Keeping it local is the key to community model’s success

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KAHULUI -- he principles of community-based fuel could cover other kinds of energy sources, but to Kelly and Bob King it fits best with biodiesel.

Bio-sourced ethanol, for example, requires big volumes and big inputs.

In their community-based energy model, the Kings can afford to seek a niche market. With governments requiring ethanol added to all motor fuel gasoline, the ethanol volumes

have to be huge. Even if exploiting locally available resources, the ethanol player will face competitors with advantages of scale.

"When you get into the commodity pricing of raw material, you're playing in a pretty big game," Bob King said. Within the United States, you dance to the tune called by the 10 billion bushel corn crop.

"That gets pretty risky."

It isn't that the Kings weren't invited to play in the big leagues.

Kelly King said that in the early years of Pacific Biodiesel, there were offers of financing but for large-scale development that violated their community model.

"It was easier to raise $100 million or $200 million than it was $20 million."

Bob King said they raised what they needed for their community-scale project by "pulling out our wallets" and by persuading friends to join in.

Going big "never made sense for us, on an island," Kelly King said. "We looked at what do we have here. . . . We had to look for people who understood what we're doing."

The most famous were Willie and Annie Nelson, but along the way they recruited experienced entrepreneurs like Cameron Healy. Healy, a partner in the SeQuential plant in Oregon, got his start there in the food business, later coming to Hawaii to open Kona Brewing Co.

Besides being less risky, she said, "it was really easy to do the island-based model, because we're already here." At the same time, they have successfully transferred their island experience to the Mainland.

"The results were also a good lesson for the rest of the country," Bob King said.

Although their community-based model results in numerous small, local plants, Kelly King said that "size is not the issue." It's more complicated than that.

A big, global model "encourages huge agriculture and the buyout of family farmers . . . We are trying to support family farmers and local agriculture," she said.

"Renewable is not the same as sustainable."

The Kings, with the Nelsons, are among the founders of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance, headquartered in Austin, Texas. In August, it released the first national Baseline Practices for Sustainability in Biodiesel for public review. Its program is available at www.fuelresponsibly.org.

"All biodiesel is not created equal, so establishing baseline practices for biodiesel production and distribution is critical to creating transparency in the marketplace and allowing consumers to know if the biodiesel they are purchasing is part of the solution or part of the problem," said Jeff Plowman, alliance executive director.

A different view of sustainability was introduced in August 2007, when the Natural Resources Defense Council, at the request of Hawaiian Electric Co., developed a biosustainability policy. But the council supports using feedstocks from distant places, anathema to a community-based model for sustainable practices.

Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.