A Seattle company wants to develop a massive renewable energy project in the waters between O'ahu and Moloka'i, targeting an area that usually has Hawai'i's largest concentration of endangered humpback whales, is an important feeding ground for Hawaiian monk seals and is popular with commercial and recreational fishermen.

The proposal has many environmentalists, fishing enthusiasts, government marine officials and others alarmed.

"Great project, wrong location," said Irene Bowie, executive director of Maui Tomorrow, a citizens planning and environmental group.

As many as 100 raised off-shore platforms would be erected over a roughly 80-square-mile area between O'ahu and Moloka'i to harness up to 1,100 megawatts of electricity from waves and wind, according to Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Co. documents filed with the federal government and a company official.

O'ahu's peak power demand typically is about 1,200 megawatts.

The proposed site, called Penguin Bank, is in the heart of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, considered one of the most important habitats in the world for the whales. Penguin Bank is the eroded summit of a submerged volcano and has features, such as being relatively shallow and close to shore, that tend to attract calving and mating whales and those rearing their calves. It also attracts monk seals, another endangered species, foraging for food.

While many laud Grays Harbor's desire to develop renewable energy, they question the wisdom of selecting such an environmentally significant site.

"It's going to be a big, big problem," said Moloka'i resident Halona Kaopuiki, whose family has fished the area for four generations. "We're really against this."

The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is so concerned about the potential harm to the whale sanctuary that the federal agency is seeking to have the project moved outside the area.

But Burton Hamner, Grays Harbor president, said the development is not expected to have any significant environmental impact because the submerged parts will not be moving and digging the trenches to bury the transmission lines would only have temporary effects, stirring up sediment. He also noted that off-shore energy platforms elsewhere have not proven to be environmentally harmful.

Three concrete-encased steel pipes extending to the ocean floor basically will serve as legs for each Hawai'i platform, which will be erected about 50 feet above the ocean surface and will hold the wave and wind turbines.

"Once these things are installed, they're just a bunch of sticks in the water," he said.

Hamner acknowledged that the site would be controversial, but he said Penguin Bank is the only area in Hawai'i waters that meets his company's criteria for a high-capacity, off-shore power project. Among the criteria: A large enough site (at least 80 square miles) that is relatively shallow (Penguin Bank is up to 180 feet deep), not too far from shore and near a community, such as O'ahu, that has high enough power demands to justify such a venture.

"If I didn't have to be in a sanctuary, I wouldn't be there," Hamner said.

Grays Harbor in October applied for a preliminary permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, for the Hawai'i project and six others like it proposed for the west and east coasts of the Mainland. A formal public comment period expired in January, and a decision on the Hawai'i permit is expected within several months, according to an FERC spokeswoman.

The permit only applies to the wave portion of the project and, if granted, would give the company development rights for the Penguin Bank site for the purposes of doing further feasibility studies over three years. It would not allow any construction. That permission would come only if the company subsequently obtained a five-year license from FERC to erect a small-scale pilot project. If that were successful, it would pursue a commercial license to develop the entire wave project.

Grays Harbor intends to pursue separate agreements with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which has jurisdiction over wind projects in federal waters and is disputing FERC's jurisdiction over the wave project. The windmills, each of which would have a steel tower about 300 feet high, plus three spinning blades atop the tower that would be more than 200 feet long, would produce 90 percent of the project's electricity, Burton said.

The development wouldn't be economically viable without the wind component, he added.

OTHER CHALLENGES

Even if Grays Harbor can overcome the environmental hurdles, it faces numerous other challenges, including financial and technical ones, that ultimately could doom the project. Assuming it can clear those hurdles, the company doesn't anticipate applying for a commercial license until 2012 and doesn't expect to complete the entire project until about 2016.

Besides the environmental obstacles, one of the biggest hurdles could be whether the company can reach agreement to sell the Penguin Bank power to Hawaiian Electric Co. Hamner said he has been told by a state renewable energy expert that HECO might not need all that electricity.

If the 100 platforms are developed as planned, 1,100 megawatts is expected to be the peak capacity, but the average output would fall well below that because wind and wave energy are intermittent, rising and falling with the intensity of those sources.

"The greatest risk to this project ever happening is that Honolulu doesn't need the power," Hamner said. He has yet to contact HECO.

"We're always willing to listen to renewable energy developers," said Darren Pai, a HECO spokesman.

In its permit application, Grays Harbor identifies a site that is 260 square miles and, at its closest points, comes to within nearly three miles of Moloka'i and about 10 miles of O'ahu. Within that large area, the company would determine through further study where the roughly 80-square-mile footprint for the project would go, Hamner said.

But the decision already has been made not to locate a platform any closer than 10 miles from either island, partly to allay concerns about creating a visual blight, he said.

The wind turbines would stand so tall atop the raised platforms that they would rival some of Hawai'i's tallest buildings. The tallest, First Hawaiian Tower, is 435 feet high.

Hamner said the structures, which would be up to a mile apart, would be visible from shore only a few days each year when the sky is exceptionally clear. And even then, he said, they would be barely visible, comparing the scale of what would be seen to someone fully extending his or her arm and looking at a fingernail.

Many Moloka'i residents, however, are leery. Their suspicions have been fueled in part because the company did not inform the community before filing for the preliminary permit in October.

"It already creates bad blood right from the start," said Moloka'i resident Steve Morgan. "It always makes us angry when we find out about these things second hand."

Hamner said he hasn't had time to meet with Moloka'i residents yet, but the company eventually plans to meet with them and other "stakeholders" because he realizes Grays Harbor will need the support of all affected communities if the project is to succeed.

PROVEN TECHNOLOGY

To help gain support, the company in its permit application mentions the jobs that will be created, along with a host of other possibilities, such as revenue-sharing from electric sales and enabling local residents to become shareholders through special stock sales.

As daunting as the task will be in winning community support, the technical hurdles present their own tough challenges.

Hamner said the technology that will be used for the project already has been proven, particularly with off-shore wind facilities in Europe, and should be much improved by the time the Penguin Bank platforms actually are installed. "This is a technology that does work."

But whether Grays Harbor can pull off a development of this magnitude raises many questions.

"We would love to see this project come to fruition," said Josh Strickler, facilitator of renewable energy projects for the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. "There's just some concerns about the technical viability."

No wave-energy plant exists anywhere in the world, and only one small device — a 40-kilowatt test buoy in Kane'ohe Bay — is operating in the U.S., according to Roger Bedard, an ocean energy expert with the Electric Power Research Institute in California.

The largest prototype project in operation is a three-device facility off Portugal, and that only generates up to 2.25 megawatts of power and has been running just five months, Bedard said.

Also, no wind turbines have been developed that produce up to 10 megawatts of power — the level that Grays Harbor envisions for each of its turbines.

The company, which was formed in 2007, also faces significant financial hurdles. The estimated cost of all seven of its wind-and-wave projects is roughly $28 billion, or about $4 billion each.

Hamner said he currently is seeking financing for the planning phase of the projects.

BIG HURDLE

The biggest hurdle probably is the environmental one.

Penguin Bank is known to have the largest density of humpback whales in Hawai'i waters and constructing fixed structures in the area is a significant concern, especially if there are cables that could entangle the mammals, according to Naomi McIntosh, superintendent for the whale sanctuary.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said in a filing with FERC that the construction and noise generated by the project potentially could be so disruptive that the whales and monk sales abandon the area.

Grays Harbor will be required to address environmental concerns as part of the regulatory review process.

But because nothing of this magnitude is in operation now, anticipating the environmental effects will be difficult.

Among the organizations that have intervened with FERC to be a participant in the proceedings is Life of the Land, an environmental group that favors wave energy systems. But that support depends heavily on a project's location, according to Henry Curtis, the group's executive director. Life of the Land has not taken a position yet on the Grays Harbor proposal.

If the project ultimately is developed and the whales start leaving the area, the platforms are designed so they can be moved, and Grays Harbor would do that and reinstall them elsewhere or sell them, Hamner said.

Getting a license to build a wave-energy project in a national marine sanctuary is not unprecedented.

FERC granted such a license in 2000 for a 1-megawatt facility off the coast of Washington state, according to Bedard of the research institute.

That project was never built.