Will ethanol save Kaua‘i’s sugar industry? Are Hawai‘i’s two refineries, Tesoro and Chevron, colluding to stymie the production and use of ethanol here? Could the mixing of ethanol actually cost us more at the pump, and hurt the environment? These
Will ethanol save Kaua‘i’s sugar industry? Are Hawai‘i’s two refineries, Tesoro and Chevron, colluding to stymie the production and use of ethanol here? Could the mixing of ethanol actually cost us more at the pump, and hurt the environment? These questions and others will be explored today through Sunday as The Garden Island provides coverage and analysis of the public hearing on ethanol rules in Honolulu.
Members of the community and various vested interests have converged on Honolulu today for a public hearing to determine how ethanol will be manufactured and used here.
The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism is charged with drafting the ethanol regulations. If the hearing goes well and the governor signs off, the state could begin requiring that gasoline here include 10 percent ethanol within 18 months.
That means that construction will soon start on the $50-million ethanol plant on Kaua‘i, adding 20 mid-range technical jobs, an hundreds of others indirectly. If the hearing does not go well, the rules could be rewritten or stalled until the governor is satisfied, and the dream of an ethanol industry on Kaua‘i could be effectively killed.
The issue of whether or not ethanol will be produced here was settled 10 years ago when the state Legislature passed a bill signed by Gov. Ben Cayetano mandating the mixture of sugarcane- based ethanol with regular petroleum.
Therefore, today’s public hearing will only focus on the mechanics of the process, not whether ethanol should be made and mixed in Hawai‘i. Does that mean that ethanol production and use here is already a done deal? No, said one official with Gay & Robinson, who insisted that, until “mandates” to blend and sell ethanol right here in Hawai‘i are set in stone — that is, written into the administrative rules — investors in the industry will run, effectively killing the industry.
Ted Liu, DEBDT director, has made it clear that the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle is “concerned” about the blending mandate.
That concern has some ethanol-mixing proponents wondering if lobbying efforts by Hawai‘i’s two refineries, Tesoro and Chevron, have the governor kowtowing to the petroleum industry.
In a letter to the editor of The Garden Island dated Aug. 5, Melissa Pavlicek, a spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association, said that the WSPA recommends “ethanol for export to California, which needs more than 700 million gallons of ethanol annually.” But without a guaranteed Hawai‘i market, say proponents of blending here, investors in ethanol will bail out.
