Strange Bedfellows

SUBHEAD: AlohaFuels wants to turn Hawaiian water and air into jet fuel using alternative energy. It's high-tech suicide.

By Juan Wilson on 9 April 2013 for Island Breath -
(http://alohafuels.pbworks.com/w/page/44240912/FrontPage)


Image above: Image of alternative energy from AlohaFuels website. From (http://alohafuels.com/who-we-are/).

Yesterday we posted an invitation to sign a petition " A PV on enery roof" (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-pv-on-every-roof.html) )

The petition is addressed to Mina Morita, the Chairperson of the Hawaiian Public Utilities Commission. It have the PUC make Hawaii's power utility companies become proponents of distributed photovoltaic panels on residences with backup-battery storage.

That means finding a way for customers to have an affordable path to generating the power for their own homes on their own roofs. This would mean changing HECO and KIUC's position to have just limited number of PV co-generation from residences.

The current go-gen policy means that customers share their own generation of PV electricity with the power company at a low price (without the ability to store that energy for their own use). Then when its dark and the customer needs energy, they must buy energy back (generated by diesel fuel) from the utility at a high price.

We have supported the idea of independent distributed solar panel generation and storage of energy at individual residences for some time now. But, it is strange who we find behind the petition in question. It was the AlohaFuels Division of H2-Technologies.

After posting the invitation to join the petition I re-visited the sight of  the petition's author (AlohaFuel) and found the following mission statement.

Welcome to AlohaFuels, Division of H2-Technologies

Our mission:
Help Hawaii to become self-sustaining on energy, fuel and food.

Our Goals:
Secure clean, safe, renewable and affordable solar electric energy for everyone and;
  • i. Convert water to hydrogen (H2)

  • ii. H2 and CO2 to gasoline or aviation fuel (CH2)*

  • iii. H2 and N2 to ammonia (NH3)
In the fine print below Aloha fuels specified:
* Produce renewable gasoline in Hawaii, from CO2 and water captured from air, for 3 (2011) $/GGE** wholesale before taxes, or ~4 $/GGE** retail after taxes, independent on World crude oilprices, with a ~ 20 MGGE/y** plant, sized for economic viability on the Big Island, to replace part of the present con- sumption of 30 Mgal/y jet fuel and/or 120 Mgal/y of gasoline.

** Million Gallons of Gasoline Equivalent per year
What this means is AlohaFuels plans to capture CO2 and water captured from the air and using alternative energy to split the water into oxygen and hyrodgen and then combine it with the CO2 to produce JP4 jet fuel (octane = C8H18). Alternative energy sources would include geothermal on the Big Island.

The plan would have the scope of rendering Hawaiian water and air into 20 million gallons of jet fuel a year.

AlohaFuel thinks this is a win-win proposition for Hawaii. We'd become "self reliant" on fuel to get across the Pacific Ocean.

 Only one little problem with that plan - That jet fuel would be burned in the upper atmosphere. This plan would only accelerate global warming and the effects of climate change on Hawaii. Those effects include a dryer climate with less atmospheric water.

The AlohaFuel plan is high-tech suicide.



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