Don’t count out energy innovation

While I appreciate the Practical Policy Institute’s (PPI) straightforward acknowledgment that “climate change is real,” its passive-aggressive denigration of existing renewable energy technologies and skepticism toward innovating for the future is disheartening (“Addressing climate change realities and steady progress,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, July 7).

Its characterization of “unsightly wind projects” and “land- gobbling utility-scale solar projects” as “by far, the only foreseeable pathway to get anywhere near 100% renewable,” exhibits very narrow, biased, in-the-box thinking. Never set policy “based on hope”? How did we get to the moon?

Being overly “practical” by supporting “low carbon” energy (e.g., liquefied natural gas) impedes the promise of American and Hawaiian ingenuity to directly confront this existential threat. For a problem so profound and widespread, with such devastating consequences for the human race, doesn’t PPI want to encourage our citizens — entrepreneurs, universities, schools, government agencies, nonprofits — to channel their efforts to discover those breakthroughs, and then reap the requisite rewards? Hawaii is leading. Please join the cause.

John Cheever

Kalani Valley

Renewable power lacks a backup plan

Hawaii needs to face its own realities of renewable energy. Recent editorials have supported our Legislature’s random objective of 100% renewable energy by 2045. Bills and reports continue to support this headlong push without realistic details of how it is actually going to work.

A recent commentary pointed out the land-use implications, but there are many more inconvenient realities (“Addressing climate change realities and steady progress,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, July 7).

Hawaii cannot just keep building giant solar farms, deluding itself that fossil fuels will simply go away, the sun will shine, the wind will blow and the lights will stay on. When we get a week of rain or calm (or a hurricane), batteries full of renewable electricity are not going to power Oahu, no matter how good batteries get. Useful renewable energy is a wonderful goal; 100% dependence is not.

We will always need reliable, instantaneous backup. Where is that plan?

Brian Barbata

Kailua

Agrivoltaics promote energy, agriculture

The editorial, “Update, expand agricultural leases” (Star-Advertiser, Our View, July 5), said that 243 agricultural land lease applicants are on the waiting list because of shortage of land. Also problematic are the lack of water and clean energy.

There are some solutions. Created in 1981, agrivoltaics combine food and energy production — food grown under elevated photovoltaic panels, maximizing land usage.

Plants absorb heat, its moisture rises to solar panels, cooling the panels to increase energy production. The panels provide partial shade, reducing the need for irrigation water for plants. Leafy plants reach out for the partial sunlight, increasing leaf size and food volumes. This also reduces food imports, transportation costs and carbon, for a cleaner environment. Partnerships between farmers and utility companies would allow for sharing land lease costs and more available land.

The possibilities are endless to meet these Hawaii challenges head-on. Let’s do it.

Brad Baang

Waianae

Amend Constitution to address abortion

Congress could amend the Constitution to specifically define the rights of the unborn, when human life begins in the womb, and women’s rights pertaining to the unborn. This would be a significant step in resolving the abortion issue. While a long process, it would be better than eternally going back and forth on the issue and tearing the country apart.

One of the major problems in America is that we talk about and sometimes behave as if each “right” is absolute. Most are not. Taken to the extreme, each right will violate someone else’s right. We have free speech but we cannot falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater. We can pursue happiness but not by hurting someone else.

While this solution is not great and will not satisfy both extreme sides of the abortion issue, it focuses the discussion on the three main issues. It is workable, necessary and democratic.

Leighton Loo

Mililani

No whales? Blame China’s coal plants

What your article, “Hawaii without humpbacks?” (Star-Advertiser, July 3), misses is that the problem with global warming is China, not the U.S.

According to the Environ- mental Protection Agency, U.S. energy and transportation emissions are steadily declining, with the largest driver being the switch from coal to gas switching in the power sector.

China, on other hand, is building 43 new coal-fired plants, more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all the other countries in the world combined.

The solution to threatened whale habitat lies in China, not the U.S.

Roger Wong

Waikiki

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