VISION: THE VALUE OF TRAVELS for PICHTR

After I returned to the University of Hawaii in 1982, the new Dean of Engineering Paul Yuen and I agreed that one problem with the research to commercialization model used in our country was that the bridge from the former to the latter was missing.  What was needed was a different type of organization to serve as a technology transfer agent.

So we asked Senator Spark Matsunaga to speak about this problem at an American Society of Civil Engineering meeting in Honolulu, with a solution.  Of course, we wrote the speech, where Sparky suggested Hawaii create such a program.  This is how it all unfolded:

• Governor George Ariyoshi liked the concept, and submitted a bill, calling the organization the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (which should have been called the Pacific International Center for Technology Transfer, for the inclusion of research irritated university personnel).
• Various Hawaii Senate chairmen, Ben Cayetano, Richard Matsuura and Ann Kobayashi, and the Hawaii House, supported the bill, and at the end of the session we had a sum of money to start  PICHTR.
• The original board included Ariyoshi, Fujio Matsuda (president of the UH), Akio Morita (headed SONY), others, and was chaired by John Bellinger, CEO of First Hawaiian Bank.

You need to read that entire posting to appreciate how PICHTR formed.  Anyway, with those funds, I took several trips to Japan to give lectures at various universities, like Tokyo University and Tokyo Institute of Technology, meet with the American Ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield, and also Japanese government officials, which we saw as our best hope for external funding.  To quickly summarize, we got a million dollars spread over eight years, mostly to develop OTEC.  The key individuals were President Ronald Reagan and Senator Spark Matsunaga.

I traveled the world to recruit Luis Vega and Gerard Nihous from Berkeley, Steve Masutani, who was with Hitachi in Ibaraki, Japan, and Andrew Trenka from Colorado.  They hired the staff to do the work.  I also made frequent trips to DC, and a fateful meeting occurred in 1986:

Just around this time, Louis Rotundo (left) of the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) and I met with Len Rogers, director of ocean/wind programs of the Department of Energy at Trader Vic's in D.C.  Without much ado, Len told us that he would be shutting down the OTEC program because the government had done all it could and it was now up to the private sector to commercialize it.  Out of nowhere, Louis, who is a history major and noted authority on obscure battles of World War II, blurted out, what about open-cycle OTEC (Louis drove a red Ferrari and later became chairman of the board of FSEC, so there was that something special about him).  This was not planned, but I knew enough to convince Len that this was worth a shot, and more so, I could get Japan to cost-share.  No one knew anything about open-cycle, so PICHTR scooped up all the OTEC funds for the next decade and succeeded with their 40 kW (net) OC OTEC project in 1992.  It remains the last and largest OTEC project to attain net positive.

In the seven years or so I remained with PICHTR as Vice President of Development, I'm sure I took more than 25 trips to drum up business:  throughout the South Pacific for future development sites, plus South Korea, Singapore and Oceania.  Early in the program, a company called Sanki, headed by Paul Yonamine, became involved as our interface.  It was convenient to funnel funds through them for spending.  Federal and State officials are very picky.  Sanki's philosophy was that you gain respect through stays at the best hotels.  Thus the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka designed by Kenzo Tange was one of our favorites.  Hard to believe it was more recently torn down and replaced by the Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho.  I remember one trip we had people like Ron Hays (former commander in chief of the Pacific, who was president of PICHTR), Fujio Matsuda (past president of the University of Hawaii) and Paul Yuen.  In a space of only a few days, various Japanese organizations treated us to lunch and/or dinner at the most expensive restaurants, and six of the seven meals were French.

Paul is now Executive Chairman of Central Pacific Bank.  His father was that famous athlete, Wally, who played for the San Francisco 49ers (football) and managed the Tokyo Giants (baseball).  His mother had a thriving pearl store in Roppongi that attracted people like Liz Taylor.  He asked me to go there and his mother would give me a good deal.  So I went, and she mostly showed me those thousand dollar pearl necklaces which I couldn't afford.  Thus, I picked a simple pearl earring for my wife, Pearl, which  cost $40.  She just gave them to me.

I left PICHTR in the early 1990's after getting for them approximately $25 million for the open-cycle OTEC program and another $25 million on a project to produce biomethanol from sugar cane on Maui.  Twenty-seven years later, nothing much is happening in both areas.

I spent almost a decade building up and serving as the chief fund-raiser for PICHTR.  I chose not to receive any recompense, save for all those travels.  I remained director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute during this entire period.

However, I still had a continuing interest for their success, and in the late 1990's, while serving on a large committee to plan for the future of the University of Hawaii, I noticed that Hamilton Library Phase II was soon to be occupied.  Some of us had connections with a new company called Google, and they were already on their way to pioneering digital publications.  Books would soon become obsolete, and I proposed to the committee that we turn this new building into the first virtual library, with Google assistance, thus opening up several floors to another first, university-industry partnerships to spur the local economy.  My thought was to have PICHTR find a new home on campus, but without being managed by the administration.

This could well have been one of my greatest failures, for everyone on the committee thought that was a terrible idea.  Students wanted the space for sleeping (they said studying), university people had too much love for libraries, etc.  Oh well, we could have become the first digital library, and a world leader in something, being on top of this list.

The lesson here is don't just spring an idea on a group of people.  You need to cultivate their interest, arrange someone from Google to make a presentation, and so on.  PICHTR did not just happen by accident.  Matsunaga wrote personal letters to state leaders.  I went on trips with legislative movers and shakers.  We went karaoke singing, golfing, had dinners, and more.  This I did not do with that University committee.  Frankly, while this matter made sense to me, it just wasn't a priority.  I was too busy trying to save the world.

Some, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are lucky.  They have visions, and quickly become billionaires.  Me?  My dreams are amorphously complex and monumental for the benefit of Humanity and Planet Earth, considerably lowering the assurance for any success.  Someday I still think these concepts will gain prominence, and maybe too PICHTR, but I might not be around anymore.

-

TRANSITIONS: Part 12A--Return to the University of Hawaii--The Pacific International Center for High Technology Research

Two and a half years into my Senate assignment, I received a letter from President Fujio Matsuda of the University of Hawaii.  He basically said, a long time ago the UH only allowed him a three year leave, so that must be the policy, or something like that.  Senator Matsunaga had given me a rather hefty raise in anticipation of this ultimatum.  However, I did not want to give up tenure, and, frankly, it was time for me to strike out on my own. so I went home.  I never did, but I should have thanked Fuj, for the 80's and 90's at the University of Hawaii were my most productive.  This three year experience in the U,S. Congress provided the base from which I could develop a fabulous academic career.

The difficulty I had in this transition had to do with real estate.  Early into our stay in Skyline Towers (interesting how things have changed, for this luxury complex is now dominated by Muslim owners, and it is reported they cheered 9/11), we saw an ad for a lottery (these were the days when demand far exceeded supply in DC) for those desiring to live in Montibello, a future condo to be located on the only hill south of Alexandria:

With the Potomac River to the right, the apartment I "won" had a view of the Washington Monument.  We kept visiting the site to see the building grow.  A particularly attractive feature was that the new Yellow Metro Line terminated at the development as the Huntington Station, and was to open just about when we had access to Montebello.

Unfortunately a month before our move, I got that fateful letter.  To make a long story short:

• Our Honolulu condo, Coronet, was leased for another six months.
• We had to sell our unit in Skyline Towers.
• We had to sell our unit in Montebello.

I returned a few weeks early to find something, and my real estate agent, Stan Lizama, indicated to me that an interesting penthouse just was made available an hour ago.  So we went to Penthouse A2 in Craigside, and I immediately decided to purchase it.  The building had just opened, the partners only owned the Penthouse A units, but one of them just put his up for sale.  We had special house rules on our floor, which still prevail.  That was 32 years ago.  After a couple of trying years, I was able to sell the other three properties.

A few months before I left DC, the new dean of engineering, Paul Yuen, dropped by my office, and we brainstormed the thought of creating our own funding agency.  We wanted it to be international to focus on technology transfer.  Here is how the organization unfolded:

• I asked Senator Matsunaga to give a talk to the American Society of Civil Engineers, proposing this concept.
• Governor George Ariyoshi liked it, and submitted a bill, calling the organization the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (which should have been called the Pacific International Center for Technology Transfer).
• Various Hawaii Senate chairmen, Ben Cayetano, Richard Matsuura and Ann Kobayashi, and the Hawaii House, supported the bill, and at the end of the session we had a sum of money to start  PICHTR.

Click on PICHTR to read the details.  However, I repeat from one of my earlier postings (with a couple of updates) just one of a hundred things we had to do for PICHTR:

During the mid-80's I visited Tokyo a number of times, giving speeches at various universities and  government agencies about PICHTR.  One meeting in particular was key, for Professor Yasuo Mori of the Tokyo Institute of Technology accompanied me on a visit to Ambassador Mike Mansfield (left).  Senator Matsunaga, who was a former colleague in the Senate, had alerted Mansfield about this meeting, so the Ambassador magnanimously let us use his limousine to take us to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and, further, asked his secretary to call that office to announce our arrival.  We were royally welcomed by a host of officials, taken to a conference room, where the director of Second North American Desk scolded us for twenty minutes.  SCOLDED US FOR STUPIDITY!!!   This never happened again in my life.

Essentially, he said we were doing this all the wrong way, and what we had to do was ask President Ronald Reagan to tell Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone that our countries should work together on this project.  Before I could ask any questions, he stormed out of the room and the meeting was over.

Luckily, the assistant, Shinichi Nishimiya (left, who is today the Japan Ambassador and Counsel General to New York City--he was named the future Ambassador for Japan to China, but a few years ago, soon thereafter, suffered a heart attack and instantly passed away) , was present, and he asked that we later meet to discuss this matter.  On the ride back to the American Embassy, I was distraught, but Professor Mori was in awe and ecstasy.  This is where experience and cultural differences come into play.  Mori said this was the first meeting he had ever been in with a Japanese government official where he told us exactly what to do.  But, sure, what were the odds of a Democratic senator getting a Republican President to do anything?  Anyway, I did a couple of days later have a long three hour lunch with Nishimiya and briefed him on the effort.  Very unusual meal, for we started with a bottle of white wine, and finished with cognac while the staff was just standing, waiting for us to leave.  This was lunch.

A few months later, in 1986, Senator Matsunaga, a Democrat, voted with the Republicans on a free trade bill.   President Ronald Reagan rewarded Matsunaga by asking him to catch a ride with him to the Tokyo G8 Summit.  Matsunaga's administrative assistant called me and asked what favor should Matsunaga ask of the President.  I indicated OTEC and PICHTR would be ideal.

On Air Force One (the plane itself is now at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley) Matsunaga wanted to ask the President to support a U.S.-Japan project on OTEC, but Donald Regan guarded the door to the President's area.  When Regan went to the restroom, Matsunaga knocked on the door.  Nancy answered, and Ronald was putting on his pants, but they told him to please come in.  Matsunaga gave them a book of proverbs and asked the President to please support the OTEC/PICHTR project.  Returning, Donald Regan was in controlled fume about the nerve of Matsunaga to bother the President.

Unfortunately, Reagan was already showing symptoms of dementia, but fortunately, National Security Agency head John Poindexter (right) was present.  His grandfather was a former governor of Hawaii (in fact, he was the governor who telephoned President Franklin D. Roosevelt about 7December1941 attack), and with a wink, Poindexter indicated to Matsunaga that he would follow-through.  Surely enough, in the meeting with Nakasone, the first item on the agenda was the PICHTR OTEC project.  They agreed in principle to cooperate.  The interpreter was Shinichi Nishimiya, who, when he returned to his office, wondered what to do, as no money and period were mentioned.  So he arbitrarily wrote in his report that Japan would provide a million dollars/year for eight years towards the PICHTR OTEC project.  Every penny was awarded.

During my decade or so as Vice President of Development (Paul was President), the programs I directed secured approximately $50 million in grants, mostly to build an OTEC plant (left) at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority and a biomass-to-methanol facility (right) at the HC&S Paia sugar factory on Maui.  The key members of those teams went on to work for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute of the University of Hawaii, and are still there.  I might add that during this period PICHTR did not pay me a cent, although I did have a generous travel budget, one reason why I am currently headed for 3 million miles on Star Alliance.

PICHTR still functions today and provides funding for technology transfer.  Included among their current projects are:

• Energy Excelerator
• Hawaii Health Information Exchange
• Hawaii Technology Development Venture
• National Disaster Preparedness Training Center
• UH-PCSU - Environment, Ecosystem Management and Conservation

In many ways, they remain poised for another glorious attempt to Save Planet Earth and Humanity.

NEXT:  Part 12B--Development of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute.

-

IN REMEMBRANCE OF PAUL AND GUY

In a three day period I suddenly lost two of my closest friends and associates.  They were both healthy and active.  I was supposed to have golfed with Paul Yuen on Friday and have a dinner meeting involving Guy Toyama later this week.

Paul Yuen was the most important person in my professional life.  He was 84 and I am 72.  We're dragons.

I first met Paul when I interviewed for a College of Engineering position at the University of Hawaii forty years ago.  He hired me. 

Paul grew up in Honolulu and went to Roosevelt High School and the University of Hawaii, obtaining his B.S. in physics from the University of Chicago and PhD in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.  While in Chicago he met Janice, and they this year celebrated their 60th anniversary.  Family matters drew him back to Hawaii.

In the early eighties, as he was about to become dean of engineering, he visited my D.C. office when I was working for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga.  We thought it would be a great idea to invent our own funding agency.  We thus (with the help of a lot of people) created the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR), which succeeded during our ten year period with them to draw $50 million of funding, mostly for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) and biofuels development.  He was a co-founder of the International OTEC Association.

We became internationalists and traveled the world for PICHTR, one good reason why I have two million flight miles with United Airlines.  While we must have done wonderful things for PICHTR and Hawaii on these trips, what I most remember is that he liked to shop for his family:  $12 Rolexes from a street blanket in Taipei, almost genuine Louis Vitton bags from Hong Kong and $1 "Italian Silk" ties in Itaewon.

I actually don't remember meeting him much in our PICHTR and UH offices.  We did most of our talking on the golf course.  He picked me up on Saturday mornings, and it was during this ride and back that we made most of our decisions.  The breakthrough for PICHTR was a golf match with Counsel General Mitsuro Donowaki, who thirty years later still returns to Hawaii for PICHTR Board meetings, and golf at Waialae.  This Saturday group has had various deans and even one president, Al Simone.  While the people have changed, the Saturday golf group still tends to play at the Ala Wai Golf Course.

Paul was one of the leaders of PEACESAT, the engineering lead for the team that drilled the hottest geothermal well in the world, and served as President of PICHTR, Acting President of the University of Hawaii and on the boards of Hawaii Electric Company and Cyanotech.  We even started a company with former Governor George Ariyoshi, Hawaii Cultured Pearls.  He still went to his office on the Manoa Campus and, among other things, dabbled in day trading.  

In the DEDICATION to my first book, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth, he is the first person I mentioned:

...in particular, I would like to thank my fellow Dragon and co-conspirator, Paul Yuen, who served to mentor and guide many of the things we initiated.

Paul was a patient and loving father.  He put his daughters, Marcia and Sandy (left to right in this photo), first.  According to Sandy, the Big Bang Theory was his favorite show, and he related well to Sheldon.

We were opposites.  He was steady, careful and very smart.  I was more adventuresome and took risks.  He had this innate ability to read people.  We made a fine team. 

Guy Toyama was perhaps even more the polar opposite of Paul. First, Guy was exactly half Paul's age, so his death is especially tragic, for he had a lot more to accomplish.  He grew up on Maui and obtained a marketing degree from the University of Oregon.  He worked for a while in Japan, married Rika and spoke the language fluently.  He was an entrepreneur and initiated various start-up companies.  Here he is to the left on a hydrogen motorscooter as co-founder and chief executive officer of Hydrogen Technologies.  He was the chairman of the Hawaii County Mayor's Energy Advisory Commission and executive director of the Friends of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA).

Guy's legacy might well be Blue Revolution Hawaii and the Pacific International Ocean Station.  A couple of years ago, we were having lunch in Kona when he mentioned how billionaire Gordon Moore had provided funds to initiate the Thirty Meter Telescope Project.  As Guy had an office at Keahole Point at the entrance of the NELHA, why not the Blue Revolution with support from a billionaire?  Thus was born Blue Revolution Hawaii, which proposed the Pacific International Ocean Station.  Guy created the presentation for PIOS, which I presented at the Seasteading Institute's conference in San Francisco.  

A year ago he chaired the first OTEC summit  at NELHA involving most of key players from industry and government.  The participants agreed on a five-stage program:

  -  Add a 100 kW turbogenerator to the Makai Ocean Engineering OTEC test tower (left photo--yes, that's me to Guy's right...like Paul, he was tall and lanky) for $5 million.

  -  Install a 1 MW OTEC system to the current 55 inch cold water pipeline.

  -  Build a similar facility at Kumejima, Okinawa.

 -  Plan for a 5-10 MW floating OTEC prototype.

  -  Visionize a 100 MW commercial OTEC plantship.

Guy was enterprising and a really nice Guy.  He had an energy and activity level that exceeded anyone I know.  It was just a matter of time for him to become famous.  That is the tragedy.  He could have done so much more for Planet Earth and Humanity.

Appropriately enough, a somber sunset this evening:

-

TRANSITIONS: Part 12B--University of Hawaii--PICHTR Anecdotes

Part 12A on the Pacific International Center for High Technology Center (PICHTR) was posted last week.  Today, a few more anecdotes on the founding of PICHTR.

When I returned to the University of Hawaii in 1982, John Shupe essentially traded positions with Paul Yuen, gaining the directorship of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and passing on to Paul the deanship of the College of Engineering.  The two years or so Paul and I spent inventing PICHTR, I might add, involved a couple of other key factors/relationships/circumstances:

• GOLF:  When Paul and I first met with Honolulu Counsel General (CG, for Japan) Mitsuro Donowaki, he sat imperiously at his desk in front of a large Japanese flag.  He was cool to our presentation and the only discussion subject that seemed to lighten him was golf.  So after we returned to our office, Paul and I decided to ask them out for a golfing session.  We got a time at the Pali Golf Course, so I called Donawaki's aide to invite them to join us.  He said he would check with the CG.  He called me back and rather assertively indicated that they instead would like the two of us to come to Oahu Country Club, and we should bring a change of clothing, for golf would be followed by a shower and dinner.  The faux pas I made, which turned out to be just about right, was my remarking something to the effect that I guess you don't like to golf at public golf courses.  In a way, they were sufficiently abashed that they welcomed joining us for a visit to the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority on the Big Island with golf at the Maunalani Golf Course.  This experience broke the ice and the four of us became good friends.  More so, their intelligence was so advanced that they kept passing on to us crucial information about what to do, and not, and kept inviting us to various activities at the Japanese Consulate.  Almost a third of a century later, Ambassador Donowaki still attends PICHTR board meetings in Honolulu.

• Paul Yonamine:  Son of Wally Yonamine, a local boy who went on to fame as baseball player and coach in Japan, Paul created Sanki to serve as the go-between for PICHTR.  He had some important connections in the Hawaii Legislature that smoothed the way for continued funding.  More so, as he had lived part of his life in Japan, he personally took us to Japan and was interpreter and cultural teacher for us.  He is now General Manager of IBM Japan and serves on the U.S.-Japan Council.

• Richard Matsuura, Ann Kobayashi and Mamoru Yamasaki were State Senators key to the success of PICHTR.  They, further, aided me in my direct requests about funding for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, something the University of Hawaii abhorred.  Richard had a PhD and worked on the Green Revolution for Norman Borlaug, founder of the Green Revolution.  Richard and I wrote the first paper for the Blue Revolution.  Ann is now Budget Committee Chairman for the Honolulu City Council.

-

BLUE REVOLUTION (Part 7)

Politics of OTEC
-
Earlier, it was reported that I helped with the drafting of the original ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) legislation in Congress, which became law in 1979. If the Blue Revolution ever develops, the whole concept will depend on OTEC. The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

-
When I first was exposed to OTEC in the mid 1970s, I was a skeptic. I even submitted an environmental impact statement questioning the potential effect on the coastal region. Having experienced the birth of the legislation, though, and realizing that this technology could well be the key to the success of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) and a tonic for the planet, I became not only a supporter, but self proclaimed savior.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry abhorred this energy option. On the Japanese side, the money to PICHTR came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the U.S., the funds were stuffed down the throat of the USDOE by Congress, and this was some achievement in the mid-80’s, as Ronald Reagan had virtually shut down the solar program. Hawaii ended up with all the meager OTEC funds because our only competition came from Guam and the Caribbean, neither which had a real congressional member. Sea Solar Power of Maryland made a run for some funds, but never made it to first base. Part of this was a ploy we by chance stumbled into that changed the whole nature of the game.

The USDOE director of wind/OTEC programs in those days, Leonard Rogers, had a drink with Louis Rotundo (yes, that same individual who saved the hydrogen program--Chapter 3) of the Florida Solar Energy Center and me at Trader Vic’s in the District. Rogers came right out and said he was closing the program down because the government had done all it could for closed cycle OTEC and now it was up to industry to pick it up. There was nothing more to research. In a leap of logic that still astounds me, Louis says, “what about open cycle OTEC?” Len was not too up on this technology, so I explained that open cycle did not use ammonia or Freon and produced freshwater as a by-product. The whole system had been abandoned since Georges Claude’s experiment 60 years ago, but today would have a lot more potential because most of the OTEC areas in the world with electricity needs also could use potable water. No one had done any turbine research and it was time to work out an internationally cooperative program for developing nations. In those days international partnerships and helping deprived areas were not of high priority for our Federal government. However, there was something about this “new” technology that gained Len’s attention. I did tell him that I would leverage his input with funds from Japan, and that seemed to be a plus. In hindsight now, open cycle made no sense for larger OTEC activities because of the inefficiency of this cycle. But it did serve an important bridge to develop the technology.

So the USDOE totally adjusted its objectives and PICHTR proceeded to gobble up all the OTEC funds because there was no competition in open cycle OTEC. I recruited Lloyd Trimble, who was with Lockheed on the Mini-OTEC project, Luis Vega and Gerard Nihous, who had a small company in Berkeley, California, and a bit later, Andrew Trenka, who once managed the OTEC project out of the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado. They hired a staff and we just re-invented open cycle OTEC.

In 1988 I engineered the publication of a paper entitled, “Converting OTEC for Commercial Use in the Pacific,” with Leonard Rogers as the lead author and Fujio Matsuda, Luis Vega and I as co-authors. It was published in Sea Technology, and sealed the deal for the PICHTR group, which proceeded to gain $22.2 million from the USDOE, $4.5 million from the State of Hawaii and $8.2 million of others (including Japan, of course). The 210 kW (gross, 40 kW net) open cycle system saw groundbreaking in 1991 at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority and full operation, with freshwater, in 1994. The system actually produced 103 kW of maximum net power.

At around this time, about a decade after Paul Yuen and I first thought up the concept of this international technology transfer organization, I parted with PICHTR. The University of Hawaii had continued to pay my salary while I directed the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, so I was helping PICHTR on a pro bono (I did it for free) basis. There were new fields to conquer, as I was named to the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Hydrogen Technical Panel and began championing the Blue Revolution and Green Enertopia. In parallel, I had intitiated the effort and laid the foundation for PICHTR eventually garnering $20 million for a biomass to methanol project.

-

Oil slipped to $114/barrel, and, expectedly, the DJI jumped 83 to 11616.

-

Kika is now a remnant and far southwest of Hawaii. Tropical Depression Hernan continues to move towards a point south of the Big Island, and should dissipate over the next few days. Tropical Storm Iselle is expected to track westward on the 20th parallel, meaning if this direction continues, it will run into the Big Island. However, weakening is projected.

-

SHOULD OUR OCEANS BE ONLY PRESERVED?

On Tuesdays I usually reach back into the past and repeat an early posting of importance, but today there will be two.  Let me start with World Oceans Day, which is celebrated this month.  The concept was first proposed 30 years ago, around the time the concept of the Blue Revolution began to develop.  These international events about our seas almost always are devoted to "saving" our oceans, certainly not wisely utilizing them for the benefit of humanity.

I've been in academia now for half a century.  Research funding is scarce for ocean resource development.  The National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration focus their support just about only for science, not engineering, and more specifically to monitor and protect our seas.  The Department of Energy is more applications than pure science.  However, in the 1980's the UDOE hated ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).  Read my 14 August2008 posting.  

BLUE REVOLUTION (Part 7)

Politics of OTEC
-
Earlier, it was reported that I helped with the drafting of the original ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) legislation in Congress, which became law in 1979. If the Blue Revolution ever develops, the whole concept will depend on OTEC. The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

-
When I first was exposed to OTEC in the mid 1970s, I was a skeptic. I even submitted an environmental impact statement questioning the potential effect on the coastal region. Having experienced the birth of the legislation, though, and realizing that this technology could well be the key to the success of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) and a tonic for the planet, I became not only a supporter, but self proclaimed savior.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry abhorred this energy option. On the Japanese side, the money to PICHTR came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the U.S., the funds were stuffed down the throat of the USDOE by Congress, and this was some achievement in the mid-80’s, as Ronald Reagan had virtually shut down the solar program. Hawaii ended up with all the meager OTEC funds because our only competition came from Guam and the Caribbean, neither which had a real congressional member. Sea Solar Power of Maryland made a run for some funds, but never made it to first base. Part of this was a ploy we by chance stumbled into that changed the whole nature of the game.

The USDOE director of wind/OTEC programs in those days, Leonard Rogers, had a drink with Louis Rotundo (left, yes, that same individual who saved the hydrogen program--Chapter 3) of the Florida Solar Energy Center and me at Trader Vic’s in the District. Rogers came right out and said he was closing the program down because the government had done all it could for closed cycle OTEC and now it was up to industry to pick it up. There was nothing more to research. In a leap of logic that still astounds me, Louis says, “what about open cycle OTEC?” Len was not too up on this technology, so I explained that open cycle did not use ammonia or Freon and produced freshwater as a by-product. The whole system had been abandoned since Georges Claude’s experiment 60 years ago, but today would have a lot more potential because most of the OTEC areas in the world with electricity needs also could use potable water. No one had done any turbine research and it was time to work out an internationally cooperative program for developing nations. In those days international partnerships and helping deprived areas were not of high priority for our Federal government. However, there was something about this “new” technology that gained Len’s attention. I did tell him that I would leverage his input with funds from Japan, and that seemed to be a plus. In hindsight now, open cycle made no sense for larger OTEC activities because of the inefficiency of this cycle. But it did serve an important bridge to develop the technology.

So the USDOE totally adjusted its objectives and PICHTR proceeded to gobble up all the OTEC funds because there was no competition in open cycle OTEC. I recruited Lloyd Trimble, who was with Lockheed on the Mini-OTEC project, Luis Vega and Gerard Nihous, who had a small company in Berkeley, California, and a bit later, Andrew Trenka, who once managed the OTEC project out of the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado. They hired a staff and we just re-invented open cycle OTEC.

In 1988 I engineered the publication of a paper entitled, “Converting OTEC for Commercial Use in the Pacific,” with Leonard Rogers as the lead author and Fujio Matsuda, Luis Vega and I as co-authors. It was published in Sea Technology, and sealed the deal for the PICHTR group, which proceeded to gain $22.2 million from the USDOE, $4.5 million from the State of Hawaii and $8.2 million of others (including Japan, of course). The 210 kW (gross, 40 kW net) open cycle system saw groundbreaking in 1991 at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority and full operation, with freshwater, in 1994. The system actually produced 103 kW of maximum net power.

At around this time, about a decade after Paul Yuen and I first thought up the concept of this international technology transfer organization, I parted with PICHTR. The University of Hawaii had continued to pay my salary while I directed the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, so I was helping PICHTR on a pro bono (I did it for free) basis. There were new fields to conquer, as I was named to the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Hydrogen Technical Panel and began championing the Blue Revolution and Green Enertopia. In parallel, I had intitiated the effort and laid the foundation for PICHTR eventually garnering $20 million for a biomass to methanol project.

Much of my life has been devoted to finding a way to sustainably develop the potential of marine bioproducts and habitats in a manner that can enhance our natural environment.  The Blue Revolution is designed to remediate global warming and reduce the dangers of hurricanes while providing an opportunity for corporations to make a profit by providing green energy and products for humanity.  The great majority of geoengineering solutions to combat global warming attempt to control carbon dioxide in ways that could cause more harm than good.

All the above starts with my posting of 10 August 2008, where I indicated that the first congressional bill I drafted was in 1979, or 43 years ago:

EARLY POLITICS OF OTEC

The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth. I place the beginnings of the modern day development of ocean thermal energy conversion with the first OTEC congressional legislation in 1979.
-
Hawaii had just shown for the first time in July, through the Mini-OTEC barge under the leadership of Lockheed, that it was possible to produce net positive electricity from the temperature differential of the ocean. I had just started work in the U.S. Senate for what would subsequently be a three year period, and Senator Spark Matsunaga asked me to develop a bill to authorize funds for OTEC. Rich Woldin, also newly hired, and a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote the first draft and I provided comments.

In those days Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, plus, we were in the midst of the second energy crisis when no one in his right mind would actually pick up a visitor at Dulles Airport, but would do so if the arrival was at National Airport (now Reagan). The difference was distance and the requirement to join a gasoline line. Any energy bill, thus, passed without much debate.

On October 15 of that year there was a Senate hearing, and the USDOE representative, Bennett Miller, who later became a friend of mine, testified that the administration did NOT want the OTEC program accelerated. This was standard USDOE protocol, for the administration generally abhorred the interference of Congress on anything. So, as a staff member, how do you maintain positive relationships with government officials with this kind of attitude? You simply talked things out behind the scene and treated congressional hearings as just a stage of the process. Whether we agreed on anything or not, Democratic or Republican, the key to long term success was to maintain a trusting rapport. Lifetime alliances generally resulted, which worked to my favor when I returned to the University of Hawaii and directed the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and served as vice president of development for the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. Almost a third of a century later, many remain close friends, I can’t identify even one person I can cite as an antagonist and some are still working for the USDOE in D.C.

There was a follow-on reception after the hearing, with hula dancers and the usual assortment of Hawaiian food and drinks. Lobbyists seeking advantage paid for these events. We also passed out flashlights charged with electricity from Mini-OTEC and small bottles of seawater from the ocean depths. Senators generally avoid these receptions unless personally asked to come by the sponsoring Senator. Matsunaga’s bill did have 20 co-sponsors, but many Senators found their way to the reception mostly because of a fortuitous circumstance. There were roll call votes through the early evening and Sparky brought back with him streams of Senators who had to eat something anyway. Within months the bill passed into law.

-

When after three years in the U.S. Senate I returned to the University of Hawaii 40 years ago, a lot of work remained to position Hawaii as the world leader in the Blue Revolution.  Some of the preliminary work had begun half a century ago, as outlined in THE STORY OF THE BLUE REVOLUTION, reported in the Blue Revolution Hawaii blogsite.  You can read the details.

Industry and entrepreneurs have done a terrible job taking care of the marine environment.  The seas are overfished, there is considerable pollution of our coastlines, so it became inevitable that much of the effort in this field remains focused on preserving our oceans.

A good part of this attitude starts from kindergarten to high school and into college, where students are taught to be anti-pollutionists.  Science teachers are universally conservationists.  Thus, into adulthood the vast majority of the population becomes suspicious of any enterprise having to do with utilizing our oceans for economic progress.

Worse, with global warming, almost all of the geoengineering concepts to solve this problem look worrisome.  When I talk about the Blue Revolution, I attempt to forge a completely new path, one that underscores profits to interest the private sector, while actually enhancing our environment, from producing sustainable products to remediating global warming to reducing the problem of hurricanes.  

To overcome suspicion and gain supporters, I have made numerous presentation worldwide, and here are three suggesting that as we move into the future, one component of a better world should be the Blue Revolution:

• 2012:  My talk at the San Francisco Seasteading Conference.
• 2019:  Seasteading podcast.
• 2021:  TEDx talk--The Time for the Blue Revolution is Now.

Unfortunately, the traditional financial supporters, the government and companies, are too picayune to handle something so large.  To my readers, I ask only one favor.  Help us interest a billionaire, or team of them, to sponsor:

• The charter summit of the Blue Revolution.
• Provide $150 million to design, build and operate the Pacific International Ocean Station, the first floating platform to bridge the gap from university search to the marketplace.
• Initiate a $150 billion floating city to host the 2050 Ocean Expo.

How can you do this?  Send them to this blog site, and also to:

• Blue Revolution Hawaii.
• iBlue Revolution.

So about the title of this posting, yes, of course we should take good care of our marine environment.  However, as we farm and build habitats on land, there is every reason to believe that we should be able to conscientiously utilize our oceans in harmonious ways to provide sustainable products and energy, while enhancing our environment.

If you've come this far, congratulations.  Following up on my posting yesterday, I'll end with a notice that the third House January 6 Committee hearing schedule for tomorrow has been delayed until next week.  Has to do with the subject matter and some technical problems.  A hearing will be held on Thursday:

June 16, 1PM EDT:  will look into Trump pressuring Mike Pence, crackpot John Eastman recommendation to invalidate the votes of 5 states and the judge that resisted Trumps demands.

-