Biofuel

National Research Council: Biofuels Costly, Impacts Questionable

Cellulosic biofuel projects have been a financial disaster for U.S. taxpayers.

From Robert Rapier’s Energy blog:

NRC Report to Congress: Cellulosic Biofuel Mandates Unlikely to Be Met

A congressionally requested study by the National Research Council — an arm of the National Academy of Sciences — concluded that next-generation biofuels are costly, and their impacts questionable. “Absent major technological innovation or policy changes, the … mandated consumption of 16 billion gallons of ethanol-equivalent cellulosic biofuels is unlikely to be met in 2022,” the report stated. This conclusion should come as no surprise to readers of R-Squared Energy, as its author Robert Rapier covered this in a recent article: Cellulosic Ethanol Targets: Mandating the Nonexistent. Read the rest

You can learn about this and other important liquid fuel subjects at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference, which will be held November 2 – 5 in Washington, D.C. I highly recommend decision makers send people to this conference.

I’ll be representing the County of Hawai‘i at this year’s conference, my fourth time attending. Mahalo to Mayor Billy Kenoi. He knows what is going on.

Biofuel, Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Kudos to the PUC!

The recent PUC decision denying a HECO/Aina Koa Pono biofuel contract was a landmark decision. Kudos to the PUC for understanding precisely what was at stake. Very impressive!!

See this Big Island Video News story about the decision.

My observations:

  • The process was not transparent, and people had a difficult time understanding the issues.
  • Cellulosic biofuels is not proven technology, so it’s high risk.
  • Filling oil tanks with long term biofuel contracts would block cheaper alternatives, like geothermal, from gaining critical mass.
  • Ratepayers would have financed the risk. And ratepayers are not venture capitalists.
  • Businesses would have seen their electricity rates go higher than they were with electricity generated by oil, making their products even less competitive to mainland competition. And food security would have suffered.
  • Social consequences would have included fewer government services, less charitable giving and more working homeless. It would have put stress on our spirit of aloha.

We can and must do better for our future generations. As Steve Jobs always said, “We need to think different!”

Not, no can, CAN!

Tomatoes

Remembering the Tomato Fest

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I’ve been thinking about the trips we’ve taken in the past to the Carmel Tomato Fest, which hasn’t been offered for awhile now.

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Those Tomato Fests were terrific. Where else could you taste 200 varieties of heirloom tomatoes? Or watch the faces of kids trying them, and based on their reactions say, “Let’s grow that one?”

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I wrote about the 2007 Tomato Fest here on the blog. In Carmel that year, we went south down the Pacific Coast Highway to visit our friend Judy Lundberg at Babe Farms in Santa Maria. I told June about when I was stationed at Fort Ord and how I loved to fly down that road when I was young and invincible.

Good memories.

Biofuel, Renewable Energy Sources

Compliments to Gov. Abercrombie for Selecting Wise PUC Commissioners

The PUC’s decision Thursday, which denied Aina Koa Pono’s biofuel contract with HELCO, is significant for several reasons.

To me, most significant is that the PUC is not going to let HECO force ratepayers to be the bridge financier.

Hawaii PUC denies HECO, Aina Koa Pono application

September 29, 2011 

HONOLULU, Hawaii: In a decision that was handed down today, the Hawaii Public Utility Commission voted to deny the HECO companies’ application for approval of the biodiesel supply contract with Aina Koa Pono, rendering moot the application to establish a biofuel surcharge to help cover costs. Read the rest

Farmers take the commonsense approach – We look for others that have solved the technical problems, and just copy. Save money, less risk.

Food Safety Certification

Hamakua Springs is Food Safety Certified

The farm had its external food safety audit yesterday.

“We don’t hear officially for a week or so, but I know we did pass,” said Tracy Pa, Richard’s daughter, who – among other responsibilities – handles the farm’s food safety certification process.

I asked her how she knows.

“Because the auditor couldn’t believe how clean our place was,” she said, “and how orderly the records are.”

There are two different audits – one for the farm, and another for the packing house. “It’s all about worker protection, safety and cleanliness,” said Tracy.

For the farm audit, she said, you even have to show documentation about what the land was used for before you got there.

“Everything has to be documented,” she said. “We are on land that was previously sugar cane land for 90-100 years.

“There’s a cleaning schedule for when to clean your harvest bins, you have to sanitize your knives every day before you use them, we wear disposable gloves when we’re working, and they’re discarded once they touch some surface other than the food itself. They take water samples and test the water quality.”

“These days pretty much everyone requires it,” she said, “like Costco requires it to sell anything to then, and more and more supermarkets, too.”

But back when the farm first received “Food Safety Certification,” in 2003, it was not the norm. “We were ahead of the game,” she said. “It was very unusual then, and everyone looked at us as if we were crazy because we were spending a few thousand every year to get audited. And it’s a lot of paperwork on top of whatever else we’re doing.”

It was primarily as protection for their workers that they started pursuing Food Safety Certification, which they received every year.

These days, “the employees are proud when we pass,” she said. “When it’s over and you tell them we did a good job, they give a sigh of relief.”

Articles, Food Security, Games, Renewable Energy Sources

Richard Ha at Civil Beat

Civil Beat asked Richard to write some opinion pieces for them, and his 3-part series on energy and food security in Hawai‘i is running right now. You can click the titles to read the whole article.

Part 1:

Trying to be Safe by Doing Nothing is No Longer Safe 

I am Richard Ha, chairman of the board of Ku‘oko‘a. Ku‘oko‘a is trying to align the needs of Hawai‘i’s people with the needs of the electrical utility.

I want to start by telling you who I am and what my values are. My mom is Okinawan, Higa from Moloka‘i, and my Pop was half Korean and half Hawaiian. His mother was Leihulu Kamahele. Our family land was down the beach at Maku‘u in Puna. We were very poor but didn’t know it….

 Read the rest

Part 2:

Expensive Electricity Threatens Hawaii’s Food Security

At the 2010 Peak Oil conference, held in Washington, D.C., a speaker pointed to a graph showing that oil is used for a very small portion of the U.S. mainland’s production of electricity.

He pointed out that Hawai‘i is responsible for a huge portion of the nation’s oil use. The U.S. mainland uses oil for less than 10 percent of its electrical generation, while Hawai‘i depends on oil for 76 percent of its electrical generation. So when oil prices rise, Hawai‘i’s electricity ratepayers are significantly more affected than mainland electricity ratepayers.

And as oil prices rise, any imported mainland product that has electricity usage imbedded in its production has a cost advantage over the same product produced in Hawai‘i. This is true for ice cream, bakery products and even jams and jellies….

Read the rest

Part 3:

What Works, Works

Farmers cut straight to the chase. We farmers are concerned about survival, the bottom line, people and the environment.

Although we do support maximizing other technologies available to us in Hawai‘i, here I am talking about “base power” electricity – stable, steady power. Eighty percent of our electricity needs to be stable, steady base power. Base power has the biggest impact on our electricity bills….

Read the rest

Peak Oil

Peak Oil Conference in November

In November, I will attend my fourth Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference.

I highly recommend that Hawai‘i people in decision-making positions attend.

This year’s conference theme is “Truth In Energy,” and it will focus on the importance of transparent and reliable energy information, and the need to educate influential leaders and the public on the peak oil energy challenges facing our nation.

Energy is a very complex subject, and it’s sometimes difficult to separate the truth from the marketing hype. The value I get from attending these conferences is in being able to determine the difference between the middle ground, the fringe, the hopesters and the hypesters.

For example, when I went to my first ASPO conference in Houston, a speaker pointed out that the peak of oil production in the U.S. occurred in 1970. Although Saudi Arabia keeps their oil reserve data secret, there are ways that regular folks can make reasonable assumptions. He said that there were people from Saudi Arabia working in the oil industry in Houston, and that they had learned how to not waste their resource.

On April 13, 2008, Reuters reported that King Abdullah said, “When there were some new finds, I told them, ‘No, leave it in the ground, with grace from God, our children need it.’”

That was not reported in the mainstream media, but because I went to the ASPO conference, I read about it. I heard the King very clearly.

There are also others who, through regular means like Google Earth, make reasonable assumptions.

Take a look at this animation and narrative about Saudi oil fields. It seems reasonable to assume that the Saudis cannot keep on pumping endlessly.

Any “rubbah slippah” person can understand that this shows more and more oil being sucked out of the ground, and it will begin to decline. It’s all about supply and demand, and because oil is a finite resource, we should expect rising oil prices.

At the 2009 conference in Denver, someone showed a graph that pointed out the direct relationship between oil price, GDP and the last several recessions. The data showed that when oil prices exceeded $85 dollars or so, we could expect a recession.

The worrisome part is that hardly anyone makes the oil cost/recession connection. If they did, they would realize that unless we in Hawai‘i find a way to avoid the rising cost of fuel and electricity, we are at best looking at a future of very little economic growth. Because we are more reliant on oil than most, our future could be very bleak.

That is why we, in Hawai‘i, must force the change and go to low and stable cost geothermal faster, rather than slower. This will allow us to dodge the oil bullet, and will give us the opportunity to unleash the abundance of renewable energy alternatives available to us.

I really returned from a study trip to Iceland and learned that by using cheap geothermal and hydroelectric, that country is now food and fuel secure.

I am noticing more and more homeless people here. Many of them are working homeless. As we bring on more low-cost, stable geothermal, our standard of living and economic activity will rise. More and more of the working homeless will be able to get their families off the street. We can do this without having to tax the people.

We must force the change, but we will need everyone’s help. We are all in this together.

Dr. Charles Schlumberger, who is in charge of the airline section of the World Bank, spoke at the last ASPO conference. Watch video of his talk The Future of Air Transportation.

Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist for the Canadian bank CIBC, spoke too, explaining how the world economy will shrink as oil prices rise. Here is his Oil and the End of Globalization speech.

This has very strong implications for Hawai‘i. We all know that we must get off oil. But the problem is the cost and practicality of the solution. Solutions need to be cost-effective and proven technology, as well as environmentally friendly.

Geothermal fits this requirement. But we need to move much faster than we have been.

When I return from this year’s conference, I will post this year’s speeches.

Government, Peak Oil

New York Times Op-Ed Piece on ‘The Power of Foreign Oil’

Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and James Woolsey, former CIA Director and board member of Ku‘oko‘a, wrote this op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday:

How to Weaken the Power of Foreign Oil

By ROBERT C. McFARLANE and R. JAMES WOOLSEY

Published: September 20, 2011

OUR country has just gone through a sober national retrospective on the 9/11 attacks. Apart from the heartfelt honoring of those lost — on that day and since — what seemed most striking is our seeming passivity and indifference toward the well from which our enemies draw their political strength and financial power: the strategic importance of oil, which provides the wherewithal for a generational war against us, as we mutter diplomatic niceties.

Oil’s strategic importance stems from its virtual monopoly as a transportation fuel. Today, 97 percent of all air, sea and land transportation systems in the United States have only one option: petroleum-based products. For more than 35 years we have engaged in self-delusion, saying either that we have reserves here at home large enough to meet our needs, or that the OPEC cartel will keep prices affordable out of self-interest. Neither assumption has proved valid. While the Western Hemisphere’s reserves are substantial and growing, they pale in the face of OPEC’s, which are substantial enough to effectively determine global supply and thus the global price…. Read the rest

At the same time, the bipartisan United States Energy Security Council was being introduced to the public in Washington. In addition to McFarlane and Woolsey, it includes Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and two former Secretaries of Defense, William J. Perry and Harold Brown, as well as two other former National Security advisers, two former Senators, a Nobel Laureate, a former Federal Reserve Chairman, and several Fortune-50 Chief Executives (including John D. Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil in North America).

Read its take on the issue here, and the group’s mission statement.

The U.S. mainland has a transportation problem because it depends on fossil fuel for 90 percent of its transportation needs. But Hawai‘i is especially vulnerable. We depend on fossil oil for transportation – but, unlike most places in the world, we also rely on oil to generate our electricity.

We must pay attention and force the change necessary to protect ourselves and future generations. It is no longer enough, or safe, to rely on others. We must take our future into our own hands.

Bananas

Our Bananas are at Foodland

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Foodland Supermarket is now supporting locally grown bananas.

Bananas

Sometimes the bananas may not be picture-perfect looking on the outside, because we refuse to use insecticide-impregnated bags. That’s because our workers cannot avoid skin contact with the bags.

We know we could make the fruit prettier by using the insecticide, but we refused to expose our workers that way.

We appreciate Foodland going to bat for us.

Bananas2

Though local bananas may not be the prettiest, they are definitely the best tasting.

Mahalo to Foodland for supporting locally grown bananas.