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As the Honolulu forces gather to plunder the Big Island’s geothermal power via an expensive undersea cable system, local resistance is sounding off loudly. We the people of the Big Island of Hawai`i do not wish to put our people at great health risk to power our own grid. We certainly don’t wish to put ourselves in harm’s way for Oahu’s demands or the Governor’s re-election bid. If the State of Hawai`i intends to put our people in jeopardy to serve the utility monopoly, the Big Island residents will view this as an act of war on our island. This conflict will eclipse the Super Ferry resistance many times over.
Governor Abercrombie, clean the crud out of your ears and hear us, we are expressing our opposition week after week. The Governor is in a soundproof lobbyist bubble. When did the Big Island get all this extra energy?
Oahu is desperate to solve energy problems and energy demand issues. Fortunately there is plenty of sunshine, wind, and wave power available to meet these needs but the State has blinders on. There is nothing in this proposal to solve any problem we face. The Feed-in Tariff program will only add cost to any outside fuel we add to the grid. Thanks for looking out for us Public Utility Commission. They forget they work for us, not the utility from time to time.
The energy produced by geothermal is not cheap. You can build three nuclear power plants for the price of one geothermal plant. Guess who pays for that?
Geothermal power is not clean. They inject all kinds of toxic chemicals into the ground, thousands of gallons. The steam coming off the vents is not clean either. Puna Geothermal Venture sits in the middle of a residential district. NO geothermal plant in the world is sited so close to people’s homes, due to the negative impacts people may suffer from uncontrolled venting events or long term exposure to hydrogen sulfide. Here in Hawai`i, we live right next door and ignore the EPA guidelines. Logic: What people don’t know is hurting them, won’t hurt them.
Geothermal is not renewable. The holes they drill are only useful for so long and they need to drill another. Drilling the well is the most dangerous part of the operation.
This is the political reality; the Big Island of Hawai`i has less than 200,000 people living here. Oahu is the most densely populated city in the country with about one million people. If all the people on the Big Island join together to fight this, and Oahu voters still don’t care about the impacts to our island, we will lose this fight. We need all the neighbor islands and our friends on the mainland to join us in this struggle.
Hawai`i County Council and Mayor, look at each other and try to wrap your head around the idea that we need to unite on this. We cannot spare one Judas official in this battle. There will be no political advantage to turning your back on our residents. We are watching you too closely now and we will know what we see. If our local government won’t stand for the safety of the residents, it is a violation of the concept of social contract.
If the people of the Big Island and local government unite to fight this attempt to “drink our milk shake” regardless of the impact on our island and people, but the State still refuses to listen, we will view this as an act of war. There will be a reaction that will make all other political uprisings in the state’s recent history seem like nothing. Precedent has already been set on this. The biggest political protest in this state’s history was over geothermal exploration in the Puna district. Thousands protested, and hundreds were arrested for this cause. They still live here, and more have come to join the battle since then. Business knows how tricky it can be to operate in this state with the local resistance groups we have. Governor Abercrombie, you are playing with matches in a sulfur mine. Back off.
Hawaiian Electric wants to control the new green energy grid. They know their fuel is obsolete so they intend to sell their power plant on the Big Island and maintain the grid as their primary business. Of course this new green grid will need to be updated at the expense of the tax payers and utility customers of the state. Why do we allow them to control what we pay for? They want to make money off of our grid? That’s right you heard it, whose grid? OUR GRID! If we have to pay for improvements, it is ours. We demand democratic control of OUR GRID. What we have now is a collusion between the state and corporation and the Public Utility Commission is where the line between state and corporation have blurred. This in not how it is supposed to work in this country.
Call the Governor, your state Representative and Senator and tell them to listen to us. Tell them how big this mistake will be. If you live on a neighbor island, this is your fight too. They are coming for geothermal on Maui and wind farms on Molokai and Lanai. If you live in Honolulu, stand with us. There are better ways to get the energy you need without lining the pockets of so many as they did with the rail project.
16 Comments
Awesome job, Dan…! Much Mahalos…!
Good take-down of enhanced geothermal. I’m not sure, but I think Google and others have pulled their initial investments. I still have hopes for it, but as you point out it’s a very centralized operation.
Genuine conservatives preach diversification and decentralization. Renewables such as solar panels, concentrated solar, wind, and wave meet those.
I have heard Hawaii is a good place for OTEC, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. The key is that the islands are extremely close to extremely deep (cold) water. Again, it’s pretty centralized.
Solar Fire P32 is a low-tech, open source form of concentrated solar. Even on the islands, the parts probably won’t cost more than $3,000 grand. They claim it will hit temps of 700 Celsius. You can use the thermal energy directly in industry or use something like a Sterling engine to generate electricity.
Infinia’s Power Dish is a slick looking high-tech, patented form of concentrated solar that uses their Stirling to harvest the heat for electricity.
I can’t see the video right now, and I don’t know how geothermal works, but it sounds a lot like fracking, and if your water supply is poisoned I wouldn’t call it green energy.
I just saw The Sky is Pink, Josh Fox’s (Gasland) 18-min video letter to Gov. Cuomo on Rolling Stone – Cuomo is floating plans to permit fracking in the southern part of the state, gets fracking toe in door. Suggest HI and NY and CA (Southern California – e.g., Sunrise Powerlink, Ocotillo wind project – see comments and links in this diary’s thread) are in the same bad spot, watching helplessly as we are railroaded into giant destructive projects overpromised as green that actually lock us into dirty energy dependence on megacompanies. Railroaded is a good term – think RR barons, monopolies, corporations uber alle. Suggest you watch Sky is Pink and pay attention to the concrete casings fail graphs. They’re supposed to last forever, but they start failing from the minute they’re put in. The oil drilling disasters like BP in the Gulf are due to concrete failure.
solidarity
The governor of Hawaii not being a household name around most of the country — quick! name the governors of fifteen states — I suggest that the designation Gov. be added to future headlines about this man and subject. When I first saw the title in the list of Recent Posts I thought it must have something to do with some boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch.
Should also add that when the concrete casings fail, there’s no fix to unpoison your water supply.
Also, I remember a 2008 article about a public meeting about a proposed toll road that would have wiped out the Trestles surf spot here in California — at least 2,000 people turned out.
The public’s “collective need to innovate solutions” — not stand aside while giant energy corporations dominate the choices and wreck the environment.
Good luck, keep us posted.
Any time you see “Sterling Engine” you know it’s bullshit.
Any fool can raise steam from the sun. Converting it into electricity is difficult.
If you need electricity, then I have know investors who will build and operate wind turbines. They are already in business somewhere in your state.
Like the Pattern Ocotillo wind project in California, story linked to by Fatster in May 20 Roundup diary @3? Let’s look. Big promises, big hooey, too bad endangered bighorn sheep and Native American ancestors and everyone else:
These giant megaprojects on public lands are greenwashed corporate welfare hopium of the finest Cheney. Tell me about small and local instead that doesn’t require giant transmission lines and captive consumers. That’s where we need to go. See thread discussion on Naked Capitalism here. Too long to quote it all, but small, local, private, rooftop — “Massive redundancy IS nature’s way.”
To put this in a more personal context, think of when one Homer Simpson dude can black out all of Southern California and part of Mexico — like that’ll never happen — oh wait, remember last September? The 500 kV Line And The Outage
“Giant transmission lines” already exist and deliver power to SoCal.
The come from the Hoover Dam.
Please go and educate yourself about power distribution.
Yes the transmission lines are a potential target. So is every other piece of Civilian infrastructure, and there is one hell of a lot of it. All unprotected and all vulnerable, a few need 767s as demolition equipment.
Which leads me to conclude THERE ARE NO TERRORIST CELLS IN THE US.
Those are a lot of unreferenced claims. Per the Wikipedia:
Care to provide references?
In Hawaii county we pay the highest rates in the U.S. at between .40KWH and .43KWH, the U.S. average is 9.7KWH last time I checked.
Report: Hawaii’s electricity cost is highest in the nation
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/138411179.html?id=138411179
In Hawaii county 20% of our power comes from geothermal yet we pay much more than Honolulu that gets its power from oil.
Geothermal in Hawaii is not cheap.
It’s certainly not clean, hereis just a few of the sources that prove that.
This one was done in Puna Hawaii
Health Effects from Chronic Low-Level Exposure
to Hydrogen Sulfide
http://punapono.com/docs/Legator.pdf
Tapping Earth’s Geothermal Energy: “Green” Panacea Or Pandora’s Box?
http://oregon.sierraclub.org/groups/juniper/library/Documents/Geothermal%20Energy%204-08.pdf
Elsewhere in the world, geothermal’s record has also produced environmental harms, with reports of toxic atmospheric emissions, harmful health impacts, water pollution, and damaged crops and fisheries. Citizen activists from California to the Philippines are fighting geothermal plants. However, discovering information raising questions about geothermal’s environmental track record is difficult with web searches flooded by industry sites.
In 1978 NIOSH found that an “unknown toxic agent” occurring within geothermal steam or used to control pollution emissions was causing skin rashes and respiratory problems. In a more recent study in the mid 1980’s by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal-OSHA), deposits of arsenic and vanadium dust were found after a malfunction in the steam cleaning process. The arsenic tests showed concentrations of 430 ppm – over two times the state’s safety standard. Vanadium, for which test results showed concentrations of 4,200 ppm, had no set safety standard, though it is a known toxin. While cleaning up a chemical spill resulting from the malfunction, twenty-four workers developed nosebleeds, nausea, and other illness symptoms. Of these 13 were unable to work for “an average of two weeks.”
Hawaii Residents Raise Serious Concerns about PGV, Geothermal Energy’s Clean Energy Credentials
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/28/hawaii-residents-raise-serious-concerns-about-pgv-geothermal-energys-clean-energy-credentials/
Low-level hydrogen sulfide and
central nervous system dysfunction
http://punapono.com/docs/Kilburn1.pdf
Kaye H Kilburn et al, 2010, “The precautionary principle recommends that smelling this gas is a warning that should be heeded by people to evacuate quickly.”
HEALTH CONSULTATION
PUNA GEOTHERMAL VENTURE
PAHOA (PUNA DISTRICT), HAWAII COUNTY, HAWAII
CERCLIS NO. HID984469536
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/pha/pha.asp?docid=1036&pg=0
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Division of Health Assessment and Consultation
Atlanta, Georgia
Hawaii’s Rainforest Crunch: Land, People, and Geothermal Development
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/hawaiis-rainforest-crunch-land-people-and-geothermal-development
Did Hawaii Geothermal Developer Benefit from Illegal Bailout?
http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/6395/Did-Hawaii-Geothermal-Developer-Benefit-from-Illegal-Bailout.aspx?utm_source=March+25%2C+2012+news+from+Hawaii+Free+Press&utm_campaign=March+25+2012+Email&utm_medium=email
a US House committee report shows that Ormat benefitted from its close ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and profited from a potentially illegal $98.5M bailout of an Ormat geothermal project in Nevada.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on September 23, 2011, that DOE finalized a $350 million partial loan guarantee for three geothermal power plants owned by Ormat Nevada, Inc.
250 page pdf report on cumulative health effects of repeated low-level H2S exposure by the Science and Standards Branch of Alberta Environment, Canada: “background information on hydrogen sulphide … identify[ing] knowledge gaps about the health effects of hydrogen sulphide and may be useful in designing future research projects….”
HEALTH EFFECTS
OF
HYDROGEN
SULPHIDE:
http://environment.gov.ab.ca/info/library/6708.pdf
It would never work. Then the anti wind turbine NIMBYs will be out. Doesn’t matter what option they eventually take, somebody isn’t going to like it.
PS: I wasn’t evaluating or commenting on the relative pros and cons of geothermal, just pointing out that the solution doesn’t matter in this context because no matter what the ultimate solution is, there are going to be critics. In the case of Hawai’i, the toxic gases associating with geothermal generation are insignificant compared to what the volcano pours into the atmosphere every day. I’m sure I don;t need to remind you that you live on the side of an ERUPTING volcano in a decades long active cycle so imo, you sorta gave up your right to gripe about geothermal toxins by just living there.
Appreciate your take. You have infinitely more experience/understanding than I. Apologize for uncritically implying that turning thermal energy into electricity was a simple or efficient process.
Did you read any of the things I linked to? This thread may be dead now, but in case it’s not, I think it’s important to clarify what I was saying.
It’s all right, I don’t click every link either.
Yes, there are existing power lines. Yes, that’s the energy model we are all tied into now. But we desperately need to change and do better.
Why build the Sunrise Powerlink, when the Southwest Powerlink already exists and is underutilized? Why make green promises that aren’t promises at all and aren’t fulfilled?
and
Watch the video — educate yourself “:-)
The point of the Sunrise Powerlink, as I understand it, is that it opens a new line from Mexico to Los Angeles, and that dirty and dangerous LNG energy will be imported via Mexican ports. We’ll be locked in and stay dependent on dirty energy and dirty politics. Global warming? Not mentioned.
If you clicked the Naked Capitalism link, you would see this back-and-forth about independent, truly green solutions — jumping in the middle:
Gotta go, will check back later. Hope this helps clarify what I was trying to say. If local/rooftop would work for San Diego, it would work for Hawaii, it would work for New York and Pennsylvania — anyplace with sun and sky — everywhere — and suddenly the govt/energy megacompany model, and not the 900 remaining bighorn sheep, would be the endangered species. THAT’S the choice.