Honua Ola: July Newsletter
Aloha,
We hope you and your ʻohana are staying safe and doing well.
As Hawai‘i aims for 100 percent renewable energy on every island grid by 2045, as required by law, it is crucial for the state’s renewable energy portfolio to be expanded and diversified to meet the ambitious mandates in the law.
Pending the approval by the Public Utilities Commission of a new amended purchased power agreement between Hawaiian Electric and Honua Ola Bioenergy, the new facility will be ready to provide Big Island residents a new source of continuously available clean energy by the end of 2020 with an effective purchase power agreement in-place.
Equally important as the Big Island recovers from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Honua Ola will create more than 200 badly needed jobs for the island’s residents once it begins operating. In fact, Honua Ola can provide jobs years earlier than any other renewable energy project now being considered for Hawai‘i Island.
More than four hundred temporary jobs were generated to construct the plant, and now that it’s 99 percent complete, the more than 200 high-paying permanent jobs and careers needed to produce biomass energy will be around for at least 30 years. These jobs will provide workers for a new forestry industry and in transportation, as well as employing the men and women operating the plant.
Hawai‘i is the most oil-dependent state and has suffered from the highest electricity prices in the country. Honua Ola can help reverse that situation, stabilizing electrical rates with locally grown fuel, instead of imported oil, while helping our state reach its renewable energy goals.
Currently, a variety of renewable energy technologies have been deployed in the Islands, such as solar, wind, and geothermal energy. The Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative, a co-op utility, currently leads the state in the amount of renewable energy on its grid. KIUC understands that the strength of the portfolio of resources is its diversity and features both variable and firm power technologies. On the firm side, biomass energy is part of KIUC’s portfolio and should play an important role in the renewable energy future elsewhere in the state, as it provides a constant source of power that allows more intermittent technologies, like wind and solar, on the grid. At night or when there’s no wind and these intermittent technologies cannot generate power, a renewable firm source, like Honua Ola, can take up the slack and keep the grid energized.
Kauaʻi has significantly reduced their dependence on fossil fuel from 91 percent in 2009 to 49 percent in 2019 while getting 11 percent of its power from biomass and hydro and 29 percent from solar. At Honua Ola, we see it as our kuleana to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. With the PUC’s concurrence, we will soon be providing clean energy and high-quality jobs to the residents and businesses of the Big Island.
Mahalo for your continued support in Honua Ola.