COMMENTARY
Hawai'i has fuel to power energy revolution
By Mike May
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It is an often repeated adage that the Chinese character for "crisis" is the same character for "opportunity." What we have in energy use in Hawai'i is a great opportunity to demonstrate the power of that adage. Hawai'i can lead the world in the area of renewable energy and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and in the process become a vibrant and healthy economy with a dramatically improved environment. Dreaming? Not from where we sit.
You have all heard that Hawai'i is more oil dependent than any other state. That's very true. What is not looked at is that other states have equally large dependencies on other fuel sources. A number of states have very large dependencies on coal, on natural gas, on nuclear power or on hydropower from dams. The fact is that those dependencies are very hard to change and cannot easily be made environmentally friendlier. They are what they are and their impact on their environment will remain the same for many, many years to come.
Our path can be dramatically different. Ironically, in our dominant use of oil lies Hawai'i's opportunity to alter the equation. What we have the opportunity to do in Hawai'i, unique in the United States, is to substitute fuels.
Crisis to opportunity. Oil to biofuels; biodiesel and ethanol.
We can move our power plants from using oil to using biofuels.
We can move our cars from 10 percent ethanol, which we already have, to 85 percent ethanol, which Brazil has done.
We can take one of our greatest vulnerabilities, an oil-based economy, and turn it into one of our greatest assets — a home-grown (pun intended) agricultural energy-based economy for Hawai'i. No other state has this opportunity and it will be a disgrace if we do not take advantage of it.
So what will it take to make this future happen?
We need tax incentives for growers and processors; tradeoffs for the urban development of acreage in the form of long-term commitments to agricultural use as a condition for the urbanization of any land; resolution of water issues; the rebuilding of the irrigation systems; and long-term commitments to take the products for use in our transportation and power sectors.
Hawai'i needs to lead the U.S. and the world in committing to a simultaneous long-term commitment to substituting our oil-based fuels for biofuels, and especially for using locally grown biofuels.
With that, we also need to maintain our strong commitment to conservation and energy efficiency, each of which must be part of our energy portfolio as well.
Biofuels have been a personal dream of mine for a decade. We have worked with the University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture on crop issues and the College of Business Administration on the financial case. We have worked with the mayor and the Legislature and the administration on these issues, and we are now on the verge of making it happen.
We need to believe in the opportunity before us, we need to believe in ourselves, and we need to act.
We at Hawaiian Electric, Maui Electric, and Hawaii Electric Light Co. are absolutely committed to this future and will do everything we can to make it happen. Crisis to opportunity; opportunity to action.
Mike May is president and chief executive officer of Hawaiian Electric Co. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
