A dream, or a nightmare? A visionary solution to Hawai`i’s growing problems of rubbish and oil dependency? Or a pie-in-the-sky proposal, completely untethered from reality?
Those were among the conflicting views of a proposal that recently came before the board of directors of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority. The board was being asked to give the green light to the plan of BioEnergy Hawai`i, LLC, to build on 25 acres of state land at Keahole a $70 million, 6 megawatt waste-to-energy plant, desalination facility, wastewater treatment plant, rooftop photo-voltaic installation, and algae farm. The algae, to be grown in bioreactors that will receive the sequestered carbon dioxide produced by the waste processing, would be refined off-site (at an as-yet unspecified location) into 8 million gallons a year of biodiesel that would power the fleet of Pacific Waste, the Big Island’s largest trash hauling company and sole member of BioEnergy Hawai`i.
Board member Richard Hess put the skeptics’ position bluntly: “Everybody blows a lot of smoke,” he said, but NELHA needs “a partner that’s going to tell us the truth, that’ll be frank with us.” Some of the statements of BioEnergy Hawai`i, which its principals acknowledged might be a bit overoptimistic, “give us a bad feeling,” Hess said.
On the side of the cheerleaders was Ted Liu, head of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. The details of the development might have to be worked out, he said, “but it’ll be worthwhile to work them out. A new energy climate is going to drive breakthroughs in technology… The race is on to tap algae for its fuel properties.”
At the end of a long and often heated discussion, the board ended up approving in concept the request of BioEnergy Hawai`i (BEH) to become NELHA’s latest tenant. Now the NELHA staff must work out with BEH final details, including: land rents, a power-purchase agreement between NELHA and BEH, a specific site for the plant (what BEH has proposed is just makai of the Gateway Center on Queen Ka`ahumanu Highway), a firm commitment to carbon-dioxide sequestration and development of biofuels from algae, litter abatement, and the duration of the lease. Although BEH assured the board that no environmental assessment or impact statement would be required, the board also included as a condition that the company would prepare an EIS if it turns out that one is needed.
Baked, not Burned
The principals of BioEnergy Hawai`i – Guy Kaniho of managing member Pacific Waste, Inc., and Larry Capellas, former solid waste chief for the County of Hawai`i – don’t like to hear the plant that is at the heart of their proposal called an incinerator. They describe it instead as a waste-reduction facility. And although the process they plan to use involves putting rubbish into a chamber where it is subjected to high temperatures (around 600 degrees Celsius, or more than 1100 degrees Fahrenheit), it does not involve incineration, Kaniho said. “It’s more like baking than burning,” he told the NELHA board at its May 27 meeting.
Exactly how much would be “baked” was the subject of some discussion at the May NELHA meeting. According to the statements made in the BEH proposal, Pacific Waste at present “collects and disposes of nearly 200 tons of municipal solid waste everyday, at the Pu`uanulu [sic] landfill.” All of that – and then some – would evidently be diverted to the NELHA facility; according to BEH’s proposal, the waste-to-energy plant would receive some 300 tons per day of trash.
Don Thomas, a University of Hawai`i professor of engineering and head of NELHA’s scientific advisory committee, raised the issue of traffic impacts. To deliver the waste, he noted, there would have to be a truck coming in every eight minutes, “and if eight trucks come in per hour, that means eight go out – a truck going by every four minutes.” In comments on the proposal at last December’s NELHA meeting, Thomas had also noted that of the reported 300 tons coming into the facility, “fully 90 tons/day (69 tons of ‘tramp’ and 21 tons of recyclables) will have to be trucked back out – either to the landfill or to recycling centers.”
Kaniho, manager for Pacific Waste, replied. “The expectations were high for us to acquire more feedstock, more municipal solid waste. Currently Pacific Waste takes about 35 loads into the landfill per day. That’s substantially different from the number at your rate, 90 trucks per day.”
Thomas: “That’s the number in your proposal.”
Kaniho: “We may have misstated ourselves. Currently we’re at one third of that.” The higher figure was just a projection, Kaniho added, of what Pacific Waste’s collection volume would be in four or five years. Kaniho’s statement was an admission that the 200-tons-per-day figure given as the current haul of Pacific Waste might have been an exaggeration as well.
Honolulu’s HPOWER plant burns up to 2,160 tons of waste per day, with generating capacity of 57 megawatts. If BioEnergy Hawai`i’s efficiency were on a par with HPOWER’s, it would need to “bake” some 341 tons a day to generate 6 MW. According to a short video shown to the NELHA board, BioEnergy will remove inorganic materials and recyclables from the waste before processing it. The process itself involves injecting the waste (some of it pelletized) into a “fluidized bed gasifier,” which will produce a synthetic gas (syngas) and an inert fly ash from the stack. “While the technology of gasification is fairly new,” the narrator of the video states, “there are examples of successful implementation around the world.” One such plant, in Asahi, Japan, the narrator says, was built in an existing residential neighborhood next door to an elementary school.
The syngas will be burned in the facility’s electric power plant. Fly ash from the 100-foot-high stack will be “mixed with concrete and used in construction,” according to the video. Similar claims have been made for the residual ash from HPOWER, but the ash has yet to be incorporated into any large-scale application.
As a bonus, BEH is proposing to sell the power it produces directly to NELHA and its tenants as well as the nearby Kona airport at a price 10 percent below what they pay for power delivered by the island utility, HELCO. Yet Thomas pointed out that this would not involve any sacrifice on BEH’s part: “You offer constant power … at 10 percent below commercial rates. That’s a modest reduction, but at the same time, all of us on the board have to recognize that having NELHA as a captive customer gives you a 60 percent premium over what you would get if you sold your power to HELCO.”
Francis Jung, attorney for BEH, replied that while the proposed electricity sale was “a benefit for us, that’s true, but it’s symbiotic,” helping all parties involved.
Thomas was unmoved: “This proposal is not attached to reality,” he commented, “and I’m disturbed by that.”
A Green Cherry?
A staff report on the BioEnergy Hawai`i project raised concerns that the algae farm, which would occupy 16 of the 25 leased acres, involved an as-yet unproven technology. “The algae portion of the project is a pilot project first,” said board member Laurence Sombardier, summarizing staff comments. “The proposal says that if it’s not feasible, they may jettison that part.”
Hess echoed the concerns: “The important thing is doing something with garbage,” he said of the project. “The algae is a throwaway…. They’re not even close to a final answer.”
BEH had paid to fly in from Canada two “algae people,” as Kaniho described them – Scott Leslie, with the private firm Menova, which produces solar concentrating devices, and Stephen O’Leary, an algae researcher employed by the National Research Council of Canada, a government agency similar to the National Research Foundation in the United States. They attempted to address the board’s concerns that the algae part of the proposal might be no more than an effort to paint the project green by adding a fictitious carbon-sequestration and biodiesel production component.
Menova, said Leslie, had developed large-scale (40 feet by 40 feet) solar concentrators that “squeeze down” sunlight and “pipe it down a fiber optic cable to photo bioreactors,” where the algae is grown. “In Canada, things tend to freeze in winter, so the open pond idea doesn’t work in Canada. That’s why we came up with the idea of a closed photo bioreactor, and taking light to it.”
In working with BioEnergy Hawai`i, Leslie said, “we want to emphasize that it’s our intention to use indigenous species to Hawai`i and have them approved by the Department of Agriculture.”
O’Leary said that at present, in enclosed photo bioreactors, “we can grow algae at high densities.” His agency’s interest in the project “is in screening microalgal strains for maximum growth strains and biofuel production,” he said. “There’s still a lot of R&D to be done.”
Deputy attorney general to NELHA Bryan Yee asked what assurance there was “that some good-faith effort would be made to determine the actual economic viability” of the algae farm. On Menova’s part, Leslie said, “we would certainly be keen to partake in this… Menova is very interested in moving forward at a rapid rate to do this.”
DBEDT’s Liu explained that for him, the algae portion of the project was critical. “Are the principals suggesting that we proceed with a gasification project if there was not either a carbon dioxide sequestration component and an algae-based component that also leads to biofuels?” he asked. “We don’t want just another gasification project here. It needs to come with the CO2 sequestration and, ultimately, what’s the holy grail to me, using the sequestration to produce biofuels…. The algae isn’t just the cherry on top, it’s a major part of the project.”
Hess again expressed his skepticism: “What these guys are talking about is a small part of the project that makes the project look and smell good. The bigger picture – trucks, litter by the side of the road, the smell…”
‘A Disconnect’
Thomas reported on his own research into the state of today’s technology with respect to algae production and algae-based biodiesel: “The numbers I came up with suggest that your production rate is a factor of 20 higher than what is considered the so-called industry standard,” he told BEH representatives. To produce eight million gallons of biodiesel a year on 16 acres, he said, you’d need to wildly exceed the top yields reported so far, of 55 pounds per square meter per year.
“The problem that I have with this whole proposal,” he continued, “is similar to this issue. The proposal makes statements in absolute terms that this will happen, but when I research what’s behind how this is going to happen, I find that there is a disconnect. The proposal says you’ll reclaim 100 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the facility. Yet in looking at design drawings, I don’t see any infrastructure for extracting 100 percent of this CO2. There’s no reference to that in the design. When I look at the development and production of algae from waste gases, from flue gases, I’m seeing numbers that range between 5 and 40 percent of CO2 recovery.
“So, do these people really know what they’re talking about, or are they just putting the best face on it that they possibly can? I’m not seeing a clear picture that what they’re promising can be delivered.”
“I agree completely,” replied O’Leary, the algae expert from Canada. “The numbers are about 20 times what is currently available. I was not involved in the proposal that was put forward, and that caught my eye as well when I looked at the proposal.”
The projection of being able to produce 8 million gallons of biodiesel a year, O’Leary said, “was based on being able to sequester the entirety of CO2. That’s a goal to aim for, but as a scientist, I’d never put my neck out so far.”
In a telephone interview, O’Leary said that he understood how the numbers in the BEH proposal were generated. “You multiply the amount of CO2 produced per day and come up with the amount of algae that would be generated by that amount of CO2 if it were all converted to biodiesel. But there’s a high expectation of what can be accomplished on 16 acres.” If you had 200 acres on which to grow the algae, O’Leary said, it might be possible.
Realistically, he said, you could probably achieve a yield in bioreactors of five to ten times the amount of algae that could be grown in an open pond, “but the numbers in the NELHA proposal … were about 26 times” the growth rates seen in an open pond setting. “By my calculations, I don’t see a production of 8 million gallons a year of biodiesel on 16 acres,” he said.
And if the volume of waste treated fell short of the amount on which their algae production figures was calculated, the yields would be even less. “If you’re only producing half of the CO2, then you’ll only get half the yield of biodiesel. Carbon dioxide is the building block of producing algae,” O’Leary said.
A Pass on an EIS?
When the question arose as to whether an environmental impact statement would be required before the plant could be built, Kaniho responded. “Some time ago,” he said, “we learned that NELHA already had an EIS and SMA [Special Management Area permit] in place. We inquired with the County of Hawai`i to see if that EIS and SMA applied to our project. Chris Yuen [county planning director] gave us a letter of determination saying that those permits cover our project.”
That letter, included in BEH’s proposal, was dated March 10, 2008. After a brief recap of the history of SMA permitting for the NELHA site, it concluded that, since “alternate energy research and development” was among the activities proposed when NELHA obtained an SMA permit in 1994, the BEH facility required no additional environmental impact statement or SMA permit.
Yuen clarified to Environment Hawai`i that the letter from his agency had a narrower reach than Kaniho gave to it. “Whose decision is it to require a supplemental EIS or not? In this case, it’s not really a permitting matter. It’s NELHA’s decision. The agency leasing the state land, NELHA, has to do the 343 analysis,” Yuen said, referring to Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes, the Hawai`i Environmental Policy Act. “Once we don’t have a permit issue, we’re out of the picture,” he said.
As the board discussed the proposal, it became evident that several board members were not buying the argument that BEH was going to get by without having to prepare an EIS. Liu asked Kaniho whether he would be willing to prepare such a document: “Given what’s at stake here, it behooves you to consider a supplemental EIS,” Liu said. Kaniho consented to that being added as a condition of approval.
Prohibited Uses
One of the points mentioned in NELHA staff comments on the BEH proposal was the fact that the proposed facility seems to run smack into a list of prohibited uses that the NELHA board has developed. Application guidelines tell prospective tenants that among the activities that “shall not be permitted on any lot at NELHA properties” are:
• “Junk yards or recycling facilities” (unless carried out in conjunction with a primary permitted use or as part of waste management practices); and the
• “Dumping, disposal, incineration or reduction of garbage or other forms of refuse.”
The board seemed unconcerned about dealing with these apparent prohibitions. Deputy attorney general Yee noted that, “Prohibited uses are passed by the board, so if the board doesn’t want to follow the list, the board can decide that.” However, Yee continued, “the bigger question is, why did the board put that [restrictions on waste facilities] into the list in the beginning? And if the [BEH proposal] is not disposition or disposal, why is it not at least considered reduction? I think it is reduction – but the board can change that.”
When board chairman John DeLong asked whether the current Keahole tenants were supportive of the proposal, a representative of the tenants’ association assured him they were, citing the prospect of reduced electric rates promised by BEH.
Before the final vote, Hess again voiced his concerns about the suitability of the project for NELHA. “The thing that sticks in my mind is, you can tell a garbage dump from 10 miles away from the stuff hanging on the trees.” He asked DeLong, “Is there anything in your motion that addresses how the stuff gets here?”
DeLong admitted there was not. A representative of BEH suggested that this issue could be taken up as a condition of the eventual contract. “In the normal permitting process, you have to design mitigation circumstances. You have to provide litter abatement, not only at the facility, but also in all traffic patterns. In a well-run facility, litter and odor don’t exist.”
DeLong then amended his motion to include litter abatement. When the vote was called, Thomas was the sole dissenter.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 19, Number 1 July 2008
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