no wood-fired grid power for you!

[randomq]

Not sure about 30 year life solar panels, but lead-acid batteries are 100% recyclable. Go off grid!

[MarkP]

Personally, I'm done with lead acid batteries. Sure they are recyclable, and I have been recycling them every 2 to 3 years! I am obviously failing to care for them properly but I am going to LiFePO4 batteries and not looking back.

[terracore]

What kind of lead acid batteries have you been using?

[leilanidude]

One could argue that the cutting/trucking/etc part isn't carbon neutral
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To be fair, there is no reason why the trucks could not be electric. It isn't like they have to go a long way from the plant location.

[MarkP]

Started out with golf cart batteries. Have a set of Deka L16s now.

[Chunkster]

Once again, our incompetent state government has not followed its own regulations. Imagine that! The really sad thing is that the energy this project would produce is indeed renewable and sustainable by most standards. Trees sequester carbon and grow quite well on the windward side of this island.

If you look beyond the front men (environmentalists) opposing this, the real opposition has come from nearby residents. The location has been zoned industrial since plantation days, but nearby residents don't want it used for its intended purpose. Some of these people have been there since those times, but others bought homes there since then and should have known about the zoning through disclosure or due diligence. Typical Hawaii combination of NIMBY and incompetent government.

[geochem]

quote:

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Originally posted by Chunkster

Once again, our incompetent state government has not followed its own regulations. Imagine that! The really sad thing is that the energy this project would produce is indeed renewable and sustainable by most standards. Trees sequester carbon and grow quite well on the windward side of this island.

If you look beyond the front men (environmentalists) opposing this, the real opposition has come from nearby residents. The location has been zoned industrial since plantation days, but nearby residents don't want it used for its intended purpose. Some of these people have been there since those times, but others bought homes there since then and should have known about the zoning through disclosure or due diligence. Typical Hawaii combination of NIMBY and incompetent government.

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Certainly, I wouldn't disagree with you on your assessment, but there's another element as well: Hawai'i's prevailing judicial philosophy seems to be "no whiner shall be denied...". Why Life of the Land should be given standing in a PUC proceeding is beyond me. They have no special knowledge or expertise to asses the technology and have no more vested interest in the production of power than any average citizen.

[leilanidude]

If you look beyond the front men (environmentalists) opposing this, the real opposition has come from nearby residents.
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While that is true, the PUC should not approve any new energy projects that do not end up lowering the cost of energy to the consumer.

[Frank]

Why Life of the Land should be given standing in a PUC proceeding is beyond me. They have no special knowledge or expertise to asses the technology and have no more vested interest in the production of power than any average citizen.

good question/observation geo...additionally,

What special knowledge or expertise does the PUC have to to asses the technology presented to insure Fed EPA standards for ambient air quality are met and maintained? Does the DOH answer to the PUC when environmental concerns (air quality) are raised?

[glinda]

Why Life of the Land should be given standing..

Boy, what a slippery slope. If concerned citizens, groups, are not given standing, able to become party to matters of their concern, we might as well let Putin run the show. Methinks it brings shame on anyone that would suggest otherwise.

Interestingly, the courts, at least here in Hawaii, have always granted concerned citizens standing. Otherwise there are all sorts of boondoggles we would have been saddled with.

If the evil carbon is the excuse to stop this monstrosity

I see this project as an echo, a reflection, of days gone by. A last ditch effort to capitalize on something envisioned many moons ago that never really panned out, and now is an outdated modality.

Eucalyptus has been a part of the state's forestry vision since before there was a state. In days gone by there were studies done, plots planted with several different varieties in several different configurations. All with an eye towards determining which would be the fastest growing and yield the most etc. And ultimately, when Hamakua Sugar went under and Kam Schools picked up all their land, they too were suckered into believing in their flawed vision. Now, after the latest debacle with LHF Lopiwa LLC there are thousands of acres of the stuff that Kam Schools hoped would be picked up by CN Renewable Resources LLC (the sister company to Hu Honua Bioenergy) that now, with this latest ruling, probably is not going to happen any time soon. All told we'll probably have large tracks of eucalyptus growing wild all over the East side of the island into the foreseeable future.

One hundred years ago Jack London was a part of an effort to get farmers in California to grow eucalyptus. Promoting it as a fast growing hardwood that had all sorts of uses, all of which turned out to be bogus. Even as far back as 1902 the U.S. Department of Agriculture was promoting its virtues with their bulletin, “Eucalypts Cultivated in the United States“ which can be read here..

https://books.google.com/books?id=od3NAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA1&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

And all those wonders, the herbal remedies, the valuable timber, failed to materialize when put into practice. But for whatever reason, Hawaii bought into it and, unlike folks on the mainland, has never really let go.

After early visions of eucalyptus as a dimensional hardwood proved to be fruitless Hawaii continued to grow it for it's fiber alone. Admittedly it is a very fast growing tree, and the state has at times run a reasonable enterprise with it. Until it burnt down in the early '80s there was a wood chipping plant in Kawaihae that processed what seemed like an endless stream of the stuff. All being trucked in from stands in Hamakua and the Hilo area. And, as long as gas was cheap and nobody cared about carbon emissions, all was to the good.

Today, without all the other humbug, just the idea that we would create a reliance on logging trucks and deforestation does not make any sense any more. Add to that all the other concerns and I have a hard time imagining this is the way to go to fulfill our goals of weening ourselves off of CO2. Even if Geochem is right, and sequestering were to be built into the process, why would we want something as outdated, and as cumbersome, as this when we could create the same energy so much easier, and cleaner, with other technologies?

Now, if we were to acknowledge that the land is better cleared of the eucalyptus and put into other more meaningful practices (Kam Schools talks of not replanting eucalyptus once they find someone to clear what is there, and go with a diversified ag model) I could see this as a practical way to dispose of the trees we no longer want. But that will only last so many years, and is certainly not going to recoup the investors money, and provide them the profits they hope to reap into the future. As such, I suspect all involved, the investors and the rest of us, are better off looking elsewhere for our energy needs in the future.

I still would like to see geothermal gain ground, not in Puna, the area is already given over to other land uses, but the back side of Hualalai is a wide open, and not impacting anyone, space. With a more stable (assumed) heat resource than all that active volcanic stuff along Kilauea's East Rift, we could power the whole state with that.. but no, that too has been ruled out, or so it seems.

list of the emissions the diesel fired plants emit

Do we actually have plants that burn diesel? I thought we burn the waste oil left over from the creation of fuels at the refinery on Oahu. Am I wrong?