Panel to review biofuel options
Maui News June 15, 2007


KAHULUI – A panel of experts will discuss how to guarantee that only sustainable palm oil feedstocks are used in a proposed Maui biodiesel refinery in a series of sessions around the islands, including a Maui presentation July 2.

The panel will take public comments.

The Maui meeting will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Room 103, Ka Lama, Maui Community College.

Hawaiian Electric Co. has contracted with BlueEarth Biofuels to build a 40-million-barrel refinery on Maui. The fuel would be sold under a long-term contract to Maui Electric Co. for electricity generation.

BlueEarth has promised that it will use only sustainable palm oil. It is leaving the definition of “sustainable” to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The panelists will include three present and former council specialists:

Debbie Hammel, senior resource specialist who works to identify and protect forests.

Peter Miller, formerly a senior council scientist and now a doctoral candidate in environmental planning at the University of California at Berkeley, whose research is on conservation planning in a changing climate.

Ralph Cavanaugh, a senior attorney and co-director of the council’s energy program. He has been a visiting professor of law at Stanford University and UC-Berkeley and was on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board from 1993 to 2003.

Other meetings will be held on Oahu on June 27, in Hilo on June 28 and in Kona on Wednesday.

In addition to the Maui refinery, HECO plans a 110-megawatt peaking generation unit at Campbell Industrial Park that will use all biofuel.

HECO will promote local production of fuel feedstocks, but until that happens – estimated to take three to five years – the oil to be refined will be imported.
BlueEarth has said that palm oil is not its only candidate source, although it was its original proposal.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental protection organization, is working with HECO to create a procurement policy to ensure that all palm oil feedstock imported is produced sustainably.

In addition, the policy will state how Hawaiian Electric will support the production of sustainably grown local feedstocks for biofuel. The policy will apply to all biofuel purchases by Hawaiian Electric and subsidiaries on Maui and the Big Island.

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