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38 comments on Hawaii's "Energy for tomorrow"

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LevinK on January 18, 2006 - 11:09pm

This reminds me of the way the party secretary from the days of my youth used to decide problems (of which they usually have nothing close to a clue). Usually the meeting begins with:
"Comrades, we have this and this problem! Let us do something! Any suggestions?" Usually nobody says a thing. Then the one who is appointed by the party before the meeting stands up amd says: "We must do this this and this!" Everybody applauses, the proposition is accepted unonimously. The plan is well documented and included in the reports to the part leaders, some funds are assured and the work is buried in some laboratory or commetee until the end of the next reporting period when hopefully nobody will remember for the problem.

I'm sorry if the resemblance is too unfair, but that's what it sounds like. A quick out of the pocket calculation gives me that using the optimistic 464 gal. ethanol/acre from corn would require 4 times the total area of Hawaii (16,649 km2) to replace the 110 million barrels of crude oil mentioned above. Let's make it 2 times if they can invent some new technology or use sugar cane instead but the point is there.
In the end the funding (aka the preappointed party decision) goes to hydrogen that does not seem to be at least at a visible distance of being able to achive the goals stated (what happened with the ethanol?). What should I say... maybe more optimistically it is better than nothing... or maybe not.

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Glenn on January 18, 2006 - 11:21pm

Like everything else, I think ethanol or biodiesel could fill an important niche for critical liquid fuel powered transportation needs. Beyond that, I say that conservation and/or price demand destruction will take care of most of the 110 million barrels of oil.

I agree they should include some more market oriented strategies. And Hydrogen seems very dubious at this point.

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LevinK on January 18, 2006 - 11:36pm

When government tries to solve problems that are far from its competence the results could be disastrous.
I also think that ethanol + biodisel have their place but my estimate is that in this case they can achive 5 to 10% of the necessarry reduction at the very best. If the government wanted to do something really useful it would start to finance relocalization and building the necesserry infrastructure - isn't that what the governments are supposed to be doing by definition? This would be much more useful than the proposed quasisolutions. Yet quasi and partial solutions are the most preffered by them because they can win you elections while the really hard ones will most likely throw you out of the office.

P.S. Sometimes I start to fear that the next day I'll wake up in a totalitarian country again (or am I already?...). Democracy doesn't seem to work for the challenges to come.

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Engineer-Poet on January 19, 2006 - 5:04am

Iogen claims 87 gallons/ton from biomass, so 18 tons/acre of cane would produce on the order of 1600 gal/ac/yr.

Probably still nowhere near enough to satisfy motor fuel needs. I'll bet that electric vehicles charged from solar and/or wind would do it, though.

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