Land-Poor Hawaii Must Build ‘Solar Farms’ at Sea

For the second time this week, National Public Radio provides the subject matter for a post here at Hawaii Energy Options. Morning Edition today carried a story on what will be one of the world’s largest solar thermal plants.

They’re planning 38,000 “sun catchers,” described as looking like “enormous satellite dishes with mirrors” that will be spread over 10 square miles of southeast California desert.

That’s what they do on the mainland – find open space not suitable for just about anything else and build on it. It sounds relatively simple compared to what we have to do out here in land-scarce Hawaii to capture the sun’s energy.

Hawaii’s “sun catchers” likely will take the form of ocean thermal energy plants once a 10-megawatt pilot plant proves the OTEC concept. The tropical ocean captures enough solar energy each day to easily meet the entire state’s current electrical energy demand and its future electric vehicle requirement, to boot.

The NPR story ends by noting the 25-percent unemployment rate in Imperial County where the energy projects are taking shape: “The challenge now is to train this potential work force for jobs in this industry and build the controversial transmission corridors it will take to carry this clean energy to the coastal cities that want it.”

Hawaii has its own unemployment issues as tourism continues its slide and faces an uncertain future when oil prices rise to last year’s levels, as most observes think they certainly will. A clean energy industry would shape our future positively and provide employment to the next generation of young people – a worthy goal if there ever was one.