Geothermal energy is key to our economic diversity, prosperity

Hawaii needs an economic engine. In the past Hawaii has had one crop economics. First it was mostly self-sufficiency, and if you were alii or important kahuna life was good. If you were a kauwa (slave) not so good, in between you lived well or not at the pleasure of your chief. Life was good, if living in a grass shack with a diet of poi and dried fish is your goal. Contact brought commerce; the earliest trade was provisioning ships, including satisfying sailors’ personal needs.

Beef and sandalwood became major industries; the sandalwood was harvested nearly out of existence, but beef is still with us though limited by the complex and expensive long distance to market. Pineapple was a major export for many years, but too labor intensive to compete worldwide, and for about 100 years, sugar was king. Many blame high American labor costs for the demise of sugar, even though three other states still harvest cane sugar profitably. Brazil has built an economy on sugar, undeterred by labor cost because unlike Hawaii they mechanized, replaced the coolie labor with John Deere combines.

Tourism is a major economic force and Hawaii has long enjoyed the monopoly on tropical beaches with a stable government. The monopoly is eroding, as other tropical paradises manage to attain political stability and the relative cost of airfare becomes competitive. Many tourists shun Hawaii because their interest includes gambling and the missionary culture won’t allow it here, although wagering was intrinsic to the Hawaiian culture. Meanwhile, thousands of Hawaii residents trek to Las Vegas to support Nevada’s gambling economy. Yes, there was a time when gambling meant organized crime, but now it’s MGM, Deutsche Bank and Marriott. Many Native American tribes have pulled themselves out of poverty with well-managed casinos and attached outlet malls.

We hear a lot about sustainability. It usually is a call to return to an 18th century subsistence farming economy, with each family raising just enough to feed themselves in the good years (and miraculously anticipating no bad years). How many of us would consider it an improvement to live like our great grandparents, field to mouth? We hear a lot about how much of our food is imported, but nobody mentions most of that imported food is frozen, canned, processed or packaged. You can’t grow a Sarah Lee cake or even peanut butter in your backyard. In a modern, and I mean post-Civil War modern, world, you produce what you are good at and export it to buy what others can produce more efficiently than you can. Adding complexity is the dependence on imported fossil fuel. Sustainable agriculture requires a cash crop that has a wide dependable demand.

What can Hawaii produce competitively and where do we go from here?

No matter what industry or commerce is contemplated, energy will be crucial. Computer- based business? I hear you thinking. Guess what, Google and Yahoo and Facebook etc. all need server farms, airport-sized air conditioned warehouses full of computers built (as are aluminum smelters) close to cheap electricity. The call centers in India have to build their own generating plants because India’s power grid is even less reliable than HELCO.

Tourists like their fresh gourmet food, TV, cold beer, air conditioning, fountains and hot showers. Their airplanes and buses need fuel. Restaurants need refrigerators and ovens. Serious agriculture needs refrigeration and tractor fuel. Therefore, the first economic priority has to be energy — abundant, cheap energy. The good news is Hawaii has tremendous energy potential. The question is which source deserves primacy. There are basically two important criteria: cost and reliability.

Cost has two basic components, installation and operating. Low installation cost electrical sources, like a gasoline generator, have high operating cost. Low operating cost sources, such as geothermal, OTEC, solar, nuclear or hydro have high installation cosst. The cost-benefit decision can be based upon commonly accepted accounting and engineering principles. Some renewables sound quite good on the low operating cost issue, but are horrible on the reliability side. Wind is fickle. Wind turbines can only produce usable power about 20 percent of the time, and not necessarily the 20 percent when it’s needed. They often wear out, break or catch fire before they recover their cost. As a result, they need something else idling as standby power for when the wind is not suitable and almost always, it is fossil-powered. Solar is a little better, its off time is more predictable, but, unfortunately, often coincides with high-need hours, like early evening. There are ways to store electricity, but, again, the cheap ones are inefficient, the efficient ones are expensive. Some, like hydrogen, cannot live up to the hype. OTEC is far from ready and suffers from low efficiency.

One energy source stands out on Hawaii: geothermal. The technology is mature, not experimental. You can buy the equipment, or lease it. The supply is dependable, and, once installed, very inexpensive to operate. It has all the advantages of fossil power, without the fuel cost or pollution. It is cheaper, safer and simpler than nuclear power without the controversy. Admittedly, there were problems more than 30 years ago, but the industry has learned from them. Hawaii, like Iceland, is ideally positioned to produce geothermal electricity. Unlike Iceland, we have a customer only 150 miles away. A cable to Oahu is simple compared to the one from Iceland to Scotland 600 miles long, two miles under the world’s roughest ocean. Undersea cable technology is older than the automobile. King Kalakaua considered it in 1891. The profits of geothermal must be shared with the people of Hawaii Island. A stipend like the Alaska oil dividend would be fair and progressive.

Geothermal electricity can make other energy technologies competitive. Thirty percent of our energy consumption is for transportation. Cars can be run on battery power, at least for moderate distances. Airplanes, trucks and buses, though, need a denser more portable energy medium, biofuels can fill that gap. Biodiesel can be a drop-in replacement fuel, suitable for existing jet and diesel engines. Cheap electricity can make conversion of biomass to fuel economical. Gasoline is more challenging, but butanol, a four-carbon alcohol, can be made from biomass and can be a drop-in replacement for diesel or gas in existing engines. If someone replaced the gas in your tank with butanol, you probably would not notice the difference. Hawaii used to export a million tons of sugar a year, we have plenty of biomass.

This brings us back to agriculture. Growing biofuel feedstock will support the agricultural infrastructure that can make all other farm activities more effective. Almost anything green from algae to jatropha to sugarcane to Christmas berry can be converted to a biofuel.

Inexpensive electricity can be used to pump water, make fertilizer and power the refrigeration necessary to preserve fresh food. Inexpensive electricity would make it possible to make ammonia from air and sea water. It can be a fertilizer or a fuel.

So, solution No. 1 is geothermal for our island and for our state. Solution No. 2: biofuels for our trucks, buses, tractors and airplanes.

What industries might flourish and create jobs with cheaper energy? Hotels, restaurants, theaters, tours, casinos, sport fishing, even horseback riding would benefit from lower energy cost, enabling lower prices and increased profits. Hawaii is neatly positioned halfway between the major financial capitals of San Francisco and Hong Kong; it is a logical place for another center provided there is abundant reliable electricity for the servers and the luxuries the arbitragers are accustomed to. Computer server farms here could better connect the Pacific basin. It would lead to more efficient agriculture, to cultivate tropical crops like orchids, dragon fruit, avocados, vanilla and chocolate, as well as more staples locally like coffee, milk, ulu, kalo and eggs. Even meat production requires cheap energy to be competitive. Many need refrigeration as soon as they are harvested. Food grows where water flows, that takes energy. Research, medi­­cal, environmental, energy, astronomy, etc., laboratories and computers require controlled environments, air conditioning. Medicine, Hospitals are safer with air conditioning to minimize infection. The monitors and diagnostic equipment all consume power. Recycling takes energy to remelt and reprocess materials for reuse. We send it mainland now. Low-cost energy could bring some of that process and the associated jobs here. Iceland uses geothermal power to refine aluminum profitably, but they have more remote land to hide the smelter. Aviation fuel is most of the cost of an airline ticket. Some airlines might find it cost-effective to refuel in Hawaii rather than carry enough fuel for a nonstop trans-Pacific flight. As long as they are stopping here, people might decide to spend some time and money here, too. Distribution, Hawaii could become to the Pacific basin what Memphis (Fed Ex) is to North America. Education, imagine a four- year college in Kona across from NELHA.

Those are just the ones I can think of — today.

Ken Obenski is a Kaohe resident.