I returned to Honolulu from Maui to see that a major brushfire had closed the only road between Lahaina and the Kahului Airport. I had just driven in that area to visit the windpower site, which is close by. I wonder how many missed flights? The photo is from the Hawaii House blog site.
Part of the problem is that "Hawaii is the Nation's Driest State," having nothing to do with alcohol. Lahaina has this year received only 6% of the normal rainfall. HC&S, the only sugar company left in Hawaii, has been told to share their irrigation water with "the People." There already is a worldwide freshwater crisis, and Maui is at the forefront of the politics. Hawaii, of course, is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and drinking water is really an energy problem. However, irrigation water is way to cheap to think about desalinating the ocean.
My final meal on Maui was at Marcos on the way to the airport. There is a Marcos Southside Grill in Kihei. The Kahului version is more Italian than anything else, but, as you can see, also features a $5.95 breakfast. I wondered why the background music was contemporary instead of something more European or nostalgic, and the waiter indicated they wanted a diverse clientship, by implication hinting that Maui's taste in music lacked culture.
Anyway, the mahimahi piccata was outstanding.
After lunch, I had an hour, so visited the HC&S sugar factory, the only remaining such operations in Hawaii. The sugar industry really created Hawaii and our sociological mix of races. My first job after college was at the Hutchinson Sugar Company in the southernmost community in the USA, Naalehu. All the sugar factories I worked in are now gone.
A quick tutorial:
1. If you want to produce electricity from biomass, it makes no sense to first convert into a liquid biofuel to power a combustion turbine. Just burn the stuff in a boiler. Now, if you have an existing system, with the choice being between oil and a sustainable liquid fuel, that is a more difficult decision based on the value placed on energy security, jobs and life cycle costs, for the home-made fuel will be a lot more expensive.
2. Transportation fuel will require a liquid, but don't make ethanol. The future should be methanol and the direct methanol fuel cell. Crops like palm oil grow to slowly and take up too much water. Algae shows promise, but more so, ultimately, in the open ocean.
3. DARPA announced working with Maui to produce biofuels for land vehicles and aircraft. Hawaii absolutely needs to move in this direction, for I wonder about the future of plug-in electric vehicles, and, more importantly, the future of Hawaii will be linked to the availability of a substitute for jet fuel and/or a next generation aircraft utilizing hydrogen.
The factory above might someday process a variety of biofuels, in addition to electricity. But sugar, as a commodity, will soon expire.
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After a good start, everything went downhill, and the Dow Jones Industrials fell 41 to 9899. World markets were mostly up, although the Japan Nikkei fell further to 9439. Gold dropped $3/toz to $1234 and crude oil is at $74/barrel.
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