rflickinger@westhawaiitoday.com Reed Flickinger | West Hawaii Today ADVERTISING You can tell Hawaii is an island state by its politics. It mirrors the tides, advancing, retreating and always the same makeup. We can’t point fingers at political infighting and gridlock resulting
Reed Flickinger | West Hawaii Today
You can tell Hawaii is an island state by its politics. It mirrors the tides, advancing, retreating and always the same makeup.
We can’t point fingers at political infighting and gridlock resulting from partisan squabbling, because like the ocean, it’s all the same salt here, Democratic.
While that isn’t necessarily bad, neither does it always bode well.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat and a longtime political product of Hawaii who has matriculated through the state ranks to Washington and now returned to pasture in Hawaii as governor before he retires from politics, provided another look at Hawaii’s tides Monday as he presented his State of the State address.
The tide is coming back in. What we once saw, we shall see again, provided Democrats in the Legislature go with the tidal flow.
Hawaii may be about to revisit the great Geothermal Initiative. For those whose institutional memories of the state might not have as many back pages, a refresher: In the 1960s, Hawaii began to look at energy potential from geothermal power, an already-known technology that uses heat (from a natural geological source) to provide the kinetic energy to drive generators and provide electricity.
It is a common, developed technology, used from Iceland to Steamboat, south of Reno, Nev. It’s not rocket science and has not been for a generation.
Hawaii, seeking energy generation, industry and profitability, began looking at the prospect of geothermal energy from the Big Island’s volcanic geological resource to drive the state. It was also during the late 1970s and early 1980s that Hawaii was entertaining the prospect of manganese mining — on the ocean floor, or, more accurately, the seamounts surrounding the state. It was likewise envisioned a technology of deep sea mining could marry with abundant energy into smelters on the plains of Puna.
The catch, however, was existing surface mining was — and still is — more economical than submarine excavation.
The other catch was the state, in demonstrating its capacity to develop geothermal energy, planned and executed it poorly, creating a public relations nightmare for Puna area residents. And by keeping its demonstration well (HGP-A) going longer than it should, it created a working model of how not to develop geothermal energy wisely.
In the early 1980s, a submarine path was mapped between Mahukona (on the North Kohala Coast) and Maui as the desired route for a transchannel cable. Cable development discussions began with the Italian company Pirelli.
And then — the plug was pulled on the initiative. The tide rapidly retreated. No longer were Hawaii politicians discussing the Geothermal Initiative. No longer was the Big Island viewed as a potential power generator for Oahu. Puna Geothermal Venture (as it was then called) came in, developed a small-scale generator to supply Hawaii Electric Light Co. at a rate based upon costs to generate that power with oil.
But now the tide turns, as expected — though many details remain forthcoming. Abercrombie told the Legislature we must “ensure our electric grids are stable, reliable and modern enough to integrate alternative and renewable energy technologies. … One of those investments is an undersea cable that can connect our island grids to provide stable, reliable electricity between islands.”
A veteran of old tidal ebb and flow, Abercrombie added, “I assure you, the energy debates that will take place this session will echo the debates that took place here when I was a legislator in these chambers in the 1970s. Let us not repeat a history of failure to act in 2012.”
Though he mentioned geothermal and specific untold plans for our island, he is still playing those details close to the vest. We are only privy to the big extension cord proposal resurrected from the past. Yet we know winds calm, the sun sets but geothermal heat persists day and night.
This is not to condemn or praise the plan, which, if executed in a consumer-oriented capacity rather than corporate, could provide needed relief to Hawaii ratepayers from the costly rates we now pay.
This is more to recognize the probability of another tidal retreat, that the cable proposal will be withdrawn (for now), only at a later date to reappear. It’s little different from rail transit on Oahu, with its back-and-forth battles that continue to this day.
The only constant is the ocean, Hawaii’s political composition — and, of course, the needs of our people, which too often are swept along by those tides.
rflickinger@westhawaiitoday.com
