I was spending my summer of 1979 at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory when the Second Oil Crisis was in full swing. Gasoline lines were tormenting and the price of petroleum was at an all-time high.
A friend of mine at the University of Hawaii, Tak Yoshihara, was ending his time with U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga, and my name was being mentioned as a possible replacement. So I just flew to DC to meet with Cherry Matano, the senator's chief of staff.
She hired me on the spot, so Pearl and I moved to the national capital for a three-year assignment. After I returned to the University of Hawaii, she continued on with Senator Matsunaga, ran his campaign headquarters in 1982 and continued on with Senator Dan Akaka when Spark passed away.
This was my second-most (#1 was as a process engineer in the Hutchinson Sugar Company factory) stressful period ever, for I typically left home at 8AM and returned 12 hours later. But it was also enjoyable, for the long hours were usually punctuated by attendance at grand receptions somewhere in town. Senator Matsunaga got several invitations every night, and he rarely went, so sent his staff members to represent him. 
The concerts on the Mall for Memorial Day and 4th of July began when we first arrived, and continue on today. We were completely free on weekends, so we travelled to various festivals and the like. Washington, D.C. is also the most beautiful city for two weeks in the Spring when the cherry blossoms and tulips are in bloom, and again in the Fall for the change of colors.
Professionally, my stay here made my career. I did learn a lot and established important contacts in the U.S. Congress and government departments. Also too, colleagues at the University of Hawaii tended to over-value my importance because they thought I had all the connections. Yes, that's me on the right.
It was not like I innocently came here with no goals. In the mid-seventies the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute had formed, and I led various studies dealing with the future of energy. One, we knew we had huge wind potential. Second, there was the ocean around us. Third, we needed to develop transport biofuels, and we did have all that sugar cane. Fourth, the tourist industry would someday be challenged by air travel and cost of jet fuel, so we thought that hydrogen offered a more secure path to the future.
Right at the start, Lockheed was the first to attain net-positive with Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, off the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii off Keahole Point on the Big Island. Matsunaga felt elated, for he was the person who got the U.S. Navy to provide the ship. Here is an introduction to OTEC Steve Masutani and I wrote almost two decades ago. Sad to say, nothing much has changed.
I was asked to help the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to draft the original OTEC R&D bill, for Senator Matsunaga was a member. It took a few months, but in 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed what started as S 1380 into Public Law # 96-130. We were optimistic, for the bill indicated that the U.S. government was committed to producing 10,000 MW by 1999. Okay, nearly forty years after passage, and twenty years after that deadline, you want to know how many megawatts of net-positive OTEC electricity are being generated today? Zero.
There are two experimental facilities, one in Okinawa and another at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (left). The Kumejima plant produces a gross of 50 kW, while the Hawaii version can generate 100 kW.
As I had just come from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I asked Spark to drop by the facility on one of his next trips home. He did, and returned with a surprising request. Draft me a hydrogen bill, he said. I asked if this was related to fusion, and he said no, renewable energy hydrogen. Now that this was his idea, producing the legislation and having it become law should have been easy. But, no, it took almost a decade, long after I had returned to Hawaii, when the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act became law in 1990.
The story of how this bill became law could itself be a whole book. In short, Dan Brewer and Willis Hawkins of Lockheed visited with me at least a dozen times, for their interest was in the National Aerospace Plane, exactly what Hawaii would need some time in the longer term future. Just the presence of this legislation being considered was sufficient for Lockheed to stick in huge chunks of money to develop this program. It is said that the Department of Defense and NASA spent $2 billion of mostly black funds to take the technology up to the point where they then determined it was premature to build an intercontinental hydrogen jetliner.
Dan authored Hydrogen Aircraft Technology, which you can still purchase for $464 Kindle and around $500 hardback. Willis had quite a career, for he started Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and served as President. He also was Assistant Secretary for R&D in the Department of Defense. You want to form a good lobbying team? Use Dan and Willis as models.
Being linked to the beginning of this legislation, I was able to later help form the National Hydrogen Association. Also, I became chairman of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel (HTAP). Our greatest accomplishment was the production of The Green Hydrogen Report, a proposed budget which was religiously followed by congressional committees such that at one point the hydrogen budget was higher than the solar budget when George W. Bush was president. The key to all this funding was that written in the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act was a simple clause found in no other energy technology: HTAP reported to BOTH the Department of Energy and Congress.
A third area of responsibility I shepherded had to do with Deep Seabed Mining. Matsunaga had already introduced that bill before I arrived, but I was tasked to get it passed. Oh my, the environmentalists were loud in their opposition, Lockheed, again, in the form of Connie Welling, provided various inducements, which then were legal...not anymore, and the lawyers from other corporations also had their say. In tandem, there was the Law of the Treaty before the Senate (this body ratifies all treaties, the House is not involved). S. 493, the Deep Seabed Mineral Resources Act did make it into law, but the Law of the Sea Treaty is still wandering about till today. Why? Companies wanted to make a profit, but did not want any bother from the United Nations. Like we have pulled out of the global warming agreement, the USA has refused to ratify. The red nations are those who have not signed on.
While the Law of Sea sessions held world-wide were incredibly boring, and the field almost deserved its fate, there was Project Azorian of Cold War intrigue, said to have cost $4 billion, obscuring the technology. The Soviet Union lost one of its submarines not too far from Hawaii in 1968. The CIA/DOD fitted the Hughes Glomar Explorer to retrieve secrets from that sub, but the cover story was that it was after manganese nodules. I was able to sit-in on some of the closed Congressional hearings. You can read all the details in my 13 August 2014 posting, so suffice to say that this story kept sneaking into the news in spite of all the attempts by the CIA to suppress this story, fighting off Jack Anderson, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
While nickel and other minerals from manganese nodules have not developed much, the more recent matter with rare earths could someday enliven this field. China currently produces 90% of all rare earth materials. However, rare earths aren't all that rare, and can be found all over the USA. It's just not mined much. China can do it cheaper. One possible product of the Blue Revolution could well be rare earths, for some day a floating city or industrial park could well be located right over an attractive resource bed.
Being linked to the beginning of this legislation, I was able to later help form the National Hydrogen Association. Also, I became chairman of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel (HTAP). Our greatest accomplishment was the production of The Green Hydrogen Report, a proposed budget which was religiously followed by congressional committees such that at one point the hydrogen budget was higher than the solar budget when George W. Bush was president. The key to all this funding was that written in the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act was a simple clause found in no other energy technology: HTAP reported to BOTH the Department of Energy and Congress.
Yes, sure, there is no hydrogen jetliner flying today, similar to the non-advancement of OTEC and lack of activity in seabed mining. However, I remain convinced that some day most of the intercontinental passenger liners will be fueled with hydrogen, and 1000 MW OTEC will power floating cities, with environmentally acceptable rare earths mined at the sea bottom.
As far in the future as hydrogen and the Blue Revolution might be, one piece of legislation that brought immediate results was in wind energy. Tom Gray was a staff member in the House plugging this option, and I was conveniently in the Senate working under a member on the right committee. So I helped him pass the first wind energy act.
Tom went on to help found the American Wind Energy Association, wrote the first few newsletters and served as executive director in the 80's. He last year passed away.
About this VISION thing, by now, if you have been keeping up with these postings, you surely must have gained some impression that there generally is not an "aha" moment where a brilliant idea just overwhelms you. Nope, vision begins with a seed that is sparked many times, and compounded with other visions over time, eventually producing something of value. Perseverance is mandatory, and some combination of luck and providence absolutely indispensable. In travels to come, I had those points in mind.-
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