Maybe it’s imprecise or flawed. But the report on greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 published by the Hawai`i Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism and the Department of Health still represents the best source of information on what, and how much, the various sectors of Hawai`i’s economy contribute to atmospheric warming.
And it is this report, seven years in the making, that provides the basis for the target for future reductions in such emissions. Under Act 234, enacted by the Legislature last year, by 2020, Hawai`i’s greenhouse gas emissions must be no higher than they were in that baseline year of 1990.
So how much will the state’s emissions have to fall to meet that target?
It’s too early to say exactly, since over the coming year, DBEDT and DOH will be refining the figures in the report, using newer, more sophisticated algorithms and formulas. The reformulation (required under Act 234) is needed, says Maurice Kaya, head of DBEDT’s strategic industries division, because the 1990 report is too imprecise to be used as a basis for eventual regulation.
But the 1990 figures and another preliminary accounting of greenhouse gases emitted by Hawai`i in 2005 can provide some order-of-magnitude ideas of just how far Hawai`i will have to travel over the next 12 years if it is to meet the goals of Act 234.
So far, DBEDT has done a rough recalculation of the 1990 figures, using updated calculations of the carbon-dioxide equivalency of several important greenhouse gases. Carbon-dioxide equivalency is calculated by multiplying emissions of gases other than CO2 by a factor that yields the same global-warming potential, or GWP, as CO2. For example, the GWP for methane, CH4, is 21, which means that a ton of methane in the atmosphere has the same consequences as 21 tons of CO2. The GWP for nitrous oxide, N2O, is even greater: a ton of nitrous oxide has the same GWP as 310 tons of CO2.
According to John Tantlinger, who last month retired from his position as manager of DBEDT’s energy policy and planning branch, those recalculated figures show that in 1990, Hawai`i generated 24.925 million tons of CO2 equivalent. (The original report put the total at just under 17 million tons, using factors of 22 and 270 to arrive at the CO2 equivalency of methane and nitrous oxide, respectively.)
By 2005, Tantlinger found, Hawai`i was generating 26.795 million tons of CO2 equivalents, for an increase of 7.5 percent over 15 years.
The Sources
The information on 2005 emissions, found in an eight-slide presentation Tantlinger gave to a conference last June, is not presented in the same level of detail as the 1990 report (more than 100 pages long). Still, some sector-by-sector comparisons are possible.
Electricity generation: Looking at the figures for 2005, the single largest source of emissions is the electric utility sector, accounting for roughly a third of the total. Emissions in this sector rose by nearly 15 percent from 1990 to 2005.
Ground transportation: The second-largest single source is ground transportation, which in 2005 was responsible for 19 percent of Hawai`i’s greenhouse gas emissions. Growth in that sector from 1990 to 2005 came to more than 28 percent; in 1990, ground transportation accounted for just over 15 percent of the total emissions.
Some part of the increase is attributable to diminished fuel efficiency of newer vehicles. The Hawai`i Climate Change Action Plan, released in 1998, noted that from 1990 to 1995, “the estimated average fuel economy of Hawai`i’s vehicles declined an estimated 8 percent.” This, the plan goes on to say, is despite the fact that nationally, Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards for newer vehicles increased over the same period, suggesting “that new vehicles registered in Hawai`i were, on average, less efficient than the CAFÉ standard.”
Air transportation: This sector has shown improvement – not because the number of flights or passengers has dropped, but because aircraft have become much more fuel efficient. Act 234, however, exempts the airline industry from any eventual greenhouse gas regulations. According to Jeff Mikulina, director of the Sierra Club, Hawai`i Chapter and a member of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Task Force set up by Act 234, during negotiations in the Legislature over the bill that eventually became Act 234, “we were told by the Attorney General that we couldn’t touch airplanes, because of interstate commerce and federal supremacy.”
Fellow task force member Robbie Alm, senior vice president for public affairs for Hawaiian Electric Co., said the exclusion “was done so we didn’t burden the tourist industry in such a way as to drive away a portion of our economy, and therefore we exempted out aviation fuel.”
The data are silent with respect to military uses of fossil fuels. To the extent that the electricity consumed by military facilities is taken from the grids of the various island utilities, the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions attributable to them can be determined. And, according to Tantlinger, “with respect to fuel use, we know what they acquire every year.
“They’re very cooperative with us” in providing that information, Tantlinger told the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Task Force, set up by Act 234, at its meeting last month. “On the other hand, we don’t know how much of that [fuel] is used in Hawai`i or elsewhere, because where it’s used, and for what, is classified.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 18, Number 7 — January 2008
Leave a Reply