Page 18 - Living Aloha Magazine 21 May April June 2017

a long-term vision

for a

SuStAInABLE by Mark Sheehan

mAUi

What company has PIONEERED A NEW TECHNOLOGY that is used around the world?

Who has been on the LEADING EDGE OF SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY for over twenty years?

What local business has a SUSTAINABLE, COMMUNITY-BASED MODEL
of agriculture and renewable energy?

Pacific Biodiesel began in 1995 and has now grown to be The California Air Resource Board spent years looking for
the nation’s longest operating biodiesel producer. Begun the cleanest, most efficient way to cut carbon. Biodiesel
on Maui, the company employs 80 people statewide; was their top choice; it is also considered by energy experts
their plant at Keaau on Hawaii Island has state-of-the-art to be the most sustainable fuel on the planet.
distillation technology with an annual production capacity
of 5.5 million gallons annually. For a long time the Kings have looked forward to a
new era in agriculture when our island could grow a
As long ago as 1925, Henry Ford recognized the potential renewable energy crop, sequester carbon and produce
of renewable energy when he observed, “there’s enough other byproducts. The company recently held a Hawaiian
alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive blessing to mark the beginning of a scaled-up farming
the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a demonstration to produce biofuels using sunflowers grown
hundred years”. It’s a long way, however, from that thought on Maui’s former sugar cane lands.
to building a company that leads the industry.
You can see the company’s 115-acre test plot of at
Meet Bob and Kelly King, the visionary entrepreneurs the intersection of the Kuihelani Highway (380) and
who brought the dream to life here on Maui when Honoapiilani highway (30), on the Wailuku side of Maalaea.
they realized restaurant grease could be converted After years of seeing only cane grass waving in the wind, it’s
into fuel. A very special set of skills is required for each refreshing to see sunflowers smiling in the sunshine..
phase of problem solving and company building and
the King team combines both engineering insight and “We’re designing a sustainable, zero-waste and
management savvy. Add to that the ability to attract economically viable system to grow food and fuel.
investors, expand across the state and export the Short-term crops that harvest in 100 days or less can be
technology to Japan, and you understand why what planted, harvested, crushed and converted to biofuel,
they’ve accomplished is a big deal. all in Hawaii”, said president Bob King. The company is

18 INSPIRATION Living Aloha | SUMMER 2017