One of the most important things I have learned from going to Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences is “The Rule of 70.”
The Rule of 70 tells you the doubling time of anything that is growing at a compound rate. For example, China’s economy is growing at seven percent a year. How many years will it take for its economy to double?
Seventy divided by seven percent per year tells you that in 10 years, China’s economy will double.
Once you know that, you can start to ask the questions: Will they have enough oil? Where will it come from? How about water? Etc.
Professor Albert Bartlett, an advisor to ASPO until he passed away this month, said that the biggest shortcoming of the human race is its inability to understand this exponential function.
Albert Bartlett: On message about exponential growth to the end
Albert Bartlett might have been another obscure physics professor had he not put together a now famous lecture entitled “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” in 1969. The lecture, available broadly on the internet, begins with the line: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
The logic is surprisingly simple and irrefutable. Exponential growth, which is simply consistent growth at some percentage rate each year (or other time period), cannot proceed indefinitely within a finite system, for example, planet Earth. The fact that human populations continue to grow or that the extraction of energy and other natural resources continues to climb does not in any way refute this statement. It simply means that the absolute limits have not yet been reached….
“…exponential growth in the consumption of finite resources is unsustainable. At some point growth in the rate of extraction will cease. And, given the dependence of the economy on continuous growth of resource inputs including energy, this leads to instability and finally decline.”
The message: Compound growth of a finite resource is, clearly, not sustainable.
This is why the Big Island should be using our geothermal resource for energy, and technology instead of oil in farming.
Since the Big Island will be over our geothermal “hot spot” for 500,000 to a million years, we can view geothermal energy as sustainable.
Let’s say the State’s Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) needs an annual return of 7 percent. That means its money will need to double in 10 years. How?
How about Hawai‘i’s economy doubling in 24 years? That would result from a compound growth of just 3 percent. Would we need double the number of hotel rooms? But if the price of oil keeps rising, can we do that?
The high cost of Paradise is making us less and less food secure.
From the Economic Research Organization at the University of Hawaii:
An Insight on the Cost of Paradise
Posted July 3, 2013 |
Whether visitors or residents in Hawai‘i, we are all aware of the high cost of living in paradise. One major contributing factor is the cost of energy. Households in Hawai‘i pay 4 times more than the average US household and nearly 7 times the households in Utah, where the residential energy cost is the cheapest in the nation.* While the US average for April 2013 hovered at 12 cents/kwh, Hawai‘i paid 37 cents/kwh for electricity in the residential sector.** … Read the rest here
Hawai‘i uses oil for more than 70 percent of its electricity, while the U.S. mainland uses oil for only 2 percent of its electricity. Any
food product from the mainland that uses lots of electricity in its processing has an increasing advantage over Hawai‘i food producers and manufacturers.
The U.S. mainland is both our supplier and our competitor. The mainland’s use of cheap natural gas versus our usage of expensive feedstock for electricity production makes all the difference. It’s all about cost. There is no free lunch. Subsidies are not free.
Agriculture and energy are inextricably tied together. Energy helps us do work. Since no one in the world has found a solution for liquid transportation fuel, we need to look to electricity.
On the Big Island, we do have a solution. Geothermal is the cheapest way to generate electricity. And with the throwaway electricity at night, we can generate ammonia, which is a nitrogen fertilizer as well as a hydrogen source. And when we generate cheap electricity, we can run electric vehicles as an alternative to using liquid fuel.
Stable cost for fertilizer for farmers, low-cost electricity for the rubbah slippah folks, clean transportation and a low walk around cost for tourists. We can have the best of all worlds.
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.
These 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.
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.
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.
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.
“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 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.
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.
On Saturday, I was on a geothermal panel at the Hawai‘i Island Democratic Party Convention, which was held at the Volcano Art Center. Senator Brian Schatz speaking
Also on the panel were State Senator Russell Ruderman and former Big Island Mayor Harry Kim.
It went very well and I’m very optimistic. I think most of us just want to do the best for all of us.
I made it a point to tell the audience that I went to O‘ahu on behalf of the Big Island Community Coalition and testified in favor of four
geothermal bills. What the four bills had in common is that they all contained provisions for “home rule.” I told the audience: This was so you could have a say in the geothermal issue.
My main point was that we are competing with the world for oil. And we need to seek a competitive advantage for the Big Island, and this has to do with cost.
We all know that the price of oil price rise; it’s only a matter of when, and how high. So if we can find a lowest cost solution, this will protect us from a rising oil price. It does not matter what the alternative is, so long as it gives us a competitive advantage.
Right now, it’s geothermal that has the potential for giving us that competitive advantage, assuming we don’t drive up its cost so high that we lose that advantage. Whether or not we achieve its potential is up to our leaders and to the Puna community.
Here’s what I told the Democratic Party Convention:
We are on a search for “competitive advantage” for the Big Island. Organisms, organizations and civilizations do this – it is called “survival of the fittest.” It isn’t the strongest or the smartest that survive; it’s the ones that can adapt – Charles Darwin
My name is Richard Ha. I am a farmer here on the Big Island. Together with our 70 workers, we farm 600 fee simple acres at Pepe‘ekeo. We have produced multi-millions of pounds of bananas and tomatoes over the past 35 years.
In my search to find competitive advantage for my farm’s future, I’ve now been to five Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences.
Here is what I took away from these conferences:
Oil price quadrupled in the last 10 years.
The last 11 recessions were associated with a spiking oil price.
Oil is a finite resource.
The world has been using three times the oil it has been finding for many years now.
The days of cheap oil are over.
The cost to produce the marginal barrel of oil – the last barrel, as in shale oil and tar sands – was $92 per barrel in 2011.
The U.S. mainland uses oil for only two percent of its electrical generation. Hawai‘i uses oil for more than 70 percent of its electrical generation.
Anything manufactured on the mainland with cheap oil embedded makes our local producers and manufacturers less competitive. This affects Ag products.
It is not the supply or demand of oil that will cause the
greatest damage; it is the cost of oil.
How much time do we have? Because it is about oil cost, we have less time than we think.
ELECTRICITY ON THE BIG ISLAND
Uses 180 MW at Peak.
Most of the increase in electricity bills is caused by oil pass through.
Bio mass – as in wood chips – and geothermal have base power potential.
Solar and wind must add storage to become useful as base power.
Storage at utility scale is prohibitively expensive today.
ECONOMY
Big Island electricity rates have been 25 percent higher than O‘ahu’s rates for as long as anyone can remember.
The Big Island has the lowest median family income in the state.
The Pahoa School Complex has, at 89 percent, the highest percent of students participating in the free/reduced lunch program in the state. Ka‘u at 87 percent and Kea‘au at 86 percent are close behind.
Education is the best predictor of family income. Yet the Big Island’s high electricity cost takes away from its education budget.
Rising electricity rates act like a giant regressive tax. The folks who are able to leave the grid for PV do so. The folks left behind pay more for the grid. Many of these folks are the ones already on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder: THE ONES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS CONCERNED ABOUT.
Rising electricity rates take away discretionary income. Two-thirds of our economy is made up of consumer spending. Bottom-up economics benefit all, from the rubbah slippah folks to the shiny shoe folks.
GEOTHERMAL
Cost to generate electricity from geothermal is estimated at 10 cents per kilowatt hour. This is less than half the price of electricity generated by oil, which is estimated to be 21 cents per kilowatt hour.
The cost of the feedstock steam will be stable for a long time. The Big Island is estimated to be over the “hot spot” for 500,000 to a million years.
Concentrating geothermal on the East Rift increases risk. Iceland mitigated the risk by keeping some oil-fired plants in operational reserve.
Home Rule. The Big Island Community Coalition, myself as representative, personally voted for four of the bills that contained the Home Rule provision.
Mediation vs. contested case hearing. It is a risk/benefit, cost, competitive advantage question. The lowest cost solution to accomplish the objectives is our target.
How much time do we have? If cost is our primary concern, we have less time than we think.
I asked Dr. Carl Bonham: What happens if the oil price hit $200 per barrel? He replied that it would devastate our tourism industry.
I asked Dr. Bonham: What if we used geothermal as our primary base power? Wouldn’t we have a competitive advantage to the rest of the world as the oil price rose? He said, “YES.”
And, I asked, isn’t it fair to say that our standard of living would rise? He said: “YES.”
By giving the Big Island a competitive advantage in electricity rates, we can take care of all of us; not just a few of us.
WHERE ARE WE TODAY?
We are on a good track.
We have 38MW of geothermal. The 25MW original contract, which is still tied to oil, is being renegotiated right now.
HELCO has signed a 22MW power purchase agreement with Hu Honua. This is proven, stable and affordable technology – firewood, boil water.
HELCO has issued a 50MW request for geothermal proposals.
These 110MWs of stable, affordable electricity base power represent 60 percent of the Big Island’s peak power usage.
O‘ahu has 10 percent of its base power electricity coming from stable affordable sources.
If we all work together, to take care of each other, we can be on track to have a competitive advantageover the rest of the world.
***
Some good resources on this topic:
Geothermal Assessment & Roadmap is a report compiled by the Pacific International Center For High Technology Research (PICHTR) under contract to Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, University of Hawaii in January 2013.
Peak Oil Warning From an IMF Expert: Interview with Michael Kumhof is a modeling done by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic team. Although it is not an official IMF document, it was done by the team that does economic analysis and modeling for the IMF.
Over the weekend, Scott Bosshardtof Kea‘au had an important letter to the editor of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
His point was that products produced and purchased locally shouldn’t be more expensive than the same product purchased abroad.
One extremely important fact that the “Think Local, Buy Local” proponents shouldn’t overlook is that local businesses need to “price local.”
Products produced and purchased locally shouldn’t be more expensive than the same product purchased abroad.
He also wrote:
“Price local” instead of as if our Big Island-grown tomatoes and coconuts were imported from half way around the world or some other planet, then people will be much more inclined to “buy local.” This holds true for everything we produce here. Think about it. When you live in Columbia, you don’t pay more for coffee than you do in San Francisco.
He’s right: Prices are higher here, and we need to lower them. It’s what I keep talking about. We need to find a way that we can lower our costs.
I first noticed our farm costs rising steadily back in 2005 and 2006. Rising costs affect every aspect of our farm, and it was very worrisome. Looking into it, I realized that the rise in price was due to the price of oil increasing.
Here in Hawai‘i, we are being squeezed extra hard. More than 70 percent of our electricity comes from oil. Compare this to the U.S. mainland – Hawaii’s primary competitor in many produce and food manufacturing categories – which relies on oil for only about two percent of its electricity generation.
As the price of oil rises, you can see how our local farmers and food manufacturers become less and less competitive with the mainland.
Farming is very energy intensive, and farmers’ refrigeration and water pumping costs have steadily gotten more expensive. Wholesalers’ and retailer refrigeration costs have gone up, too. This means food costs more.
Oil prices have quadrupled in the last 10 years, and this has put the economy into a continuous recession. Everything has been squeezed. Government workers’ pay has been cut. Electricity costs have gone up steadily. School budgets have been squeezed. Medical costs have risen.
I have so far attended five annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences trying to figure out how to protect our farm from the rising price of oil. I don’t have a degree in chemistry or the sciences – but I am a farmer with common sense. So I spent my time figuring out who I can trust for good information
I determined that the folks at ASPO can be trusted because they have no other agenda than to produce good information. It is up to me to decide if their studies are valid or not, or whether I agree with their conclusion. On the other hand, I thought that people whose livelihood depends on putting on a happy face would probably just put on a happy face.
I have learned that the world has been using two to three times as much oil as it has been finding, a trend that continues. I’ve learned that the oil being produced now is much more expensive than what they found 50 years ago. It takes more energy now to get the energy. The cost of producing oil from shale and oil sands was $92 per barrel in 2011, and the floor price of oil is probably not much lower than that.
The era of cheap oil is over. And the stuff produced in the future will be even more costly, setting a higher floor as time goes by. Unless we do something, it will squeeze us all even more.
Look around: It is happening right now, even with a banner tourism year. Imagine what it will be like if we have a significant downturn.
Also important to note is that the rubbah slippah folks have less and less discretionary income. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of our economy. Our consumers will have more spending money when we can lower the cost of our electricity.
What about the happy news that the U.S. will become the largest producer of oil and gas in the future? In 2009, Art Berman, a petroleum geologist, showed that in a study of 4,000 gas wells in the Barnett Shale, most of the production came out in the first year. Sixteen-thousand wells later, we see that 90 percent of shale gas and shale oil wells were more than 90 percent depleted within five years. And the decline rate for all the wells is more than 30 percent. We will need to drill one third as many we have now just to keep production steady.
One can reasonably conclude that the shale gas and shale oil phenomenon may not be a game changer. It probably won’t make a large dent in world oil production.
Meanwhile, the overall trend continues. Most of the world’s oil is produced by giant and supergiant oil fields, and lots of them are declining. Folks who study this estimate that the decline rate is around 4 to 6 percent annually. That is about 3 million barrels a year. This is going on all day, every day, no matter what the stock market does.
What can we do on the Big Island to lower electricity costs, and the cost of locally produced food? Biomass and geothermal can do that today. There may be other choices maturing in the next few years, too.
Producing electricity from geothermal here costs half as much as producing it from oil. And the Big Island will be over the hot spot that provides us with geothermal for 500,000 to a million years.
Iceland is pulling itself out of the largest financial crash in history because it has cheap electricity from geothermal and can export fish.
Let’s say that one wanted to payoff an oil-fired plant that produces 60MW today. That difference in price would save $6,600/hour and $158,400 /day. This is more than $50 million per year. Seems like we could be creative with writing off stranded assets.
OHA is contemplating investing in geothermal. I am in favor of that, for the reasons that I mention below.
I sent the following testimony to OHA:
***
Subject: OHA testimony re: Huena Power Co/IDG
April 17, 2013
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
711 Kapiolani St.
Honolulu, HI 96813
Aloha Chair Machado and Board members of OHA:
The Geothermal working group report, which Wallace Ishibashi and I co-chaired, recommended that geothermal be the primary base power for the Big Island. OHA was represented on the working group by trustee Robert Lindsey.
I believe that OHA should participate in geothermal development because it is an income source for OHA to provide services to the Hawaiian people. And it can influence the course of our people’s history.
Geothermal-generated electricity is proven technology, affordable and environmentally benign. The Big Island is expected to be over the “hot spot” for 500,000 to a million years so its price is expected to be stable.
The Pahoa School Complex in Puna, at 89%, has the highest number of students in the State who participate in the free/reduced school lunch program. Participation is related to family income. The Big Island has had electricity rates 25% higher than O‘ahu’s for as long as anyone can remember. So a large portion of the school budget, that should go to education, goes instead to pay for electricity. Yet the best predictor of family income is education. A lower electricity rate, generated by geothermal, will have a direct effect on education. And if OHA, through its influence, emphasizes education in the community, there will be even more positive results.
Rising electricity rates act like a giant regressive tax. The folks on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder are affected disproportionately. Those who can leave the grid, leave. Those who cannot leave end up paying more for the grid. Too often those folks will be Hawaiians.
Hawaiians should be able to live in their own land. Yet there are more Hawaiians living outside of the State, because they needed to move elsewhere to find jobs to raise their families. Exporting our children is the same as losing our land. OHA is in a position to drive the agenda so Hawaiians can afford to live at home.
During the development of the Geothermal Working Group report, Rockne Freitas arranged a meeting with Carl Bonham, Executive Director of the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization (UHERO), and some staff.
I asked Dr. Bonham two key questions: “Is it fair to say that if the Big Island were to rely on geothermal energy for its primary base power as oil prices rises, shouldn’t we become more competitive to the rest of the world?” He said that was fair to say.
I asked: “Then is it fair to say that our standard of living would rise?” He said: “Yes.”
I am a farmer on the Hamakua coast with family ties — Kamahele — in lower Puna. I farmed bananas at Koa‘e in the late 70s and early 80s. I have been to five Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences. I went to learn and to position my business for the future. I found that the world has been using two and three times the amount of oil than it has been finding for more than 30 years and that trend continues. The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years.
Until the first ASPO conference, I was just minding my own business, being a banana farmer. But what I learned became my kuleana. I did not ask for it.
Until last year, when Kamehameha Schools sent Giorgio Calderone and Jason Jeremiah and Noe Kalipi went to the conference, I was the only person from Hawai‘i to attend. The subjects were always data driven and conclusions could be duplicated.
We have the resources here to dodge the bullet. We need to drive a clear agenda for the benefit of all the people, not just a few.
One of the controversial issues in the Puna district is H2S gas. I went to Iceland and sat in the Blue Lagoon, where a geothermal plant within a quarter mile emits geothermal steam into the atmosphere. Millions of tourists visit the Blue Lagoon for health purposes.
There are small geothermal wells within the city that are used to heat the residences and businesses. If you did not know what to look for, you wouldn’t even know they were there. I walked by and touched the walls.
A long term study of the effects of H2S on people who suffer from asthma was just completed. It was done in Rotorua. They found no correlation of asthma to daily ambient H2S levels of 20,000 parts per billion over a three-year period. The study indicated that there might be a beneficial effect because it relaxes the smooth muscles. See link above.
The human nose can detect levels of H2S at incredibly low levels: 5 parts per billion. The Department of Health requires reporting when levels exceed 25 parts per billion. The Rotorua study was done for three years at average levels that were 20,000 parts per billion. OSHA allows geothermal plant workers to work in a 10,000 parts per billion environment for 8 hours per day without a mask.
Wallace Ishibashi and I went to the Philippines with the delegation that Mayor Kenoi put together. We visited a geothermal plant that sat on a volcano that last erupted 100,000 years ago. Mauna Kea last erupted 4,000 years ago. We may have more resources than we know.
The Phillipines and Hawai‘i started geothermal exploration at the same time. They now have in excess of 1,200MW, while we have 38MW. We are so far behind them, a supposedly Third World country, that it is embarrassing.
OHA is in a unique position to be able to influence the future. It is as if we are getting ready to duplicate that first voyage from the south so many years ago. It’s not whether or not we are going. It’s who should go, and what should we put in the canoes? Mai‘a maoli? Popoulu? What else?
Richard Ha
President, Mauna Kea Banana Company
I am a member of the Hawaii Clean Energy Steering Committee, Board of Agriculture and farmer for 35 years.
I’m speaking on a radio program about geothermal tomorrow afternoon (Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 5:15 p.m.). It’s on KGU AM, if you’re in Honolulu, or you can listen to the program online tomorrow.
The main speaker will be former Hawai‘i County Mayor Harry Kim.
Joining him for the first half of the program will be Robert Petricci, leader of the Puna Pono Alliance, and Tom Travis, Navy nuclear submarine commander.
For the show’s second half, it will be Mayor Kim, me and Professor Don Thomas, PhD, who is Director of the Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes at the University of Hawai‘i.
If you get a chance to listen, let me know what you think.
Years ago I worked for United Airlines, and the story of that portion of my life is told through travel tales.
For instance, when the airline started flying to New Zealand, I packed my bag. Two highlights of that trip were:
The Auckland Museum. I purposely, and delightedly, went to New Zealand by myself, which was delicious because it meant I got to go where I wanted, and do what I wanted, without compromise. It meant I could spend hours and hours at this museum with its fascinating Polynesian collection. I was so interested that a man who is a guide there, but was off for the day, gave me a tour of part of the museum. Also, I met a really nice older, grandmother-type woman in the museum’s café and we chatted for a long time; eventually she invited me to her house for tea and we had a fun visit that I have always remembered. (Lesson: When you travel by yourself, you often have experiences you would not otherwise have.)
Visiting Rotorua, specifically for the geothermally heated mineral spas that the North Island town is known for. That was great.
What a cool place, first of all. The whole town smells slightly sulfur-y, which gives it an otherworldly feel (smell?). I liked that.
People love soaking in those geothermally heated pools such as Rotorua’s Polynesian Spa (recognized by Conde Nast Traveller magazine as one of the Top 10 natural/thermal/medical spas in the world), I tell you. Including me.
Another big spa in Rotorua is interestingly called Hell’s Gate, with the subtitle, “The Beast Of All Geothermal Parks.”
From the website (which explains how it got that name):
Hells Gate geothermal attraction is Rotorua’s most active geothermal park and is known as the “AWESOME BEAST” of New Zealand Geothermal attractions. Hells Gate geothermal attraction features boiling hot pools and erupting waters with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Celsius; steaming fumaroles; hot water lakes; sulphur crystals and deposits; New Zealand’s largest active mud volcano; Southern Hemisphere’s largest hot water fall and even examples of land coral. See, feel and understand the awe of Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw as he gazed upon the land and gave it the English name “Hellsgate” as he believed he had arrived at the gates to Hell. A primeval setting displaying the awesome RAW POWER of the earth and its geothermal nature.
And here’s how they advertise their “unique geothermal muds,” and what they are helpful for:
See, touch and be amazed with the unique geothermal muds of the Hells Gate geothermal park – the black geothermal mud used for more than a century in the treatment of arthritics and rheumatism, our ice cold white geothermal mud that changes its form from solid to liquid and back again, that is used for the relief of burns; and the warm silky grey geothermal mud that gently exfoliates the skin. Hells Gate geothermal park is the only geothermal attraction in New Zealand that produces these three types of geothermal muds making Hells Gate geothermal attraction in Rotorua a unique geothermal mud experience.
And a little history:
Follow the footsteps of warriors old, through the swirling clouds of steam, past the pool where the Maori Princess, “Hurutini” lost her life for her people; see the violent geothermal activity of the “Inferno” with two erupting pools aptly named “Soddam” and “Gomorra” by George Bernard Shaw and then on to the “Kakahi Hot Water Fall, where warriors would return after battle to remove the “Tapu” of war and heal their wounds at the only Maori-owned area of geothermal in New Zealand.
I am such a huge fan of the whole hot spa soaking thing, as people have been, of course, throughout time.
From the UK Energy Research Centre: Geothermal energy was discovered in its simplest form many centuries ago. During Roman times water percolating through fissures in hot rocks produced hot springs in the ground around which civilizations were built (e.g. Bath Spa, UK; Pompeii, Italy).
This past summer I took my daughter to see the ancient geothermal Roman baths at Bath. Check out this neat video look at the elegant and historic town of Bath. The section on the baths themselves starts at about 4:09.
There are geothermally heated springs for soaking in all over the place. I truly got lost in this article, 20 Great Hot Springs Around Europe, for quite awhile.
Then there’s the amazingly beautiful Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik, Iceland, which Richard has visited and which I would love to see (especially between November and April, which is the season of the Northern Lights – how great would that combination be!).
And now I have worked myself all up into wanting to take a world tour: Visiting hot spas, soaking in geothermal mud, relieving aches and possibly medical conditions, who knows, while at the same time completely relaxing and rejuvenating. What a life that would be! Shall we have Richard send me on such a fact-finding mission?
I could go check out all these geothermally heated spas, first-hand, ask people why they flock to them, and then post reports on the blog telling you how great it is.
I would revisit Rotorua and soak right at Hell’s Gate.
I would go to Japan, where I was a teenage exchange student not once but twice, and still somehow completely missed the onsens.
It’s possible I would even try an “onsen tomago.”
Onsen tamago (温泉卵 or 温泉玉子?) is a traditional Japanese boiled egg which is originally slow cooked in the water of onsen hot springs in Japan. The traditional way of cooking onsen tamago is to place eggs into rope nets and leave them in a hot spring, with water that is approximately 70°C (158ºF) for 30 to 40 minutes. Crack open the shell and serve the egg in seasoned bonito dashi (Japanese stock) for breakfast, or in a light sauce made with mirin, dashi and soy sauce with chopped spring onions sprinkled over the top.
To heck with the eggs; I would soak myself in Japan’s onsen, snow all around, and possibly even with these macaques. Lucky devils.
On my international fact-finding mission, I would be forced to stay in Reykjavik and soak in the Blue Lagoon night after night after night, until I had marveled at the Northern Lights to my complete satisfaction.
But in the meantime, it’s not all bad here, either. There is, for instance, our geothermally heated pond at Alahanui County Park in Kapoho. Did you know that before the 1960 Kapoho eruption, the waters there weren’t hot? I didn’t know that.
Another interesting site within the Puna district are the heated tide pools at Ahalanui Beach Park (aka Puʻalaʻa County Park), where spring water has been naturally heated through geothermal energy and this mixes with ocean water along the shoreline.
Q: How deep is the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa in Iceland?
From Wikipedia: The warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulphur and bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help some people suffering from skin diseases such as psoriasis.[1] The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages 37–39 °C (98–102 °F). The Blue Lagoon also operates a Research and Development facility to help find cures for other skin ailments using the mineral-rich water.
The lagoon is a man-made lagoon which is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant Svartsengi and is renewed every 2 days. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.
A: I was there, and it’s waist high. People don’t stand up because it’s too cold outside. The steam rising in the back is partly H2S. But as with Japan’s onsens, the Blue Lagoon is looked upon as providing a health benefit.
There have been fireworks lately around the subject of geothermal over at the Big Island Chronicle blog.
Robert Petricci is leader of the anti-geothermal group that include Senator Ruderman and Mayor Kim. Petricci never answers the question, “What about the rubbah slippah folks?”
