Discover world-changing science. n}���)�| On Kauai, hydroelectric projects that date back to the island’s plantation era drained streams dry when the water was diverted to support big agriculture. “I really see a lot of hope on Kauai,” says Ms. Morita, a former chair of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. Modern Hawai'i, like its colonial overlord, the United States of America, is a settler society. But in recent years, residents have slowly begun to reclaim the land. 1248 0 obj <> endobj “We can meet the goals without having to trample on other people’s rights or prolong 100-year-old injustices.”. In the end, Hawaii, like other states, will have many problems to surmount if it is to point the way toward a green economy of tomorrow. Hawaii is the only U.S. state that has never had a white majority. It is the only state of the United States that is found in Oceania and is entirely composed of Islands. ... Reading has never been easier. Hydroelectric power includes both massive hydroelectric dams and small run-of-the-river plants. All will have to overcome practical problems such as revamping electrical grids to keep pace with the proliferation of rooftop solar. Site has information/education resources on a broad range of topics, including asthma, birth defects, radiation, sanitation, lead in blood, and more. Rainfall in Hawaii has been decreasing, but scientists do not know whether that trend will continue. Here's how to force a citizen vote on a specific issue of concern. Molokai was at one point projected to hit 100% renewable as soon as 2020. Large-scale hydroelectric dams continue to be built in many parts of the world (including China and Brazil), but it is unlikely that new facilities will be added to the existing U.S. fleet in the future. Under the 2015 law, Hawaii must meet interim renewable portfolio standards of 30% by 2020, 40% by 2030, and 70% by 2040. This includes several efforts to harness one of Hawaii’s most abundant resources: the ocean. Researchers at the U.S. Marine Corps and the University of Hawai‘i at Ma–noa as well as private companies are exploring the potential of wave energy. The topography of the Hawaiian Islands lends itself to small streams with flows that fluctuate considerably from month to month, appropriate for only small hydropower … El Niño will probably continue to dominate precipitation patterns from year to … Similar sentiments emerged at a recent community meeting in Maui, which the company co-hosted with the Maui chapter of the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i and Maui Tomorrow Foundation. $385 million to Hawaii each year through tourism, direct consumption, and commercial fisheries. Our Hawaiian people, now but a remnant of the nearly one million Natives present at contact with the West in the 18th century, live at the margins of our island society. Both routes have been tested using different catalysts. California, New Mexico, Washington, New York, Nevada, and Maine have already followed Hawaii’s lead and adopted legislation calling for 100% reliance on clean energy by various dates in the future. New York City was has always been a big a big customer for them and New England as well. The state leads the nation in rooftop solar installation. The company Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning wants to use water pumped from the deep sea to cool buildings in downtown Honolulu, effectively eliminating 1% of the energy demand for the island of Oahu. FERC-regulated hydroelectric projects are found in all states except for Delaware, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Hawaii. Small hydropower projects are site specific and need careful planning for project formulation and implementation. Deleted from National Priorities List As of April 5, 2021, Kauai has rejoined the State of Hawaii’s Safe Travels pre-travel testing program for trans-pacific travel. The mismatch of timing between peak daytime generation and peak evening demand means that power generated from home solar installations can quickly flood the grid during the day. Kauai, for instance, has long been a haven for two endangered species of seabirds, the Newell’s shearwater and the Hawaiian petrel. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. KD���8(���) ����ޟ�I;��h��X{�(ue)�;������\ߎ���PjM�*��5砌T;��:O4�c��Q��w����y�5��{Ԛ��#��G��F��W�����6��/L��y�`�h���� �-� “If you think about it, 150 years ago people thought smokestacks were awesome because they symbolized progress.”, In his role as a state senator, he hears a lot of complaints about windmills from his North Shore constituents. There is no state in the United States with fewer lane miles. Achieving them is another story. Yet the challenges facing all these states – as well as Hawaii – are numerous. He can lasso the sun’s rays to slow its passage across the sky and lengthen the day. However, it regulates privately and publicly (non-federal) owned projects through a total of 1,022 licenses and 641 exemptions. One reason: birds. “These projects do more than bring in energy at night,” says Mr. Bissell. As of May 1, 2010, there were three Superfund sites on the National Priorities List in Hawaii. Plantations held their grip on the North Shore for most of the 20th century. Others urged the utility and the planning commission to put solar panels on rooftops and in abandoned lots before erecting massive solar farms on pristine undeveloped land. David Bissell’s Toyota Tundra crunches to a stop in the reddish dirt and gravel road as the first heads appear in the grass. The push to tap the sun presents both problems and promise for Hawaii, too. “It’s just sort of contradictory to me that we’re saving the environment by destroying the bats,” he says. While Hawaiian residents hail from around the world, many have adopted the native ethos of malama ‘aina, the idea of caring for the land in a way that won’t harm it for future generations. “We’re trying to push ourselves to expand our thinking so we don’t approach the problem the same old way,” says Mr. Seu. )�&2IQv��xY���zU]��%�ZK���Gv���*M�!�5�CE�4nO4/��d����)�F�1\7�4c�x��E6R9|���^B��[�/�� �N���'�=z�-��P��og�~ʷgv��lnP�Z���/N�˲��#���)��K6K�E� The story was produced with support from an Energy Foundation grant to cover the environment. %PDF-1.7 %���� m�Tyy��Ca�,-|����� �'d��&�g[-�J�[ ������; ͗N4ͽ&h�M4@�R��qg�h�, But after receiving stiff criticism for failing to solicit adequate community input before approving a solar power plant last year, Maui Electric has slowed its plans. It has to do with the killing of the ‘o–pe‘ape‘a, or the hoary bat.”. Then, a reopening date with an option to test before travel to avoid the quarantine became a moving target as the islands battled a COVID-19 surge and the U.S. as a whole dealt with a lack of reliable, rapid testing. “Windmills are modern-day smokestacks,” says Mr. Riviere. �^�?�,������&P]�_�C���;aw{��R�����[�������\� As co-director of Keep the North Shore Country, he is on the front lines of the effort to block development of the Na Pua Makani Wind Project. Small hydropower project is a clean source of power, which India has in abundance. Furthermore, it is the only state that is located outside of North America. 8�� ��&�|`f���5㌃� G�f0�6�*�����|�A>Ac�/&�����h���iH��:w{�m�s���6������ F���"e�����ia#����Ŭ ��pZ�-F1���iZ����z"�G[uB�r���ah R@9��^1��OO=;�, J��Ng ���� ��� D All, for instance, will have to go through a substantial culture shift, encouraging changes in consumer habits and weaning utilities off conventional forms of energy that have been around for more than a century. No one knows how many hoary bats call these islands home, but anecdotally, residents say they used to encounter more of them than they do now, according to Kristin Jonasson, a bat expert who spent a year and a half studying the tiny mammals. Community organizations founded with the promise of “keeping the country, country” have blocked most large development projects here, and small farms have once again begun to flourish. On Oahu, evidence of the activities of feral pigs has been reported at all summit occurrences (HBMP 2010). It’s part of a pilot exchange program between the Monitor and local newsrooms. Part of this decline has been traced back to conditions caused by reservoirs in the mainstem of the Columbia and on the Snake river. A feed-in tariff (FIT, FiT, standard offer contract, advanced renewable tariff, or renewable energy payments) is a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers. While rooftop panels can yield major savings for homeowners, renters and people living in multifamily homes or condominiums typically can’t take advantage of those benefits. In Hawaii, every county provides a process for citizen initiatives. The power of moving water is obvious to anyone who has stood amidst breaking waves or struggled to swim against a river’s current. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a process or technology for producing energy by harnessing the temperature differences (thermal gradients) between … As the world confronts the possibility of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in the next 15 to 30 years, the race is on here and around the globe to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. One further site has been cleaned up and removed from the NPL; no sites are currently proposed for addition. Andrea T. Gill, DBEDT Energy, Resources and Technology Division, Hawaii INTRODUCTION The Hawaiian Islands lie above a geological “hot spot” in the earth’s mantle that has been volcanically active for the past 70 million years, with the island of Hawaii (the “Big Island”) having the most recent activity. On Kauai, evidence of the activities of feral pigs has been reported at the remaining occurrence (Wood 2005e and 2007c, in litt. %%EOF Tapping these resources will be critical to meeting the country's rapidly growing demand in a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable manner. Battery storage is crucial for any intermittent sources of power, like solar and wind energy, so utilities can provide power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Hawaii is the 8th smallest state and the 11th least populated among the 50 states. Subscribers get more award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology. The hoary bat is sacred to many Polynesian cultures. “They improve reliability because they can make up for outages in other parts of the system.”. An estimated 146 hoary bats were killed at the state’s five largest wind farms in just six years, 2.6 times the projected rate of 187 deaths over 20 years. All sites are on the island of Oahu. Conservationists and others worry about the turbine blades’ effect on seabird populations. Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at, French Program That Lampoons Trump's Catchphrase Draws U.S. Scientists. The Greeks used water wheels to grind wheat into flour more than 2,000 years ago. Since the world turned upside down, planning a vacation to Hawaii has proven to be a challenge.. For months, the only way to enter Hawaii was with a mandatory 14-day quarantine. Lawmakers, energy providers, and communities around the country are watching to see if the 50th state will be able to make good on the pledge to become America’s first green energy economy. A limited number of no-interest loans are available to offset installation costs, and residents can take advantage of state and federal tax credits (though federal incentives are set to phase out after 2019). “If we’re the only state that moves to 100% renewable energy, even if we did it tomorrow, it would mean nothing if everyone else didn’t come with us,” says Mr. Lee, the state lawmaker. And so that's a very explicit strategy. For now, solar and wind power dominate the state’s renewable mix, having outpaced production from biomass, geothermal, and hydroelectric facilities. A handful of other states have set less ambitious goals of between 30% and 50% dependence on renewables. Before the Clean Air Rule's emissions reductions could begin taking effect, a 2018 court ruling suspended the rule. 1.. IntroductionHydroelectricity, or electricity generated by large turbines located at the bottom of reservoirs created from large dams, has been a viable technology since the late nineteenth century (Edwards, 2003).In the early 1900s hydropower accounted for more than 40% of total U.S. electricity supply (and more than 75% of electricity supplied in the West and Pacific Northwest), but … Getting to the next goal, 40%, shouldn’t be too difficult, either. “We are very supportive of renewable energy,” says one of them, Te–vita Ka‘ili, speaking for his family. Even Puerto Rico with its 3,459 square miles (8,959 sq. In the past, Hawaii’s utilities have faced sharp rebukes for failing to take into account the cultural needs of Native Hawaiians when developing other forms of renewable energy. While Mr. Ka‘ili, a cultural anthropologist and chair of the Department of International Cultural Studies at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, lauds the motivation behind the push for wind power, he worries that it comes at too steep a cost. Mr. Lee is working with legislators in half a dozen more states, including Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Colorado, that are exploring clean energy mandates of their own. In 2016, Turtle Bay Resort relinquished nearly 500 acres of farmland to the Trust for Public Land and North Shore Community Land Trust, a victory for the sustainable agriculture movement that hopes to wean the state off dependence on imported produce. Otherwise, the State of Hawaii requires that you quarantine for 10 days or the length of your stay, whichever is shorter. © 2021 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. Support our award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology. There has always been an abundance of renewable sources to tap – sun, wind, waves, volcanoes – but it has taken a shift in political will and a drop in photovoltaic and turbine prices for the state to turn away from oil, gas, and coal. The drive up Oahu’s iconic windward coastline starts on the ancient cliffs of Makapu‘u, luring tourists – or visitors, as Hawaii residents call them – to the sapphire and turquoise waters of Hanauma Bay. h�mo�8���?�8�&N������UᮧC|H���B���v��7�$Z8Z�S�d�{ƞ'�p�]��\�9 The co-op continues to lead the way in “solar-plus-storage” with the sprawling Lawa‘i solar farm here tended by the grass-shearing sheep. Yet the majority of the state’s electricity is still produced by petroleum- and coal-fired power plants. Residents and advocates expressed support for the 100% renewable initiative, but also concern that the goal should not be met at any cost. Mr. Sargent says states that build momentum early – either through rate policies or legislative mandates, or as a result of simple market economics – end up achieving the most success later. Some groups here oppose a plan by KIUC to maintain these hydroelectric projects for this reason. Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is squirting lava and toxic gas through new cracks in the earth ... Hawaii Civil Defense Agency. Learn more. An assortment of fringe renewable energy projects is in various stages of development throughout the islands that could ultimately contribute to Hawaii’s green portfolio. Solar power is by far the fastest-growing source of renewable energy in the state. The nearly 200-acre network of glistening solar panels incorporates the world’s largest operational solar-plus-storage facility. km) of land has more road miles than Hawaii, which has 6,422 square miles (16,633 sq. “We passed our [renewable portfolio standards] at a time when people said it was politically, technologically, and financially impossible,” says Hawaii Democratic state Rep. Chris Lee, an early booster of the state’s clean energy initiative. There can also be effects to fish from loss of riparian vegetation, sedimentation, erosion, and temperature changes. A few sheep come into view, but, startled by the trucks, they skitter away through the unruly vegetation surrounding a network of solar panels. New technologies can enable us to harness the might of moving water to help light our homes and keep our ice cream cold in the freezer without building new dams that can have major impacts on wildlife and water quality. It was intended to show both the importance of the sun and the importance of being sensitive to native culture as Hawaii tries to forge a green future. The siphoning led to the decline in traditional taro farming by Native Hawaiians, a practice that is only now seeing a revival. These are the ovine foot soldiers in one of the most ambitious renewable energy revolutions in the United States. 18 hours ago — Katherine Harmon Courage, May 18, 2021 — Benjamin Storrow and E&E News. Weighing just half an ounce, Hawaiian hoary bats are notoriously difficult to count, since they are solitary and easily disappear into treetop roosts. Oahu, on the other hand, has invested heavily in wind power, despite concerns from community members about the noise and what they perceive as the unsightliness of the massive blades. Hawaii News ; Opinion ... bolstered by the context of our global concern over climate changes and resource depletion,” he said in a statement. endstream endobj startxref These include some as fundamental as the difficulty of transmitting electricity among the eight major islands that make up this bejeweled archipelago, and others as unpredictable as dealing with the presence of an endangered bat the size of a salt shaker that is drawn to wind turbines. 0 In 2015 Hawaii became the first U.S. state to mandate a total transition to renewable energy. They're actually trying to … Bhutan boasts a very high hydropower potential, estimated at around 30,000 MW, of which 23,760 MW has been identified as economically feasible. Will Hawaii emerge as America’s king of green energy or just be a well-intentioned pretender to the throne? ް���(F��Q��evD-$ But advocates are confident it can be done and, for the sake of the planet, needs to be done, both here and across the country. ����#7�~}�ܖ�6�B�g���Z����u���M�m�;�ܜ�#ٌ����YżB m@�/US\g�������S�� �Ab���R�)��. Those plans are still in the early stages of development, but Hermina Morita, a former state legislator who is part Native Hawaiian, is encouraged by those efforts. Hitting these benchmarks, particularly the early ones, is considered crucial to the success of the program. The issue has become enough of a problem that the company has a pilot program to provide batteries for residential use to avoid overloading the grid. Solar panels make long-term economic sense for homeowners in this sun-kissed paradise.
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