[ok-sus] Hawaii's Moon Shot

[Miles, Karen]

Hawaii's Moon Shot 

 

Jeffrey Mikulina, a longtime environmental activist in Hawaii, jokes
that his home state, which is almost completely dependent on imported
oil, is one supertanker away from being Amish. It also is one
superheated ocean away from being underwater.

 

There, in a nutshell, is the motivation behind a new campaign to wean
Hawaii from fossil fuels in 10 years. The project is Hawaii's own moon
mission, led by the Blue Planet Foundation and not by the state's
political establishment, which tends to prefer the slow and tortured way
to change (a long battle over a new commuter rail system was bogged down
by a ferocious debate over whether it should have steel or rubber
wheels).

 

Blue Planet, a private foundation, is the creation of Henk Rogers, a
software entrepreneur who made a fortune in Tetris. Reassessing his life
after a heart attack two years ago, he decided to pursue a goal that for
decades has been as elusive as it is drop-dead obvious.

 

Hawaii is as energy-hungry as any state, but it has no oil, natural gas,
hydroelectric dams or nuclear plants. It needs imported crude to keep
the lights on, but it also has an abundance of clean-energy sources:
sunshine, wind, powerful tides and waves and cold ocean depths. 

 

A green consciousness is beginning to take root in Hawaii. In January,
the state approved a plan to cut its reliance on foreign oil by 70
percent by 2030. Mr. Rogers doesn't want to wait that long, so his
foundation is trying to turbocharge the effort. Mr. Mikulina, the
foundation's executive director, says this will mean more than just
throwing up lots more solar panels and windmills and making lavish
investments on exotic technologies. 

 

Wind-farm relics from the 1980s are now languishing on Hawaiian
hillsides or as forgotten proposals in desk drawers. The foundation
plans to seek structural changes, like pushing the state government and
Hawaii's main utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, to revamp an
obsolete electrical system to increase efficiency and to allow customers
with solar panels to easily sell power back to the grid. An agreement to
do just that was signed last month but has not been enacted into law.

 

Advances like these, plus a concerted push for conservation, may be just
the steps needed to complete the state's transformation from blue to
green. Hawaiians have a long tradition of self-sufficiency, community
action and a deep attachment to the land that sustains them - leadership
in a clean-energy movement could powerfully reaffirm those values and
perhaps spread them to the rest of the nation.

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