A couple of interesting news items have come to light in recent days that relate to clean energy and the state of Hawaii.

The Department of Energy announced a partnership, “that will work towards dramatically shifting Hawaii’s energy system from one that is fueled primarily by oil to one that is powered primarily by renewable energy.” The project is called the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative.

The goal of this project is an ambitious one. The project, “…aims to have 70% of all of Hawaii’s energy needs generated by renewable energy sources by 2030…” Very ambitious indeed. But there may be no better state to take advantage of the full scope of clean energy technologies.

Since Hawaii sits in the middle of the ocean and has a number of high mountain peaks conditions for on-shore and off-shore wind generation are extremely favorable. You have volcanic activity so geothermal is a possibility. There is plenty of sun making solar viable, except during the rainy season. You also have the possibility of employing wave powered generation.

See the Department of Energy press release here.

I also picked up on the announcement of the Hawaii Climate Change conference. The NY Times Dot Earth blog provides some details on the two-day conference that will include eight industrialized nations. The White House held a press briefing on this “technical meeting” on January twenty-fifth. According to the briefing text, “…the purpose of the major economies meetings is to support the collective effort to negotiate a new international agreement.”

It is likely that this meeting simple amounts to a negotiation with China and India on reducing emissions targets. To that end President Bush pledged $2 billion to help those countries get up to speed on clean energy technologies. This action follows the Bali conference where the burden of reducing emissions for China and India was a big issue.