Richard Ha writes:
On Saturday, I was on a geothermal panel at the Hawai‘i
Island Democratic Party Convention, which was held at the Volcano Art Center.
Senator Brian Schatz speaking
Also
on the panel were State Senator Rus...
Richard Ha writes:
On Saturday, I was on a geothermal panel at the Hawai‘i
Island Democratic Party Convention, which was held at the Volcano Art Center.
Senator Brian Schatz speaking
Also
on the panel were State Senator Russell Ruderman and former Big Island Mayor Harry
Kim.
It went very well and I'm very optimistic. I think most of us just want to
do the best for all of us.
I made it a point to tell the audience that I went to O‘ahu
on behalf of the Big Island Community Coalition and testified in favor of four
geothermal bills. What the four bills had in common is that they all contained
provisions for “home rule.” I told the audience: This was so you could have a
say in the geothermal issue.
My main point was that we are competing with the world for
oil. And we need to seek a competitive advantage for the Big Island, and this
has to do with cost.
We all know that the price of oil price rise; it’s only a matter
of when, and how high. So if we can find a lowest cost solution, this will
protect us from a rising oil price. It does not matter what the alternative is,
so long as it gives us a competitive advantage.
Right now, it’s geothermal that has the potential for giving
us that competitive advantage, assuming we don’t drive up its cost so high that
we lose that advantage. Whether or not we achieve its potential is up to our
leaders and to the Puna community.
Here’s what I told the Democratic Party Convention:
We are on a search for
"competitive advantage" for the Big Island. Organisms, organizations
and civilizations do this – it is called “survival of the fittest.” It isn't
the strongest or the smartest that survive; it's the ones that can adapt –
Charles Darwin
My name is Richard Ha. I am a farmer here on the Big Island.
Together with our 70 workers, we farm 600 fee simple acres at Pepe‘ekeo. We
have produced multi-millions of pounds of bananas and tomatoes over the past 35
years.
In my search to find competitive advantage for my farm’s
future, I've now been to five Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)
conferences.
Here is what I took away from these conferences:
Oil
price quadrupled in the last 10 years.
The
last 11 recessions were associated with a spiking oil price.
Oil
is a finite resource.
The
world has been using three times the oil it has been finding for many years
now.
The
days of cheap oil are over.
The
cost to produce the marginal barrel of oil – the last barrel, as in shale oil
and tar sands – was $92 per barrel in 2011.
The
U.S. mainland uses oil for only two percent of its electrical generation. Hawai‘i uses
oil for more than 70 percent of its electrical generation.
Anything
manufactured on the mainland with cheap oil embedded makes our local producers
and manufacturers less competitive. This affects Ag products.
It
is not the supply or demand of oil that will cause the
greatest damage; it is the cost of
oil.
How
much time do we have? Because it is about oil cost, we have less time than we
think.
ELECTRICITY ON THE BIG ISLAND
Uses
180 MW at Peak.
Most
of the increase in electricity bills is caused by oil pass through.
Bio
mass – as in wood chips – and geothermal have base power potential.
Solar
and wind must add storage to become useful as base power.
Storage at utility scale is prohibitively expensive
today.
ECONOMY
Big
Island electricity rates have been 25 percent higher than O‘ahu’s rates for as
long as anyone can remember.
The
Big Island has the lowest median family income in the state.
The
Pahoa School Complex has, at 89 percent, the highest percent of students
participating in the free/reduced lunch program in the state. Ka‘u at 87
percent and Kea‘au at 86 percent are close behind.
Education is the best predictor of family income. Yet the Big
Island’s high electricity cost takes away from its education budget.
