Tag Archives: Peak Oil

Big Island, Biofuel, Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

‘Aloha, Aloha, Call When You Find Land!’

I stayed at the Ala Moana Hotel last week while attending the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit, which had 1400 participants and was huge and exciting.

One evening, as I sat on the lanai of my hotel room looking toward Waikiki and all the lit-up hotel rooms and bright lights and the headlights and tail lights of cars, it came to me: Everything visible was dependent on oil.

The only thing I could see that was good was that the Macy’s sign is cheaper to power than the Liberty House sign it replaced. Shorter sign.

Sitting out there on the lanai, it became clear to me that if we follow HECO’s plan for using biofuels to generate electricity for the Big Island, we will soon have limited food resources and will be making plans to send people out to discover new lands.

Back in 2007, I spoke at the Hawaii Island Food Summit:

I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we
would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land—all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, though maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying,
“Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

If, instead, we on the Big Island follow our own plan of maximizing
our geothermal resource, and start to add others such as wind, solar and ocean resources as they scale up; and if we emphasize lots of small- to medium-sized diversified farms, we will not need to send out the canoes to look for new land.

The Big Island could help solve O‘ahu’s food and fuel issues, too, so it wouldn’t be necessary for them to send their white-haired folks off, either.

The Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit was exciting and I’ve spent all week trying to put all the goings-on into perspective. O‘ahu has a real serious electricity problem. It has no proven-technology base power alternative to fossil fuels. And it has limited opportunity to integrate solar and wind.

I can absolutely see why HECO was anxious to institute Smart Grid. It was an attempt to wring every bit of efficiency out of intermittent sources of power.

I can also see why HECO made the decision that biofuels would have to be a solution for O‘ahu. The biorefinery is located on O‘ahu. I can even understand why they changed their minds and decided to bring on more PV solar. THEY do need everything!

What I just cannot understand is why HECO tried to force the Big Island to go that route.

We on the Big Island need a different strategy – one that focuses on the Big Island’s resources and environment.

Peak Oil

Energy Conservation & Regular Folk

I don’t talk about energy conservation much because the regular folks already have this figured out.

I would feel a lot better, though, if the regular folks had a greater say about our energy policy.

When the oil price spiked in the summer of ’08, Moms all over the island were following their kids around, turning off lights. By that summer, one could see lots of big pick-up trucks in used car lots. Many more were parked along the roadsides with “For Sale” signs on their windshield.

My nephew’s family had a car and a big-tired 4-wheel drive pickup truck for work transportation. One day, my nephew told me: “Uncle, I’m going to sell my truck and get a scooter to go to work.” A young guy, selling his big-tired pickup truck, the one he used to take his pitbull riding in the back, for a scooter? There is no question that the regular folks get it about high energy costs! That consciousness is working its way through our whole society.

No, I don’t worry about the regular, rubbah slippah folks. I worry more about the folks that have no “real world” life experiences and are making survival decisions for the rest of us.

Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, Video

Video: Climbing Up The Bamboo Pole

Richard Ha writes:

Awhile back I spoke to the UH Hilo Student Association Senate leaders about geothermal energy. I warned them that exponential growth fueled by a finite resource – oil – was a serious problem for us here on the Big Island.

Along the very same lines, Lloyds of London just warned its business clients to prepare or it could be catastrophic. I wrote about Lloyds of London's warning here.

I told the student leaders that we need to know what we are going to do before a catastrophe happens. "White water coming, we need to climb up the bamboo pole and lift up our legs." 

This video sums up everything I talk about on this blog.

Richard Ha Video 

Biofuel

Farmers & Biofuels

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This article appeared in Pacific Business News on August 13, 2010:

Biofuels have supporters, but
scale remains an obstacle

Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
– by Sophie Cocke

Three years ago, representatives of Hawaiian Electric Co. met with farmers on the Big Island to discuss growing feedstock that could be converted to biofuel and used in the company’s generators. But discussions grew quiet when local farmers calculated how much they would be earning.

There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, each container of which weighs 286 pounds. So oil, at $80 a barrel, would yield the farmers about 28 cents per pound.

“There’s hardly anything a farmer will grow for 28 cents per pound,” said Richard Ha, one of the local farmers who attended the meeting.

Profits decline even more given that the feedstock must be drained to obtain the oil. Four pounds of a crop can result in only one pound of oil, meaning farmers would be getting paid only 7 cents per pound for their crops.

“The farmers never went back to another meeting,” said Ha.

This story looks at biofuels, and their role in Hawaii’s push for energy independence…. (Read more)

It is no secret that I am very concerned about betting too much of our future on biofuels just because we feel that we need them desperately. The critical chokepoint is feedstock.

We need to take a deep breath and we need to talk to farmers. Read about when I asked HECO not to let us get flattened by the wild bull.

Food Security, Geothermal, Peak Oil

How Geothermal = Food Security

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Our “food security” is about farmers here in Hawai‘i farming. We know that Hawai‘i imports more than 80 percent of its food, and has only a seven-day supply of food on island at any one time.

Being more food secure means growing much more of our food here. How do we make that happen?

If farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

The cost of electricity cost is directly related to farmers farming or not. Farmers are price takers, not price makers. So as electricity costs go up for consumers, wholesalers and retailers, farmers’ prices necessarily go down and so do their profits.

We all know that world oil supplies will be declining and that petroleum prices are likely to be very high in the next few years, making fossil fuel-produced electricity rise very high in price.

Do you know what the most energy-intensive part is regarding getting our food? Surprisingly, it’s not the “on farm” energy usage. It’s the energy needed for the stop-and-go transportation of getting food to your home,  the cost of refrigeration during that journey and the cost to refrigerate your food once it’s at your home.

So what will help with food security?  Cheap electricity. On the Big Island, that means geothermal electricity.

Produced locally, it is the cheapest form of electricity here. For more than 15 years it has operated without subsidies, and it even earns money for the state of Hawai‘i—currently more than $3 million a year.

Cheap electricity will lower wholesaler and retailer operating costs and therefore leave more discretionary income in the pockets of consumers, and they will be able to buy local produce. It will result in less pressure on farmers to lower their prices beyond what is reasonable, and they will make decent livings and continue to farm. And we will have increased food security out here in the middle of the ocean.

If farmers make money, the farmers will farm!

Community, Peak Oil

Hawaiian Common(s) Sense

I was interested in this energybulletin.net article.

Elinor Ostrom Wins Nobel for Common(s) Sense
by Fran Korten

Fran: Many people associate “the commons” with Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He says that if, for example, you have a pasture that everyone in a village has access to, then each person will put as many cows on that land as he can to maximize his own benefit, and pretty soon the pasture will be overgrazed and become worthless. What’s the difference between your perspective and Hardin’s?

Elinor: Well, I don’t see the human as hopeless. There’s a general tendency to presume people just act for short-term profit. But anyone who knows about small-town businesses and how people in a community relate to one another realizes that many of those decisions are not just for profit and that humans do try to organize and solve problems.
If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them…. Read more

This is the Hawaiian way, and it’s the way we are trying to go. Common(s) sense is appropriate.

The world has changed in the face of Peak Oil. So that we will be relevant years from now, we are changing. I am turning our farm, Hamakua Springs Country Farms at Pepe‘ekeo, and the resources available to us – people, water, land and hydro power – into a commons of sorts.

We are bringing more and more farmers to work together with us for the common good.

Peak Oil

Peak Oil’s Real Symptoms

Peakoil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gail Tverberg, who I’ve written about here before, has a good article at www.ngoilgas.com about “the real symptoms of Peak Oil.” It starts like this:

Most people expect high prices to be an indication of “Peak Oil”, but are we missing the real symptoms?
 Our resident expert and one of the editors of The Oil Drum, Gail Tverberg takes a look at what she believes to be the more important symptoms of the arrival of peak oil.

If I were to ask 10 random people what they would expect to be a sign of the arrival of “Peak Oil,” I would expect all 10 to say “high oil prices.”

Let me tell you what I think the symptoms of the arrival of peak oil are:

1. Higher default rates on loans

2. Recession

Furthermore, I expect that as the supply of oil declines over time, these symptoms will get worse and worse – even though people may call the cause of the decline in oil use “Peak Demand” rather than “Peak Supply.”

Let’s think about what happens when oil prices try to increase. From the perspective of a consumer who is already spending pretty much all of his income, it seems to me the result is something like this…

Read more

Peak Oil

Gail Tverberg & Peak Oil

Gail Tverberg wrote this article for Oil and Gas magazine:

It seems to me that the current recession is very much energy-related, and is likely to continue. The recession is occurring because the current US “system” (individual homes, private cars, many imports) was built for cheap ($20 barrel) oil and gas, and cannot function well using expensive oil and gas.

She notes that people’s income are relatively fixed and any increase in energy costs is not good for the economy. This means that expensive energy will hurt us, while cheaper energy will help us. If people no more money, they cannot go to the stores.

Geothermal gives us a way out.

When energy matters came to my attention several years ago, Gail’s writings stood out. They are clear, simple and easy to understand. Gail has a mathematical background. She worked as an actuary, advising the insurance industry on risk and reward matters.

Later, I found out that most Peak Oil staffers are international and nationally recognized experts in the oil and gas industry, or experts in other relevant fields. They know what they are talking about. I respect simple competency.

When I went to the first Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in October 2007, in Houston, I made sure to go up and introduce myself to Gail.

As soon as I came back, I suggested to Betsy Cole of the Kohala Center that they do an energy conference. It took place in June 2007 at the Hilo Hawaiian, and Gail was the featured speaker.

After the conference I spent three days taking Gail and her family sightseeing. Peak Oil was on both of our minds and we spent quite a bit of the time talking about the ramifications.

Although masked by the present recession, the same forces of declining oil supplies are still at work two and a half years later. Many folks from Hawai‘i responded to her post on the Big Island. It is true that we are very much aware of what is going on.

Back then I called Kale Gumapac, alaka‘i of the Kanaka Council, and told him that I could arrange for the Kanaka Council to hear Gail’s talk free of charge. He told me that his people would feel awkward among the “shiny shoe” crowd*.

So instead I made arrangements for Gail to see them at the Lili‘uokalani Children’s Center. Though the Kanaka Council members were at an important County Council hearing, they all went over to hear Gail speak.

It was remarkable how Gail’s message resonated. For them, it was not a matter of “if the boat not going come.” It was a matter of when.

During the talk and after, they  treated Gail as a kupuna. It was remarkable to see.

* This is where the phrase “rubbah slippah crowd” came from.