10-30-2012, 12:49 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Rob Tucker
Financially I liked Yagong's proposal where a WTE facility would pay the county (we taxpayers) instead of the County funding a $100 million project.
How does Kenoi or Kim propose to handing the financial?
I am trying to learn a thousand things at once, so can't claim to know every single detail of Hawaii legislative functions. But, HPOWER is owned by Honolulu county, designed, built and operated by a private contractor, Covanta. There is some mechanism for Hawaii counties to own power generation sources (hate to even bring this up but there was a time when Hawaii county was part owner of PGV). Processing of municipal waste comes under county responsibilities and probably paid for with a combination of state and local taxes.
Kenoi has already informally raised this dollar amount with Inouye and Inouye has indicated no problem with the dollar figure.
The driver here is the Hilo landfill is a few years away from being filled up. The county has to do something, so there are funds being lined up with the state ready to allocate the majority. The county council is studying what to do: 1)truck to Kona, 2)build a new Hilo landfill, 3) waste-to-energy. This is being handled by a lame duck county council.
This is the status of the municipal waste study headed by Smart, who goes out at the beginning of next year. The range in cost for waste-to-energy was questioned and a follow-up study was requested:
quote:
The study calculated the cost of hauling rubbish to West Hawaii at $52 to $72 per ton, compared with $92 to $110 at a new Hilo landfill or $80 to $210 per ton at a waste-to-energy plant.
Again, the primary purpose of a waste-to-energy plant is to reduce the rubbish needing to go to landfills. The secondary purpose is provide fuel to create electricity, which can be sold, and to produce an aggregate of recyclable material, which also is sold. The net effect of this is the plant pays itself off fairly rapidly and becomes a source of income after that. Plasma converters make this payoff even more lucrative for the county.
Honolulu considers HPOWER to be a huge success and is expanding it even more. This is incinerator technology, which can't handle large volumes of plastic, old tires, toxic liquids, many other materials that plasma converters can process. Here are just some statements about HPOWER:
quote:
HECO will pay H-Power 6 cents to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on time of day and total power provided, plus 5 cents per kilowatt-hour capacity payment for electricity during peak hours from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The price is linked to an external price index. H-Power is paid the nonescalating capacity fee because it provides firm power when it is needed. Hawaiian Electric takes no mark up or profit on energy purchased from vendors such as H-Power.
In 22 years of operation, the facility has processed more than 13 million tons of waste, reduced the need for 15 million barrels of imported oil, saved 500 hundred acres of land otherwise used for landfills and recovered 450,000 tons of metals for recycling -- the equivalent of four aircraft carriers.
You can't be "AGIN' EVERYTHIN'!", then wonder "WHY THE DANG BLAMIN' HELL AIN'T NUTTIN' HAPPENIN'?"
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*