In the search for alternatives to fossil fuels, Hawai`i has looked to a wide range of renewable energy sources, including geothermal, wind power, solar generating systems and solar water-heaters, hydroelectric power, wave energy, ocean thermal energy conversion, biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel), bagasse, and municipal solid waste.
The two largest energy-consuming (and greenhouse-gas emitting) sectors are electric utilities (and independent power producers) and ground transportation.
Options for reducing tailpipe contributions to the state’s greenhouse-gas load are largely limited at this point to conservation measures: seeking alternative transportation means (bus, bicycle, or foot), driving fuel-efficient vehicles, and reducing the overall number of miles driven. The infusion of ethanol into the gasoline blends sold at pumps statewide has had little (or possibly negative) impact on fuel efficiency, so it is, at this point, difficult to say whether the requirement to sell ethanol blends has had any positive impact on the state’s carbon footprint. Electric-powered cars have the potential of making a dent in greenhouse-gas emissions if the source of their power is renewable or comes from a generating plant where carbon dioxide emissions are sequestered – but the technological advances required for this are years distant.
That leaves the electrical generating sector as the area where Hawai`i may make the greatest headway in reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases.
According to the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, in 2005,nearly 90 percent of Hawai`i’s power came from petroleum. The second largest source was another fossil fuel, coal, which accounted for roughly 5 percent of the total. All other sources made up the remainder (H-POWER, bagasse, and solar-water heating the three largest of them).
The state’s renewable energy portfolio requires utilities to have no less than 20 percent of their net electricity sales generated by renewable resources by the year 2020. In addition, Act 234 of the 2007 Legislature requires that statewide greenhouse-gas emissions be reduced substantially by that same year.
Already utilities are planning with these goals in mind. In its strategic plan approved just last November, Kaua`i Island Utility Co-op committed to producing within 15 years 50 percent of its electricity from renewable, non-fossil-fuel sources. HECO is planning to build a 110-megawatt biodiesel-fueled plant at Kalaeloa. Wind farms either have been built, refurbished, or are being planned on Maui, Hawai`i, Kaua`i and O`ahu. The City and County of Honolulu is planning an addition to its H-POWER plant, which will increase electrical generation from municipal solid waste on that island.
Yet, as HECO discovered when it unveiled its plans for the Kalaeloa plant, to be fueled with palm oil, putting the renewable label on a fuel does not inoculate it against controversy. Much of the world market in palm oil is supplied from plantations that have been established on what were once forested lands of Southeast Asia. HECO has promised to use its best efforts to ensure that its fuel will not come from freshly deforested lands, but with a burgeoning world market in the commodity, HECO’s promise does nothing to stop deforestation.
(Not only does the clearing of tropical rainforests release the carbon in the vegetation once covering the land, it is followed with the burning and drying of peatlands. According to Greenpeace, some 1.8 billion tons a year of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released as forests are cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.)
Eventually, Hawai`i may be able to grow some of its own fuel to be used in island electric plants. William Steiner, dean of the University of Hawai`i-Hilo College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resource Management, has championed this notion and has obtained a lease on Big Island land to undertake a demonstration project to grow varieties of oil palm.
Yet the cultivation of biofuels locally may not be an unmixed blessing. There is the risk that an oil-rich plant (switchgrass, for example) could turn out to be invasive. Economically, it is uncertain whether locally produced biofuels could compete with imports, given relatively higher wages paid in the United States, compared with wages in developing countries. Not least, there is the concern that if Hawai`i produced enough biofuel crops to make a meaningful reduction in imports, it could drive down production of local produce.
Still, Mina Morita, chair of the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, harbors hopes for Hawai`i attaining a high degree of energy self-sufficiency. “It’s a very realistic goal because of the amount of renewables that we have,” she told Environment Hawai`i. “We don’t have to look at heating costs, we have minimal cooling costs – cooling is just a matter of good design, really. And for the distances that we travel, electric engines make good sense. We’re not hamstrung by many of the challenges on the continent.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 18, Number 7 — January 2008
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