WCA March 2012

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2012 40
Energy
To consolidate their resources, all eight of
the Hawaiian Islands are to be connected
by submarine cable
“We are at great risk of a severe crisis in the future if we
don’t become self-sufficient. Our long-term vitality is totally
dependent on our ability to become more self-sufficient
and, in turn, to retain businesses.”
The emphatic realist is Mark Glick, administrator of
the energy office of Hawaii’s Department of Business,
Economic Development, and Tourism (DBEDT). In his view,
the state’s current high energy prices are a deal-breaker for
many businesses, making it difficult to grow the economy
beyond the state’s traditional economic engine – tourism.
For this reason, Mr Glick told Amy Westervelt of Forbes,
Hawaii has set itself the aggressive goal of meeting 40 per
cent of its energy needs through renewable sources, at the
same time employing conservation measures to reduce
energy demand by 30 per cent by 2030. Because the goal
is unlikely to be met unless disparate island energy sources
are connected by a single grid, the state is going forward
with an innovative and ambitious plan to connect the eight
major islands via undersea cable, starting with Oahu, Maui,
Molokai, and Lanai.
As noted by Ms Westervelt , nowhere in the US is the
immediate need to tackle resource efficiency more evident
than in Hawaii, which imports 90 per cent of its energy
and has the highest energy prices in the country. An
archipelago, Hawaii is moreover uniquely vulnerable among
the 50 states to effects of global warming, notably the rising
sea levels warned of by island nations at the Copenhagen
climate summit in 2010. For Hawaiians, a low-carbon
economy is perceived as an imperative. (“Our Very Own
Island Nation, Battling Climate Change Via Innovation,”
29 th December).
The subsea cable would advance these goals. But even a
smaller and less complicated project would have first to
surmount a number of obstacles, and the Hawaiian Islands
present challenges jurisdictional and environmental. The
marine sanctuaries that abound are overseen variously by
the federal government and the state. Some renewable
energy projects, particularly wind farms proposed for Lanai
and Molokai, have met with opposition.
❖ Accordingly, Ms Westervelt reported, the Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) now in preparation avoids
tying the development of the undersea cable to a
particular type of renewable energy or specific project
– a programmatic approach which, it is hoped, will
permit at least some progress before approvals must
be sought. The EIS is scheduled to be completed by
April. Hawaiian Electric Co Inc (Honolulu) already has a
request out for proposals from cable developers, with a
selection considered likely by the end of the year.
❖ Thanks to its commitment to renewable energy,
Hawaii is now also becoming something of a test
bed for renewable energy technologies, from the
study of various geothermal and algae-based biofuel
technologies happening at the Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority on the Big Island to
smart grid experiments the state is conducting along
with representatives from Japan and China.
“We have more in common with Japan and Okinawa
than we do with any other part [of the US],” Mr Glick
told Forbes. “They look to us as a place to test
technology. We’re isolated and so the tests can be very
true. We provide an excellent statistical case to test new
technology.”
Elsewhere in the Pacific . . .
❖ A quiet development has been occurring in the call
centre business: the rise of the Philippines, a former
United States colony that has a large population of
young people who speak lightly accented English and
are steeped in American culture. As reported by Vikas
Bajaj in the International Herald Tribune (25th November),
industry officials say that more Filipinos – about
400,000 – than Indians now spend time talking to mostly
American consumers. India, where offshore call centres
first gained traction, fields up to 350,000 call centre
agents.
Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Centre
Association of the Philippines, told the Herald Tribune
that his country, with a population one-tenth that of
India, overtook India last year. Companies including
AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, and the travel website Expedia
have engaged call centres in Manila or built their own
there. Business comes in from the US, Europe, and
even India as outsourcers follow their clients to the
Philippines. “The growing preference for the Philippines
reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing
business and in part a preference for American English,”
Mr Bajaj wrote. In the early days, the industry focused
simply on finding and setting up shop in countries with
large English-speaking p labour
costs, which led them mainly to India. But executives
say customers now increasingly identify places best
suited for specific tasks. India remains the biggest
destination by far for software outsourcing.
Steel
US makers of steel towers for wind
turbines seek redress for market
share lost to Chinese and
Vietnamese manufacturers
Marking a new phase in an escalating green energy trade
war, on 29th December the four companies that make most
of the steel towers for wind turbines installed in the US
filed a trade complaint against China and Vietnam, seeking
tariffs in the range of 60 per cent. The action is likely to
exacerbate existing trade frictions between the United
States and China.
The case was filed by the Wind Tower Trade Coalition
— comprising Trinity Structural Towers, DMI Industries,
Statue of Liberty Image from BigStockPhoto.com
Photographer: Marty