Scraping bottom of the oil barrel | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Scraping bottom of the oil barrel | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Sunday, November 19, 2006

COMMENTARY
Scraping bottom of the oil barrel

By Roger Davis

The Oct. 15 power outage reminded us of the stark inconveniences of life without electricity: no traffic lights, gas pumps, supermarkets or elevators, no convenient way to cook or refrigerate food. It was challenging to cope with this for a single day. Imagine what life would be like if these conditions lasted longer than 24 hours.

Island residents should exercise their imaginations on that point now while there's time to prevent that scenario from happening. Eighty-six percent of O'ahu's electricity comes from oil-fired turbines. World oil reserves are finite and on the road to exhaustion. And many analysts believe we are near the peak of a bell-shaped curve of global oil depletion. Almost half of all oil is now gone, and an accelerating usage rate driven by both the industrialized world and developing economies such as China will consume the last half far more quickly than the first.

Annual oil production will decline, perhaps sharply, over the next 10 to 30 years, and unsatisfied demand will force the price of oil out of the reach of many. Electricity in Hawai'i depends greatly upon oil, and when there is no more oil there will be virtually no electricity.

I believe that potential renewable energy solutions will exist in the near future, but whether we make the right decisions to leverage them in time is a different question. Liquid fuel scarcity will also disrupt agriculture and transportation, and global warming from increased coal consumption due to oil's decline will force us from the frying pan into a planetary fire. There is no single CO2-neutral energy technology that can satisfy our entire need but there are several that together might come close, including solar, biomass, ocean thermal and wind.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES

A solution will be far more likely if supportive policies are adopted:

Revoke the energy cost adjustment clause that permits Hawaiian Electric to charge consumers for any oil price increase. HECO has no incentive to abandon oil with such a built-in profit guarantee.

Implement a carbon tax on all fossil fuels in proportion to the CO2 released by their usage, focusing on oil-fired electricity and gasoline. This tax should be revenue-neutral, i.e., equivalent reductions in income and excise taxes would result in no overall tax increase. Taxpayers would possess the entirely new ability, however, to make voluntary positive energy choices that lower their taxes.

Require HECO to publish a credible long-term plan for transitioning from oil to sustainable non-fossil sources. It must be plausible with regard to both likely capacity of near-future renewable technologies and projected oil availability.

Require the state to publish a similar plan for energy use in other sectors such as transportation, shipping, agriculture, etc., prioritizing resources to maintain critical infrastructure in case of an energy shortfall.

Require all new home construction to include renewable energy generation technology sufficient to satisfy the home's energy demand. Solar photovoltaics are now capable of providing sufficient energy for most homes in Hawai'i at a cost less than what HECO charges over the system's lifetime and below 5 percent of the median home price, and are likely to become even cheaper soon.

Plan land use to ensure adequate agricultural resources for growing sufficient food and energy crops. Hawai'i's food supply today consists largely of imports shipped via oil.

Create a "feebate" system covering all car purchases and/or registrations. Pay a pro-rated rebate to owners whose cars exceed a certain efficiency, e.g., 30 miles per gallon, but charge a fee to those with guzzlers. The amount should be substantial on cars at either end of the scale, on the order of $5,000 per purchase or $500 per annual registration.

Government has always encouraged certain industries and public behavior through tax and criminal codes as well as foreign policy. Enormous public sums are spent to maintain a full battle fleet in the Persian Gulf to protect the oil supply, oil companies are getting record tax breaks in their most profitable era ever, and American blood is spilled daily in Iraq in an effort to stabilize the most oil-rich region of the world. The modest interventions suggested above hardly begin to level the playing field with the petroleum industry.

Environmentalists and the public also must recognize that an adequate energy supply is critical to our survival and its absence will lead to social disintegration, famine and habitat destruction. Efforts by HECO to create that supply must not be met with unreasonable objections over aesthetic concerns, which pale in comparison with the issues of climate change and energy scarcity.

Energy is the biggest problem we face in the coming decades and there is no excuse for it to become mired in partisan politics. It is not about culture wars but rather the ability to read the gas gauge in our communal car that is approaching "E" and realize that action is required now. It's about the survival of modern society as we know it and so deserves our very best effort.

Roger Davis is a software engineer for the University of Hawai'i;s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. The opinions expressed here are his own. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.

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