I was surprised to get virtually no reaction to yesterday’s entry about the lack of campaign disclosure in the current special city council election. Maybe no one really cares about this stuff any more.
The Honolulu Advertiser reported yesterday on plans announced by a New Mexico company to build a plant on Molokai to produce electricity using hydrogen.
The Moloka’i plant, proposed by Jetstream Wind Inc., would use electricity from wind or solar or a combination of the two to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would then be burned in a turbine — similar to what is used in a natural-gas-fired power plant — and would generate enough electricity to power 6,000 homes and businesses, the company said.
Apparently an almost identical press release accompanied announcements by the company of power plants to be built in other locations, including the company’s home state of New Mexico.
Jetstream Wind Inc. officials said the $219 million plant would use electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would then be burned in a turbine — similar to those used by natural gas-fired power plants — to generate enough electricity to power about 6,000 homes and businesses.
There are hints in both stories that this company could be promising more than it can deliver, but neither challenge the company’s narrative directly. Both stories note the company would not talk about financing or provide any additional details about its supposed technology.
One thing that strikes me is the silence about one necessary resource–water–which is in very short supply on Molokai.
Even if the company plans to use ocean water, it will have to overcome hurdles in terms of potential impacts on ocean water quality, marine life, etc.
One analysis of water requirements for producing hydrogen concluded:
“This analysis is not meant to say that hydrogen should not be pursued, just that if hydrogen production is pursued through thermoelectrically-powered electrolysis, the impacts on water are potentially quite severe.”
So I guess I wouldn’t be holding my breath on this one.
If you enjoy digging around in data sources just to see if there’s anything interesting there, check out this collection of statistics on government finance from the University of Michigan Library. It’s quite a treasure trove of numbers.
One of those links eventually led me to a U.S. Census site, which in turn yielded a table comparing property tax rates in the largest city in each state.
Ready for how Honolulu fared? It was dead last with the lowest property tax rate of any of the cities studied. We pay about 1/10 the property tax per $100 of value paid by residents of Indianapolis, which had the highest rate. Check it out.
Of course, the numbers don’t tell the whole story, since property values are taken into account when wetting those rates. I think we need to know the dollar amount of tax paid on a median priced home in each city for a better comparison.
One morning I started paying attention to boats out of water along the route of our morning walk. So click on this one for several more photos from recent mornings.
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There are several reasons why Honolulu’s property tax rate is relatively low. First, most localities finance their school systems with property taxes–our property taxes do not. In addition, the Legislature shares portions of the Transient Accommodations Tax collections with each county allocated based on the counties populations. Its possible that since Honolulu’s budget is balanced as the Mayor has heralded, the Legislature could re-direct the counties share of the TAT to close the State’s budget gap, thereby requiring the counties to hike real property taxes.
You’re right about values, Ian–many of these locales have homes in the $50K range, not $500K. I would also like a chart which compares the property tax paid to the median Federal and State income tax paid by residents in each locale, as a measure of local income. $40K is a lot of money in Iowa but poverty level in Honolulu/S.F.
That said, State income tax is high in Hawaii, property taxes are low–a “gift” to non-resident property owners?
Here in Berkeley voters have approved “special assessments” to fund schools, libraries, transit, etc. which effectively double property taxes. Those assessments don’t show up ont he chart you linked to. We pay 2X as much property tax as we pay Federal income tax. Yes, we are “moderate income” but that’s a measure of just how high property taxes are in Calif. What’s the ratio for a median-income couple in Honolulu?
A quick note from a non-chemist re: hydrogen: the chemical bond between H and O (hydrogen and oxygen) in water is extremely strong and requires a lot of energy to break. But once the two are separated, there is a lot of energy stored. (Space shuttle launches are liquid H and O). The amount of water which would be needed would be relatively trivial compared to industrial uses.
The real question is why expend energy breaking out H and O rather than just use the electricity directly? That’s the entire problem with the “hydrogen economy.”
There are just tons of problems with this Molokai-Wind-Hydro proposal, some listed above. Not the least of them: their proposed plant produces twice the power Molokai uses. How much research did these folks do?
The low property taxes are also illustrative of the extremely regressive tax structure in Hawaii. Not only are residential and commercial property taxes realtivly low, taxes on Agricultural land are even more disproportionately lower. Historically, large landowners have had a large influence in the legislature, the low property tax have allowed them to maintain there large, often unproductive land holdings.
Instead, the state raises most of its money through the most regressive tax in teh country: the GET. While it is often compared to a sales tax, it is anything but. Because it pervasive nature – you pay taxes on services, rent, there is a whole sale GET, etc – many things that are rarely taxed by typical retail tax. To raise as much money from a traditional sales tax on retail sales as is raised by the GET, our sale tax would need to be upwards of 16%.
Simply put, Hawaii’s entire tax structure is by far the most regressive in the country. Poor people have to pay GET tax on there medical visits (to a doctor who has to pay GET on whose rent, his electric bill, etc) while large landowners pay next to nothing to bank there land. There are housing developers who are paying next to nothing in property taxes on vast tracks of land that only suddenly get converted to residential zoning the week before they begin construction.
The Molokai wind/hydrogen plant is a scam. Jetstream Wind Inc. has been making a big splash in the media with their wild claims. They say they’re ready to spend nearly half a billion dollars on major electrical plants using renewable energy. The fact is that they’re nobodies who don’t have half a million cents between them. They don’t appear to have any expertise in this field. This supposed multi-million dollar corporation doesn’t even have an office. Pretty much nothing that they say stands up to examination. There was no ground breaking ceremony in Truth or Consequences NM. They don’t appear to have applied for any permits of any kind anywhere. Their “CEO” who claims to be a renewable energy engineer might have an associates degree from a two year college.
The idea is that you store the electrical energy as hydrogen so you can burn hydrogen in turbines and produce electricity when there’s no wind. The problem is that it would be horribly ineffecient.
You can find several of the principles in this company here: http://www.rapidmodelsnm.com/home.html and here: http://musicishere.com/artists/Henry_Herman,_Jason_Landers,_Christopher_Rocha,_Chris_Whitsell/Dark_Omen_Rising
You can find their spokesperson/New Age guru here: http://www.greenascension.com/
You can find their “consultant” Richard Knouse in a homeless shelter: http://www.santafe.com/articles/giving-more
Anyone who would like to chat with them can use the forum on their website here: http://jetstreaminitiative.com/ Good luck, they just delete my inquiries without responding.
For those who are interested in the Molokai wind/hydrogen plant here’s some more information on the “CEO”. Henry Herman, from his hometown newspaper;
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/PrintStory/Renewable_energy_Two_stumble_onto_the_next_big_thing_
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Pueblo_plans_wind_farm
I suspect that his claims were exaggerated at that time. Green Energy Wind LLC does not appear to be an active company at this time.
It’s an ill wind indeed that blows no good; it looks like Jetstream Wind isn’t make quite the impression they hoped for.
http://www.themolokaidispatch.com/?q=node/3267