Listing: New homes for fish. Available immediately. Spacious, great floor plan, located in an excellent neighborhood. Open habitats include airplanes, shipwrecks, concrete pyramids and contemporary fiberglass structures. All dwellings have a spectacular ocean view.

For the last 50 years, some of Hawaii’s most beautiful natural reefs have been disappearing — reefs that are home to more than 7,000 known species of marine plants and animals, one-quarter of which are found nowhere else in the world. These coral reefs have been threatened by alien invasive species, overfishing, land-based pollution, ocean debris and detrimental climate changes.

Hawaii residents pay among the highest energy costs in the country. We are the most oil-dependent state in America — 90 percent dependent on imported fossil fuels for our energy needs. And with the looming threat of global warming, time is not on our side.

An aggressive new state and federal initiative, however, is looking to accelerate the transformation of Hawaii into one of the world’s first economies based primarily on clean energy resources such as wind, solar, ocean, geothermal and bioenergy. The state would also serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

Gov. Linda Lingle and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner signed a non-binding agreement in January to establish this “Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative.”

Through the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, the state will become a test bed for technology and a place for private companies to launch new ventures.

Dr. Michael Cooney, an associate researcher at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is hard at work trying to find a new microbial method to produce fats (lipids) that could both mitigate liquid waste and serve as an alternative source of energy.

Cooney has partnered with Mainland company Community Fuels on the project, which received a DOE Small Business Innovation Research grant to explore the processing of biodiesel from microalgae and yeast. Phase I of the project is now complete and Cooney is hoping the next phase of research will be funded so he can continue this important work.