Three months after launching a green jobs training program, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1186 and the Electrical Contractors Association of Hawaii say they have seen steady demand and interest even with relatively few projects in the pipeline for their members.

IBEW Local 1186 has held four courses, each 13 hours in length, to train journeymen and apprentices in the latest green technology. The courses are spread out over several days and are kept relatively small — between 10 and 15 students.

Feedback from most of the union’s 3,500 members has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Damien Kim, business manager and financial secretary for IBEW Local 1186.

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The soon-to-be systems owners will be selected from a list of those who sign up to be a “friend” of Blue Planet by Dec. 20 at www.blueplanetfoundation.org and the winners will be announced Dec. 22. The installations will take place in early 2009. The solar giveaway is one in a series of programs Blue Planet Foundation will be rolling out over the next year to decrease household energy use in Hawaii.

“Blue Planet Foundation approached us to discuss the best way to help ten families go solar as a holiday gift, and we knew a good idea when we heard it,” says Mark Duda, Suntech Hawaii’s vice president of finance. “By not only doing the system design and installation, but also making a contribution ourselves, Suntech Hawaii is able to drive the system cost down to zero for those 10 families.”

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The state will also use this opportunity to launch the inaugural Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit & Expo to provide nations throughout the region an opportunity to share renewable energy policies, best practices, new technologies and innovations.

“Hosting this annual conference provides us with an opportunity to build on our bilateral trade and investment relationships so that we can grow stronger partnerships,” said Governor Linda Lingle. “Having clean energy be a major focus of next year’s Joint Conference will emphasize the role we must play as a model for the Pacific Rim.”

“By focusing the topic of the conference on clean energy, the event is expected to draw upwards of 1,000 government, business and research participants,” said DBEDT Director Theodore E. Liu. “As the worldwide importance of the Asia-Pacific region grows, the need for economic cooperation between Korea and the U.S. Pacific states increases.” Government policymakers, industry professionals, suppliers and customers, and consultants are the targeted audience for this important summit.

“As the Asia-Pacific region sets an aggressive course towards energy independence, we have much to learn from each other. Energy is the number one challenge we face in our region, as well as by nations around the world,” Liu said. “Our solar, wind, wave, geothermal, climate and marine resources serve as the foundation for an economy based on renewable energy.”

For more information on conference participation or sponsorship, please contact Jamie Lum of DBEDT at 808-587-2753 or see the web-site http://asiapacificcleanenergy.com.

Background on the Korea-Pacific U.S. States Joint Conference:

In 2002, the Governors of the five Pacific U.S. states—Alaska, California, Hawai‘i, Oregon and Washington formally recognized the importance of the relationship with Korea, and made a commitment to strengthen that relationship.

The Joint Conference between Korea and the Pacific states was created to foster trade, investment and economic cooperation between the two regions. In 2006, Idaho joined the consortium.

The Korea-Pacific U.S. States Joint Conference is sponsored by the Korea-U.S. Economic Council (KUSEC) and the six Pacific states.

This year’s Joint Conference will be held in Seoul and Jeju, Korea, November 14-15, 2008.

KUSEC is a private, non-profit organization under the auspices of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), whose purpose is to promote economic cooperation between Korea and the United States. KUSEC is supported by leading Korean corporations and economic organizations, and exercises significant influence in both private and public sectors.

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The agreement, which the governor called “historical and transformational,” includes multiple commitments from both the state and the utility to reduce regulatory roadblocks to reach the state’s energy independence goals more quickly.

The agreement was announced at the State Capitol by Lingle and Hawaiian Electric Industries CEO Constance Lau, with U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, in attendance. Highlights include:

• HECO will add 1,100 megawatts of renewable energy to its portfolio, including 700 megawatts within the next five years.

• HECO will speed up so-called purchase power agreements. Currently, these contracts for buying renewable energy such as wind and solar take several years to negotiate.

• HECO will request approval from the state Public Utilities Commission by July 2009 for a feed-in tariff system. The system would require the utility to publish in advance the rates it will pay for renewable power, and in effect, encourage investors to put money into renewable energy projects.

• A ban on increasing infrastructure for power plants that run on fossil fuels.

• HECO will lift its caps on net-energy metering for residential and commercial renewable energy projects. Net-energy metering refers to selling back excess energy to the utility’s grid.

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That’s not a problem that’s garnering much attention because, frankly, there are a lot of places in this country to bury our trash.
But across the Pacific Ocean it’s a real concern — right now.

The landfill on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu is running out of room. It will be full in 15 years if nothing changes. The Honolulu City Council wants to have 100,000 tons of trash a year shipped to Washington state for disposal in Klickitat County. The folks who run the Klickitat landfill, the largest in our state, are eager to receive the garbage because it means a lot of green in their pockets. The Klickitat dump is the major business in that area as it gets paid to dispose of the garbage. It also converts methane from the waste into electricity.

In the short term, Hawaii’s solution might make sense. It is buying the island’s people some time. But shipping tons of garbage from Hawaii to the mainland, or even from state to state as New York is doing with its garbage shipments to Alaska, is not a sustainable solution. It may take many decades, but our trash capacity will one day be exhausted. In addition, shipping tons of trash could be an environmental hazard waiting to happen.
If the garbage barge were to sink at sea there would be an uproar. And if a barge had problems in the Columbia River, which it would have to travel to get to Klickitat County, the environment could be severely damaged. Sure, the possibility of disaster is remote, but it is possible. We’ve got to find an efficient way to get rid of our trash that results in a positive for society. Klickitat County’s methane to electricity is on the right track.

So, too, is Hawaii’s H-Power plant, which generates electricity using garbage as fuel. Right now Hawaii’s operation is too small to burn all of Oahu’s trash. A new boiler is planned that will allow all the garbage to be burned and extend the life of the island’s landfill to 30 years as only the ashes would have to be dumped in the dump.

The mainland has far more time to deal with this problem, but at some point we will be in the same boat (or is that trash barge?) as Hawaii.
The mainland should keep an eye on Hawaii as it deals with its serious garbage issue. If Hawaii finds a workable solution, the entire nation would benefit.

Hawaii’s most populated island is already running out of room to bury garbage.

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In 1881, King David Kalakaua had the bright idea of using Hawaii’s fiery volcanoes to produce electricity and light the streets. It took technology the next century to catch up with the visionary king.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, nearly 20 percent of the electricity we consume is produced naturally by tapping the Earth’s heat. It is firm, strong power that the island truly depends upon, enough to continually power 20,000 residences.

When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, heat from the Earth’s interior is always available.

Puna’s geothermal power station delivers 30 megawatts of power, with potential to deliver much more. (Photo: Puna Geothermal Venture)

Puna Geothermal Venture, the only commercial geothermal facility in the state, has been generating sustainable electricity for the Big Island for 15 years.

Under a Power Purchase Agreement with Hawaii Electric Light Company, PGV sends all the electricity it produces—30 megawatts—to the utility. It could provide much more.

The slopes of Kilauea Volcano are the state’s best resource.  The only other island with significant geothermal resources is Maui, but its potential is considerably less.

Geothermal electricity:

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Using Hawaii based company Sopogy’s system known as Micro Concentrated Solar Power technologies, this solar farm will be the first of its kind in the world.

"MicrosopCSP technologies combine the efficiencies of traditional Concentrated Solar Power collectors but incorporate new key elements that are required for operation in Hawaii," said Darren T. Kimura, President and CEO of Sopogy.

Those key elements include; a stronger more durable frame with the capability of operating in high temperatures and the new MicrosopCSP system will also enable Hawaii’s contractors to install and service the system themselves.

Using reflectors and optics to harness the energy from the sun the new system allows generated heat to pass through a turbine and thus produce electricity.

Those at Sopogy believe their new solar power technology if spread far enough could collect enough power for the Big Island and Maui. The first phase which is currently under way will produce power for 100 Hawaii homes and subsequent phases will follow. In its entirety, the project will generate 1 megawatt which will off set over 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. They believe that no matter what it will create, clean, renewable power for Hawaii.

"Our technologies create energy from the sun, a sustainable and renewable energy resource and will help Hawaii break its bonds to imported fossil fuel,"said Kimura.

The Sopogy system was initially modeled after a similar project that was very successful in the Mojave Desert in the mid 1980′s.

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So what would it take to replace the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil? Roughly 4.2 billion solar rooftops, 3 million wind turbines, 2,500 nuclear power plants or 200 Three Gorges Dams, according to Menlo Park, Calif., nonprofit research institute SRI International.

In other words, no single category of renewable energy is growing anywhere near the speed it needs to bear the full brunt of displacing carbon-emitting fossil fuels anytime soon.

Barring a major technology breakthrough, every category of renewable energy will need to grow as rapidly as possible to make a serious dent in the twin challenges of clean energy and climate change. But another, less discussed factor–one familiar to oil companies–is also crucial: developing in the best places.

Just as with oil, gas and hydroelectric, some places are just better than others for generating different types of power. "What feedstock is available at what cost is totally a regional thing," says Pat Gruber, chief executive of Pasadena, Calif.-based biofuels start-up Gevo.

In Texas, for instance, that means wind. Although legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens stole the spotlight with his plans to build the world’s largest wind farm slightly north of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle, the state’s most powerful wind energy resources remain untapped. The mountain passes and ridge tops of the Trans Pecos have the highest average wind speeds in Texas. The mountains in the state’s northwest region roll off the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains, and a maze of mountains and valleys funnel the wind into extreme speeds by the time they pass over ridge crests and mountain tops of the Guadalupe and Davis mountains.

Meanwhile, many areas with abundant wind power resources in one season have almost no wind resources in others. For example, during the winter, the Judith Gap Energy Center in Wheatland County, Mont., one of the top-producing wind farms in the U.S., supplies a little over 8% of Northwestern’s Power Grid. It supplies far less during the summer months.

Although solar energy varies less from season to season than wind energy, it still depends heavily on local environmental conditions. The town of Inyokern in southern California has the best environmental conditions in the country. Ensconced on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Inyokern covers 11 square miles of Kern County in the dust-choked Mojave Desert. Those 11 square miles receive more solar insolation annually than any other comparably sized locale in North America.

FPL Energy recently announced plans to build a massive 2,000-acre solar power plant in the area called the Beacon Solar Energy Project. Construction on the project is scheduled to begin in 2009 and last about two years.

While wind and solar sites may seem fairly obvious to most people, biomass and geothermal probably don’t.

For current commercial processes, the highest concentration of biomass is in the Corn Belt states of Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. But the long-term prospects for biomass are best with non-food based feedstocks such as switchgrass, wood chips and forest residues.

Geothermal energy is buried miles deep underground and is, for all practical purposes, impossible to find without a fair amount of technical knowledge, testing and so forth. Hot springs are perhaps the most recognizable signs of geothermal energy stored under the Earth’s surface in any specific area. The desert hot springs of the American Southwest and the geysers of California are near geothermal energy resources.

Hawaii and Alaska also have substantial geothermal resources. In Hawaii, the Puna Geothermal power plant sits about 21 miles south of Hilo on the Big Island on the Kilauea Volcano. The geothermal plant provides roughly 30% of the Big Island’s power.

While there is no doubt that wind, solar and geothermal have ample energy to power the planet–the sunlight that hits Earth in a single hour contains enough energy to fuel the human population for a year–they will need years to mature before they reach anything approaching their potential. Oil has had more than a century to mature, and its shortcomings remain painfully obvious even now.

The U.S. spends roughly $1 trillion each year–approximately 10% of gross domestic product–on the fuel needed to power 114 million households, 82 billion square feet of commercial building space, 130 million cars, 95 million trucks and the countless computers, ovens and alarm clocks that drive the metabolism of the modern economy. If there is a cheap and clean energy source out there, odds are someone–looking in the right place–will find it.

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The Keahole Solar Power concentrated solar farm will break ground Wednesday at NELHA, in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island. The project is using $10 million in state-backed special-purpose revenue bonds, approved during the 2007 legislative session.

Honolulu-based Sopogy said the solar farm will be built in phases over several acres and is the first of its kind to use the company’s MicroCSP technologies.

The company said it had been conducting research and development, as well as waiting for permits to construct the solar farm.

Once the first phase of the project is completed, Keahole Solar Power will produce electricity for over 100 homes. The one-megawatt solar farm will be capable of powering 500 homes and offsetting over 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the company said.

Unlike photovoltaic cells that convert light to electricity, Sopogy’s proprietary solar technology uses curved mirrors to intensify and focus the sun’s energy to heat mineral oil, which is then used to drive turbines and generate electricity.

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The 4,800-mile voyage, which began in Honolulu in March, ended when Kenichi Horie’s three-ton yacht docked in Wakayama in western Japan last night.

"The sea was so calm, and the weather was so great throughout my journey. That’s why it took me so long," he said.

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