The Lack of New Warming Is a Surprise -- Recall Al Gore!

These two graphs from a major article in The Economist (see source below) clearly indicate that:

1.  Global Warming occurred between 1985 and 1998, but Earth's temp has remained fairly steady for 15 years now!
2. The predictions of Global Warming models are incorrect.
3. The yellow lines indicate the year when Al Gore and IPCC received the Nobel Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" (the bold is mine.)

Global Warming alarmism has caused the inappropriate issuance of two Nobel Prizes (Gore and Obama) and the unnecessary brainwashing of millions of young children at their schools.  Global Warming alarmism gave more support to "environmentalists" whose most prominent successes are to pick the wrong winners (e.g., cost ineffective renewables and rail systems) and make life more expensive in first world populations, and more difficult to rise out of poverty for third world populations.

Now The Economist from Europe, where the core support of Global Warming alarmism is located, has provided some reasonable perspective which shows that:

• There is no denying that some Global Warming (GW) has taken place.
• GW has remained stable for at least a decade.
• Models used by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predict the wrong trend.
• GW did not increase despite the billions of tons of anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 emissions
• Arctic ice does melt to unusual levels in the summer months but no appreciable sea level rise has been recorded.
• Nobody knows what the real effects of an increasingly less possible GW are.

The main article of The Economist is titled Climate science: A sensitive matter -- Here are a few interesting quotes from this comprehensive article:

• "Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise."
• "The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now."
• Despite all the work on [the planet's] sensitivity [to carbon dioxide emissions,] no one really knows how the climate would react if temperatures rose by as much as 4°C.

Three days later The Economist added a short article to calm down Europe's socialists and Obama-like pro carbon taxation politicians (see last bullet below). These politicians need to keep people focused on secondary problems like the GW, because primary problems such as huge budget deficits and problematic pension and health care systems cannot be addressed in the socialist realm of thought. The short article is titled Global warming: Apocalypse perhaps a little later. Exact quotes below. The bold section is mine.

• The science that points towards a sensitivity lower than models have previously predicted is still tentative. The error bars are still there. The risk of severe warming—an increase of 3°C, say—though diminished, remains real.
• Bad climate policies, such as backing renewable energy with no thought for the cost, or insisting on biofuels despite the damage they do, are bad whatever the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases. (Thank you for this. I am sorry to inform you that California, Hawaii, The Blue Planet Foundation and several "environmentalists" do not subscribe to reason, cost-effectiveness analysis or The Economist.)
• Good policies—strategies for adapting to higher sea levels and changing weather patterns, investment in agricultural resilience, research into fossil-fuel-free ways of generating and storing energy—are wise precautions even in a world where sensitivity is low.
• Put a price on carbon and ensure that, slowly but surely, it gets ratcheted up for decades to come. 

I enjoy The Economist for its variety of subjects, reasonable depth of analysis and humor.  I'm sorry, humour. I was disappointed that nowhere did they ask for a recall of Al Gore's and IPCC's Nobel. The two shared a Nobel Prize in 2007.

Energy from Trash Should Be a Priority for Hawaii

Read the full article in Honolulu Civil Beat. Selected highlights:

The long term economy of Waste to Energy (WtE) plants is very good. There is plenty fuel (trash, waste and biomass). Municipalities pay the WtE plant to take their trash. The utility pays the WtE plant for the mega-watts of electricity it produces. Trash volume reduces 6 to 10 times so landfill demand is minimized.

• Sweden imports waste from other Europe to fuel its WtE program. Maui should install a WtE plant and bring in trash from Big Island, Lanai and Molokai. Oahu should plan for another 100 MW of WtE (about half of it tuned to burn biomass, sludge and manure) and bring in trash from Kauai. Barges return to Honolulu from Kauai practically empty.
• Both Oahu and Maui should consider ordering a sophisticated MRF, or Materials Recovery Facility, to better sort materials such as glass (by color), stones and similar inert materials, and all types of metals out of the trash. This would result in a cleaner burn at the WtE plant and revenue from recyclables, e.g., mixed glass is nearly worthless but glass sorted by color has value. So do sorted metals.
• To make Oahu more sustainable we should revise what we currently trash and what we recycle at home in the BLACK, GREEN and BLUE bins, as detailed in the post below.

Last but not least, The Economist notes that "Energy from waste plants that use trash as a fuel to generate electricity and heat continue to have an image problem. That is unfair, because the technology has advanced considerably and has cleaned up its act." As depicted in the image blow, very large part of modern WtE plants is devoted to pollution control.

Oahu Household Recycling

• Honolulu has the most expensive electricity rates among U.S. metro areas, by far.
• Oahu makes about 8% of its electricity from trash. It should plan to make 20% by 2020.
• Oahu generates thousands of tons of paper, plastic, and cardboard trash. This is free fuel for the production of electricity. Instead of making power with it, we waste energy to bale it and ship it out. That’s nuts!
• The next four slides explain what to recycle and what to throw in the trash.

 

Transportation and Energy Infrastructure Projects: Forecasting is Unnecessary

I enjoyed Dr. Martin Wachs' brief article Planning for High Speed Rail (HSR) in California. It centers around planning and forecasting: "The current debate is divisive precisely because improved data and models cannot provide a better glimpse into the future" Wachs says.

After nearly three decades in planning and policy, and six years involvement in local politics I have come to believe that forecasting is unnecessary as a primary decision making tool. Why?

Because transportation infrastructure deployment lags demand by decades. Why do we need to forecast 20+ years into the future? The need is present (or not.) Current data are the best quality data we have. So instead of making numerous uncertain assumptions about a future we do not control, let's assume that the project is built overnight and assess its benefits at the present time.

In the case of Hawaii, when I first relocated here in 1990, traffic congestion was the No. 1 issue and has remained in the top 10 ever since. Twenty three years later, roadway capacity addition has been marginal and most major bottlenecks have not been addressed. So why does the city's planned rail project have a 2030 horizon?

I think the answer is this: The proposed rail does not generate enough ridership with the current population so artificial demand balloons for population and jobs in 2030 are "forecast" to justify the system.

Similarly California has a population of 38 million with huge concentrations in Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas. If HSR does not work for 38 million, then it won't work. Why is a 20 to 50 year projection needed?

Worse yet, the typical  planning models lack credibility because they are never tested with back-casting.  If Parsons Brinkerhoff's model is trusted to predict transit ridership (bus and rail) in Honolulu with year 2006 as baseline and 2030 as the horizon, does it also predict transit ridership for 1982?  In other words, we should check the model's ability to project forward by using the 24-year period from 1982 to 2006; for which we have perfect information. How does the model do?

I think the answer is this: It does very poorly and for this reason back-casting is never applied.(1)

Obviously, since the inception of a project, several years go by for environmental studies, design,  engineering, funding, bidding and construction. So a 10 years-out plan and forecast is needed. But multi-billion dollar energy and transportation infrastructure projects should be justified by their "now" value and not by future demand balloons.

If the projects are beneficial "now" then long range forecasts can be performed for selecting the proper size for them. For example a reversible highway sized at two lanes for sufficient congestion relief may need to be built with three lanes to accommodate future demand. Similarly a 1,000 MW power plant may be engineered with a 1,200 MW capacity for the future.

Projects funded with private capital, fully or partly as in Public-Private Partnerships, sophisticated risk analyses that protect investment from foreseeable risks are conducted. These meticulous and carefully inspected forecasts of project costs and revenues have little in common with the manipulated forecasts for taxpayer funded and subsidized systems, primarily transit systems.

For taxpayer funded projects forecasting is unnecessary and indeed misleading for decision making. It is commonly used a tool for deception, particularly for rail projects.(2)


Endnotes

(1) My students and I investigated the accuracy of traffic volume forecasts primarily in the agriculture-to-residential mega developments in Ewa between 1976 and 2002. We found this:

The study compared forecast traffic levels from Traffic Impact Analysis Reports prepared between 1976 and 2002 to actual traffic volumes recorded by the Hawaii State DOT in the city and county of Honolulu. The information extracted uniformly from 11 reports included year of report, consultant, type of project, location, movement, forecast horizon, forecast traffic volumes and forecasting method.

This study focused on road and residential developments and examined the accuracy of traffic demand forecasting, the conservative or optimistic tendency in traffic forecasts and the potential factors affecting accuracy. The results revealed that traffic forecasts are on average overestimated by 35% and there is a clear tendency to overestimate future traffic volume. Errors ranged from -40% to +200%.

SOURCE: Caroee, Maja, Panos D. Prevedouros and Alyx Yu, Volume Forecasts for Environmental Impact Statements and Traffic Impact Analysis Reports: Accuracy of Road and Residential Developments in Honolulu, Paper 13-1398, 92^nd Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2013.

(2) Flybjerg, Bent, et al., Delusion and Deception in Large Infrastructure Projects (2009)

EPA and Caldwell Are Costing Honolulu $4.5 Billion for Sewers

October 2012 was the 40th anniversary of the landmark Clean Water Act (CWA). On this anniversary, the U.S. Conference of Mayors voiced concerns with what is seen as an increasingly unequal partnership with the federal government. The nation’s towns and cities face a “fiscal crossroads with affordability” as a result of the costs associated with the CWA.

  

Jim Suttle, the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska and former director of its public works department states that the EPA’s reliance on consent decrees is a factor that has impeded the search for innovative solutions to sewer overflows and other problems pertaining to clean water. He argues that the federal government must stop pursuing consent decrees and instead rely on the permitting process to manage water quality problems.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors brings up as an example Lima, Ohio, a town of 39,000 residents. To comply with the Clean Water Act, Lima devised a $60-million long-term control plan, but in 2005 the EPA rejected the plan, and has sought to impose a consent decree that would entail $104 million in capital costs. As a result, Lima’s population will face sewer rates amounting to 4% to 7% of their household income. The CWA compliance costs come to about $2,700 per Lima resident.

Honolulu is in a similar predicament with the overreaching consent decree that Mayor Hannemann signed with the EPA for secondary sewage treatment which is expected to cost no less than $2 billion (The $1.2 billion figure in this article is old and partial.) The same consent decree mandates a number of other replacements and upgrades that will cost about $2.5 billion for an approximate total cost of about $4.5 billion. The CWA compliance costs come to about $4,600 per Oahu resident, almost twice those for Lima residents.

These figures indicate that EPA has gone wild with its requirements for small and large cities. Michael Bissonnette, the mayor of Chicopee, Massachusetts has requested revisiting the consent decrees that are already in place. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is calling on Congress to amend the CWA to make it less burdensome to local governments. The group wants a cap placed on costs to ratepayer associated with unfunded water mandates.

In Honolulu, KITV has already reported that local residents are calling the Board of Water Supply because they can’t afford to pay the rapidly escalating water and sewer rates. (View KITV story.) Therefore, high on the agenda of the new mayor of Honolulu should be the revisiting of the exorbitantly expensive EPA consent decree. This however, would be highly unlikely with mayor-elect Caldwell because he considers this outrageously expensive agreement as an accomplishment.

Godfather of Global Warming Is Less Alarmed Now

Professor James Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist who had a major impact on the development of global warming theory. As the Toronto Sun describes him: Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honored working scientist and academic.


In recent interviews Lovelock has made these rather starling declarations:

1. He had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.
2. He's been a long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
3. He is in favor of natural gas fracking extraction because natural gas is a low-polluting alternative to coal.
4. He believes that ‘sustainable development’ is meaningless drivel.
5. He "can’t stand windmills at any price."
6. He "blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion."

I am truly humbled to be in agreement with him, 5 for 5, with first five arguments: climate change, nuclear power, fracking, sustainable development and windmills. I have not yet written an article blasting greens (although I often refer to them as pseudo-greens) because I've been rather busy countering the railigious.

Sources

• Green ‘drivel’ exposed: The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria
• 'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change
• James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking

Honolulu Rail: Designed to Fail

Randal O'Toole, economist and author of several books on transportation and urban planning was in Honolulu last week where he spoke on two distinguished panels in Kapolei and in Honolulu (see notes 1,2.)

He summarized his opinion about Honolulu's rail in this eye-opening Designed to Fail article.

A few highlights:

• Honolulu rail ... will have the high costs of heavy rail and the capacity limits of light rail.
• Honolulu rail ... has too few seats so bus riders question whether people will be willing to stand for 20-minute trips.
• Honolulu rail ... was planned to go to Kapolei, which has about 35,000 people, but the city decided it didn’t have enough money to go that far. Between East Kapolei and Honolulu the rail line will pass through Waipahu (33,000 people), Pearl City (48,000 people), and by Pearl Harbor Naval Base (its 20,000 people work right on the base). The rest of the rail line goes through light industrial and commercial areas. So the rail line will serve, at most, about 15% of the residents of Oahu and probably no more than 20% of the jobs. That means no more than about 3% of workers will both live and work on the rail line.
• Honolulu rail ... ridership projections are questionable and average at 110 passengers on board the two-car trains at any given time. US light-rail cars carry an average of 24 people, and the most crowded in San Diego carry just 37 people, 110 is highly optimistic.
• Honolulu rail ... proponents argue that the project will relieve congestion, but even the final environmental impact statement says that, at every place evaluated, congestion will be worse in 2030 with the project than without it (see page 3-51).
• Honolulu rail ... will not save energy: at 2,020 BTUs per passenger mile, Honolulu’s bus system already uses less energy than almost every other light-rail and heavy-rail line outside of New York City. By 2030, under the Obama fuel economy standards, the average car on the road will also use only about 2,000 BTUs per passenger mile, and cars in Hawaii (where gas prices are higher than the rest of the U.S.) will probably use even less.

Finally speaking about deficient (low) capacity, O'Toole calculates this:
With 64 seats, the two-car trains supposedly have room for 254 standing passengers. But that’s at “crush capacity,” which is far more crowded than Americans are willing to accept. Assuming the city increases the seating to 76 seats, actual loads are likely to be limited to a total of about 150 to 200 people per train. At a maximum of 20 trains an hour in each direction, the line will be able to move about 3,000 to 4,000 people per hour inbound in the morning and a similar number outbound in the afternoon. By comparison, a highway lane can easily move 600 buses per hour, and at 40 seats per bus that represents 24,000 people per hour, none of them having to stand.

Overall O'Toole observes that in order to pay for this and other rail contracts, Honolulu’s city manager quietly “suspended” the city’s debt limit without consulting the city council or, apparently, the mayor. As Wendell Cox points out, the city faces billions of dollars in expenses fixing its sewer, water, and other infrastructure, and spending $5.3 billion on rail, which at best is a luxury (and at worst a curse) will make it harder to do anything else.

Notes: (1) West Oahu Development: Meat and Potatoes or Gravy Train? (2) Sustainable Growth for Hawaii

US: Gas v. Wind -- Hawaii: Geothermal v. Wind

Matt Ridley concludes his article Gas Against Wind as follows:

To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it.

Like the U.S. mainland has abundant gas Hawaii has abundant geothermal energy. Tapping into geothermal power can be more expensive than hydraulic fracturing or fracking for natural gas but geothermal power in Hawaii is less exhaustible than natural gas on the mainland, and once developed its use does not produce greenhouse gasses.

Like in the U.S. natural gas is in shale hundreds of miles away from big metropolitan areas, but a national grid makes electric power transmission feasible, although billions need to be spent to the existing grid if gigawatts are to be transmitted efficiently and reliably.

In Hawaii a cable to connect Oahu, Maui and the Big island may be too expensive, but there are alternatives: Hydrogen, and Ammonia (as a carrier of Hydrogen.) Hawaii can utilize abundant geothermal energy to transform into a hydrogen/electric economy for long term sustainability, instead of blowing Billions in the wind.

In addition to blowing Billions on unreliable power production, I quote from Ridley's article: The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them.

Honolulu Rail is a White Elephant in the Jungle of Transportation Infrastructure

This slideshow explains why the proposed rail is a white elephant in the jungle of transportation infrastructure. Here is a short list of reasons:

1. Honolulu has a severe traffic congestion problem, not a transit problem
2. Honolulu is the most lane deficient medium/large metro area in the U.S.
3. Honolulu's bus is good but is becoming increasingly unproductive due to added low density routes
4. Voters with a tiny 50.6% "yes" margin approved light rail costing well under $5 Billion, not heavy rail costing well above $5 Billion
5. Successful rail systems are networks in multimillion population cities not 20 miles of single line on a corridor of less than 600,000 people
   
6. Proposed rail has an exorbitant cost per mile, per resident and per passenger... 2 to 3 times more than the hugely expensive Washington D.C. metro
7. Ridership forecasts are outright ridiculous and of course the majority of the projected riders are current bus riders; also about one fifth of the riders projected for year 2030 have not been born yet
   
8. Due to its huge construction costs, the proposed rail will absorb transportation funds for decades causing accumulated deterioration to the already mediocre roads and bus operations
   
9. For the price of rail and its foreign and environmentally intrusive technology Honolulu can build enough congestion relieving infrastructure to achieve 20-minute commutes for 75% of its population
10. 95% of Honolulu electric power comes from fossil fuel and thanks to utopian sun and wind policies dependence on oil for power will stay there for a long time
11. Reversible express HOT Lanes is clearly the best solution for Honolulu given the prevailing high Bus and Carpool use rates, and huge AM and PM commuting demand peaks; small trains with a capacity of 300 will do very little to demand peaks and even less off peak
    
12. The path to sustainability for Oahu requires HOT Lanes, Bus Rapid Transit, institutionalized TeleCommuting and expanded Bikeways but none of these are active projects
    
13. Independent macroeconomic analysis has confirmed that the proposed rail has a huge negative surplus (benefits minus costs) over a 40+ year horizon
    
14. Rail is unsustainable as a tax and energy black hole; Oahu has a $40 Billion funding liability and rail is the only discretionary project
15. Adding insult to injury, it is so ugly ... (see slide 21)
    

Infrastructure projects to fix the economy? Don’t bank on it.

Many good points in this Washington Post guest opinion:

• Even if federal agencies calculate the numbers properly, members of Congress often push ahead with "trash" projects anyway.
• As Morgan noted in his 1971 book, these big projects have often damaged both taxpayers and ecology.
• Taxpayers are double losers from all this infrastructure. They paid to build it, and now they are paying to clean up the environmental damage.
• When the federal government "thinks big," it often makes big mistakes.
• When the federal government is paying for infrastructure, state officials and members of Congress fight for their shares of the funding, without worrying too much about efficiency, environmental issues or other longer-term factors.
• The recent infrastructure debate has focused on job creation, and whether projects are "shovel ready." The more important question is who is holding the shovel.
• The federal government subsidizes the construction of urban light-rail systems, for example, which has caused these systems to spring up across the country. But urban rail systems are generally less efficient and flexible than bus systems, and they saddle cities with higher operating and maintenance costs down the road.

Real and Affordable Green or Misguideded Dream?

Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School. I trust his analyses much more than the "data free" propaganda of the Sierra Club and the Blue Plant Foundation of Hawaii. Here is a summary in his words of his latest assessment titled Seeming Green.

• Danish politicians – like politicians elsewhere – claim that a green economy will cost nothing, or may even be a source of new growth. Unfortunately, this is not true. Globally, there is a clear correlation between higher growth rates and higher CO2 emissions. Furthermore, nearly every green energy source is still more expensive than fossil fuels, even when calculating pollution costs. We do not burn fossil fuels simply to annoy environmentalists. We burn them because fossil fuels have facilitated virtually all of the material advances that civilization has achieved over the last few hundred years.
• Politicians in Denmark and elsewhere argue as if this were no longer true: a transition to a green economy will create millions of new “green jobs.” But, while green-energy subsidies generate more jobs in green-energy sectors, they also displace similar numbers of jobs elsewhere.
• Many politicians are drawn to photo opportunities and lofty rhetoric about “building a green economy.” Unfortunately, the green-energy policies currently being pursued are not helping the environment or the economy. More likely, they will lead to greater emissions in China, more outsourcing to India, and lower growth rates for the well-intentioned “green” countries.

Volt, Prius or CRV? Numbers Make the Choice Obvious.

The fully worded question is: How does the extended-range GM Volt Electric Vehicle compare with Toyota’s fourth generation hybrid Prius and Honda’s popular compact SUV the CRV?

I was not inclined to immediately dismiss the GM Volt as an expensive failure, (e.g., Chevy Volt is Automotive Version of Solyndra) and the October 2011 issue of Consumer Reports (CR) encouraged me to look into this different car.

Although CR did not award the Volt its coveted Recommended status, some of its critique is excellent for a compact car with unconventional technology:

• “Responsive steering makes the Volt feel fairly nimble in turns.”
• “The Volt was secure at its handling limits.”
• “The ride feels solid and firm yet compliant.”
• “Braking distance was very good overall.” And this one:
• “The Volt is amazingly inexpensive to run on short trips.”

The last one has twice the significance for Honolulu. Because of the compactness of the land, we make many more short trips in Honolulu than motorists in spread out mainland cities with about one million population. But our electricity cost is roughly three times higher than mainland US.

Does a Volt make a good choice? We can arrive at an answer by comparing it to two popular choices in Honolulu like the Toyota Prius and the Honda CRV. (1)

CR compared their $43,000 Volt to a $26,500 Toyota Prius and a $18,500 Hyundai Elantra. It excluded the purchase cost. Based on gasoline and kilowatt-hour costs, CR found that Volt is cheapest for 30 mile trips, is similar to hybrids for 70 mile trips, and loses its advantage as trips get longer.

To get to a better answer I used both Honolulu and US mainland prices for fuel and electricity, 30 mile and 70 mile trips, an 8 year/100,000 mile horizon (that’s when Volt's battery warranty expires), US and Hawaii tax incentives, and resale value at the end of 8 years. One component that remains uncertain in these half life-cycle cost estimations is maintenance.

In 8 years, Prius and CRV will make extensive use of their internal combustion engine. They would need about 20 oil changes and a few component replacements which should cost $1,000 to $2,000. Also both of them may require transmission repairs which are not applicable to the Volt. Both Volt and Prius have regenerative braking so they may not need brake pads before 100,000 miles but the CRV will likely need two sets of front brake pads and rotor resurfacing. Brake costs for the CRV for 8 years and 100,000 miles may come close to $1,000. Maintenance and repairs play a role in life cycle cost.

Insurance, finance charges, license, annual registration and safety inspections were not included because they are similar for all three cars for the same driver at a given location, e.g., registration and insurance rates vary widely by state. (As of this writing I am not certain that Volt is subject to Smog Test where applicable.) These costs do not affect the bottom line choice.

Discounted parking and other perks for EVs were not included. Currently EV perks in Hawaii are as follows:

• Special electric vehicle license plates.
• Free parking at State and County facilities including meters.
• Free parking at UH parking structure.
• Exemptions from high occupancy vehicle lanes.

For some users these perks may amount to more than $1,000 per year, at taxpayer expense (e.g., a stall occupied by an EV cannot be occupied by a fee-paying vehicle, so EV user gains amount X and taxpayer loses parking revenue X.)

A big unknown is the durability and replacement cost of Volt's battery. GM's warranty is for 8 years and 100,000 miles. Note that California requires 10 years/150,000 miles. As a result, Volt buyers will not receive California's $5,000 incentive. This limitation is not applicable to Hawaii.

The Prius' entire hybrid system (which includes the hybrid battery pack) is warranted for 8 years/100,000 miles. A battery replacement with a new one at a dealership costs roughly $4,000. There are lower cost options such as Re-Involt Technologies in North Carolina: “...batteries for the Prius 2001-2010 are $1675.00 plus shipping and your old battery.”

The table above details my estimates for the usage of these three cars in Honolulu using monthly gasoline prices and my own electricity bills to determine the actual bottom line cost of HECO’s price to the household. This price was then reduced by 6 cents, a discount that HECO offers if the EV is charged at home overnight. I assumed that this preferential treatment will last for the 8 year horizon in my analysis. HECO installation of a appropriate meter, purchase and installation of a 240V charger add over $2,500. There is a $750 incentive for the 240V charger.

Despite Honolulu’s expensive electricity, use of the Volt exclusively for short trips is much cheaper than its competitors. Honolulu Volt owner’s running cost comes to $595; the same cost at an average U.S. mainland city is $283.

Then I used a mix of 5 trips of 30 miles each and 2 trips of 70 miles each, per week, to arrive at my bottom line estimates. With such usage, the Volt, Prius and CRV will cost $1,150, $992 and $2,044, respectively, to run for 12,500 miles per year in Honolulu, and $698, $843 and $1,738, respectively, to run for 12,500 miles per year at an average mainland city.

Volt is the cheapest to operate on short and medium trips on the mainland, and Prius is the cheapest to operate on short and medium trips in Honolulu; about $150 cheaper than the Volt and more than $1,000 cheaper than the CRV. HECO’s high price per kilowatt-hour takes a toll on Volt.

Using Edmunds.com’s True Market Value(2), a flat documentation fee, 4.5% tax (GET in Hawaii, 8% sales tax on mainland) and applicable incentives, I arrived at the following cost estimates:

CRV has a purchase price of about $26,000 and Prius is about $29,500. Volt is $31,500 after $7,500 in federal incentives and $4,500 in Hawaii incentives have been deducted. These prices include destination charges and regional adjustments of about $750 (an add-on to car cost in Hawaii.) Due to lower state incentives and higher sales taxes, the Volt is about $3,000 more expensive on the US mainland. The other two are about the same as in Hawaii.

The bottom half of the table above is the bottom line. I arrived there by estimating today’s resale value of the three vehicles for 8 years in the future, using Edmunds.com. Both CRV and Prius have an over 10 year history on the market so their used car value is reliable. There are no estimates for the year-old Volt, so I assumed that it will have a resale value equal to the Prius.

Bottom line is that in Honolulu over 8 years and 100,000 miles the CRV will have a total cost of $33,775, the Prius will cost $27,888 and Volt comes in the middle with a total cost of $31,080. Mainland estimates are in the same order with only the CRV costing about $1,500 less than Hawaii due to the cheaper gasoline price.

With analysis like this, one can run “what if” scenarios quickly. What if average gasoline price for the next 8 years increases by a whopping 50% over the 18-month average I used? This would take Honolulu’s average gas price to $5.43 per gallon. In this case, the bottom line for the three cars will be as follows: the CRV will have a total cost of $41,963, the Prius will cost $31,861 and Volt would come in the middle at $32,589 (... plus registration, insurance, maintenance, parking and other applicable fees ... and the charger for the Volt.)

But over 75% of Oahu’s electricity comes from oil and this is not likely to change by much in the next 8 years. So if gasoline goes up by 50%, then electricity will go up by at least 30%. This increases Volt’s bottom line cost to $34,394. So even with very expensive gasoline Prius is cheaper than the Volt by $2,500.

All estimates indicate that Volt is a losing proposition to its buyer and it is certainly a losing proposition to the taxpayer because tax incentives of $12,000 are involved in the sale of every Volt in Hawaii. A Volt buyer could have gotten a much lower priced hybrid car and $12,000 of taxpayer monies could have gone to far more worthy causes. Parking incentives and the tax credit for the home charger may also add several thousand dollars of taxpayer subsidies.

Even the most extreme of “green” advocates cannot argue that the environmental benefits of each Volt over a Prius are worth $10,000 to $20,000 depending on location and taxpayer subsidized perks.

The Volt is a huge “miss” for GM, a manufacturer that could least afford a costly “miss,” and the total financial blunder from this vehicle is attributable to misguided policies (of the familiar liberal type.) Billions more will be spent on mandated EV chargers at parking lots, and on government fleet purchases of Volts.

Postcripts: (1) What about the all electric Nissan Leaf? Look for my updated coverage that will include the Leaf once reliable data become available, most likely early next year. (2) Edmunds.com is a reliable publication that I also used in my doctorate dissertation to determine car values in the late 1980s. It includes a “True Cost to Own” estimator that takes into account most of the life-cycle categories mentioned in my article. It has no estimates for Leaf and Volt.

Big Projects in Hawaii - Why Are They Stuck?

Big projects are complex. So the question why big projects get stuck can generate enormously complex responses. However, the answer boils down to a simple bottom line: Because they don't make the grade!

There are 10 basic dimensions that account for the reasons that big projects succeed or fail. Each project has its own complex set of technical, legal, institutional and financial requirements but 10 basic reasons cover the fundamental requirements.

A project needs to fulfill a major need (or mitigate a major problem), at a low cost, with a large share of it paid by outsiders, and with minimal environmental impacts and implementation risks. It is also important that a project has a strong local advocacy and a weak opposition, and some political support at all levels. A project has a better chance if it utilizes advance technology or is ahead of its time based on proven engineering (e.g., maglev trains, fiber based structural components, etc.) A sound business plan means that a scenario of reasonable adversity keeps the project's balance sheet solvent and subsidies are kept to a minimum even for government projects.

Table 1 presents the 10 fundamental requirements and theoretical scores using a scale where 5 is best and 1 is worst. As a result, a project that garners 50 points is “excellent” and would likely be built at a breakneck speed. Thirty or more points are needed for a project to be deemed “good,” therefore worthy of serious consideration for implementation. Projects with less than 30 points are deemed to be fair or bad and should be avoided.


There have been many high scoring projects such as the successful establishment of Costco and Wal-Mart in Hawaii in less than 10 years, the H-Power and AES power plants on Oahu, the 10 miles of Tampa’s reversible toll lanes built in less than 7 years for less than $400 Million, and the I-35W bridge replacement in the Twin Cities costing $234 Million (completed 3 months early and is Light Rail-ready,) just to mention a few.

Job creation is not a factor. While privately funded projects typically generate new jobs, several taxpayer funded projects tend to be make-work projects. In addition, the job creation aspect is partly accounted for by the Local Advocacy and Political Push factors.

Table 2 presents a sample of 8 big projects in Hawaii and their scores for the 10 basic requirements based on my ratings. Three local projects made it because they deserved it, two failed because they deserved it, and three big ones are predicted to fail. Other experts may assign different scores but the average scores of a handful of unbiased assessors with knowledge of all facets of a project should yield a reliable overall score for a proposed project.


Both the H-3 freeway and the grand expansion of the Honolulu International Airport (HIA) including its controversial reef runway had major cost and environmental problems, but their superior payoff (by providing needed roadway and runway capacity), sound business plan (by paying for themselves in the long run), and generous federal cost sharing garnered them a good score. They got done and work well.

Similarly the Hawaii Convention Center had a lot going for it. The main issue was its location. Once this was resolved, the project was built expeditiously. Its business plan was and still is weak.

Two recent project failures in Hawaii are unique. Both are water transportation projects, and both were implemented and then failed. Both should never have been started. This is particularly true for TheBoat that never had a credible business plan or solved a problem. It removed the equivalent of 2 to 4 buses from the road at a cost of $32 per commuter trip. The (sometimes nauceous) commuter paid only $2; all the rest was public tax subsidy.

The SuperFerry was a fitting transportation addition in the island state of Hawaii but it needed a super-sized investment in order to succeed; roughly four times what was actually available. It needed three fully debugged vessels with no need for custom docking platforms, and it needed media campaign and political greasing similar to the 2006-2008 pro-rail blitzkriegs. Given these requirements, it is questionable that a marine company can make a profit at the level of investment needed for establishing a competitive service. There have been several attempts since before statehood, all leading to losses and closures.

At least three large projects are currently "on the table" in Hawaii: The city's rail project, B.R.Horton's Hoopili project in Ewa (over 12,000 residential units), and the Big Wind project where wind turbines on Molokai and Lanai will generate 400 MW of electric power to be used on Oahu via submerged cables.

None of these projects make the grade. This does not mean that they will not be built. But it does mean that building them is not a good idea and that the monies should have been better spent on other projects and opportunities. Here is why.

Both Rail and Big Wind fulfill a major need but with archaic or problematic technology. Their project proponents have greased the wheels well and they enjoy strong political support, but both projects are very expensive for what they offer and the cost share by outsiders is small or nil. They have large impacts mostly borne by non-users. Both have strong local advocacy and opposition so that's a wash.

Hoopili and Big Wind have credible business plans but their externalities are not accounted for, e.g., Hoopili and surrounding developments require their own freeway lane to/from town, but none is being built. As a result, over 100,000 existing residents will suffer much worse congestion upon Hoopili’s completion and occupancy (even assuming rail is there.) In addition, both the rail and Hoopili obliterate a large portion of prime agricultural land in central Oahu.

A major externality of rail and Hoopili that is not accounted for in their direct costs is the loss of a major portion of prime agricultural land on Oahu. This is a huge loss for an overpopulated remote island.

The 20 mile rail should be replaced by 11 miles of High Occupancy and Toll (HOT) lanes and point-to-point express buses. Hoopili's 12,000 units should be replaced with 12,000 units in Kalihi and Kakaako. Big Wind should be replaced with geothermal power plants on Maui and Big Island, and coal, solar and biomass on Oahu.

The scores for HOT Lanes and Better Energy are shown in Table 3 below. These are good projects that should get done!

Note 1: Those who desire a better understanding on why big projects get or don’t get done may read articles on Megaprojects by Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg, and Utah University's study on Bootleggers, Baptists and Enterprising Politicians, that is, the alliance of profit-driven interests, groups of uncompensated advocates, and opportunist politicians that form the tripartite support alliances needed for a big project to muddle through the project development process.

Note 2: On June 23rd at the Plaza Club, HVCA and ThinkTech present Big Projects in Hawaii - Why are they stuck? Contact: Jay Fidell, ThinkTech Hawaii, jay@fidell.com, (808) 780-9254 for information.

EPA: 946 Pages to Regulate 0.5% of the Problem

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued 946 pages of new rules requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce their emissions of mercury and other air pollutants.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits. There is no factual basis for these assertions, said Willie Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, and Paul Driessen, a senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

America's coal-burning power plants emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.

All these emissions enter the global atmospheric system and become part of the U.S. air mass. Since US coal power plants account for less than 0.5% all the mercury in the air, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% our atmosphere.

Source: Willie Soon and Paul Driessen, "The Myth of Killer Mercury," Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2011.

Nuclear Power Plant ... Oxymorons and Solutions

The Economist has a useful tool for looking up which have nuclear power and how much electricity they produce in a year. The U.S. leads the pack.

One of the oddities of nuclear power is that some countries like Greece are strongly opposed to nuclear power, yet less than 100 miles away their Bulgarian neighbors already have nuclear power plants ... This reminds me of Hawaii with its nuclear power plant constitutional prohibition and the 15 nuclear submarines home ported in Pearl Harbor.

The difficult management of a failing power plant due to major force of nature as witnessed in Japan makes a strong case for locating them on off shore floating platforms (e.g., refurbished decommissioned air carriers.) These platforms, like off shore rigs can be manned as required by helicopter flights but they can be engineered for self power and management by remote control (like the unmanned drones of the air force.)

In the extremely rare care of nuclear reactor failure the floating platform can be de-anchored and de-tethered, and then robotically powered away from populations. This plan offers significant economic, safety and psychological benefits. Perhaps the state of Georgia should look into a floating platform 10-20 miles out in the Atlantic among its alternatives for locating a very large nuclear power plant.

Hawaii Clean Energy: Part 1 -- Goals and Reality

Hawaii's past history for electricity generation does not bode well for its "clean energy" goals.

Hawaii has a goal of reaching 40% renewable energy by 2040. Possible? Yes! Probable? Definitely not!

Here is why, based on our past history as documented in DBEDT statistics. I used 1993 as the reference year because in 1993 three large energy projects came online: Two on Oahu, the AES coal plant and the H-Power plant, and one on the Big Island, the Puna Geothermal Venture plant.

As a result of these large new power plant investments, oil consumption in 1993 dropped by 11.5% compared to 1992. Ten years later, in 2002 Hawaii was back at the 1992 level of oil consumption for electricity generation!

DBEDT statistics I could find had 2008 as the most recent year in the data series, so I used the 1993 to 2008 period and estimated that Hawaii energy needs increased by 12.75%. I assumed that this will be the growth of demand for electricity for 2025.

I also assumed that:
(1) Both oil and coal consumption will stay constant at the 2008 level.
(2) Covanta will successfully bring online a third "boiler" and increase power production by 50%, by expanding from 2 boilers to 3 boilers.
(3) Hydroelectric power will stay constant.

Based on these assumptions, all the additional energy will need to be produced from renewable energy sources. How much renewable energy does Hawaii need to add compared to its 2008 renewable power plant set?

• 300% increase in geothermal
• 300% increase in wind
• 300% increase in biomass, and
• 1,000% increase in solar

[Note: these are numerical examples of renewable energy shares that may satisfy Hawaii's electricity needs in 2025. These shares of renewable sources of electric power are not a recommended strategy for Hawaii.]

All these investments in renewable energy are only sufficient for keeping the oil and coal "dependency" constant at 2008 levels.

If these investments were to be executed in the next 14 years, Hawaii's renewable attainment will be 19.8% in 2025.


The pie-in-the-sky state goal calls for 33% renewable electricity generation by 2025. My 19.8% estimate is optimistic: If by 2025 Oahu has a working rail system and several thousand electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, they will require much more electric power than the amount I used for my estimations of Hawaii's 2025 power needs. As a result, the renewable energy attainment will be lower than 19.8%.

It is critically important for Hawaii to (1) set realistic goals, and (2) ensure that the right types and technologies of clean and renewable energy are installed.

This article in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald contains some of my views on energy for Hawaii.

Malama Aina? No! Can Start Construction? No!

Two great articles were published in Hawaii Reporter today.


Honolulu Rail May Stop Traffic | Hawaii Reporter

Hawai`i is a place where uncommon nature has been patient with common humanity for hundreds of years. Though we have run over it with concrete, it still engages us with views of towering mountains, and the beautiful blue sea.

So when we who love Hawaii think about just it is what we love, I wonder how much thought has been given to the incompatibility of the steel-on-steel rail, atop massive slabs of concrete to the Hawaii we love?

Malama Aina? ... We have done our beautiful islands enough harm. Now, more than ever, we should be their keepers. If we love Hawai`i, if we love O’ahu, if we love Honolulu, how did we say yes to rail?

Is the City Allowed to Start Construction on Honolulu Rail? | Hawaii Reporter

The terminology used by the FTA to outline these two levels of construction authority is Pre-Award Authority and Letter of No Prejudice.

The city has not come out and explained these requirements to the public. Therefore, it is time for the city council and the media to ask for clarity.

Here are some questions to ask the city to get them to explain where they are in the FTA New starts process:

1. Please explain the difference between the Pre-Award Construction Authority that is applied when Honolulu receives its Record of Decision and the construction authority that comes with a Letter of No Prejudice?

2. Please tell us when you are going to apply for permission to enter into Final Design? Please tell us what the city needs to do in order to make this application?

3. Please tell us what will be accomplished in Final Design and why it will take almost a year to complete?

Gasoline Price Comparisons: Taxes not Octanes Matter

The original subject is gasoline prices but before we know it, the story becomes about taxes. The graph below shows the stark contrast between 10 states in the U.S. and 10 countries in the European Union, or E.U.


Among the states shown, the lowest gas price is in Oklahoma at $2.532/gallon and the highest is in Hawaii at $3.54/gallon. This one dollar difference is actually a 40% difference. Among the EU countries shown, the lowest gas price is in Spain at $5.496/gallon and the highest is in The Netherlands at $7.382/gallon, a 34% difference between them. The gasoline price in The Netherlands is 110% higher than Hawaii’s. (June 2010 US$ and EU euro rates.)

A similar situation is observed for a small sample of worldwide islands (see below). Most island gasoline prices are twice as high as those in Hawaii. Despite the high prices, all cities in the islands shown have significant problems with congestion. This is because gasoline pricing tends to affect vehicle choice, and has a small effect only on vehicle ownership and use.

At places where gasoline price is relatively low, the typical vehicle has a V6 engine and delivers about 20 mpg in city usage. At places where gasoline price is twice as high, the typical vehicle is a 3 or 4 cylinder subcompact delivering about 40 mpg in city usage. So based on these vehicle choices, driving 12,000 miles per year at either place costs the same for fuel.

Going back to the first graph and comparing The Netherlands with Hawaii we ask: What can possibly explain a 110% difference for the same gas? It’s not technology, it’s not manufacturing, and it’s not transportation. These are less than half of the story. The “larger half” is taxes! See below:

Governments worldwide use taxes to finance general budgets and other infrastructure. Fuel taxes are among the first to be increased when budgets cannot be met. The price of gasoline is “inelastic” as economists call it, that is, a large change in the price of gas (say, +30%) does not correspond to a proportionally large change in highway travel (-10%). This is generally true for urban travel and less so for intercity travel where larger travel reductions may be observed.

Overall the lesson here is that taxes on gasoline are a cash cow for governments. Gas tax does practically nothing in reducing congestion. It may reduce pollution somewhat by forcing lower income people to purchase smaller cars, but it does this at a very high overall cost. The overall cost is high because a large part of the economy worldwide “rides on the streets.” Foods, goods and services need to be brought to the market, delivered, installed and maintained.

Expensive gas makes for expensive commuting, repair services, food and appliances. Gas taxation limits mobility, slows economy and reduces the standard of living.

In more general terms, high energy costs exacerbated by heavy taxation on them are a brake in progress. For a vibrant economy, countries and regions need to optimize their energy portfolio and reduce the taxes on it.

Hawaii energy costs are high and climbing. If the status quo continues (oil dependency and heavy subsidies on low productivity and hyper expensive alternatives), then by definition Hawaii’s long term economic outlook cannot be rosy.

Acknowledgment: Recent civil engineering graduate Michelle Coskey conducted a large part of the research and data compilation in this article.