Tag Archives: Neil Hannahs

Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Sustainability, Water

Visitors To The Farm

June 3, 2013 Richard Ha 3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

We had a lot of visitors one day last week. All, like us, were very excited about the possibilities surrounding ag and energy at the farm. Agriculture and energy are inextricably intertwined.

The visit was arranged by Matt Hamabata, Chief Executive Officer of the Kohala Center, of which I am a board member. He brought researchers from Cornell University, as well as representatives from UH Hilo and Kamehameha Schools.

From UH Hilo, Cam Muir and consultant Greg Chun. From Cornell, Max Zhang and Robert J. Thomas. Matt Hamabata from Kohala Center. From Kamehameha Schools, Mahealani Matsuzaki, Neil Hannahs, Giorgio Caldarone, Sydney Keliipuleole, Llewelyn Yee and Marissa Harman.

This reservoir supplies all the irrigation water for our vegetables. The water comes down from an intermittent stream. Soon, the water pumps that move the water and pressurize the lines will be electrified from the old plantation flume.

See the blue tanks in the distance? That’s a tilapia experiment, where we oxygenate the water by using falling water rather than electricity. This is another way to leverage the abundant water that falls on the farm: We get 2.3 billion gallons annually on our 600-acre farm.

Construction of the head works: connecting up the old part of the flume with the new part. (Left) James Channels, produce buyer for Foodland Supermarkets and (right) Kimo Pa, farm manager at Hamakua Springs.

We took them up to the head works, where the old part of the flume system joins up with the new. As we looked downslope, someone mentioned how amazing it is to think that the sugar people moved the sugar cane to the mill by portable wooden
flume structures that they moved from field to field. We were standing about three miles upstream of the sugar mill.

Next we went to the hydro turbine shack to see where the water we borrowed 150 feet upslope is returned to the flume after energy is extracted. From there, overhead lines take the electricity to our packing house.

The turbine before

The turbine after

We have a vision of lining the south side of the flume with native trees. Their shadows would fall across the flume and suppress invasive species at the same time.

Back at the packing house, I told them about diversifying our produce mix. A papaya farmer wants to work with us, producing and labeling non-GMO papayas. Also, I visited an organic farmer in Opihikao yesterday. He is interested in getting heat-sterilized coconut coir to use as media for his certified clean ginger seed business. I told him I will keep him in the loop.

Later, Laverne Omori, the new Research and Development Director, came by with County Energy Coordinator Will Rolston. Vincent Kimura, of the INNOVI group, was at the farm helping us install an ozone food sanitation system. The beauty of this system is that we won’t have to use chemicals for sanitation treatment.
The only thing left over will be plain water.

Here’s a “before” picture with some previous visitors, Claire Sullivan and Steve Carey from Whole Foods.

And this short video shows “after.”

We want to use the electricity we get from the river to help area farmers produce more food. The bottom-line, inescapable fact is that if the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

Peak Oil

Hawaii Contingent at the Peak Oil Conference

December 9, 2012 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

The most important thing about this year’s Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference was that we had a whole Hawai‘i contingent. I believe we made the point that Hawai‘i is serious.

Neil Hannahs, Senior Assets Manager for Kamehameha Schools (KS), is a visionary. Any thought about Kamehameha Schools being a slow-moving institution mired in inertia is not true in this area. In fact, KS is making major changes across a wide front.

I was especially pleased that Giorgio Calderone, Regional Asset Manager for KS, pointed out how impressive the academic rigour of the conference presentations was. I thought so too, and it was good to hear confirmation.

Big Island Community Coalition steering committee member Noe Kalipi is a smart, action-oriented young leader who knows what is going on. I cannot be happier that she made the decision to attend on her own.

Noe Kalipi and Giorgio Calderone. Not pictured: Jason Jeremiah, Kamehameha Schools Cultural Resource Manager.

I attended the first annual ASPO conference because my farm costs were rising, due to oil. I wanted to learn about oil so we could position our farm for the future. It was a matter of survival.

But by the second ASPO conference, it was apparent that this situation was bigger than me or Hamakua Springs farm. I learned that for the past 30 years, the world had been using two to three times as much oil as it had been finding—and there were going to be consequences.

More than just being talkers, we need to be doers. What can we do?

There are a thousand reasons why no can. We must find the one reason why CAN!
It is about cost! We need to find the lowest-cost, proven technology, environmentally responsible solution to our problem.
It is about all of us—not just a few of us.
The energy our society has available to use is what’s left over after energy is used to obtain the energy in the first place. Another way to phrase this: the net energy left over from the effort to get energy, minus the energy to get our food, equals our lifestyle.
The Big Island Community Coalition’s goal – of lowering the Big Island’s electricity rates so they are lowest in the state – accomplishes our mission. This is the most important thing we can do.

View descriptions of this year’s conference topics.

Biofuel, Peak Oil

What Happened to $200 Oil?

October 26, 2012 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

Whatever happened to $200 oil?

For the last few years, supply side thinking was the most prevalent way of considering the world’s oil supply. But in this last year,
something changed. Commentators started to ask about the demand side.

Specifically, they started asking, “What happens if demand goes up and prices start to rise – eventually killing demand?” In that scenario, the rising price of oil contains the seed of its own destruction.

In May of this year, Jeff Rubin, who had been the most outspoken expert warning of $200 oil, changed his mind. He calls what is happening “the end of growth.”

Whatever Happened to $200 Oil?
by Jeff Rubin on May 23rd, 2012

Four years ago, when I was still chief economist at CIBC World Markets, I forecast that global economic growth was on pace to send oil prices to $200 a barrel by 2012. In short, the argument was based on a supply-driven analysis that weighed the sources of future oil supply against the prices that would be needed to make the extraction and processing of that oil economically viable…. Read the rest

If Jeff and many others are right, we are not looking at a rapid climb of the price of oil to $200/barrel. It may not get to that price for 20 years.

And if that’s true, HECO’s request to pay $200 per barrel for Aina Koa Pono’s biofuel will be a tremendous mistake. All that will be
accomplished is a massive transfer of wealth.

This is why I am so pleased that Kamehameha Schools (on the
recommendation of Neil Hannah, Kamehameha’s Director of the Land Assets Division) is sending two senior level management folks to the upcoming Peak Oil conference. Things are moving quickly in the world energy field, and policy makers need to be up on current information.

That HECO is betting on the high side of the 2012 AEO cost curve shows they are not aware that thinking has changed. Had they sent people to past Peak Oil conferences, they would have seen the shift.

Including myself, there are now five people from Hawai‘i going to the ASPO conference. We have the makings of a delegation. Robert Rapier will also be going, too, but I am not counting him because he is a national/international commentator and he will be presenting.

This will be my fifth ASPO conference. I cannot be happier that there are other people from Hawai‘i going, besides myself, and educating themselves on this very important subject.