Cocos nucifera The Giving Tree pg.5
Adam Asquith, managing partner of Kaua`i Farm Fuel, a biodiesel company in Hanapēpē, also recognizes coconut oil as an underused local resource with great energy-producing potential. Asquith’s company already makes biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil and he says coconut oil holds real potential as renewable fuel source when global petroleum prices make it economically feasible or a practical necessity.
Asquith envisions growing coconuts for oil on small plots and unused tracts of land, noting that there are already plenty of unused coconuts in Hawai`i which, rather than going to green waste, could be cold pressed (as opposed to steam extracted) for oil. Coconut oil will ignite under pressure just as petroleum diesel fuel. New coconutbased fuels are already being tested or used in places like Pohnpei, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa, either as virgin coconut oil (VCO) or mixed with diesel fuel as a substitute for cooking and lighting fuel.
“When I think of a transition from petroleum to renewable natural oil sources in Hawai`i, I think of coconut and kukui,” Asquith says. “It already exists as feral oil, just waiting to be harvested when the economic climate is right.”
“As a biologist, I see almost no distinction between food and fuel—it’s basically the same thing. Whether it’s burned in the body, a fireplace or a diesel engine, you are creating combustion by burning hydrocarbons.”
“You could throw a cabbage in an oven and generate heat, but it’s not efficient,” Asquith says. “A coconut is much better.”
