This was a short summit held in the Convention Center of Honolulu. It featured many representatives from Agriculture, Energy Conversion, Energy Distribution, Energy End Users, Elected officials, and the Public sector (other government agencies), including the Governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle.

Alarmingly, too few were in evidence to defend the taxpayers and ratepayers who will most certainly be asked to contribute hundreds of millions more to these endeavors. In a state which has the overall highest tax burden in the nation, the officials around the table (the very large table), including state officials, seemed indifferent.

As the title of the conference indicated, the conference dealt with the role of biofuels (energy from biological sources) and its future role in providing energy for the state of Hawaii. As a retired scientist I was dismayed by the lack of worthwhile engineering, scientific, or economic data being presented. Little quantitative data was provided. For example we consume today nearly 400,000,000 gallons of gasoline per day in the United States.

What fraction of this daily total gasoline used, will all of the biomass fuels being contemplated replace, 2 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent? How much energy, land, water, fertilizers, and new infrastructure will be needed to do this? And will it be worth it? And says who? One got the impression in the meeting that engineering and economic successes in biofuels were foregone conclusions for the future of this effort.

Simple assertions and beliefs were all that were needed. No hard-nosed engineering give and take was present or encouraged.

An official from the United States Department of Agriculture mentioned to the throng that her agency had passed out hundreds of millions for such endeavors and invited those present to contact her for advice in getting more. There were no questions from taxpayers asking “What happened to that money, what did we buy for it, and was it worthwhile”?

Others were quite unembarrassed in announcing their opinions that the government had to pay for such studies, projects, assessments, which can be found throughout this biofuels effort. That planned economies have uniformly failed around the world hasn’t been learned in Hawaii. The need to read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom was in evidence throughout the room.

We saw no preliminary engineering studies, no estimates of biofuel output (like gallons per year), no descriptions of existing production and/or pilot plant programs and related problems and successes, and certainly no estimated costs per gallon of the biofuels. Yet we plunge onward.

A few mentioned concerns about the large land use requirements to grow the sugar cane and the looming conflict between land needed for biofuels and land for food. Of course, the demand for corn for ethanol is keeping the price of corn for food needlessly high. This is a mainland problem largely, since sugar cane would be the preferred future biofuel crop in Hawaii. But as we are learning from Brazil, sugar cane has a lot of its engineering problems as well.

Others mentioned some serious infrastructure problems. There will likely be a need to import sorghum, molasses, palm oil and other starting materials for manufacturing biomass fuels in Hawaii! Just how this will save energy costs over imported oil was not clear. Nor does this help in the effort for the islands to become energy self-sufficient. The harbor infrastructures on each island will need upgrading. This would include upgrading and expanding wharves, piping, pumps, storage tanks, barges, dredging and more. These are not low cost items.

Military personnel were present and mentioned their readiness to contribute. Since they supply fresh water to the troops in the Middle East deserts, they offered their help in water purification technology. What was not mentioned was the amount of water needed for a biofuels plant (known to be a large amount), nor were the costs provided per gallon for water produced from the water purification technologies used by the military. These purification costs are known to be significant and the process energy intensive.

In spite of the hype the biofuels technologies and related costs are still poorly developed, poorly understood, poorly quantified. It is far too early to commit millions and billions of hard earned taxpayer dollars in the pursuit of so many uncertainties.

We need to abandon advocacy and learn hard facts from past engineering experiences and be more disciplined in the approach. Over the past 30 years the US has been littered by hundreds of failed wind and solar facilities paid for by the tax payers. Did we learn anything from these wasted billions? Have we read and studied why these failed? We taxpayers certainly paid enough to ask to see such engineering and cost performance reports.

At this summit meeting there was a collective indifference to the unmentioned engineering and economic problems facing the state and to the proposed new burdens to taxpayers and rate payers. It does not bode well for the economic future of Hawaiian energy supplies. Further the liberation of Hawaii taxpayers from their confiscatory state and county governments is still not in sight. Too many agencies want millions more, and have the power to take it.

Other major problems faced by this industry are both in the financing of the enterprises and in the permitting processes, which, depending upon many factors can take years. Each of these problems needed to be addressed in much more detail. Investors do not like uncertainties; they do not like prolonged, wasteful, inconsistent, and duplicitous permitting systems. We have plenty of each in Hawaii.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is Director Center for Science:Climate and Environment (CSCE) for GRIH. He can be emailed at mfox@grassrootinstitute.org