Pseudo-'EIS', Emissions, and Fuel in-Efficiency

Yeah, that Part 5 will be up soon, but first got the following comments:

From: Jeff Mikulina
Subject: Superferry EIS

My calculations on GHG emissions from Superferry: EIS says total of 87,377 metric tons, or 96,317 short tons. Using assumptions (used by DBEDT) of average vehicle in Hawaii getting 22 miles per gallon and driving 8000 miles per year, and given that one gallon of gasoline produces 20 lbs of GHG, the EIS suggests that the climate impact of Superferry is equivalent of adding 26,500 cars to Hawaii.--Jeff

To which I responded:

Jeff,

Interesting calculations on emissions. Ken Stokes may find them interesting too.

Reminds me of the calculations that the Alakai's diesel engines (4 x 8200kW) put out enough energy to power 16,500 Hawaiian households while in transit. and

That HSF burns 15 times the petroleum-based fuel (MDO diesel) that a Hawaiian Airplane (jet fuel) burns to cover the same route, and even if you multiply the Hawaiian flights up to HSF's max. capacity, Hawaiian is still at least twice as fuel efficient as HSF at transporting people interisland.

There are those who might say yes, but Hawaiian Air can't transport vehicles. For which the response would be, in this day-and-age given the oil situation now and in the future, consumers in Hawaii don't really need to move their personal cars quickly for leisure 100+ miles between islands.

Lastly, the reason for all of the above emissions and fuel consumption points is because the Alakai relies upon 4 x diesel engines as opposed to 2 x diesel engines or something comparable - an idea for a new sustainable ferry design consistent with "Use Half ".

Which elicited the following response from Ken Stokes:

Aloha Brad (et.al.)!

Sad, yeah? The state of practice in measuring our Hawai`i footprint...`Auwe! We need apples-to-apples metrics, like yesterday!

I appreciate Jeff's calculation... I'm more focused on inter-island transport, and am interested in HSF versus flying. So, try this:

We know that a round-trip flight from Lihu`e to Honolulu spews 264 pounds of CO2 per passenger (via atmosfair: https://www.atmosfair.de/).

The EIS forecasts 363,000 HSF passengers in 2010 (the year when total GHGs are estimated at 96,000 short tons).

If these passengers flew instead, they would spew 48,000 short tons, or one-half of HSF total emissions.

...Of course, any meaningful comparative statements presume we have some confidence in the GHG metrics for this boat, as provided by this EIS (which I don't).

Go figure,
Ken


Aloha, Brad