Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Geothermal Aloha

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Did you know that geothermal energy is one of the cheapest sources of renewable energy? On top of that, it is steady power – just what the electric utilities need to be able to deliver dependable service. This Wall Street Journal blog post compares different renewable energy sources, and says that geothermal’s break-even point is when oil hits $57 per barrel.

Oil is close to $80 per barrel now. This means that if most of our electricity were coming from geothermal now, our electricity and water rates would hardly rise from here forward – while who knows where oil could take us.

We need to get off oil.

This Hawaii Business article, titled Big Island Big Ideas, with the subtitle “Local leaders chart six ways to revitalize the economy,” takes an optimistic point of view, and that is important.

We must realize, though, that the world has changed because of rising oil prices. We must be wise enough to take every opportunity to prepare our keiki for a future that is going to be very different from our past. If we take the long-term view, and focus on where we need to go, we can all get there together.

The Hawaii Business article discusses the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). We believed in and followed the process Judge Hara directed us to follow in developing a Comprehensive Management Plan for the care of Mauna Kea. And if, subsequently, the TMT is built on Mauna Kea, the benefits to our people will be greater than we can imagine.

In the meantime, we know that we will soon be in a new world of declining world oil supplies. In the 1930s, it took one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels. And in the 1970s, it took one barrel of oil to get 30. Nowadays it takes one barrel of oil to get 10. This is happening as oil becomes increasingly more difficult to harvest.

We know that oil prices will rise even more than they have; how fast and how high are the only questions. Net energy minus the amount of energy it takes to grow our food gives us our lifestyle, and the more energy it takes to get that energy, the more our lifestyle will shrink. We are already seeing this happen, and it will get worse.

Fortunately, here on the Big Island we have geothermal. Geothermal energy costs are stable and, unlike oil, they will not rise. Geothermal is a resource and a special gift that very few in the world are blessed to have. We must use this gift wisely.

The state of Hawai‘i owns the geothermal resource and receives revenues from its use. Of that revenue, 20 percent goes to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) for its social services programs. Currently, Puna Geothermal Venture pays $3.5 million annually to the state of Hawai‘i, and $700,000 a year goes to OHA. As we expand geothermal, these entities will receive more money.

This is an important consideration, because our own people have the lowest median family income in the state of Hawai‘i. We all know that lower income folks are hit first and hardest when oil prices rise. Putting more geothermal on-line will help the most defenseless among us (and the rest of us, too). And it means more money going to OHA for its programs.

The cost of geothermal energy will remain stable as oil becomes more and more difficult to harvest and its price steadily rises. This means we will all have more discretionary income. More spending money means businesses will flourish, which means more jobs so that folks can take care of their families.

And, as oil costs rise and rise, we with our stable geothermal energy costs will become increasingly more competitive in terms of cost of living. Although airfares may be very high, once here, folks will find it relatively less expensive than other places. So we can probably anticipate fewer visitors but those who come would likely stay longer and spend more money.

I can imagine those folks would engage with the community in Ag and other specialty experiences. I can see many more opportunities for regular folks to interact and offer custom services. There could be more individual entrepreneurs than exist in the current tourism model.

If we plan for our future, engaging with each other in a respectful manner, I can see our greatest asset, the aloha spirit, flourishing. And that aloha spirit, more than money, is what will make all of us rich.

Alan Wong, Television

PBS Program

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If you click here, and then on “Episodes,” and then “Episode 9,” you’ll find the Chefs Afield segment called “Sustainable Hawaii.”

It’s the program we wrote about awhile back. The one where they didn’t try very hard with their Hawaiian pronunciations, and PBS Hawai‘i refused to air it unless they fixed the audio.

They did.

Have a look at the trailer. It features Honolulu Chef Alan Wong, and Richard and the farm are on it too.

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Food, Humanity and Habitat

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Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times:

EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Food, Humanity, Habitat and How We Get to 2050 (click here)

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: October 28, 2009

We need to find a way to make food and energy production sustainable in the broadest possible sense — looking out for ourselves as well as other species.

Richard comments:

In Hawaii, our challenge is to resist putting too much emphasis on biofuels. Biofuel energy production is farming and will inevitably pit food against fuel. We should emphasize geothermal energy.

Bananas

New Bananas

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Awhile back, the economy was booming and we were having a difficult time finding workers for the banana operation. We made a decision to get out of banana production. But when we announced our decision to our workers, they talked and then asked us if we would consider retaining the fields closest to the packing house. They said they would take care of the bananas. We were more than happy to work with them.

We agreed to maintain the fields close to the packing house and to eventually move the distant banana fields in closer. We started on a planting schedule to replace those distant fields with new ones located closer to the packing house.  These are the first bananas from that new planting.

First fruit

In the interim, and until our new bananas came into production, we decided to close our distant fields and supply our customers with Dole fruit. We have been planting Williams bananas steadily for eight months or so, and will soon have our own production to replace the Dole fruit. These days those distant fields are in sweet potato production.

We are not growing apple bananas; we rely on local apple banana farmers to supply what we need. We made the decision to grow Williams bananas because it takes an enormous amount of electric energy to ripen that type of banana. The hydroelectric facility we are building will save us a lot of money.

Every week we plant so many plants and then a year later we harvest so many bunches each week.

Banana plant with fruit 012

Community, Company News

Hilo Coast Farms

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We are now marketing products under a new brand: Hilo Coast Farms. Under this label we are starting to market the produce of other Hilo/Hamakua farmers who see a value in shipping and marketing together.

Box1

We now pack locally grown Williams and Apple bananas, sweet Hawaiian corn, Japanese cucumber and green onions.

My son-in-law Kimo Pa, our farm manager, and Mike Nist of Seattle Tacoma Box Company designed this box over a couple of beers. Our farm is mauka of the “gears” in Pepe‘ekeo, hence the picture of the gears and the “Hilo Coast” name.

Box2

I have written about the “Family of Farms”  concept here before. From my previous post:

This is how the concept of “Families of Farms” came to me. I asked myself, What happens if we lease lands and hydroponic houses to area farmers?

Our idea is that we would each bring certain resources to make the whole more than the sum of the parts. We believe that this will help each of us make more money together than if we operated independently. So it’s in all of our interests to stay together.

•    We would get effective and efficient farmers working with us. Small farmers do not waste anything. And we would get more production than what we could do ourselves
•    We would get more variety than we could do ourselves
•    We would get more young farmers into farming
•    We would bring the water and electricity resource that we have
•    We would bring our technical expertise
•    We would bring our marketing and distribution system
•    We would bring our cooling facilities

We will need to adapt to a new normal. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Renewable Energy Sources, Water

Hydroelectric – Here We Go!

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This week we select the contractor for our hydroelectric project. It should be finished 120 days after construction starts—so, by the end of February.

Our consultant is Mike Maloney, who has done two similar projects for the Department of Water Supply in Kona. He is also working on projects in Ka‘u.

Ours will be a net metering project. This means that the meter will spin forward if we use electricity from HELCO and backwards when we supply electricity to HELCO. This will determine whether we will pay HELCO, or HELCO will pay us.

After using electricity for our own operation, we should have extra that we will supply to HELCO. The PUC is working right now on a schedule of payments for different renewable energy projects. This schedule is called “Feed in Tariff.” This is where the utility will pay for the extra electricity “fed in” by type of electricity supplied—solar, hydro, wind, etc.

The Energy Return on Investment for hydro projects is estimated to be 100 to 1. We should seriously consider bringing more hydroelectric on line on the Hamakua Coast.

This project is financed by the Department of Agriculture farm loan program. When I got back from the Peak Oil conference in Houston in 2007, I initiated a legislative bill that set up a special farm loan program in the Department of Agriculture just for renewable energy projects.

We will participate in a demonstration project that will generate nitrogen from hydrolysis using our hydro power. We will use the nitrogen in two ways –for fertilizer, and for running internal combustion engine farm equipment.

I also plan to get an electric car that I can plug in at the farm. We plan to let our workers plug in electric cars at the farm, as well. Exciting things going on!

Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Positive Changes and Energy Solutions

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A few days after the Peak Oil conference has ended, things are starting to become clear.

We have the oportunity to both make positive changes and also solve our energy problems. But we will need help from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo to analyze Big Island energy options from a holistic point of view.

The distribution curve of median family income is skewed heavily toward low income folks on the Big Island. The median family income in the state is $56,000. On the Big Island, it is $46,000.

Here on the east side of the Big Island, it is in the mid-30,000s. True aloha requires us to fix this, for all our sakes.

Last year when the oil price spiked, gasoline prices spiked as well. For the first time some of my workers asked me if they could borrow money for gas to come to work! The lower income folks were hurt bad.

It is no secret that I believe that biofuels are no solution to our energy problems, because return to the farmers would be too low.

But biofuels would also be as or more expensive than fossil fuels to the final customer. My workers would still have to borrow money for gas. What good is that?

The state of Hawai‘i legally owns our geothermal resource. So any royalties from its use must be paid to the state and to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA).

Right now, Puna Geothermal Venture pays the state $3.5 million a year, and OHA gets 20 percent of that. That’s $750,000 a year generated from geothermal en to OHA.

Also, the cost to consumers is less than that of fossil fuel and it will not go up when fossil fuel prices go up.

We need to put in more geothermal, not less. More money would go to the state and to OHA. Geothermal has low and stable costs, which results in more discretionary income left in people’s pockets. When they spend that money, businesses can hire workers, who can then take care of their families.

Taking care of people, this is true aloha. The tougher it gets, the more we need to take care of each other.

Geothermal energy is a gift of true aloha.

Peak Oil

Examining Energy Alternatives

I learned something interesting at the Peak Oil Conference I’m currently attending in Denver. It’s about a pattern. When U.S. oil costs exceed four percent of the gross domestic product – so, when the price of oil hits $80 per barrel – we go into recession. (Note that this does not mean oil prices won’t go even higher than $80 per barrel.)

David Murphy talked about Energy Return on Investment (EROI), and I asked him what he thought the EROI is for geothermal. He said around 10 to 1, and, he agreed with me that it is an attractive alternative energy to pursue for Hawai‘i. This was the concensus of everyone I asked about geothermal. Because geothermal costs are stable, it’s a no-brainer.

Terry Backer, a panel member and long-time Connecticut legislator, pointed out how he sees the economy unwinding. He said that people in his state had been doing okay. In early 2007, although things were tight, people had around a $400-500 per month cushion.  But then the price of heating oil was high in the winter, and then the price of gas went to $4.50 per gallon, and food prices went up too. It just stripped people of their “cushion.”

It’s exactly why we need to move to geothermal. It will stabilize costs, and protect folks forever from ever-higher electricity and water bills that result from rising oil prices.

And when people start buying electric vehicles, this will protect them from gasoline costs, too. As for businesses, their customers will have more discretionary income to spend. The government will see fewer folks fall through the cracks.

In the final analysis it is about the consumers. Consumers drive the economy. We tend to forget that.

For native Hawaiians, the use of the geothermal resource will generate revenues in royalties and possibly rents as well. They are consumers, too.

Biofuels, on the other hand, are not expected to be cheaper than oil, and may even need subsidies from consumers. Why would we do that, when we can instead save consumers money by using geothermal?

We need to put in a cable to O‘ahu. They need base/dispatchable power over there, on top of which they can put solar and wind. Without that, O‘ahu will be hopelessly dependent on oil.

As a farmer, I am concerned about where we are going to get the fertilizer to feed ourselves. Nitrogen, the building block of protein, is extracted from air using high heat and pressure. Oil and gas are what is used now, and that process takes lots of power. But if oil and gas prices rise enough, geothermal power can be substituted. We need to place ourselves in a position to win.

Again, geothermal would generate a lot of royalty money for the Hawaiian people. Without this revenue source, we will see more and more cuts to social services.

Geothermal can be a blessing for the Hawaiian people.

Peak Oil

At The Peak Oil Conference

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I am in Denver right now for the Peak Oil conference. It’s the same Association for the Study of Peak Oiland Gas conference I  attended two years ago in Houston. That was the one that convinced me that the amount of oil the world uses is such that oil production won’t be able to keep up. And that means oil prices will keep rising.

This video The Crash Course By Chris Martenson explains the basics of Peak Oil very nicely and I recommend it. It’s all common sense. From the introduction:

Energy is the lifeblood of any economy. But when an economy is based on an exponential debt-based money system that is itself based on exponentially increasing energy supplies, the supply of that energy deserves our very highest attention.

Oil is a miracle, working tirelessly in the background to make our lives easy beyond historical measure. Oil represents over 50% of US total yearly energy use, while oil and natural gas together represent over 75%. How easily could we replace the role of oil in our style of consumer-led, growth based economy? Not very.

Peak Oil is simply a fact. Peak Oil is NOT synonymous with “running out of oil.” But the most urgent issue before us does not lie with identifying the precise moment of Peak Oil. What we need to be most concerned with is the day that world petroleum demand outstrips available supply. It is at that moment that the oil markets will change forever – and probably quite suddenly.

Saturday was a pre-conference day for people who wanted to discuss things on a community and personal level. I wanted to see if there was anything I could apply to my business.

Gail Tverberg talked to the group for 15 minutes. In her estimation, when we start on the downside of the oil supply curve it is equally possible that we could be in for a steady decline or that it could be a steep drop off.

That is why the Thirty Meter Telescope, and a serious increase in geothermal energy, are important for us on the Big Island and in Hawai‘i in general.

Food security was top of mind. In cold parts of the country preserving things will be an important activity. Co-op and community gardening, much like was done in Cuba after the Soviet Union collapsed, are also seen as solutions. I get the impression that Hawai‘i is quite a bit more advanced than the mainland in this area.

It is apparent to everyone that you must adapt to the place you are at. “Hoping” is not a plan.

Many of the folks complained that it is very difficult to make people aware of Peak Oil. Gail Tverberg pointed out that she felt that Hawai‘i is more aware than the mainland. This is my sense as well.

But we are far from being as aware as we need to be.