Category Archives: Renewable Energy Sources

Food Security, Government, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Bill 113: It’s Not ‘Who’ Is Right, It’s ‘What’ Is Right

Richard Ha writes:

All of this hullabaloo about Bill 113, the anti-GMO bill – What it’s really about is that we need to take a little more time, so we can be sure we are making good and informed decisions.

It’s not “us against them.” It’s not “GMO against organic.” It isn't “who” is right, so much as it is “what” is right.

It’s significant that a group of farmers and ranchers who, between them, grow 90 percent of the food produced on this island, have banded together to say the same thing: We need to think this through more carefully.

These farmers and ranchers opposed Bill 113 because the bill was rushed and its consequences were not considered. We didn’t take the time to think it all through and come to the best decision for everyone.

Bill 113 looks through a very narrow prism; there is a much bigger picture that is not being considered. We are not taking into account the risk of rising energy prices. We live in the humid subtropics, where there is no winter to kill off bad insects. Our solution has been to use petroleum products to fight them off and also to make fertilizers – but now, the price of oil has skyrocketed and this is becoming unsustainable.

Use solar energy, some say. But solar energy is only sustainable right now because of subsidies, and we cannot expect that subsidies will always be there.

A leaf, though, is also a solar collector, and it’s free. Being able to leverage our sun energy year round –  assuming we have a way to control our pests – would make our farming and ranching industry, and our local food production, more than sustainable.

A solid solution to the extensive problems caused by rising oil costs is to use scientific advances. Biotechnology. It’s comparable to how we use iPhones now to replace the big walkie-talkies we used before.

This would help us get off oil, and would also give us the advantage of a year-round growing season, among other benefits. It would help us all.

We need to think through all of this in great detail. All of us need to be open to the fact that our research might prove a certain favorite plan of action unsustainable. If that's the case, we need to move on to the next idea and research that one carefully, getting input from every side.

We need to consider unintended consequences of legislation. We need to slow down, and research, and make carefully informed decisions.

Aquaponics, Big Island, Community, Eating Locally, Family of Farms, Food Security, History, How It All Started, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a, Watercress

The New Ahupuaa, Revisited

Richard Ha writes:

This is a post I wrote back in 2007. I recently reread it and realized it's the same story as what's happening today. It's six years later, and people still don't realize we don't have time to fool around.

I'm going to rerun the post here.

***

October 10, 2007

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?”

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.

***

Big Island, Hamakua Coast, Hydroelectric, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability, Water, Where We Live

Energy On The Farm

Richard Ha writes:

We’ve had two days of rain and Wai‘a‘ama Stream is a raging torrent. Incredible amounts of water running down the flume!

In addition to using the water that’s all around us, we utilize the energy of the sun. Because what drives plant growth? Sun energy in a certain range.

Photosynthetically active radiation
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia

Photosynthetically active radiation, often abbreviated PAR, designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis….

 Read the rest

We use a sensor that measures the sun energy per meter squared and gives a number for the total accumulated in a day. We keep track of the total.

The sun energy total was low these last two days. This is something we expected, because the river has been raging.

Farmers routinely use scientific information. This is why I say farmers have common sense.

Geothermal, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Robert Rapier & Tar Sands

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Richard Ha writes:

I talked to my friend Robert Rapier yesterday. He had just returned from seeing the tar sands in Canada.  

Robert Rapier is a chemical engineer with 20 years of international engineering experience in the energy business. He holds several patents related to his work. Robert is the author of Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. He is also the author of the R-Squared Energy Column and is Chief Investment Strategist for Investing Daily’s Energy Strategist service. Robert has appeared on The History Channel and PBS, and his articles have appeared in numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Forbes.

Here’s a blog post he wrote just before he went.

He told me some interesting stuff about the energy return on energy invested, which was better than I had thought, and about the break-even point of tar sands, which were lower than I expected. He had some interesting ecological observations, too, and will be writing about this soon. He’s also going to appear on national television, soon.

One of the reasons I like Robert is because, in local Hawai‘i terms, he’s a "scrappah.” He’s like our mayor, Billy Kenoi – he is both smart and tough.

I asked him what he thought of the Big Island’s energy prospects, and he said that geothermal appears to be one of the lowest-hanging fruit. I agree!

In a previous blog post, he pointed out that leveraging the sun has promise, nationwide, and observed that solar panel prices are steadily declining.

I agree about leveraging sunshine. As a farmer, I think of plant leaves as solar collectors. We have a year-round growing season here, and we have been using petroleum-based pesticides to help farmers control the year-round pests. If we can use biotechnology in a smart and safe way to help us control pests, it will lower food production costs and help our whole economy.

Instead of losing ground as oil prices rise, we can position ourselves so that all farmers have a competitive advantage to those on the mainland.

Right now, our state goal is to reach 10 percent self-sufficiency. We have to do better than that.

Big Island, Eating Locally, Food Security, Geothermal, Government, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Let’s Adapt To Change, And Survive/Thrive

Richard Ha writes:

What we’re doing on the Big Island with Bill 113 is trying to make a law that prohibits us from helping ourselves. It is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

The biggest problem we face today is at the intersection of energy and agriculture. In a nutshell: As petroleum prices rise, there’s a direct consequence on agriculture and everything that goes into it (fertilizer, chemicals, packing materials, etc.).

We rely on oil here far more than does the U.S. mainland. We generate 78 percent of our electricity from oil, whereas on the mainland, it’s only two percent. As oil prices rise, everything that has electric costs associated with it gets more expensive. We already see this happening.

Our farmers and food producers on this agricultural-based island are becoming less competitive, and our food prices are skyrocketing.

We need to find a way to be more competitive, which will not only keep our farmers and food producers working, and make us more “food secure,” but will also make our food costs go down instead of continuing to increase.

It’s energy and technology that determine agricultural costs, and fortunately we have two ways to solve this big problem:

Energy

We are extremely fortunate here on the Big Island to have a resource that most places don’t have: We have the gift of geothermal energy. Geothermal costs only half as much as oil, and the resource will be stable (we will be over the “hot spot” that makes it possible) for 500,000 years.

If we increase our use of geothermal over the years as the price of oil rises, we will be more competitive with the rest of the world. This will be good for our island’s ag industry and also for our people, who will see prices go down, instead of up.

Agriculture

Biotech solutions generally lower costs. They can help increase production, whether it’s with university-developed solutions that help plants resist diseases and pests, or biotech solutions that allow plants to manufacture their own nitrogen so we don’t have to import fertilizer (which requires electricity to produce and oil to get to Hawai‘i).

Then we will be able to rely on natural sunlight for our primary energy, which gives us a tremendous, and not common, advantage – we can grow crops here all year around. Insects, pests and weeds grow all year around too, though, and biotech can safely help us with those problems so we will become even more sustainable and competitive.

Using geothermal plus appropriate biotech solutions can give us a huge advantage over the rest of the world, and make life better for us here at home, but we don’t have much time. We have to let science and technology prevail so we can move forward, not stagnate nor fall behind, and we have to get on this now.

There is some unwarranted fear about using biotechnology, but know that all the major scientific organizations in the world say foods created with biotechnology are as safe as those created otherwise.

Oil is a finite resource, and its cost will rise. There is no question about this. It’s a predictable consequence of what’s happening now, and this is not just my take on it.

Gail Tverberg, who is an actuary and an expert on Peak Oil, says it’s not the physical oil that’s a problem, but it’s whether or not we can afford it – because, of course, the harder it is to find the oil, the more expensive it becomes. This is what’s happening right now. She predicts that in two years we’ll be in really serious trouble.

Citibank recently put out a report predicting that Saudi Arabia will no longer export oil by year 2030 – only 17 years from now – because they will be using all their oil within their own country. The consequence of this would be rising oil prices, and the effects would be felt much sooner than 2030.

Many, many other reports agree that the price of oil will continue to rise. The whole prospect is pretty scary.

Michael Kumhof of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the IMF can’t even model what will happen if oil hits $200/barrel, because that would be entirely uncharted territory.

I have been to five Peak Oil conferences now, which I started attending in order to figure out how to position our farm for the future. In the course of learning about the oil situation, I realized I was the only person from Hawai‘i attending, and realized I needed to share what I was learning here at home.

What I learned is that the world has been using two to three times as much oil as we’ve been finding, and that this trend continues. Over the five years I attended the conferences, we started to hear predictions of when unparalleled high oil prices, the kind the IMF cannot even model, could occur.

It might be two years from now, or it might be 20 years, but it will happen, and it might happen soon. We need to start preparing now.

Charles Darwin said it’s not the strongest nor the smartest who survive, but the ones that can adapt to change. Let’s survive, and more.

Articles, Big Island, Hamakua Coast, Hydroelectric, Renewable Energy Sources, Video, Water, Where We Live

Civil Beat & Huffington Post Coverage

Honolulu's Civil Beat came to the Big Island and interviewed Richard for this really good article on energy and Hawai‘i – and then today it was picked up by the Huffington Post. Wow. 

From Civil Beat:

Energy Prices Shock Hawaii Farmers Into Alternatives

by Sophie Cocke  8/15/13

HAMAKUA, BIG ISLAND — Lush green fields rise and dip through the rolling hills that stretch down to the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. The verdant surroundings and tropical air suggest this farm could be one of countless others. So does the water that flows past leafy, green taro fields, stalks of corn that sway in the breeze and the sweet potato patch.

But the subtle, steady swooshing of the water signals how this farm is different. The water has been diverted from a mountain stream, down a 150-foot slope and into a small, blue shed where it sends blades spinning to generate electricity.

Yes, Hamakua Springs Country Farms has its own hydroelectric plant.

Farmer Richard Ha borrowed money to install the plant as part of a 19th-century solution to a very 21st century problem: sky-high energy rates….

Read the rest here

There's a short video interview with Richard at the end, too.

- posted by Leslie Lang

Aquaponics, Family of Farms, Food Security, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, Water

State of the Farm Report

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Richard Ha writes:

Yesterday at the farm I had a meeting with all our workers. It was an update on where we have been and where we are going.

Where we’ve been

The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and those who could pass on the cost did. Those who could not pass on the cost ended up paying more. Farmers are price takers, not price makers, so farmers’ costs increased more than their prices.

Anticipating higher electricity prices, we lobbied for and passed a law that the Department of Agriculture create a new farm loan program that farmers could use for renewable energy purposes. Then we started to design a hydroelectricity program to stabilize our electricity costs.

Where we are today

The hydroelectricity project is within weeks of completion. With the combination of a farm loan and a grant from the Department of Energy, we will stabilize our electricity price at 40 percent less than we pay today.

The pipe that transports the water appears to me like it will last for more than 100 years. After the loan is paid off, our electricity will be practically free for more than 60 years.

Where we are going

We are taking advantage of our resources – free water and stable electricity costs – by working with area farmers to help each other grow more food.

What kind of food? Responding to consumer demand, we want to
produce food with a wide variety of nutritional content, including protein, via aquaculture.

In order to be sustainable, the feed-based protein must be vegetation-based. And since the building block of protein is nitrogen, we are looking for an adequate nitrogen source. Unused, wasted electricity can be used to make ammonia, which is a nitrogen fertilizer and, like a battery, can be used to store energy.

What does the future
look like?

Other than stable electricity, which would help us, our serious
concern is the anti-GMO Bill 79. It seeks to ban any new biotech solutions to farmers’ problems on the Big Island. The result is that the rest of the counties and the nation would be able to use new tools for more successful farming, and the Big Island would not.

What would happen is that Big Island farmers would become
less competitive, which would put even more pressure on those already at the bottom of the pay scale. It would result in higher food costs, making consumers less able to support local farmers.

The folks pushing for the anti-GMO bill have not talked to farmers, and they have no clue that this bill would make Hawai‘i less food
secure. The bottom line is that food security involves farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm. If not, they will quit.

Big Island, Eating Locally, Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources

Are GMOs Safe? Should We Label Them?

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Richard Ha writes:

Genetically engineered food? Is it safe? Should it be labeled?

Mark Lynas was one of the original founders of the anti-GMO movement. In this video, he explains that he has totally changed his mind about GMOs, his original position was not scientifically based, and he now completely regrets it.

“I want to start with some apologies….For the record, here and upfront, I want to apologize for having spent several years ripping up GMO crops. I'm also sorry I helped start the anti-GM movement back in the '90s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option that can and should be used to benefit the environment.

“As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counterproductive path and I now regret it completely….”

The video is called "Mark Lynas on his conversion to supporting GMOs – Oxford Lecture on Farming. Watch it here to learn why he changed his mind. (In short, he says he "discovered science.")

At its recent 2012 annual meeting, the American Medical Association adopted a
position on bioengineered foods:

“Conclusions. Despite strong consumer interest in mandatory labeling of bioengineered foods, the FDA’s science-based labeling policies do not support special labeling without evidence of material differences between bioengineered foods and their traditional counterparts. The Council supports this science-based approach, and believes that thorough pre-market safety assessment and the FDA’s requirement that any material difference between bioengineered foods and their traditional counterparts be disclosed in labeling, are effective in ensuring the safety of bioengineered food.

To better characterize the potential harms of bioengineered foods, the Council believes that pre-market safety assessment should shift from a voluntary notification process to a mandatory requirement. The Council notes that consumers wishing to choose foods without bioengineered ingredients may do so by purchasing those that are labeled “USDA Organic.”

But organic farmers have high operating costs, and therefore organic foods are generally more expensive. How can we help organic farmers?

One way is to increase the discretionary income of organic customers. Geothermal-produced electricity puts money back in consumers’ pockets. Everyone benefits.

The large biotech companies aren’t going to come and plant and grow on the Big Island. Half our island is lava rock, and we don’t have long straightaways where you can set up irrigation. Lose money! 

Why do you think the sugar plantations used "tracked” equipment to work the fields? So they wouldn't flip over, or get stuck in the mud.

Big tractors that are used in Big Ag make money on the straightaways, and they lose money on the turns. We don’t have the straightaways, and so we don't have that type of Big Ag here – and we won’t.

Banning University of Hawai‘i field trials on the Big Island only hurts regular farmers. 

Aquaponics, Bananas, Big Island, Eating Locally, Family of Farms, Food Security, Geothermal, Hamakua Coast, How It All Started, Hydroelectric, Hydroponics, Lowering Electric Rates, Our Employees, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, Taro/Poi, Tomatoes, Water, Where We Live

The Wheres & Whyfors of Hamakua Springs

By Leslie Lang

The other day Richard gave some of us a tour of Hamakua Springs Country Farms in Pepe‘ekeo, and its new hydroelectric plant, and wow. I hadn’t been out to the farm for awhile, and it was so interesting to ride around the 600 acres with Richard and see all that’s going on there these days.

Most of what I realized (again) that afternoon fell into two
broad categories: That Richard really is a master of seeing the big picture, and that everything he does is related to that big picture.

Hamakua Springs, which started out growing bananas and then expanded into growing the deliciously sweet hydroponic tomatoes we all know the farm for, has other crops as well.

tomatoes.jpgThese days there are farmers leasing small plots where they are growing taro, corn, ginger and sweet potato. These farmers’ products go to the Hamakua Springs packing house and Hamakua Springs distributes them, which speaks to Richard’s goal of providing a place for local farmers to farm, wherethere is water and packing and distribution already in place.

As we drove, we saw a lot of the water that passes through his farm. There are three streams and three springs. It’s an enormous amount of water, and it’s because of all this water that he was able to develop his brand new hydroelectric system, where they are getting ready to throw the switch.

The water wasn’t running through there the day we were there because they’d had to temporarily “turn it off” – divert the water – in order to fix something, but we could see how the water from an old plantation flume now runs through the headworks and through a pipe and into the turbine, which is housed in a blue shipping container.

hydro.jpg

This is where the electricity is generated, and I was interested to see a lone electric pole standing there next to the system. End of the line! Or start of the line, really, as that’s where the electricity from the turbine is carried to. And from there, it works its way across the electric lines stretched between new poles reaching across the land.

Screen Shot 2013-06-06 at 11.17.00 PM

He asked the children who were along with us for their ideas
about how to landscape around the hydroelectric area, and also where the water leaves the turbine to run out and rejoin the stream.

Screen Shot 2013-06-06 at 11.17.00 PM

“We could do anything here,” he said, asking for thoughts, and
we all came up with numerous ideas, some fanciful. Trees and grass? A taro lo‘i? Maybe a picnic area, or a water flume ride or a demonstration garden or fishponds?

There are interesting plans for once the hydro system is operating, including a certified kitchen where local area producers can bring their products and create value-added goods.

Other plans include having some sort of demo of sustainable
farming, and perhaps ag-tourism ativities like walking trails going through the farm, and maybe even a B&B. “The basis of all tourism,” he said, “is sustainability.”

Hamakua Springs is also experimenting with growing mushrooms
now, and looking into several other possibilities for using its free
electricity.

As we stopped and looked at the streams we kept coming
across, which ran under the old plantation roads we drove upon, Richard made an observation that I found interesting. In the Hawaiian way, the land is thought of as following the streams down from mountain to sea. In traditional ways, paths generally ran up-and-down the hill, following the shape of the ahupua‘a.

“But look at the plantation roads,” he said, and he pointed
out how they run across the land, from stream to stream. The plantation way was the opposite. Not “wrong” – just different.

Richard has plans to plant bamboo on the south sides of the
streams, which will keep the water cool and keep out invasive species.

At the farm, they continue to experiment with raising
tilapia, which are in four blue pools next to the reservoir.

June & Tilapia.jpgJune with a full net

The pools are at different heights because they are using gravity to flow the water from one pool to the next, rather than a pump. Besides it being free, this oxygenates the water as it falls into the next pool. They are not raising the fish commercially at present, but give them to their workers.

Everything that Richard does is geared toward achieving the same goal, and that is to keep his farm economically viable and sustainable.

If farmers make money, farmers will farm.

Continuing to farm means continuing to provide food for the local community, employing people locally and making it possible for local people to stay in Hawai‘i: This as opposed to people having to leave the islands, or their children having to leave the islands, in order to make a decent life for themselves.

The hydroelectric system means saving thousands per month in
electric bills, and being able to expand into other products and activities. It means the farm stays in business and provides for the surrounding community. It means people have jobs.

This is the same reason why, on a bigger scale, Richard is working to bring more geothermal into the mix on the Big Island: to decrease the stranglehold that high electricity costs have over us, so the rubbah slippah folk have breathing room, so that we all have more disposable income – which will, in turn, drive our local economy and make our islands more competitive with the rest of the world, and our standard of living higher, comparably.

When he says “rubbah slippah folk,” Richard told me, he’s always thinking first about the farm’s workers.

This, by the way, is really a great overview of how Richard describes the “big picture.” It’s a TEDx talk he did awhile back (17 minutes). Really worth a look.

It was so interesting to see firsthand what is going on at the farm right now, and hear about the plans and the wheres and whyfors. Thank you, Richard, for a really interesting and insightful afternoon.

Biofuel, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Video

Cutting Edge Info on Peak Oil: Here, Now & in November

Richard Ha writes:

Five Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) annual conferences later, it’s very clear to me that the information I learn at the conferences is cutting edge. It’s consistently two or more years before what the experts there are talking about shows up in the mainstream news.

From the first ASPO conference I attended, I noticed there were stock traders in the audience. I asked them why there were there, and one told me it was so he could make better investment decisions.

The oil decline situation is much more serious than people realize, and I highly recommend that anyone who wants to be on the cutting edge of knowledge attend the next ASPO conference. It is usually held around the end of November.

I also recommend you visit the ASPO-TV site and take in some of the videos there.

Robert Rapier gave this interesting talk at ASPO last year, which may be of interest to folks who have more than just a passing interest in energy issues.

Robert Rapier – Navigating a New Energy Reality from Peak Oil TV on Vimeo.

Robert, who presented at the conference the last two years, lives
in Waimea now, where he moved to take the job of Chief Technology Officer for Merica International.

He has written a book, Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil:

In Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil, energy expert Robert Rapier helps readers sort through energy hype, doom and gloom, and misinformation to understand what really matters in energy, and how it impacts individuals, investors, businesspeople, and policy makers worldwide. The book
covers the overall global energy situation, the particular risks for the U.S. with its present energy mix, the energy outlook for the developed world and emerging economies like China and India, what peak oil really means, and the present and likely future of natural gas, coal, oil, nuclear power, and alternative energy sources. 



The book also addresses common misconceptions. For instance, most readers are likely unaware that the U.S. is the third-largest oil producer in the world. Or that Canada leads the U.S. in per capita oil consumption. It will also highlight interesting facts—for example, China has solved part of its energy challenge by
mandating solar hot water systems in all new construction. Most
importantly, the book will provide specific energy insights unavailable elsewhere and help individuals and business planners chart future actions and decisions. 

In a recent blog entry, Robert talks about why rising natural gas prices will affect the biofuel industry (natural gas is a cost component of the biofuel industry).

He once told me that if a biofuel project has a negative energy balance, it would never be cheaper than oil.

He is highly technically qualified and has a knack of making difficult issues and conclusions easy to understand. I highly recommend both his book and blog.