The Hawai’in atoll boasts brilliant white shiny beaches, tropical rain forests and parched deserts. This great diversity exists within a paltry 3 million hectares of land. And, about 1.3 million people call it home. Each person thus has just over 2 hectares (an area about 200 by 100 metres) from which to draw all their resources. Or, at least this would be true if the atoll were on its own. But the rest of the world comes to its aid.
Indicative of this dependency is that of its 1.8e16 joules (17 trillion Btu) annual consumption, over 90% comes from imported petroleum oil. To relieve this dependency, the people on the atoll plan to produce biodiesel from algae.
Current estimates have annual production at about 3.6e12 Joules per hectare (10000 gallons of diesel per acre). So, the atoll need invest nearly 5000 hectares of land to meet their needs. Though the land may be available, the return on investment is not. So, not much progess occurs and the atoll continues to rely upon the rest of the world.
When no other alternatives exist, can we then afford to obtain energy from these alternative sources? Or, will they always costs more than their utility?
photo from New Mexico State University
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