(HONOLULU) – Hawaii has found a new place in the sun. With a local in the White House and clean-energy tech booming, this sunny, windy island state is blossoming into an exotic garden of alternative-power innovation with nearly $1 billion in clean energy projects underway. The aggressive  initiatives are driven by history and necessity.

Wind turbines on Hawaii Island (Photo: Hawaiian Electric Light Co.)

Necessity, because Hawaii gets 90 percent of its energy from imported oil, while its isolation makes it vulnerable to frequent power outages (no neighbors to send in reserves – until wave power is tapped). Not-so-distant history, because native Hawaiian culture is rooted in respect for nature, a vibe that resonates “take no more than is needed and squander nothing that is taken”.

Currently, islanders pay 25 to 55 cents, per kilowatt hour for electricity – three to five times the national average. Gas prices are the highest in the country.

As solar-tech pioneer and Honolulu-based Sopogy founder Darren Kimura puts it, “We only have about 5 to 7 days worth of energy stored here. And if we were cut off, we’d be stuck. Tourists would be stranded, transportation would stop, food would run out. … We have a very small grid here, and power outages aren’t uncommon.”

Kimura, who just won the Blue Planet Foundation’s Honua (meaning “Earth”) Award for Clean Energy, illustrates his point with a lighter note: “Last year in December, President Obama was out here on vacation, and we had a minor incident and lost power to the entire island. Talk about being at center stage and the lights going off. The President’s visiting and at the house where he’s staying, the power goes out. … The unfortunate reality was (driven home) – how fragile the energy grid is here.”

Fortunately, America’s 44th Commander-in-Chief was born and partly raised in Honolulu; he’s probably used to the outages. Kimura guesses it didn’t freak him out too badly.

But there’s been plenty for Hawaiians to ballyhoo in the news lately, besides ‘ownership’ of a President: In January 2008, during her State of the State address, Gov. Linda Lingle told constituents she would make energy a priority. Within a few days, Honolulu had signed the historic Clean Energy Initiative with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), whereby America’s 50th state would shift from a fossil-fuel driven economy to one that buzzed with power from wind, sun, water (and biofuel and geothermal tech and hydrogen fuel…) by 2030. Specifically, the plan calls for Hawaii to get 70 percent of of its power from clean energy – 40 percent from actual renewable power, 30 percent from energy efficiency and consumer conservation.

Since then, several other major policy changes have occurred.

• Last year, the state passed a law requiring all new homes to have solar-heated water. Jeff Mikulina, executive director of Hawaii’s influential Blue Planet Foundation (started by Blue Planet Software founder Henk Rogers) does the energy math: “We’re building about 5,000 homes a year in Hawaii, and most experts say the measure will save four or five barrels of oil, per household per year,” Mikulina says. So…that’s 20,000 to 25,000 barrels per year that we won’t consume.”

• In December 2008, California-based Better Place, an alt-energy outfit, announced it would use Hawaii as a test site in setting up an infrastructure for electric cars (Israel, Denmark, Australia and California are other test sites). The plan, agreed to by Hawaii’s utility service, calls for Better Place to build 50,000 to 100,000 recharging and battery-swap stations by 2012; they will be run using renewable energy purchased from the local utility. Various electric-car manufacturers have expressed interest in the plan, and recently Hawaii’s governor signed a law requiring large parking lots to provide additional space for electric cars by 2011. The state hopes to see 10,000 electric cars on the road by 2014. Experts say Hawaii is an ideal place for them, because travel distances aren’t very far (usually less than 100 miles). It’s a series of islands – eight in all, thank you.

• And most recently, Mikulina – whose name is familiar to many eco-advocates because of his long career with first the Sierra Club’s Hawaii Chapter and now with Blue Planet – points to the Feed-In Tariff, announced by the state’s Public Utilities Commission on Sept. 25th that levels the price-point playing field for alt-energy providers, knocking down hurdles for clean-energy development. (Essentially a feed-in tariff sets a price that utilities must pay to renewable energy providers, removing uncertainties in the market that hinder development.)

So, the groundwork for a clean-energy conversion has be laid, and the sky literally is the limit.

Hawaii Island gets about 30 percent of its power from geothermal (Photo: John Lund, Geothermal Heat Center)

With its sun, wind and surf, Hawaii is ideally positioned for such a sea change. Here, solar energy is a given, wind power a duh, and wave-power possibly just a Hang-Ten away. Not to mention the geo-thermal power contained in all that volcanic activity. In fact, with policy wonks, techno geeks and eco-interests all looking toward the same goal, the Aloha State is poised to become a global force in sustainability, exporting know-how and technology instead of importing fuel and food.

Blue Planet Foundation’s Mikulina and Rogers believe Hawaii can be energy-independent within a decade.

But what, more specifically, makes Hawaii a mecca for alt-fuel seekers while simultaneously making it vulnerable to fossil-fuel peddlers?

“First of all, there’s the geographic isolation of the island,” says Kimura. “We’re one of the most, if not the most, isolated locations in the world. We’re literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – 2,500 miles from LA and 4,000 miles from Asia in general… It’s not like it’s convenient to get here (ditto for imported foods and fuels). … We import I’d say 50 to 60 percent of our food, and as a result of that – and importing oil – we export $7 billion of our capital. We spend $7 billion annually for that energy. When you take all of those factors together, the fact is that we have no economic security, and Hawaii needs to move toward an oil-independent, clean energy/fossil-free future. … Also, take into account that the economy here is largely tourist based, and the cost of living is almost two times higher than in  just about every major city in the United States.”

The flip-side, Kimura says, looks better.  “I see two opportunities here. First of all, the opportunity for us to be self-sustaining. We have some of the best wind, some of the best solar, some of the best access to the ocean and to waste-biomass because of our agriculture industry. … All these are natural resources that could be converted into power, or even just fuel for our cars, like biodiesel. I think that’s step one — becoming energy efficient. Step two is exporting our knowledge and our technology. … It might not be mission-critical for others today, but it will be. These problems are magnified in Hawaii, but they become a reality within ten years in other parts of the world. That second point could become a key economic driver for Hawaii.”

All across O’ahu are impressive indicators for the future.

Hickam Air Force Base has a hydrogen fueling station where many of its vehicles – electric-drive vehicles, be they fuel-cell or internal-combustion that burn hydrogen – can fill ‘er up. That was built about three years ago. Now the station is powered by 146 kilowatts of solar power – enough to energize about 30 homes. The 180-watt panels were manufactured and installed by Honolulu based Sunetric. The hydrogen plant itself was a joint venture between the state of Hawaii and the United States Air Force.

Nearer to Waikiki, the historic Punahou School, where President Barack Obama graduated high school, class of ‘79, has green shoots sprouting every which way. The circa-1841 campus is home to one of the most aggressive pushes toward sustainability of any school in the nation. Across 76 acres, 44 school buildings are spread, many with solar panels and other signs of sustainability. But since 2004, Punahou has taken greenness to a whole new level, with the opening of the LEED Gold Case Middle School in 2004-2005, and, now with construction underway on the uber-clean Omidyar K-1 Neighborhood and Tennis Complex, which Punahou hopes will receive LEED Platinum upon its completion in 2010-2011.

In 2006, Punahou’s Case Middle School was named “Greenest School in America” by the GreenGuide. It features waterless urinals, photovoltaic arrays, as well as curricula and field-trips that focus on all elements of sustainability, from eating local food to being socially responsible and community driven, to being environmentally active. Oh, and the vending machines don’t have candy.

Over at Sopogy, the company is, to use surfer lingo, throwin’ some serious heat.

Sopogy's Solar Nova Concentrator (Photo: Sopogy)

Founded by Kimura in 2002 (one of several clean-energy/eco-friendly companies he’s pioneered over the past 17 years), Sopogy introduced a new product yesterday at the Solar Power International Conference and Expo in Anaheim, Calif. – the first commercially available rooftop Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) collector – called the SopoFlare. CSP’s have previously been designed for deserts, or spread across acres and large fields.

“These are about 30 percent cheaper than traditional solar collectors. And the cool thing is that when we launched the product, we had so many hits on our website that it went down. It’s back up now. But people were freaking out!” Kimura said.

But that’s only the beginning, local entrepreneurs say. A number of new projects are coming online – have actually been announced – that amount to almost a billion dollars worth of clean-energy projects in Hawaii. They span the universe of clean energy, from activated carbon to burning sugarcane to create power, to biodiesel projects to Sopogy’s own steam-energy advances, which use mirrors to intensify the energy of the sun, creating steam and then collecting it.

America’s urban centers are becoming ever greener, with the National League of Cities holding its first ever Green Cities Conference last month. While many cities have recently taken up environmental causes, some have been carrying the banner for years.

Seattle, home to such earlier innovations as the ’60s Space Needle, Microsoft, and grunge rock, is one such green leader.

In 2008, Seattle was anointed the nation’s leader in LEED-certified buildings by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), culminating an eight-year-old sustainable building policy calling for city-funded projects to be LEED-qualified at the silver level.

Seattle also can boast about its:

• Impressive bike trails system with about 30 trails and 20 bike lanes, making bike commuting commonplace in Seattle, home to the Cascade Bicycle Club, which claims to be the nation’s largest bicycle club

• Community-based home energy efficiency program, called SWITCH, that started last year and has sent neighbors door-to-door with thousands of CFL light bulbs.

• Climate initiative, begun in 2005, which sets city targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who was elected in 2002, is a strong advocate for environmental stewardship. He introduced the city’s Climate Protection Initiative after the federal government chose to not participate in the Kyoto Protocol target for reducing climate pollution. That target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

“I felt there was an opportunity for us to take action at a local level,” said Nickels in a recent interview.

The mayor says his “aha” moment came in 2004-05. “We had a very warm winter that year, and there wasn’t much snow in the mountains. That impacted our water supply and our power, since we rely mostly on hydroelectric power. It occurred to me that global warming affects every corner of the globe, including ours.

“This is something we urgently need to address for our future, and our children’s,” he says.

In 2006, Mayor Nickels asked other mayors to join him in the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Beginning with nine mayors, the group now numbers 910. These mayors represent more than 82 million people from all 50 states and are a “real political force that will continue to impact national policy,” he says.

Seattle CAN

Seattle Climate Action Now, or Seattle CAN, also began about this time. The city-led program partners with local businesses and organizations to provide residents with the tools needed at home and work to put an end to global warming. The Seattle CAN website helps citizens calculate their carbon footprint with a link to ZeroFootprint Seattle. Here residents can sign in and learn steps to reduce their family’s carbon footprint.

The site provides commonsense advice, such as driving less; replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones; turning off and unplugging computers and cellphone chargers; changing furnace and air-conditioning filters regularly; installing weather stripping anywhere there is a draft; turning down the thermostat at night and when away from home; insulating the attic; running the dishwasher only when full; installing water-saving devices such as low-flow shower heads; and reducing the size of trash by recycling and buying less stuff.

There’s also an events calendar for climate-related events like Seattle’s Celebrate Summer Streets festivals.

A recent poll shows that three out of every four Seattle residents are taking actions to lessen their carbon footprint, says the mayor (center of photo at green event this year).

“With our ‘Climate Action Now’ campaign, Seattle is making great progress engaging and motivating our residents and business to fight global warming,” Nickels says. “Last year, we distributed more than 10,000 home energy kits to our residents. Our electric utility was successful in distributing more than 1.4 million compact fluorescent bulbs to Seattle homes and businesses.”

Congregations of any faith may benefit from joining the nonprofit Interfaith Power & Light initiative. The non-profit group offers members a way to lessen energy costs and at the same time, promote renewable energy.

The IP&L initiative came into effect in 1998 when a coalition of Episcopal churches formed with the support of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. They joined together to purchase renewable energy. In 2001, the group grew into the California Interfaith Power and Light, helping people of all faiths in California organize to promote environmental change and address global warming. Today, under the umbrella group, The Regeneration Project, there is a movement to establish similar programs in all states. Today, 29 states have Interfaith Power and Light organizations.

The mission of The Regeneration Project, as stated on their website, is to make the connection between ecology and faith. The project’s Interfaith Power and Light campaign is generating a religious response to global warming in congregations by advocating renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation.

Massachusetts’ Interfaith Power & Light group, for example, gives members an option to join an oil-purchasing group that can lock in prices; gives them access to utility rebate programs and offers technical advice on energy issues as well as a comprehensive energy audit of their worship facility. In Wisconsin, the Interfaith Climate & Energy Campaign works closely with the state’s Islamic Environmental Group. The latter’s mission is to educate the local Muslim community as well as the general public about Islamic environmental teachings and how they can be incorporated in every day life for a sustainable future.

IP&L also offers a program called STEM, which stands for Saving Through Energy Management. It’s a 15-hour program for congregations that teaches the skills needed to reduce energy consumption. Membership starts at $50 for an operating budget up to $150,000.

Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham is the president and founder of The Regeneration Project. She says putting faith into action is key. This includes educating congregations by getting them to buy energy efficient lights and appliances, offering energy audits, encouraging people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, and supporting large-scale renewable energy installations such as rooftop solar.

EPA’s Energy Star website includes links to many of the Interfaith Light and Power groups.

(See our related story on churches employing green design.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

With unemployment at a 25-year peak, it’s sometimes difficult to find the good news. The silver lining.

You have to look for it. Sometimes you have to pull up a curtain, or crawl behind the scenes, but we believe it’s there: a green jobs revolution.

OK. Maybe the revolution is more of a restless assemblage, a loose gathering on the horizon than a storming of the palace. But we’ll take it. When we started looking into it, we discovered that green jobs are bubbling up in so many sectors. They’re rewarding, forward-looking and surprisingly well-paying.

The people we’ve been talking to about their planet-preserving employment are beyond enthused. Whether they’re in recycling, home building, organic baking, new energy or water conservation, so many green-collar workers in these new (and some old) jobs see a bright future. Just read their stories, which begin today on GreenRightNow in our Business section. Look for the “My Green Job” headlines.

We start with Susan Casias, a woman whose chosen career involves destruction and renewal — she’s head of a document shredding department. Casias’ verve for the work is infectious. She loves her job and tells her employees that they’re “superheroes” because they’re fighting crime and saving the planet!

Later this week and every week throughout April, we’ll bring you more stories about other people in green endeavors.

And if you know someone who’s gone green who wants to tell how they’re doing, we would love to hear about them! Please drop us an email. (Or a tweet on Twitter.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Northerners dread opening up those utility bills this time of year. On the flip side, Southerners hate seeing theirs in summer. The local utility company is their arch nemesis. …Or is it?

More and more utility companies are working to help customers save money when it comes to energy — even though it’s counter-intuitive because when customers trim their energy bills, utility companies collect less money.

Setting up a less profit-bound system involves a concept called “decoupling,” in which states step in to help the power companies become agents for change. Typically, the state offers incentives to companies to help customers become more energy efficient. When electricity demand falls, the state might replace profits or extend other financial assistance to the power company, thereby “decoupling” the profits from usage.

“When the bond is broken between energy sales and profit. It’s win-win for everyone,” says Katie Romans, a Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which serves northern California, the state at the forefront of decoupling.

PG&E, which serves northern California, offers an online home energy analyzer for residents. “Customers are overwhelmed with all the green info out there,” says Romans. “They don’t know where to begin. Our online tool gives them a start.”

Customers visit the website, equipped with their most recent energy bill, and answer 14 questions about their appliances – their size, their age, etc. Based on their responses, PG&E will examine how a customer compares to similar size households in the neighborhood and offer easy and affordable steps toward reducing their energy bill.

WATCHING OUT FOR WALL WARTS IN CALIFORNIA

“Nothing too overwhelming,” says Romans. One step might be to put in CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs) into the home’s five most used sockets. Another suggestion might be to install a programmable thermostat. “We advise that the thermostat be set at 68 degrees when you’re at home and lowered to 55 when you are away or asleep,” says Romans. “Obviously, if you are already disciplined to resetting your thermostat, you don’t need this.”

PG&E also offers on-site energy analyses for businesses and low-income residents (as well as an education area for teachers and kids called “Energenius“).

Businesses, she says, “are really taking advantage of the audits. They see they can control energy costs which helps control the bottom line.”

For both residential and business customers, says Romans, “it’s all about teaching them to make smart choices.” Simple things such as unplugging what she calls “wall warts” – shavers, electric toothbrushes, cell phone chargers, hair straighteners, coffee makers, toasters – are another easy step. The energy drain from these small appliances adds up. There are items in the home, however, that shouldn’t be unplugged, she notes, such as a plasma TV.

The green roof concept — in which some form of plant is grown atop a building — is spreading in multiple directions in the States. Not just the realm of futurists (though we love this idea) or extravagant fashionistas (see some lovely examples here), the field is drawing interest from homeowners and corporations with a range of motivations.

Now a study by the University of Texas at Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has quantified some of the issues motivating folks to put plants on the roof and found that the benefits are substantial, although results can vary widely depending on how the roof is composed and installed.

At the Wildflower Center, a team led by ecologist Dr. Mark Simmons studied roofs made by six different manufacturers with an eye toward helping the fledgling industry make better performing products. “Just having a green roof may not mean anything in terms of preventing water from reaching the street level, for instance,” Simmons has said. “Green roofs have to be done right, and our hope is to help manufacturers understand how to improve their designs.”

Rain runoff is one of the key arguments for putting plants on roofs. It’s an argument, though, that is most persuasive to government and conservation organizations, not the individuals who have to pay to mount the structures. Runoff that reaches gutters during a heavy storm can overload drainage systems and carry pollution into rivers; with certain green roof installations claiming to absorb a whopping 70% of the water that hits them, it’s not surprising that leaders like New York Governor David Paterson would include tax abatements for green roofs in packages of environmental measures.

But individuals may be more attracted, especially in August, by the prospect of lower temperatures in buildings with plants atop them. “For Energy folks, water retention isn’t a priority,” Simmons told GreenRightNow, and the Center’s study has an ongoing component that speaks directly to those people: A web page that provides real-time data comparing three different kinds of roofing as they perform throughout the day.

The researchers have installed metal insulated boxes at their field study site with three configurations: one is covered with plants and soil, one has a reflective white material, and one is topped with the kind of black tar substance found on many roofs. Not surprisingly, black works worst when it comes to keeping the box from warming up; around midday on the day this story was written, the temperature inside that box was 133.1°. But one might wonder how reflective white and a roof of plants would compare:

“Early morning is an exception,” Simmons acknowledges, during which the white-topped box sometimes has the lowest temperature, but “generally green roofs are more effective than white roofs at cooling internal temperatures when it matters most.” On this midday, for instance, green was 13.6 degrees cooler.

The variation is far more impressive when it comes to the roof surface itself, another piece of data that may not seem to affect the people inside the building, but does: Lower roof temperatures on a substantial percentage of structures in a city would diminish the “heat island” effect, which the Wildflower Center describes as “the difference in temperature between urban areas and the surrounding countryside caused by a lack of vegetation and a large number of reflective surfaces that absorb heat.” With green roofs as much as 80 degrees cooler than conventional ones, that could add up to make “summer in the city” a lot more pleasant.

Obviously, any plants added to an environment will mean some increase in air quality: more CO2 and pollutants sucked out of the air, more oxygen released. That aspect of the roofs was beyond the scope of this study. “We do intend to look at gas exchange,” Simmons tells us, but so far they’ve focused on quantifying runoff and temperature effects.

As with everything at the Wildflower Center, this study emphasized plants that are native to Central Texas. When asked what he thought about a decision made by Con Ed in New York to use non-indigenous plants because they were “unlikely to attract potential pests,” Simmons said it was “interesting — but probably wrong. Having non-natives does not mean you don’t attract animals (they’re not always that fussy about where the plants comes from when it comes to food and nesting).

In fact it may be worse because non-native plants may not support a potential predator of any pest that takes up residence, increasing the problem.”

Speaking of pests and predators, homeowners may be concerned about putting tiles of dirt on their roofs — even with the waterproof barriers included in green roof set-ups, mightn’t all that soil encourage critters that would burrow through to the attic? While Simmons concedes that “in biology anything is possible,” he’s not worried about that: “the Europeans have looked at green roofs over the long term (decades) and I am not aware of any major negative issues with animals.”

He adds what could be a clincher for homeowners considering the investment: Though he cautions that installation on a sloped residential roof will raise costs, he says “remember a green roof can actually preserve the integrity of the roof” — protecting it from heat damage, hail storms, and wear from sunlight — “doubling its life.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Nancy Riddick leads a visitor to the power meter on the side of her rural home, set on two acres of prairie land in Hunt County, Texas. The mid-April wind is whipping at 30 miles an hour or more, so the timing of this demonstration couldn’t be much better.

Nancy points as the dial slows to a crawl, then stops. As the stiff breeze continues unabated, the meter actually starts to move backwards.

“I love it when it does that,” she says with a smile.

Small wonder. Thanks to a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine, the Riddicks (for this moment, at least) aren’t paying for electricity. Instead, they are actually creating and capturing it for future use.

Welcome to what just could be the next big thing in personal energy conservation, assuming you have upwards of $12,000 to invest up front and a lot of 1/2 acre or more to accommodate the installation. Skystream isn’t going to eliminate the need for the local power company any time soon, but it just might help take some of the sting out of that monthly bill. Since flipping the switch just after Christmas, Nancy says the Riddicks have enjoyed a 40 percent reduction in their monthly electricity costs compared to the same months in 2007.

The source, in this case: A 33-foot tower located about 80 yards from the back of the Riddicks’ house. At the top, 12-foot rotors catch the force of the wind, and a 2.4 kilowatt generator turns those gusts into energy that feeds directly into their home — or it could be your home or business.

The system works in conjunction with your local utility. When the wind is blowing, Skystream (produced by Southwest Windpower of Flagstaff, Ariz.) provides at least a portion of your electricity. When it isn’t, you tap into your regular power source.

Even better: If Skystream produces more power than you are currently using, the meter actually does spin backwards as you contribute energy to the local grid and earn credits.

Skystream requires an 8 mile per hour wind to get started and a 5 mph breeze to keep going. How much power you generate is completely dependent on how much wind you get. The beauty of the tower and rotors is in the eye of the beholder, but the turbine is surprisingly quiet, producing a low hum that can barely be heard from the Riddicks’ house.

“We had been interested in some form of alternative energy for a long time,” says Nancy, a home-based medical transcriptionist. “We’ve looked at solar, and we’ve looked at the wind. The solar is so bulky and there’s a lot of maintenance to that, and the turbines were so ridiculously expensive.

“The price (on Skystream) finally came down, starting at $11,900. That was the cheapest we’d ever seen it. That’s when we decided to do it.”