Big Island, Community, Hydrogen

Big Island Getting Hydrogen-Powered Bus

Richard Ha writes:

Hawai‘i County is getting a hydrogen-powered shuttle bus. This is a significant step in the right direction for the Big Island.

Hydrogen will help with ground transportation, help other motors to do work, help with storage of energy and can even be used to make nitrogen fertilizer, leading to better food security.

As petroleum prices rise, our hydrogen costs will remain stable. Eventually we will have a competitive edge over the rest of the world. It's a step down the path to making a better future for coming generations.

From US Hybrid:

US HYBRID AWARDED CONTRACT TO DELIVER HYDROGEN-POWERED SHUTTLE BUS TO HAWAII COUNTY MASS TRANSIT AGENCY

June 17, 2014 – Honolulu, Hawaii – US Hybrid has been awarded a contract by the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies (HCATT) to design, integrate, and deliver its H2RideTM Fuel Cell Plug-In Shuttle Bus for operation by the County of Hawaii Mass Transit Agency’s (MTA) HELE-ON Big Island bus service. The project is funded by the State of Hawaii and Office of Naval Research via the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI).

Integrated at US Hybrid’s Honolulu facility, the 25 passenger shuttle bus utilizes a 30 kW fuel cell fueled by a 20 kg hydrogen storage and delivery system. The fuel cell and 28 kWhr lithium ion battery power the vehicle’s 200 kW powertrain, air conditioning, and auxiliary systems. Onboard batteries are recharged by regenerative braking. The US Hybrid fuel cell, powertrain, and vehicle controller optimizes power delivered by the energy storage and fuel cell power plant.

Upon notification of the award, US Hybrid’s President and CEO, Dr. Abas Goodarzi remarked: “At this critical time in energy advancement, we are honored to have our hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology selected by HNEI, the Hawaii County MTA and HCATT to lead the way for the adoption of zero emission mass transportation throughout the State of Hawaii.”

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie commented: “I am proud of the state’s leadership role in providing the funding to introduce the first hydrogen fuel cell electric bus in support of public transportation in Hawaii. My vision is to leverage opportunities like this to introduce clean energy transportation services that utilize our own renewable energy resources to the benefit of our local economy, while helping the people of Hawaii get where they need to go.”

Hawaii Island Mayor Billy Kenoi added: “This new fuel cell electric bus is the first tangible step in realizing our vision of transforming the County of Hawaii public bus system into one that is powered by our island’s incredible renewable energy resources. Instead of exporting our citizen’s hard-earned dollars offshore, we will be able to keep this money in our local economy creating new jobs and protecting us from the swings of the fossil fuel markets. We would also like to thank the Governor for investing in this project and allowing us to lead the way for the rest of the State of Hawaii.”

HCATT Director Stan Osserman also expressed his support for the project: “This project demonstrates that Hawaii takes its role in leading the U.S. in clean transportation technology very seriously. We’ve already established ourselves as industry leaders with Department of Defense projects related to alternative fuel vehicles, and we are moving forward to make our counties and the state leaders in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.”

HNEI’s Director, Dr. Richard Rocheleau echoed these sentiments: “We look forward to evaluating the performance of this system and helping to develop ways to reduce the cost of the hydrogen infrastructure to the point where private industry can lead future hydrogen development.”

The H2RideTM Fuel Cell Plug-In Shuttle Bus is scheduled for deployment with Hawaii MTA in early 2015.

About US Hybrid

Founded in 1999, US Hybrid Corporation specializes in the design and manufacture of integrated power conversion components for fuel cell, electric, and hybrid medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, as well as for renewable energy generation and storage. US Hybrid offers comprehensive engineering expertise and experience in vehicle powertrains and components, including DC-DC converters, energy management systems, high-performance AC motors, and controllers. For more information, please visit www.ushybrid.com.

About HCATT

Managed by HTDC, HCATT has organized public/private partnerships between the federal government and private industry to develop advanced low emission and zero emission vehicles centered on electric drive technologies. Additionally, HCATT has entered into a partnership with the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to introduce zero emission, hydrogen fuel cell/battery powered hybrid electric buses into the park to support environmentally friendly tours for the millions of annual visitors to the park.

About HNEI

The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute is an organized research unit of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM). The Institute performs research, conducts testing and evaluation, and manages public-private partnerships across a broad range of renewable and enabling technologies to reduce the State of Hawai‘i's dependence on fossil fuel for the benefit of the citizens of Hawaii. 

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Science

How You Can Help Us Face a Food-Secure Future

4 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I am getting a lot of really positive response when I talk to people about energy and how it relates to our food security for our future generations, as in this speech I just gave.

So many people ask me how they can help, and here’s how: Find me a group of people I can talk to. I’ll come and bring along a couple scientists and we will talk to your group.

It’s important. We’re not really addressing the future right now; we’re just pointing fingers and hammering each other. We need to stop with what my Pop used to talk about. He always said, “Get thousand reasons why no can. I’m just looking for one reason CAN.” It’s an attitude thing.

If you can find me a group of people to talk with, let me know. You can leave a comment here on the blog or at Facebook. Or email me at richard@hamakuasprings.com.

Big Island, Current Affairs, Food Safety Certification, Food Security, Geothermal, Government, Hydroelectric, Hydrogen, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Preparing for Climate Change, The Overview

Richard Ha writes:

I was asked to talk this morning at the Hawai‘i State Association of Counties 2014 Annual Conference, which was held in Waikiki. I spoke on the panel called Preparing for Climate Change. Here’s what I said.

***

Aloha everyone. Thanks for inviting me.

Food security has to do with farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm!

The Hawaiian side of our family is Kamahele, from lower Puna. All the Kamaheles are related. The Okinawa side of our family is Higa. The Korean side of our family is the Ha name. It’s about all of us in Hawaii. Not just a few of us!

I write an ag and energy blog Hahaha.hamakuasprings.com. It stands for three generations of us.

What is the difference between climate and weather? Neil DeGrasse Tyson, on Cosmos, describes it like the guy strolling down the beach with his dog. The dog running back and forth is the weather. The guy walking along the beach is climate.

Background: 35 years farming, more than 100 million pounds of fruits and vegetables. We farm 600 fee-simple acres which the family and 70 workers farm. Not having any money, we started out by trading chicken manure for banana keiki and went on to become the largest banana farm in the U.S. We were green farmers early. In 1992, we were first banana farm in the world certified Eco-OK by the Rainforest Alliance. In 2008, we were one of six national finalists for the Patrick Madden SARE award. We were one of the first farms in Hawai‘i to be food-safety certified.

When we needed to find a solution for a disease problem, we took a class in tissue culture and tried to culture the plants in our back bedroom. But there was too much contamination, from cat hair maybe. So we made our own tissue culture lab. We have our own hydroelectric plant, which provides all our electricity. Our trucks and tractors operate with fuel from Hawai‘i biodiesel.

My pop told me that, “Get a thousand reasons why no can.” I’m only looking for the one reason why CAN.

As we stroll along the climate change beach, there are two things that we notice.

The first is energy. Without energy, work stops. Petroleum products are finite and costs will rise. Farmers’ costs will rise and farmers’ customers’ costs will rise. How can we dodge the bullet?

I attended five Peak Oil conferences. The world has been using twice and three times as much oil as we have been finding. So the price is going to keep on going up. It will increase farmers’ costs and will increase the farmers’ customers’ costs. We need to do something that will help all of us, not just a few of us. Something that can help future generations cope.

That something is hydrogen. The geothermal plant can be curtailed at 70 MW per day. That’s throwing away 70 MW of electricity every night. The new eucalyptus chip plant Hu Honua can be curtailed by 10 MW for ten hours per night. The key to hydrogen is electricity cost. On the mainland it is made from natural gas. Here it can be made from running electricity through water. We are throwing away lots of electricity at night. We know that oil and gas prices will be steadily going up in the future. Hydrogen from our renewable resources will become more and more attractive as oil and gas prices rise. At some point we will have an advantage to the rest of the world. And as a bonus, hydrogen combined with nitrogen in the air will produce nitrogen fertilizer.

You may be interested to know the inside scoop about the lawsuit that Big Island farmers brought against the County.

Why? Clarity: Farmers are law-abiding citizens and we play by the rules. We thought that the Feds and the State had jurisdiction. We want clarity about the rules of the game.

Equal treatment: Only Big Island farmers are prohibited from using biotech solutions that all our competitors can use. How is that equal? It’s discriminatory against local farmers.

When the law was first proposed, they wanted to ban all GMOs. We asked what are papaya farmers supposed to do? They said, we can help them get new jobs, to transition. We were speechless. It was as if they were just another commodity. So farmers and ranchers got together and ran a convoy around the County building in protest. Then they said they would give the Rainbow papaya farmers a break. I was there when the papaya farmers had a vote to accept the grandfather clause for Rainbow papayas. There were a lot of young, second- and third-generation farmers there in the room.

In the end, the papaya farmers said, We are not going to abandon our friends who supported us when we needed help. That is not who we are. Then they voted unanimously to reject the offer. I was there and being a Vietnam vet, where the unspoken rule was we all come back or no one comes back, I could not have been prouder of the papaya farmers. That explains why the Big Island farmers are tight. Old-fashioned values. The rubbah slippah folks absolutely get all of this.

So who are these farmers? I am one. I don’t grow GMOs. It isn’t about me. I’ll make 70 this year and, like almost all the farmers, have never sued anyone. But there comes a time when you have to stand up for what is right.

The group we formed, Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United, grows more than 90 percent of the farm value on the Big Island.

This is about food security. The GMO portion of food security is small. This is not about large corporations. It is about local farmers. It is not about organics; we need everybody. But organics only supply 4 percent of the national food supply and maybe 1 percent of Hawai‘i’s. Our organic farmers are not threatened by modern farming. Hawaii organic farmers are threatened by mainland, industrial-scale organic farms. That is why there are hardly any locally grown organics in the retail stores. It’s about cost of production. Also, on the mainland winter kills off the bad bugs and weeds and the organic farmers can outrun the bugs through the early part of summer. Hawai‘i farmers don’t have winter to help us.

Most importantly, this is about pro-science and anti-science. That is why farmers are stepping up. We know that science is self-correcting. It gives us a solid frame of reference. You don’t end up fooling yourself. In all of Hawai‘i’s history, now is no time to be fooling ourselves.

My pop told me that there were a thousand reasons why No Can. He said, look for the one reason why Can! He said to look for two solutions to every problem and one more, just in case.

He would pound the dinner table and dishes would bounce in the air and he would point in the air and say, “Not no can. CAN!”

We can have a better world for future generations. It’s all common sense and attitude.

***

Big Island, Community, Education, Science, Tomatoes

Kids Learn How to Create a Tomato

By Leslie Lang 

Richard recently contributed tomato flowers for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the Pacific Basin Agriculture Research Center (PBARC) in Hilo.

The cocktail tomato flowers were for a hands-on demo where kids learned about putting a tomato flower in sterile culture and growing their own tomato. They practiced removing flower petals with their fingers, and then saw how the scientists prepare the flowers under sterile conditions using forceps to remove the petals. The scientists put the flowers into a tissue culture and let the kids take them home and observe them developing into green tomatoes and then ripening.

Tomatoes3

It was the Ms. Foundation for Women (with support from foundation founder Gloria Steinem) who started “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day” back in 1992; it started out as “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.” Sons were added in 2003. More than 37 million people participate every year at more than 3.5 million workplaces in the U.S., and there are more participants in over 200 other countries. Pretty impressive numbers!

From the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Foundation:

Exposing girls and boys to what a parent or mentor in their lives does during the work day is important, but showing them the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future, and allowing them to begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment is key to their achieving success.

PBARC participates once every three years, inviting employees to bring their children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren. Each child, too, can bring a friend.

Tomatoes3

Scientists set up displays and demos, usually hands-on, to demonstrate aspects of research and agriculture. Some of this year’s sessions had kids learning how to extract purple pigment from “red” cabbage, how to detect whether papaya seeds were genetically modified for ring spot virus, and drafting hibiscus cuttings. There was a short “genomic number cruncher” session, too.

“For the most part they are very engaged,” said research horticulturalist Tracie Matsumoto. “We keep the displays short, less than 30 minutes, and hands-on. One year we had a dead baby pig that we set up outside three weeks before the event, so the kids got to see the maggots and decaying carcass. That same entomologist who did that also set up a colony of sweet potato weevils one year, where the kids could put their arms in and let them crawl on their arms. Another year, we were extracting banana DNA and the kids got to take home DNA in a test tube.”

Because the facility recognizes that not every child wants to be a scientist, they also show the kids around all the other PBARC departments, so they see the various jobs that keep the facility going. They hear what the duties are for employees in administration, computer networking, janitorial and landscaping, payroll and purchasing. They learn that it takes more than just scientists to keep that operation going.

“We know students over the course of their lives are going to have multiple jobs and bosses and maybe careers, too, so we like to expand their expectations of what careers could be,” said Suzanne Sanxter, a biological laboratory technician and coordinator of the Daughters and Sons program.

Over the years, about 175 children between the ages of 7 and 18 have attended a PBARC Daughters and Sons event. This year there were 20 more, and all were asked to fill out surveys at the end of the day. PBARC must have really done something right, because each demo was listed as more than one students’ favorite, and reviews were glowing. A sampling:

How was your day at PBARC?

  • Awesome and super fun, because we got to do a lot of things.
  • It was the best and I wish there was more but I can’t wait for the next time I get to go.
  • Amazing!

What did you like the best?

  • I liked all of it, it was really fun the one that I liked the most was the tomatoe one and the calerpiler.
  • All the subjects
  • Going upstairs to see the wires.

What did you like the least?

  • I loved all of it.  All of them was really fun. I do not have any dislikes.
  • Nothing
  • Nothing

What experiment would you like to do next year?

  • The experiment that I would want to do is the calipilier one, the tomatoe and the planting one in the patiow.
  • Anything.
  • Looking in the microscope.

What would you like to learn more about – plants or insects?

  • What I would want to learn more is witch plant or fruit and inscect is the most endangered.
  • How many years does a lemitoad (nematode ?!) stay alive.
  • Insects.

Tomatoes3

Bananas, Big Island, Science

Biotech Solutions to Bad Problems

Richard Ha writes:

Dr. Michael Shintaku shared this article with me. It’s about a biotech solution to a blight that was threatening the American chestnut. 

American chestnut set for genetically modified revival

16:30 30 May 2014 by Andy Coghlan

The near-extinct American chestnut looks set to make a comeback. Genetically modified trees, which are resistant to a deadly fungus that has decimated the species, have produced the first resistant chestnuts. From these seeds, countless resistant trees could be grown in the wild.

An estimated 4 billion American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) once covered the US, accounting for a quarter of all US hardwood trees. But in around 1900, a lethal fungus called Cryphonectria parasitica was accidentally imported in chestnut trees from Asia, and by the 1950s it had almost completely wiped out the American chestnut….

Read the rest

Hopefully, here in Hawai‘i we can be prepared in case a fungus starts killing off all our ‘ohi‘a trees.

The rose apple trees in East Hawai‘i are currently all dying from a fungus; have you noticed? The dying trees are everywhere.

All the mai'a maoli and popoulu cooking bananas, which came from the south way back when with the Polynesian settlers, are gone now, because they got Fusarium Wilt.

Don't we want to have tools that will help us preserve our heritage and other valuable plants?

Geothermal

A Geothermal Column in OHA Newspaper

Richard Ha writes:

Do you read the Office of Hawaiian Affairs monthly newspaper Ka Wai Ola? You can download the June 2014 issue here, and if you scroll down to page 28, you’ll see Trustee Robert Lindsey’s column.

He asked Davianna McGregor and me to write about geothermal in his column this month. She writes from the “anti” perspective, and I write from the “pro” one.

It was not a debate. I have no expertise in the cultural area of geothermal, though I am very respectful of the cultural aspect. I’m sharing my mana’o as a 35-year farmer and the only person from Hawaii to have attended five Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences on the mainland. I’ve visited both Iceland and the Philippines to see geothermal operations and I have a good sense of how and why it would work for us here.

Big Island, Community, Hawaiian Role Models, History, Science, Sustainability, Travel, Where We Live

Around The World on a Wa’a

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

The Polynesian voyaging canoes Hokule‘a and Hikianalia departed Hilo a couple days ago, headed for Tahiti on the first leg of an around-the-world voyage. Kalepa Babayan is captain of the Hokule‘a, and he melds ancient ways with modern technology and education. He is one of the most solidly grounded person I know. 

Hokule‘a crew member Na‘alehu Anthony blogged about leaving Hilo in It Takes a Community to Launch a Canoe:

Literally thousands of members of our ʻohana waʻa (canoe family) have come to see the canoes.  School groups by the busloads have come to share mele (songs) and hoʻokupu (offerings) to the canoes and crew. But if one looks a little closer, they can start to really notice how well this community still understands the sense of aloha. Every day for the past 10 days this community has come out to feed the crew three meals a day.  Cars have been dropped off to help with last minute runs to the store. People have come without any expectation of personal gain to give of their time to just help us prepare for this 47,000 mile journey. Just this morning after sunrise, one of the uncles from nearby came to drop off a dozen or so lei, that he personally strung together with flowers from his yard, just to “Aloha” the canoes.  He didn’t even ask to come aboard, rather, he left them in the care of one of our watch captains to bless the canoes with the sweet fragrance that reminds us all of Hilo.

We did our small part by supplying bananas and tomatoes, and feel very privileged to be able to support Hawai‘i's voyagers, along with hundreds of others. We learned, early on, that the voyaging crews like fresh fruit, especially longer into the trip, so we do this as much as we can on the voyages out of Hilo. We do our best to stage the ripening at different times, and try to see how far into the voyage we can get the bananas to last. We once got a batch to last until the crew reached the equator. 

Keaukaha was the host community for the wa‘a and their crews, and its president, Patrick Kahawaiola'a, was in charge of coordinating. June and I went to Palekai to see the canoes the other day.

As we walked down to the water, we ran into Bruce Blankenfeld, the captain of Hikianalia. I knew he had lots on his mind, so I introduced myself by saying we had supplied bananas on previous trips, and that they should "try keep the bananas separated so they no all go off at one time." He knew exactly what I meant. I gave him the thumbs up and we kept on going. 

To me, the voyage of the Hokule‘a and the Hikianalia represents hope for mankind. It is about the spirit of aloha. It is about using the resources available, modern and ancient, in a smart way. But mostly it's about attitude. There are a thousand reasons why no can. We need just one reason why, CAN.

From www.hokulea.com:

Island Wisdom, Ocean Connections, Global Lessons

Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia, our Polynesian voyaging canoes, are sailing across Earth’s oceans to join and grow the global movement toward a more sustainable world. Covering 47,000 nautical miles, 85 ports, and 26 countries, the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage will highlight diverse cultural and natural treasures and the importance of working together to protect them. The Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage began in 2013 with a Mālama Hawaiʻi sail around our archipelago, and will continue through 2017 when our new generation of navigators take the helm and guide Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia back to Polynesia after circumnavigating the globe.

The Hawaiian name for this voyage, Mālama Honua, means “to care for our Earth.” Living on an island chain teaches us that our natural world is a gift with limits and that we must carefully steward this gift if we are to survive together. As we work to protect cultural and environmental resources for our children’s future, our Pacific voyaging traditions teach us to venture beyond the horizon to connect and learn with others. The Worldwide Voyage is a means by which we now engage all of Island Earth—practicing how to live sustainably, while sharing, learning, creating global relationships, and discovering the wonders of this precious place we all call home.

Science

Golden Rice & Why Greenpeace Co-Founder Wants It

3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

Dr. Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace, is conducting a public demonstration on June 17th at the Greenpeace France office in Paris, demanding they stop opposing Golden Rice and confirming that they don’t support the destruction of research trials. You can read more about his campaign to Allow Golden Rice Now here.

This less-than-two-minute video very succintly lays out what Golden Rice is (it’s had two genes inserted that adds beta-carotene to the grain, an essential nutrient that provides Vitamin A). Vitamin A is the leading cause of child mortality in the world. A child dies every minute, his video says, because of Vitamin A deficiency.

He’s asking that Greenpeace make an exception to its zero tolerance for GMO stance on humanitarian grounds.

Bananas, Science

Might We ‘Have No Bananas?’

Richard Ha writes:

My friend Nate Hagens forwarded me this story yesterday. I’d been aware of this peripherally, but now this is serious and we are putting the issue front and center. 

The gist of it is that a massive Chiquita banana plantation in Mozambique has a deadly banana disease that will likely spread, and probably already has.

From Popular Science.com:

Has The End Of The Banana Arrived?

Researchers fear that a relentless and virulent fungus could cripple the world's banana monoculture.

By Dan Koeppel Posted 05.13.2014 at 8:30 am

Two weeks ago, at a conference in South Africa, scientists met to discuss how to contain a deadly banana disease outbreak in nearby Mozambique, Africa. At fault was a fungus that continues its march around the planet. In recent years, it has spread across Asia and Australia, devastating plants there that bear the signature yellow supermarket fruit.

The international delegation of researchers shared their own approaches to the malady, hoping to arrive at some strategy to insulate Mozambique and the rest of Africa: a continent where bananas are essential to the lives of millions. They left the Cape Town-based meeting with an air of optimism.

Only days after the meeting, however, a devastating new survey of the stricken Mozambique farm was released. Scientists at the conference assumed that the fungus was limited to a single plot. The new report suggested the entire plantation was infested, expanding 125 diseased acres to more than 3,500. All told, 7 million banana plants were doomed to wilt and rot.

“The future looks bleak,” says Altus Viljoen, the South African plant pathologist who organized the conference. "There’s no way they’ll be able to stop any further spread if they continue to farm.” Worse, he says, the disease's rapid spread endangers banana crops beyond Mozambique’s borders…

Read the rest

The Mozambique banana plantation has what veteran banana farmers know as “Panama Wilt.” Long-time banana farmers in Hawai‘i remember when “Race 1, Panama Wilt” killed off Hawai‘i’s Bluefield bananas, the main variety grown here back then, as well as the banana varieties that the ancient Hawaiians brought in their canoes.

This disease in Mozambique is a variant of that one, called “Race 4, Fusarium Wilt.” This one affects and kills many banana varieties, including the Cavendish varieties, which are the main bananas in the world trade.

What’s most disturbing in this story is that Chiquita seems to have done a lot of things wrong when it started its new banana plantation in Mozambique. The company sent workers back and forth from Mozambique to Central America, when this disease easily spreads by soil on boots and clothing. The writer speculates that the disease is probably in Central America right now! As a long time banana farmer who knows about banana diseases, I too believe that it is probable.

The possiblity of this disease arriving here and decimating Hawai‘i’s banana industry is very real, and very scary. Our local banana industry is working closely with the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. I sent them this article, and the wheels are turning. This is no longer business as usual!

This same thing happened in Taiwan. They have the Race 4 disease there, and all their farmers now source their new plantings from Race 4-free tissue culture. They are selecting for resistance as they go along. The director of Taiwan’s lab is a graduate of UH Manoa and we visited that tissue culture facility once.

I’m debating whether I should start up our tissue culture lab again. In the meantime, we are relying heavily on the College of Tropical Ag. This is a very, very serious situation and it’s bigger than any of us alone. But I’m optimistic.

Current Affairs, Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

What Monterey Shale Oil?

Richard Ha writes:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) made a dramatic announcement recently: it is revising its estimate of the Monterey Shale Oil supply downward by 96 percent.

Ninety-six percent is a lot.

Especially when you consider that the Monterey Shale Oil supply presented two-thirds of the United States’s oil reserves. It was estimated that we had 100 years of oil reserves left in this country altogether, but now that we know 66 percent of it doesn’t exist, there must be only 34 percent, or 34 years, of oil reserves remaining in the U.S.

However, the cost we would have to pay for oil companies to retrieve it would exceed what it would cost them to do so. In other words, if we consumers were willing to pay $1 million/barrel, all of those 34 years’ worth of oil could probably be recovered. But if we the people can only pay $150/barrel, we might only see ten years’ worth drilled. Hmm.

Those of us who attend Association for the Study of Peak Oil conferences (I’ve attended five now, the only person from the Big Island to do so) have known that the claim that the U.S. has a 100-year supply of oil was way overestimated. We are never going to be Saudi America.

Kurt Cobb writes about this at Resource Insights:

The great imaginary California oil boom: Over before it started

Sunday, May 25, 2014

It turns out that the oil industry has been pulling our collective leg. 

The pending 96 percent reduction in estimated deep shale oil resources in California revealed last week in the Los Angeles Times calls into question the oil industry's premise of a decades-long revival in U.S. oil production and the already implausible predictions of American energy independence. The reduction also appears to bolster the view of long-time skeptics that the U.S. shale oil boom–now centered in North Dakota and Texas–will likely be short-lived, petering out by the end of this decade. (I've been expressing my skepticism in writing about resource claims made for both shale gas and oil since 2008.)

California has been abuzz for the past couple of years about the prospect of vast new oil wealth supposedly ready for the taking in the Monterey Shale thousands of feet below the state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) had previously estimated that 15.4 billion barrels were technically recoverable, basing the number on a report from a contractor who relied heavily on oil industry presentations rather than independent data.

The California economy was supposed to benefit from 2.8 million new jobs by 2020. The state was also supposed to gain $220 billion in additional income and $24 billion in additional tax revenues in that year alone, according to a study from the University of Southern California that relied heavily on industry funding.

But that was before the revelation by the Times that the EIA will reduce its estimate of technically recoverable oil in California's Monterey Shale by 96 percent–almost a complete wipeout–after taking a close look at actual data for wells drilled there already. The agency now believes that only about 600 million barrels are recoverable using existing technology. The 600 million barrels still sound like a lot, but those barrels would last the United States all of 40 days at the current rate of consumption….

Read the rest

We need to take a step back and reevaluate where we are and what we need to do. As I’ve been saying for years now, we need to get on with geothermal. For the Big Island, the path we need to take is clear.

A byproduct of the oil operations is natural gas, and it would be helpful if natural gas prices rose to help with the costs of development.

It’s kind of like curtailed electricity. If it could be sold at any price, it would help lower the bid price of geothermal and wind operations and would result in lower electricity costs for the rubbah slippah folks.

If curtailed electricity could be bought at a cheap enough price, it could also enable a hydrogen storage option. Then we could get a hydrogen fuel cell option for various motors. And we could look at converting hydrogen to ammonia, so we would have nitrogen fertilizer to help with our food security.