–Beginning cat commentary (for those who want to skip down to other stuff–

It’s not a good Monday morning because Romeo has gone missing. Romeo was a no-show at dinner time last night, which for Mr. Romeo is definitely unusual. Even the sound of cans of cat food being opened didn’t draw him in. And his absence turned a planned family photo into an anxiety producing exercise.

And he didn’t show up anytime overnight, as far as we can tell. He wasn’t in bed, and wasn’t around when I got up for a 2 a.m. check and another at 4 a.m. He wasn’t there to wake me up with those sharp kneeding claws, as is his usual routine. And now, at 5:20, still no Romeo. I should say that Annie has failed to show up for 12-24 hours on a couple of occasions, and Toby spent a period where he wandered more than we would have liked. But Romeo has been pretty much a homebody since adopting our household. So we can’t help but worry.

[7:30 a.m. update. I wandered the vacant areas around our house, as well as streets above and below. Then, just when I was about to send out a distress email, we found Romeo hiding in one of Ms. Kili’s spots in the back of our closet. We had checked there last night but not this morning. He may have come in during the night, perhaps while I was out beating the bushes this morning. In any case, he seems to have been on the losing end of another good trouncing, although this time the injuries are on his front end instead of his rear. I’m letting him rest and eat a bit, then it’s back on the antibiotics. Something tells me a vet visit may be lurking in his future. We’ll have to assess his condition this evening.]

–End of cat commentary–

Hmmmm. It appears that there is disagreement in the clean energy ranks. I received several emails overnight touting a “Clean Energy Rally” at the State Capitol at noon today, sponsored by the Blue Planet Foundation in support of HB 1464.

SUPPORT HB 1464 – NO NEW FOSSIL FUEL

THE GIST: The intent of House Bill 1464 is to prohibit any new or expanded fossil fuel power plants in Hawaii. Our current 92% dependency on imported coal and oil for electricity is enough, we don’t need to add any more. Hawaii’s clean energy future is based on sun, wind, wave, and other indigenous, clean energy sources, not coal and oil. The bill needs to be clear that no new coal or oil-fired facility of any sort be permitted.

But Life of the Land’s Henry Curtis takes issue with the bill in a separate email.

What does “no new fossil fuel” mean?
Should we replace imported petroleum oil with imported palm oil from recently clear-cutted tropical rainforests?

Didn’t the State Auditor conclude this week that DBEDT has mis-handled a large number of procurement bids?

Isn’t the Senate Ways and Means Committee investigating DBEDT?

Should we endorse the DBEDT’s Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI)?

Neither the HCEI Memorandum of Understanding (January 2008) nor the HCEI Energy Agreement (October 2008) mentions “no new fossil fuel.”

HB 1464 purports to ban new fossil fuel power plants. But doesn’t it allow an exception for anyone who wants to build a new fossil fuel power plants?

Doesn’t the bill exempt anyone who meets at least ONE of the following exemptions:

(a) co-ops;
(b) non-utilities;
(c) using green fuel made from fossil fuel;
(d) using fuel mixtures containing 0.1% biofuel; and
(e) creating power from multiple 2.5 MW generators.

Shouldn’t the focus be on banning high climate impact power plants?

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more on this debate, although the folks at Blue Planet certainly have more resources to spread their viewpoint.

Let’s see. My old friend Charles Smith weighed in over the weekend on the rail debate, first with a short comment on Friday’s post (which I’ll reprint here so it isn’t missed), and then with an extended observation, which I’m quoting here in full.

As someone who lived in Honolulu for decade and now lives in the SF Bay Area, I can tell you the heavy-rail BART system works well for transporting people long distances between commuter areas and downtown. But it is very costly and works best when underground in urban areas. L.A.’s new system
shares the right-of-way with freeways–a very smart idea because it doesn’t add visual pollution and the ROW already exists. Honolulu should follow this approach. Nobody seems to realize you can have a hybrid system: a heavy rail from suburbs to a central urban station which could be served by light rail with urban zones. One size does not fit all. BART was built in the late 60s and was considered “best technology” at that time–it was also appropriate for an earthquake zone and for crossing beneath the Bay. Honolulu has other issues and landscapes, and money is much tighter now. Cost should matter and BART -like systems are horrendously expensive.

OK, back in real time. while I can understand the planners’ POV that voters will turn down any proposal which takes away street lanes, they seem really stuck in a “one size fits all” solution. For instance, isn’t it obvious that a bus only lane on Kalanianiole as per the Brazilian model would work given all the constraints, while a BART-type line from West Oahu might be appropriate but stop being appropriate once it reached the downtown core? Would sacrificing one lane of King and Beretania to a light rail line really impose that much of a burden on drivers?

Few seem to realize the era of cheap oil is closing and driving will become very expensive. Electric cars are fine if you’re generating vast quantities of electricity from sources other than oil but that’s not in the cards without major investments and a complete reappraisal of NIMBYism. Nobody wants windmills, fine, then follow the German model and solarize every roof on Oahu. But instead we have insane ventures like putting huge wind and solar farms on Lanai and then running $1 billion cables undersea to Oahu. You could solarize a big piece of Oahu for that $1 billion, and nobody seems to mention you’ll lose huge amounts of the power in transmitting it hundreds of miles undersea. (And no, superconducting is not yet a reality at room temperature. It works in the lab when everything is doused with supercold liquid nitrogen.)

This is the classic “ghetto-ization” of industry: put it somewhere where the residents can’t complain (Murdock owns 98% of Lanai, perfect!) and keep the bourgeoisie happy because there’s no impact on their protected lifestyle. Meanwhile according to Bloomberg, the residents of Lanai won’t get a single kilowatt of electricity from the huge proposed windmill installations; they’ll continue paying the highest rates in the state. And Oahu residents will lap it all up because it’s all a “painless” extension of their utterly unsustainable lifestyle.

(Recall I lived on Lanai and still keep in touch with my high school friends from that era.)

Does it really make sense to spend $1 billion (estimates run $600 million to $2 billion–nobody has the slightest clue as to the real final costs) to run power cable to Oahu to power a rail system which has insurmountable problems with parking, right of way, violation of New Urbanist principles and steep costs?

This really has to be thought out with an eye on Peak Oil and total system costs. The technocrats who designed BART didn’t do everything perfectly, but they really had no choice to a super-heavy rail system which could survive an 8.0 earthquake and cross beneath the bay. Now it seems Honolulu is on the verge of accepting a super-costly solution which only works for certain segments and conditions because drivers will complain? What will they want when gasoline is $10/gallon or strictly rationed? That’s not tat far away, despite all the propaganda of “don’t worry, be happy, we’ve got 400 years of coal,” etc. And even that’s not true; we have Peak Coal as well.

Recent additions to BART lines cost about $1 billion a mile. That’s a lot of money, and paying for it will stretch out for decades. I think Honolulu residents need to look beyond Mainland models, perhaps to lower cost mass transit in Brazil and hybrid systems
which deploy whatever works best in specific corridors.

chuck smith

By the way, if you aren’t a reader of Chuck’s fine blog, Of Two Minds, you should be. Check it out.

One last rail thought. I was browsing through comments submitted during the “scoping” phase of the city’s EIS process for the proposed rail, and came upon this startling statement in an official response:

Vehicle and system technologies will not be selected prior to the draft Environmental Impact Statement. Comments about issues related to vehicle and system technologies will be considered when specifications are developed.

But the draft EIS was only delivered in November 2008, and a year earlier the public was being told it was just too late to change the technology choice already made by the mayor and his people.

So was the official city position in mid-2006, that no technology choices would be made prior to the EIS, simply a lie? A distortion? An obfuscation?