Wednesday, November 27, 2013

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 31 – Senator Schatz is Wrong about Wind Energy



A TV ad started last week shows U.S. Senator Brian Schatz promoting “energy that’s moving Hawaii forward. Senator Brian Schatz is leading the effort to harness our incredible wind energy potential with tax credits to grow wind energy production that would create thousands of new jobs and clean energy.”
Hawaii residents from Waianae to Kahuku, from Molokai to Lanai, and everywhere in the between dislike wind turbines. Senator Schatz promotes more taxpayer monies for special interests who are peddling a technology that cannot make it on its own. He is wrong for the following reasons.
Independently from any politics, a Punahou and UH-Manoa graduate student and I conducted detailed research on cost effective energy solutions for Hawaii, by examining all major energy sources available to Hawaii.  A summary of our work was accepted by Pacific Business News last month, and was published this week: Making the Case for Liquefied Natural Gas.
Our research concluded that wind and solar power plants are ineffective; they require multimillion dollar subsidies. The solar energy in our research was the power plant type that consumes land in order to produce some daytime electricity, similar to the 36 acres wasted by the Pohoiki plant at Kalaeloa to produce only 5 MW!
On the other hand, solar photovoltaic panels have been locally accepted by thousands of homeowners and businesses. Rooftop PV is an incremental, distributed power source with near zero visual or other negative impacts for Hawaii, as I explained here: Big Rooftop Solar Panels Make Sense in Hawaii - without Any Subsidies! Rooftop PV supports dozens of local small businesses.
Recently BMW decided to locate its electric vehicle chassis assembly in a region of Washington State because the local electricity rate is 3 cents (!) per kilowatt-hour.  HECO’s rate on Oahu is over 33 cents and thanks to Senator Schatz’s flawed advocacy, our electricity costs will increase, and Hawaii will become increasingly uncompetitive.
I urge Senator Schatz to review the three page summary of our research titled The Next 100 MW Power Plant for Oahu and modify his views about renewable energy. America’s future cannot be supported by intermittent, unreliable and expensive energy.
Hawaii does not need unsightly turbines and cannot afford their cost and flaky reliability. And please stop bragging about the jobs. Hawaii has fewer than 50 turbines and fewer than 50 people are located here to manage them … that is, when the turbines are not down due to fires or other self-inflicted damage.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Technology and Technological Innovations

Technology and technological innovations are presented in this installment of my O'lelo show PANOS 2050: Solutions for a Sustainable Hawaii.

The Economist:  Before 1750, the standard of living improved at a glacial pace, if at all. Farming in the early 18th century was not that different from farming in Biblical times. The Romans had invented plumbing before the very concept was forgotten for millennia. Then, something happened. Within two centuries the biggest material problems of pre-industrial life had been solved: ...

The first wave of major modern technology and innovation consisted of the steam engine, the locomotive and the telegraph.

Second and final big wave of major modern technology and innovation consisted of electrical generators, indoor plumbing and broadcast radio.  Followed by autos, oil extraction and highways.

TV, personal computers and the Internet had modest but not "wholesale" effects on our quality of life and productivity.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Honolulu Rail: 2005-2013 Slideshow

The slide show presentation titled Fighting ● Boondoggles ● Honolulu ● Rail ● Transit was presented at the 2013 American Dream conference in Washington, D.C. in mid-October 2013.  It provides a brief summary of:
  • Honolulu's history of billion dollar transit plans
  • Why is Honolulu Rail a boondoggle?
  • What was done to stop this train?
Honolulu's $5.2 Billion rail project  is a testament of the power of government and special interests to get their way.  As the Honolulu Civil Beat's multiple polls over the years have revealed, this project never enjoyed a public approval of over 35%.


Friday, October 25, 2013

Current Social and Economic Trends

Current major social and economic trends that affect the US and Hawaii are presented in this installment of my O'lelo show PANOS 2050: Solutions for a Sustainable Hawaii. From developments in China to politicians' pay in several countries.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Let Them Eat Cake

Honolulu's public is starved for traffic congestion relief. The power elite has responded with "let them have rail."

To many citizens and to most elected officials it is clear that if the government provides overhead rail, people stuck in traffic congestion will take it. "How come you don't support the rail?" They ask me. "Haven't you seen the traffic from Kapolei to the UH?"

Planners, politicians and hired spinsters have spend a lot of time and money in trying to convince people that rail is a solution to traffic congestion, jobs, development, the environment, etc. They've made many false promises. People are desperate for some relief to their daily commute after all the taxes they pay. It's easy to sell false hope.

Having lost most arguments about traffic congestion relief, environmental benefits and "thousands of new jobs," the propaganda has shifted to "transit oriented development" or TOD.

Planners, politicians and hired spinsters are extolling the mostly imaginary virtues of TOD.  Banks, developers and contractors are salivating (and bankrolling politicians) over those TODs because they are indeed, Taxes Offered to Developers to develop subsidized properties around transit stations. By the way, TOD needs Transit not Rail. Buses on express lanes will do fine, at a much lower cost than rail and transit buses offer direct connections to many locations because they are flexible.

There is little doubt that drivers and passengers dislike bumper to bumper traffic. However, they need their vehicle to meet the obligations of their daily life in space and time. Have you seen city administration and HART officials going places on TheBus?

People need and consume electricity in Hawaii. Electricity in Hawaii costs over 300% the mainland average. Have you seen people gathering wood to cook and heat water? No? Expect a similar reaction to rail. Very very few will switch to it.

John Brizdle recently commented: "It will be very hard to get car commuters to get out of their cars to ride rail. They will have to give up their comfortable seats, door to door service, snacks, drinks, Bluetooth phone conversations and then stand-up on rail averaging 27 miles per hour."

Indeed, the reality is this. If you build it, they won't come. Here is the evidence: During the last decade, the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars in new rail systems and upgraded transit buses. Did transit share grow? No! Look at the U.S. Census data below. The share of mass transit is stuck at or below 5%. All the rest of urban travel is done by car, carpool, bike, walk, or telecommuting.


When the 2010 U.S. Census numbers came out in 2011, the American Public Transit Association gloated that mass transit ridership grew by 8.5% in the ten years between 2000 and 2010. True, but in the same decade the U.S. population grew by 9.7%. Clearly despite large expenditures and expansions, mass transit usage does not even keep up with population growth, let alone gaining share to provide any relief to roadway congestion.

No matter how sleek and expensive the new transit offerings are, less than 5% of the travelers chose them. Year after year. But government and politicians support these boondoggles. Why?  Follow the money.

Professor Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University has proved that government rail projects are by far the most fraught with deception and delusion among all large infrastructure projects:
  • Deception means that the proponents lie to their constituents. Basically most cost and ridership forecasts for rail are very wrong. Costs are stated too low. Ridership is stated too high.
  • Delusion means that the rail proponents believe that their project is better and different than all the failures of the past, including the national evidence shown above. 
This history of public trust and public funds mismanagement is repeating in Honolulu. There is little doubt that Honolulu Rail will be much like the Tren Urbano of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was finished in 2006, almost 100% over budget and its ridership level has not even reached 50% of the forecast!

Rail projects are tax-payer financed and government-controlled. They take a decade or more to complete and in the end, like Puerto Rico, nobody is held accountable for the gross errors and lies. In addition to "history repeating itself" in Honolulu, I have 10+1 reasons why I do not support the Honolulu rail:
  1. Rail is the 1% solution to Oahu's traffic congestion problem.
  2. Spending over five billion dollars for a non-solution is unethical.
  3. The original and the current system are very different. Offering the public 41% less for a 73% higher price is a lie and a breach of public trust.
  4. Construction will cause critical lane closures and result in debilitating congestion for a decade.
  5. TheBus will be changed from a core operation to a feeder operation hurting those that need its service the most.
  6. Rail comes with a high security risk. It's a magnet for shooters, suicides, groping, robberies, drug trafficking...
  7. Rail makes Honolulu less resilient during and after a natural disaster.
  8. Cannot afford it. Hawaii is fifth worst state in the country in pension and health benefit funding liability.
  9. City budgets will be crushed by the union raises, the EPA sewer consent decree and the pension liabilities. Adding the rail construction cost-overruns will lower credit rating and ability to borrow and pay debt and other obligations. This is a long spelling for bankruptcy.
  10. During 2008 elections the ratio of pro-rail lies to anti-rail information in advertising media was more than 10 to 1. Taxpayer monies were used to support rail and, indirectly, rail-supporting politicians. That election process was indeed unethical. This repeated in 2012 with a smear campaign against Gov. Cayetano.
Last but not least, Honolulu is beautiful. Overhead rail is ugly and noisy. Installing overhead rail in beautiful Honolulu is a crime.
Rail is politics. Hawaii politics is all about Democrats. They proclaim their care for the little guy but they are cutting the little guy's bus, degrade his quality of life and cost of living with ever worsening traffic congestion, and raise the tax for one million little guys by several billion dollars for the benefit of capitalist interests!

Such politics take us back to eighteenth century France.  Instead of cheap roads for the 80% of travelers they offer pricy rail for the 6% who ride transit... "Let them eat cake" 250 years later.

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Postscript: Visit John Pritchett's collection of rail cartoons. Although the rail is no joke, his cartoons are a humorous take of the history of Hawaii's biggest fiasco ever.


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Comparing Economies: Hawaii and Greece -- The Writing on the Wall

Recently UHERO, that is the Economic Research Organization of the University of Hawaii, presented a detailed inforgraphic of jobs in Hawaii. The inforgraphic answers questions like: What type of jobs, how many and how much do they make?

UHERO explains their graphic as follows: Each colored rectangle represents a single occupation. The size of the rectangle indicates the number of jobs. The color of the rectangle indicates that occupation's median annual salary relative to the overall median.

The inforgraphic is pictured below but I strongly encourage to visit UHERO so that you can use your mouse to explore the data in each category that interests you.

What I found stunning is this: How is it possible that all these people live in Hawaii where a (roughly) $75,000 income is necessary, nearly double US average?

This graph suggests to me that Hawaii's economy is very much like Greece's pre-default economy. The majority of Hawaii earners are low earners particularly in comparison with the cost of living in Hawaii. So how do so many people make it in Hawaii? (How was it possible for Greece to be one of the largest markets for luxury cars?)

I suppose that at least three things are in play in Hawaii (like Greece):
(1) A large para-economy such as groups of laborers building rock walls, cutting trees and trimming bushes that never report any income. This is just an example. Check Craigslist for carport car mechanics as another example. And so on.
(2) Some under-reporting of taxes by people who have proper jobs or own businesses. (This was vast in Greece.) Do you recall the Hawaii Dept. of Taxation efforts to put cashier machines in farmers markets?
(3) A vast governmental welfare operation dedicated to income redistribution and supporting "the poor with Escalades in the public housing parking lots", as car repairman Nitta, 2008 mayor candidate used to say. Greece had that too.

The score Hawaii-Greece is 4 for 4: Many low income earners, para-economy, tax evasion and big welfare. Wouldn't you say that the writing on the wall is too obvious for Hawaii?