Hawaii's Geothermal Resources: A Reassessment

[opihikao]

FYI: Just found this announcement tonight. A scientific presentation on geothermal in Hawai'i tomorrow in Hilo.


Aloha all – please join us tomorrow (April 2nd) for the next presentation in the Hilo Seminar Series. The title of the talk is “Hawaii's Geothermal Resources: A Reassessment”, presented by Dr. Don Thomas, Geochemist, and Director of Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes. As usual the presentation will be from 12:00 – 1:00 PM (bring your lunch!) at the USDA Forest Service, Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, 60 Nowelo St., Hilo. [mauka from Komohana St. and ‘Imiloa area]

“Hawaii relies on petroleum for more than 80% of its electricity generation. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that this dependency comes at a significant environmental cost, and an expanding economic cost, to our residents; in recognition of these costs Hawaii’s political and community leaders have encouraged expanded development of alternative energy resource that are available to us. One of these alternatives is volcanic heat that is stored deep within... some of Hawaii’s active and dormant volcanoes. Early research, begun more than 40 years ago, on these geothermal resources identified high temperature hydrothermal systems associated with Kilauea’s East Rift Zone. That work led to a statewide study that estimated some potential for moderate-temperature hydrothermal systems on several of the older islands. However, the technology available for more detailed evaluation of those systems was, by today’s standards, extremely primitive and of limited reliability. With the renewal of interest in alternative sources of power generation, the University has undertaken a reevaluation of these potential resources using more modern exploration technology. This work has been coupled with a U.S. Department of Energy funded project to develop new technology that will improve our ability to locate and characterize water (and steam) flow underground. This latter project, if successful, will not only reduce the costs of producing geothermal electricity, it will also reduce the environmental and community impacts of developing the resources found. Although we are still in the very early stages of this effort, the data recovered are extremely encouraging.”

Regards, Susan

Susan Cordell, PhD
Research Ecologist
Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry
Pacific Southwest Research Station
USDA Forest Service
60 Nowelo Street
Hilo, Hawaii 96720

[waawaawah]

Beware of Madame Pele!

[kalakoa]

There is at least one study which demonstrates that "wind farm sickness" is spread by word of mouth.

[ericlp]

quote:

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Originally posted by pahoated

And somehow, in Puna, that 38 megawatts is causing death, sickness, earthquakes, the volcano to become unstable, as well as poisoning the water and causing mass fish kills plus creating so much noise that it has made insomnia epidemic. All of this just seems to be happening in Puna.

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I think only a handful of people are against this. If somehow your power bill went down by 20-30 cents off per kWh than you'd have an amazing amount of support for this project. Really tho where are these people going to post? It's not like they are going to take an buy some space in the newspaper or radio. So... yeah they post here.

Well, apparently windmills are noisy!

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/01/133384379/...-fans-foes

Walter Rittie, a longtime activist on Molokai, says that for native Hawaiians like himself, the wind is a revered god. "So until the state realizes what they're dealing with, that it's not a commodity, it's a cultural resource that Hawaiians have high regard for, part of our heritage, then we're in for a train wreck here," Rittie says.


Wind God eh? I wonder how many of "God's" money it will take to keep Rittie quiet? One god paying off another god... Ahhh, one big circle jerk.

[opihikao]

FYI:

Dr. Thomas Presentation (2+ hours):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRD9OBTaOLQ

(*Credit - Occupy Hilo)


Very well done. Thank you, Dr. Don Thomas. Scientific information which is considered FACTS, helps in assessing how we move forward.
JMO.

[opihikao]

dakine: Your statement is completely false, and inaccurate. It is part of the misinformation that continues to infect and...Well, read it for yourself below. For the record, I have known Don Thomas since 1989, and take great umbrage at the character assasination that continues of this man. He is a scientist, for God's sake, and we need to deal with facts in this geothermal issue.

We ALL have a vested interest in our community, we all must assess the pros and cons of all alternate energy options. Continuing my research, both sides have valid points when the facts are addressed.

What galls me is plethora of inaccuracies, not just regarding geothermal, but slanderous statements made against Dr. Thomas and others in this process.

Here is his response to the last time someone accused him of the same:

http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?w...3333333333&TOPIC_ID=14745&SearchTerms=don,thomas#130853

This is Don Thomas' response to opensecret's and Hollinger's comments:
The allegation that I am under contract to PGV is one, of many, fabrications concocted by Mr. Patricci in an attempt to attack my motivation and credibility in the geothermal discussion. Opensecret, you are simply parroting and propagating the lies spewed by Mr. Petricci. The allegation is completely and entirely false. I am not, and never have been, under contract to Puna Geothermal Venture and have never received compensation from them. Thirty years ago, I made the decision that, since I wanted to assist the state agencies in making rational, science-based, decisions regarding geothermal, and that any economic benefit I might gain by those decisions would be a conflict of interest, that I would do NO paid consulting for anyone with a financial stake in the geothermal industry in Hawaii. If anyone - public, private, investor, landowner, legislator, resident - has a legitimate question on geothermal (or radon, since I have done research in that area as well), I will give them the best answer I can provide at no cost to them. I have provided technical expertise on geothermal and geochemistry problems to many organizations and individuals, none of them have ever received an invoice from me and none will.

The complete absence of integrity is characteristic of Mr. Petricci and many in the anti geothermal crowd - they will fabricate whatever nonsense that they think can get them what they want. They came discouragingly close to accomplishing that, at considerable cost to many other Puna residents, with far too many on the County Council - but that's another issue.

Mr. Hollinger, I have responded to the off-the-wall claims made here and on the Civil Beat page there: you either don't know enough about the scientific data that you are citing in your comments to understand that the conclusions you are drawing are completely off base, or you don't care and are engaging in fear-mongering: simply making up exaggerated claims about non-existent threats to scare those more ignorant than yourself. I started researching the groundwater in lower Puna in 1975 - before the first deep geothermal well was drilled there. The chemical compositions of every well within the rift zone showed evidence of natural geothermal discharge from the deep thermal system into the shallow groundwater. This was nearly twenty years before Puna Geothermal Venture started reinjecting fluids into the ground. Your insistence that Green Lake is contaminated by geothermal fluids is not supported by any data that I am aware of - the lake, according to the chemical data we gathered during the work done in the '70's and 80's, appears to be a perched system that gets most of its water from rainfall rather than the groundwater system. As I recall, the lake water was high in magnesium ion concentrations - whereas magnesium is usually depleted in the groundwaters that were mixing with the natural geothermal discharge. The other ion concentrations were also substantially different from the groundwaters. How you can claim that reinjection of geothermal fluids to depths in excess of 6000' are contaminating a perched lake, defies any logic I can conceive of.

Your claims about radon emissions are equally specious. You either don’t understand the numbers in the reports you cite, or you don’t have the integrity to present an accurate analysis. As I indicated in the Civil Beat post, even under about as bad a case of geothermal discharge exposure as can be reasonably projected to occur in the community, the increased radon activity in the ambient air would be about 0.004 picoCuries per liter – which is likely to be considerably smaller than the diurnal variation in ambient air concentrations due to normal meteorological variations. Likewise, you have misrepresented the actual threat from radon – it is now widely recognized that radon daughter products (which will not be present at significant concentrations in the geothermal steam emissions due to their differing chemistry) are responsible for the “radon risk” that is commonly recognized. In tightly constructed homes, with little air exchange, those radon daughter products are known to accumulate in the indoor air over periods of hours-to-days and subsequent inhalation of those daughter products by the occupants will increase the likelihood of cancer initiation. It’s my opinion that that set of conditions is completely irrelevant to the geothermal discussion.

If past experience can be any guide, these and the other baseless claims will continue to be made, without a shred of supporting data - and when time and funds have been spent to prove them to be groundless, the opponents will simply attack the data as being biased or falsified. And that often seems to be their objective: to waste resources and effort far beyond any actual threat posed by geothermal and then complain that it's too expensive a technology to pursue.



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Edited by - geochem on 08/03/2012 15:08:37

[geochem]

[/quote]
It should be noted... Don Thomas is a PAID for consultant FOR the geothermal industry! Nothing he says.. or presents.. is free of his financial interests!
[/quote]

dakine: that is one of many lies propagated by Robert Petricci. I do no paid consulting for PGV or any other commercial geothermal interest in Hawaii or anywhere else. I would appreciate it if you would not repeat it.

With respect to your second comment, yes, I did testify at the contested case hearings - again without compensation from the developer - and, again, because there were a huge number of misrepresentations being made by the geothermal opponents at those hearings. I would much prefer that public policy decisions be made on the basis of data and accurate information rather than fearmongering and misrepresentation - even when it comes from those who claim that they represent the "public interest".

If you have to tell that many lies, the truth must not be your friend...

Don Thomas

[Richard Ha]

Don Thomas is a credible scientist. He deals with facts and data. He lets the pieces fall where they may. I trust him!

[Obie]

Robert Petricci attended school and is a convicted felon !

[TomK]

It's quite fascinating reading this thread and in a way quite reassuring. I've not followed the geothermal arguments too closely over the years, but I do see the same thing Don Thomas describes when it comes to the TMT and observatories on Mauna Kea. There have been some outrageous lies from some of those opposed to the TMT and I see the same thing here. When I say "reassured" it's not because those lies hold any weight in reality, it's because I now see it's not just the telescopes that have to deal with this nonsense, and expensive nonsense as well. I think Don has perhaps made a good point about those opposing projects making the whole process too expensive, and then using the argument of how expensive things are. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but I will bear that in mind from now on.

Incidentally - just a bugbear of mine: science deals with probabilities, not facts.

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/