to be funded for 10 million dollars

7. Wind, solar, biofuel, hydro and other alternate energy projects qualify

The High Tech Business Investment Tax Credit, Act 221, provides 100 percent state income tax credit for non-fossil, fuel-energy related technology. Although farmers qualify for Act 221, farmers often cannot finance these types of projects by themselves. And obtaining investors to accomplish alternate energy projects often leaves very little of the project value for the farmer.

The Farm Loan program for sustainable alternate energy projects leverages Act 221.

The farmer retains the benefit of the alternate energy project, which goes straight to his bottom line. And he gets 100 percent of the state income tax credit.

If a farmer can make money, more farmers will farm, and this will help us achieve our objective of producing more food locally. It also keeps money circulating inside our economy. The cost-to-benefit ratio of this project is very, very good.

See the proposed bill here.

Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Future

Peter Goodchild, at countercurrents.org, paints a bleak scenario about the future in a world of depleted oil supplies:

The decline in the world’s oil supply offers no sudden dramatic event that would appeal to the writer of “apocalyptic” science fiction: no mushroom clouds, no flying saucers, no giant meteorites. The future will be just like today, only tougher. Oil depletion is basically just a matter of overpopulation – too many people and not enough resources. The most serious consequence will be a lack of food. The problem of oil therefore leads, in an apparently mundane fashion, to the problem of farming.

To what extent could food be produced in a world without fossil fuels? In the year 2000, humanity consumed about 30 billion barrels of oil, but the supply is starting to run out; without oil and natural gas, there will be no fuel, no asphalt, no plastics, no chemical fertilizer. Most people in modern industrial civilization live on food that was bought from a local supermarket, but such food will not always be available. Agriculture in the future will be largely a “family affair”: without motorized vehicles, food will have to be produced not far from where it was consumed. But what crops should be grown? How much land would be needed? Where could people be supported by such methods of agriculture?

Though Goodchild’s portrayal looks bleak, here in Hawai‘i we have a great opportunity to transition to different ways of doing things. These ideas come to my mind:

1. If oil is equal to energy, what alternate energy could we substitute? How about geothermal? The energy is just coming out of the ground. How about water in a river running down hill? That’s potential energy. It rains 140 inches per year at our farm. What if we caught water and dug an injection well and captured the energy at the bottom? Instead of the internal combustion engine, we use electrical motors.

2. Can the utilities help us produce food? I don’t think so. It’s about costs and they have the highest costs in the country. We have to look for other ways.

3. What about fertilizer? Synthetic fertilizer is made from air and natural gas. Air is made up of 78% nitrogen. It may be possible that the geothermal company, using air, sand and geothermal energy, could manufacture calcium nitrate. Could a wind farm make fertilizer? We need to ask these questions.

Because oil was so cheap for so long, we have even forgotten that the sun’s energy has value. Here in Hawai‘i we can grow crops all year long. And as oil prices rise, the value of the energy coming from the sun will also rise. This means Hawai‘i farmers will become more competitive.

When I returned from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference in Houston in mid-October, things seemed bleak. But as time goes by, I realize we have many resources and opportunities to transition successfully.

My Pop used to say there are a thousand reasons why, “No can.” I am only looking for one reason why, “CAN!!”

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a

The New Ahupua‘a

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I spoke at the Hawai‘i Island Food Summit this past weekend, which was attended by Hawaiian cultural people, policy makers, university researchers, farmers, ranchers, and others.

The two-day conference asked the question, “How Can Hawai‘i Feed Itself?”

I felt like a small kid in class with his hand raised: “Call me! Call me!”

I sat on one of the panels, and said that our sustainability philosophy has to do with taking a long-term view of things. We are always moving so we’ll be in the proper position for the environment we anticipate five, 10 and 20 years from now.

**

I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land—all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, but maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying, “Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

**

I spoke about where we want to be in five, 10 or 20 years. We know that energy-related costs will be high then. And that we need to provide food for Hawai‘i’s people.

We call our plan “The New Ahupua‘a.”

In old Hawai‘i, the ahupua‘a was a land division that stretched from the uplands to the sea, and it contained the resources necessary to support its human population—from fish and salt to fertile land for farming and, high up, wood for building, as well as much more.

Our “New Ahupua‘a” uses old knowledge along with modern technology to make the best use of our own land system and resources. We will move forward by looking backward.

• We plan to decouple ourselves from fossil fuel costs by developing a hydroelectric plant, which will allow us to grow various crops not normally grown at our location.

• We are moving toward a “village” concept of farming, and starting to include farmers from the area, who grow things we don’t, to farm with us. This way, the people who work on our farm come from the area around our farm. We will help them with food safety, pest control issues and distribution.

• We are developing a farmers market at our property on the highway, where the farmers who work with us can market their products.

• We will utilize as much of our own resources for fertilizer as possible, by developing a system of aquaponics, etc.

This “New Ahupua‘a” is our general framework for the future. It will allow us to produce more food than we can produce by ourselves. It is a safe strategy, in case the worst scenario happens; if it doesn’t, this plan will not hurt us.

It is a simple strategy. And we are committed to it.

**

My assessment of how we came to be here and where we need to be in the future is this: In the beginning, one hundred percent of the energy for food came from the sun. The mastodons ate leaves, the saber tooth tiger ate the mastodon and we ate the tiger and everything else.

The earth’s population was related to the amount of food we could gather or catch. And sometimes the food caught and ate us. So there were only so many of us roaming around.

Then some of us started to use horses and mules to help us grow food. As well as the sun, now animals provided some of the energy for cultivating food. We were able to grow more food, and so there were more of us.

About 150 years ago, we discovered oil. With oil we could utilize millions of horsepower to grow food—and we didn’t even need horses. Oil was plentiful and cheap; only about $3/barrel. We used oil to manufacture fertilizer, chemicals and for packaging and transportation.

Food became very, very plentiful and we started going to supermarkets to harvest and hunt for our food. Hunting for our food at the supermarkets was very good—the food did not eat us and now there are many, many, many of us.

But now we are approaching another change to the status quo—a situation being called “Peak Oil.” That’s when half of all the oil in existence is used up. Half the oil will still be left, but it will be increasingly hard to tap. At some point, the demand for oil—by billions and billions of people who cannot wait to get in their car and drive to McDonalds—will exceed the ability to pump that oil.

Food was cheap in the past because oil was cheap. Five years ago, oil was $30/barrel but now it’s over $80/barrel. Now that oil is becoming more and more expensive, food is also going to become much more expensive.

In the beginning the sun provided a hundred percent of the energy and it was free. Today oil is becoming very expensive, but sun energy is still free.  The wind, the waves, the water—they are all free here in Hawaii. It’s the oil that is expensive.

For Hamakua Springs, the situation is not complicated at all. We need to use an alternate form of energy to help us grow food!

With alternate energy, we should be able to continue growing food—and maybe local food can be grown cheaper than food that is shipped here from far away.

I told the Food Summit attendees that we farmers need to grow plenty of food so that others can do what they do and so we continue to have a vibrant society. If we don’t plan ahead to provide enough food, and as a consequence every family has to return to farming to feed themselves, it would be a much more limited society. People would not be able to pursue the arts, write books, explore space. We would have way fewer choices – maybe only, “What color malo should I wear today?”

**

Some of the speakers from the conference were videotaped and are up on the Kohala Center’s webcast, if you’d like to listen.

There is also an online slideshow of photos from the Food Summit.

There was a feeling going through the Food Summit’s crowd that we were a part of something very important and very special. What I found different about this conference is that people left feeling that this was just the beginning.

We are going to take action.

Current Affairs, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Peak Oil 2

The United States’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) has an interesting report about peak oil concerns here.

This is a time of increasing concern over the security of our oil supplies—in particular, the fear that, after 150 years of growth, the industry is now facing what is known as “Peak Oil.” That’s the point at which the production of petroleum reaches its maximum before entering a terminal decline.

The big question right now is “When will demand permanently exceed supply?” It used to be that the year 2030 seemed a reasonable estimate. Now, more than a few people are saying it could be as soon as two years from now. Some are even saying we may have already passed the peak.

It is not a question of whether or not we have oil reserves. There is a lot of oil in the ground. It’s more a matter of whether we can replace expiring oil fields with new production in a timely manner. Many of the professionals feel that we cannot. Furthermore, oil reserves of the OPEC producers are suspect. There are indications that they don’t have the reserves they say they have. We don’t know because they won’t show us proof.

And so what will happen? Likely, prices will rise slowly and steadily as oil supplies decline. People will probably adjust their behavior and conserve. Whatever happens, it seems certain that supply will not be able to keep up with demand.

Fertilizer, packaging and other farm expenses have risen steadily over the last few years. I wonder if we have already reached “Peak Oil.” If that has occurred, there’s no better place to be than here in Hawai‘i. We are fortunate to have abundant natural resources that we can use to generate electricity. If we react in a smart way, we should be fine.

Maybe we should hedge our bets and start to position ourselves for “Peak Oil” sooner, rather than later.

Food Security, Government, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Looking to the Future

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Yesterday, the House of Representatives’ Agriculture, Economic Development & Business and its Tourism & Culture committees visited us at Hamakua Springs. First I gave them an orientation and then we took them on a tour of the farm.

The overriding theme of my orientation and tour was a look at how we are positioning ourselves for events that will happen five or more years from now. Along that line, our main topics these days are 1) food security and 2) decoupling ourselves from energy costs.

I included this note in the booklet we prepared for each member:

It will take all farmers—big and small, conventional and organic, rainy-side, dry-side, low elevation and high—to make Hawai‘i secure in its food supply.

As our contribution to the food supply, we have chosen intensive hydroponic production. From 15 acres we produce more than 2 million pounds of tomatoes. We have 600 acres, which we own. Land is not a limiting factor.

We think that the decreasing supply of fossil fuels is opening up a great opportunity for all of us here in Hawai‘i. We have the prospect of using our natural resources to generate electricity.

In our case, we are developing a hydroelectric plant. And we plan to utilize the “free” electricity we generate to replace as many internal combustion engines as possible. We could install labor-saving devices, such as conveyors. We could even install pumps for water filtration, temperature control, etc. We could probably duplicate many of the conditions at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) with our “free” electricity.

But our main stumbling block is financing. It is true that there is a 100% state tax credit for some energy projects. And it is so attractive that we know we could easily get investors who would jump at the chance to be a part of a “guaranteed” investment. But then the value would flow to the investors, not toward our goal of producing cheaper food.

Perhaps funding a state farm loan category specifically for renewable energy would work. This would, in effect, be betting that oil prices rise, making the payback of the loan safer as time passes.

As oil prices rise, renewable energy sources become more attractive and local farmers utilizing these resources would become more competitive and produce more food on less land. This is doable.

Hawai‘i’s lack of food security — our extreme dependence on imported food — may truly become a crisis as fuel prices continue to rise. But our concentration in the present on developing renewable energy sources can only pay off in the future as we both remove ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels, and ensure that Hawai‘i will always have easy access to the food we need to feed our people.