Key to Climate mitigation measures are the state’s on-going and overdue transition to clean, renewable, and self-sufficient energy generation. BeyondKona has reported extensively on the energy and its linkage to all aspects of life in Hawaii.  Designed to power Hawaii’s economy, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructures, this statewide energy transition is essential on Hawaii’s path to sustainability.

Key Energy Facts for the State

• Hawaii was the first state to set a deadline for generating 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources, which is required to be achieved by 2045.
• Despite being among the five states with the lowest total energy consumption, Hawaii uses about 11 times more energy than it produces. More than four-fifths of Hawaii’s energy consumption is petroleum, making it the most petroleum-dependent state.
• In 2019, solar power provided more than half of Hawaii’s total renewable electricity generation, primarily from small-scale, customer-sited solar panel systems, which have roughly tripled in capacity since 2015.
• The amount of Hawaii’s coal-fired generation in 2019 was the lowest since 1992, and coal fueled 12% of the state’s electricity generation. The state’s one coal-fired power plant is scheduled to be retired in 2022.
• Hawaii has the highest average electricity retail price of any state, in part because it relies on imported petroleum for more than 60% of its electricity generation.

Hawaii’s Transition to a Clean Energy Economy

Hawaii’s successful transition to a clean energy economy, one which is fully decarbonized, will require all stakeholders participation. Missing from this conversation has mostly been the general public.  Traditional stakeholder roles have been primarily limited to the state’s two electric utilities, their energy suppliers, one or two advocacy participants, and Hawaii’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

Beyond Hawaii’s stranglehold dependency on imported fossil fuels to run its economy, the public policy focus has been on switching Hawaii’s energy fueling priorities to locally generated energy sources. This has been no small task for the key stakeholders, Hawaii’s two principal utilities, one private and publicly-traded Hawaiian Electric (HECO), and the other, Kauai’s energy cooperative, KIUC.

David…

Beyond the obvious ownership, size, and business model differences between Hawaii’s two electric utilities, there is the question of good faith compliance by the two utilities in meeting the state’s far out and far reaching transformational energy goals.

It is also a David and Goliath comparison between KIUC (Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative) and Hawaiian Electric (HECO).

Kauai’s local energy cooperative has demonstrated nimble innovation in its deployment of advanced zero emissions energy replacements (solar and battery storage) for what was a primarily fossil-fueled grid.   KIUC’s aggressive conversion to utility scale solar energy, coupled to its leadership in utility scale battery deployments, is not only impressive, but demonstrates a good faith compliance with state’s renewable energy goal, and at the same time has proven to be beneficial to KIUC ratepayers — all in the  name of  decarbonization of electricity at a utility scale.

… and Goliath

Over 20 years into the state’s renewable energy mandate the state’s largest utility, HECO, has made some progress towards its 100% conversion to renewable energy, but has focused its limited efforts on fringe energy options also allowed under the state’s current (all-in) renewable energy portfolio standard, largely ignoring solar, wind, and renewable energy storage options. These utility scale misfires recently culminated in the utility’s awaking of the long anticipated and state-mandated shutdown of the state’s only coal-fired power plant, AES, located in Oahu.

Last week, HECO asked its customers on Oahu “to conserve energy especially between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m”, because the AES coal plant is now operating at less than half its capacity, and five other generators are offline, along with operational other issues.  The utility has also been lobbying for an extension of AES operations beyond the 2022 shut down mandate deadline.

Hawaii’s RPS law is not a state secret. The problem HECO faces is bigger than any specific event, rather it is one of the utility’s own making. The utility has had years to plan and to take action, yet as recently as 2020, HECO’s own Management Audit summed things this way, “… the Company’s planning assumptions and business strategy must reflect a 100% renewables future. In addition, it is anticipated that much of the new renewable generation will be provided from third party developers through PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) rather than by the Company”.

This awaking statement by HECO management could easily be interrupted as a response to … so we failed to take RPS compliance actions, wasted time and ratepayer savings, let clean and renewable solar and wind energy replacement opportunities come and go in recent years. So can fix all this by outsourcing the problem to third parties through PPA’s. After all, that may not be a bad strategy for Goliath of a utility not known for taking innovative and bold steps forward while clinging onto a business model vested in the past.

Hawaii, a National Leader in Solar Power?

The current RPS, under § 269-92, Hawaii Revised Statutes (“HRS”), requires electric utilities in the State to generate at least the following amounts of electricity from renewable sources as a percentage of electricity sales by year:

• 2010   10%
• 2015   15%
• 2020   30%
• 2030   40%
• 2040   70%
• 2045  100%

Recent state energy history revealed an interesting lesson for regulators and the regulated. Leave the state’s clean energy goal to market forces and technology, and all things become possible.

Case in point; Net Metering (NEM), an experiment in market forces, which by some utility sector interpretation, turned utility customers with roof top solar installations into utility competitors.

Hawaii’s original NEM program represented many things to many people, but it did accomplished a significant and sustainable transition off Hawaii’s oil and coal-fired power generation plants to the state’s most abundant and clean energy asset: sunlight.

In reality, Hawaii’s short lived experiment with its highly successful NEM program of economic equity between utility customers (as both consumers and power producers), and the utilities holding all the cards in partnership, unfortunately did not last.  The NEM experiment demise was not unique to Hawaii. Its popularity and market force changes made it just too disruptive for traditional utilities to adapt.

The original NEM did supercharge a statewide roof top solar adoption renaissance, the most notable period to date in state’s RPS transition off of imported fossil fuels.

The solar adoption boom years of 2012 -2015 also produced an economic boom with the creation of thousands of good paying solar jobs within the state. But perhaps the lasting effect of the brief and highly successful experiment was the sustainable and rapid transformation of the state’s energy dependency from a sole source utility grid provider to a highly efficient and distributed power generation and usage environment.

Equally important, the original NEM program laid the foundation for the recent and expanding adoption of energy management and storage at the point of consumption, free from grid dependencies and accompanying power uncertainties.

But all things must pass, including Hawaii’s successful and equitable NEM problem.  HECO, like other for profit electric utilities around the country systematically and successfully lobbied the shutdown of what was for Hawaii at least, a remarkably statewide success, only to be replaced with NEM replacements laden with roof top solar adoption road blocks and economic disincentives.

Solar power provides a significant boost to Hawaii’s efforts to build a clean energy future. By the end of 2015, Oahu residents had nearly 41,600 rooftop solar systems with a capacity of 343 MW, significantly more than the largest conventional HECO generator on the island.

Distributed roof top solar couple to battery storage offers several benefits to Hawaii’s residential and commercial buildings. For one, energy security advantages not otherwise available through today’s utility-controlled and vulnerable centralized power generation and distribution grid system.    

Aligning energy efficiency strategies with longer term renewable energy goals effectively increases the share of renewables in the generation portfolio. Unless the rising demand for energy is addressed, and that’s not fully possible with the added demand for power in the electrification of transportation now underway in that state and beyond.

Summary

Increases in the rapid statewide adoption of non-polluting, emissions free renewables can no longer be relegated to some future vision with arbitrary deadlines. A fact of life that we must all address as power consumers and producers. The Climate Change bill for the past 150 years of polluting energy dependencies has finally come due; both globally and locally.  The state legislature should no longer delay in making meaningful changes and corrections to an outdated RPS law, and provide clear guidance to the state’s two electric utilities to focus on ‘proven” clean and renewable energy replacements options.

The Climate clock is ticking down to zero hour, and 2045 may be too late for Hawaii to mitigate the most serious of social, climate, and economic impacts. And as interesting as unproven and experimental energy replacement options may represent, the need for  local, reliable, cost effective, and zero emissions energy replacement options is now. The good news is these clean energy replacement options are available today to Hawaii’s electric utilities.

The course for the state’s energy future was set in late 1990’s. As the state struggles to transition off its primary energy dependence of imported fossil fuels to power the grid, there is a wrinkle to meeting a statewide goal by 2045 for 100% renewable energy generation — that is, the state’s recent policy shift and market changes towards the electrification of public and private ground transportation – an impact which is now only being considered for its cause and effect relationship to the state’s 100% renewable energy timetable.

In what many consider COP 26 as humanity’s moment for world leaders to correct a dangerous planetary course, national climate pledges are too weak to avoid catastrophic global warming. Most countries are on track to miss them anyway.  The global effort to combat climate change boils down to this: Moving forward; or business-as usual and damn the consequences.

The in-depth study published earlier this week by the Center for International Climate Research (Cicero), concluded temperature outcomes based on countries’ climate pledges were full of uncertainties. Using data on goals set about a year ago, the world now is on a trajectory to warm anywhere between 1.7°C and 3.8°C by 2100 compared with pre-industrial levels. Other analyses that used the most recent data from COP26 came to similar conclusions.

In face of this facts and scientific conclusions,  how much did the world accomplish at the Glasgow climate talks – and what happens now?  The answer depends in large part on where you live.

In Pacific island nations that are losing their homes to sea level rise, and in other highly vulnerable countries, there were bitter pills to swallow after global commitments to cut emissions fell far short of the goal to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F).

Hawaii is far from exempt from climate consequences with the state’s major airports and ports at sea level, both representing the state’s connection to the outside world and its supply chain dependencies.

For large middle-income countries, like India and South Africa, there were signs of progress on investments needed for developing clean energy.

In the developed world, countries still have to internalize, politically, that bills are coming due – both at home and abroad – after decades of delaying action on climate change. The longer the delay, the more difficult the transition will be.

There were also signs of hope as coalitions of companies, governments and civil society and indigenous peoples groups forced progress on issues such as stopping deforestation, cutting methane, ending coal use and boosting zero-emissions vehicles. Now, those promises must be acted upon.

Here are five key elements to watch over the coming year as countries move forward on their promises.

Bending the curve to 1.5°C

Going into the Glasgow summit, countries’ commitments had put the world on a trajectory of warming about 2.9°C this century, well beyond the 1.5°C goal and into levels of warming that will bring dangerous climate impacts. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in the first days (much to the surprise of Indian observers) that India would reach net zero emissions by 2070 and generate 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030 helped lower that trajectory to 2.4°C.

Countries agreed to return for the next round of climate talks in November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with stronger commitments to put the world on track for 1.5°C.

U.S. Talking Points

That turns the spotlight back on national action. China reminded everyone, while throwing shade at the U.S., that goals must be backed with plans for implementation. U.S. Cabinet members and Congressional leaders had much to say in Glasgow about being “back,” after the previous administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. Yet they had little to offer in terms of the U.S. share of the finance, and the world cast a worried eye over its continued partisan politics.

Deals Done

While all countries are important for reaching the world’s climate goals, some are more important than others.

Countries that are high emitters and heavily dependent on coal will be a focus of international attention in the coming months, not just to phase down coal but importantly to fund a just transition to green sources of energy and the necessary electricity infrastructure.

The poster child for this approach is South Africa, where a presidential commission has worked for three years to develop a just transition plan and has been able to attract US$8.5 billion from the U.K., the EU, the U.S. and others to help them execute on it. That, coupled with guarantees and other financial aid that could help draw further private investment, could become a replicable model.

The key was national ownership. In the year ahead, look for plans to come together in Indonesia and Vietnam and other countries needing to fast forward away from coal.

Follow the Money

In the first week of Glasgow, the titans of the financial industry heralded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero – the commitment by financial institutions representing $130 trillion in assets to accelerate the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. The shifts within financial markets away from exposure to carbon emissions was palpable. But without more detail, the announcement attracted cries of “greenwashing.”

Throughout Glasgow’s conference halls, officials complained that finance wasn’t flowing to help them succeed.

This isn’t just a climate finance problem. Many countries are also facing economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic and have chafed at the way international financial institutions fail to address issues of access to finance and trade. Advanced economies didn’t come to Glasgow ready to provide even the $100 billion a year in finance promised a decade ago, which shrank the landing zone for agreement on all issues.

The Chinese calculate the value of growth lost through a few measures, such as floods and heat. Unsurprisingly it amounts to trillions of dollars. It may be a useful exercise whenever a government balks at the “cost” of climate action.

In the end, governments agreed to reach the $100 billion annual climate finance target within the next two years and agreed that adaptation funding should double. But with the U.N. Environment Program estimating that adaptation funds will need to quadruple by 2030 from today’s $70 billion, there’s a long way to go.

Climate action is a three-legged stool – mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage.

Loss and damage was mentioned an unprecedented 12 times in the final Glasgow texts, but without commitments to funding or mechanisms to secure funding. Loss and damage, or reparations, can be understood this way: you broke it (or endangered it), you pay for it. But, afraid of lawsuits in international courts – which the U.S. does not belong to – or afraid of the costs, developed countries have opposed progress on the issue in recent years.

Developing countries left Glasgow disappointed, but there was no escaping the debate. Although a wonky subject for climate change watchers, future progress is needed towards establishing a global mechanism to help pay for climate-induced losses and damages. With the next year’s U.N. climate conference will be held in Africa, the subject will then likely move to center stage on go-forward agreements between developing and developed countries.

.. recommended additional reading: COP26 — Success or Failure?

(newly updated, originally published October 30th)

A YouGOV poll revealed this week that 60% of Americans say oil firms are to blame for the climate crisis.

Yet, in light of the evidence presented before a House congressional hearing last week, culminating in overwhelming evidence that fossil fuel companies participated in a decades long coverup of the facts as to the dangers of Global Warming, 40% of Americans are apparently ready to give the fossil fuel industry a pass; ignoring the evidence linking fossil extraction, production, and consumption to an unregulated global experiment in hubris and global climate modification.

In fact, even when it was revealed that oil and gas companies knowingly misled the public about their products which are driving climate change, most Republicans in the national poll said the public and the government should not hold those companies accountable.  At the same time, nearly two in three Republicans believe oil and gas companies are at least somewhat responsible for the climate crisis.

The poll findings suggest that much of the marketing campaigns that fossil fuel companies have released to paint themselves in a positive light have worked.

Big oil has bankrolled multimillion-dollar campaigns for decades which downplay the climate crisis and were designed to misled the public with misinformation campaigns and tactics, that included rebranding the scientific description of fossil fuel impacts on the environment from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”, primarily because the term was less alarming to the public, previously validated through Big Oil financed focus groups. Repositioning reality, Big Oil for decades convinced a large segment of the public and policy makers that Global Warming was only a theory, not based in scientific fact. The same companies financing the media influence campaigns, knew better, as their own internal scientific studies continue to provide alarming evidence and conclusions linking fossil fuel emissions directly to global warming.

The same poll suggests the industry’s media efforts were especially effective with Republican voters, who were heavily influenced by misleading anti-science climate stories promoted through extreme conservative channels, e.g. Fox News and Newsmax.

Big Oil’s Message Contradicts its Own Research

The fossil fuel majors Exxon, BP, Shell message strategy was simple enough, change the narrative from Big Oil to individuals who are responsible for climate change, not corporations invested in fossil fuels.  The poll revealed these media efforts were and are working – even with Democrats.  The idea of a “carbon footprint” was introduced by fossil fuel companies to encourage individuals to reduce their emissions, and framed Earth’s runaway emissions as a problem that can be changed simply by changing consumer habits. But consumers are only a small part of the problem, rather, it is the dirty energy economy upon which the world depends which must change in order for the world to successfully mitigate the worst effects of a century of ever increasing global warming emissions on the climate.

For decades oil and gas companies ignored their own scientists who told them their products were harmful to people and the environment as early as the 1970s.

As early as 1958, the oil industry was hiring scientists and engineers to research the role that burning fossil fuels plays in global warming. The goal at the time was to help the major oil conglomerates understand how changes in the Earth’s atmosphere may affect the industry – and their bottom line. But what top executives gained was an early preview of the climate crisis, decades before the issue reached public consciousness.

What those scientists discovered – and what the oil companies did with that information – is at the heart of two dozen lawsuits attempting to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for their role in climate change.

Many of those cases hinge on the industry’s own internal documents that show how, 40 years ago, researchers predicted the rising global temperatures with stunning accuracy.

ClientEarth lodged a complaint in 2019 alleging that BP’s advertising campaigns had misled the public by focusing on the company’s low carbon energy products, when more than 96% of its annual spend was on oil and gas. BP withdrew the ads before the complaint was assessed. ClientEarth said it was now putting other fossil fuel companies on notice over greenwashing adverts.

“We’re currently witnessing a great deception, where the companies most responsible for catastrophically heating the planet are spending millions on advertising campaigns about how their business plans are focused on sustainability,” said Johnny White, one of ClientEarth’s lawyers.   “We need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but instead of leading a low-carbon transition, these companies are putting out advertising which distracts the public and launders their image. Our research shows these adverts are misrepresenting the true nature of fossil fuel companies’ businesses, of their contribution to climate change, and of their transition plans.”

Big Oil’s Scientific Findings on Global Warming Were Correct

Dr Martin Hoffert, 83, physicist and Exxon consultant from 1981 to 1987, put it this way.  “When I started consulting for Exxon, I had already begun to understand that the Earth’s climate would be affected by carbon dioxide. There were only a small number of people in the world who were actively working on this problem because the global warming signal had not yet manifested itself in the data.

We were doing very good work at Exxon. We had eight scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals, including a prediction of how much global warming from carbon dioxide buildup would be 40 years later.

We made a prediction in 1980 of what the atmospheric warming would be from fossil fuel burning in 2020. We predicted that it would be about one degree celsius. And it turned out to about one and half degrees celsius.

It never actually occurred to me that this was going to become a political problem. I thought: “We’ll do the analyses, we’ll write reports, the politicians of the world will see the reports and they’ll make the appropriate changes and transform our energy system somehow.”

I’m a research scientist. In my field, if you discover something and it turns out to be valid, you’re a hero. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to convince people, even when they saw objective evidence of this happening.

The Big Oil Justifies its Decades Old Campaign of Hiding the Truth

In a covert recording released by Greenpeace earlier this year, the Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy is heard on camera saying the company is actively fighting the Biden administration’s efforts on climate change, and admits that Exxon pushed back against climate science.

“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not. Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that,” he says in the recording. “We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”

Manchin is not alone, no single Republican has offered public support for the corner stone of Administration’s Climate-essential legislation scientists say is essential in addressing the impacts of global climate change, now occurring. West Virginia’s other senator, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, said she was “vehemently opposed” to the clean electricity program (CEPP) because it is “designed to ultimately eliminate coal.

Experts have said that the policy over the next decade would drastically reduce the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet and that it would be the strongest climate change policy ever enacted by the United States.

“This is absolutely the most important climate policy in the package,” said Leah Stokes, an expert on climate policy, who has been advising Senate Democrats on how to craft the program. “We fundamentally need it to meet our climate goals. That’s just the reality we face, and consequences of inaction are unthinkable..”

Consequences of Coal’s Political Clout & Hubris

Democrats are preparing for the likely demise of the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), which would reward utilities that deploy more clean energy while penalizing those that don’t. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), said Tuesday that the CEPP “is challenging” and that she had been checking with the measure’s main author, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), “every couple hours” on a substitute “that still brings down carbon emissions.

If the CEPP is dropped from the spending package, Democrats will have to find another way to meet Biden’s overarching goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a caucus meeting for Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET as Democrats try to make progress in negotiations on their sprawling economic package, which aims to expand education, healthcare and childcare support, according to a lawmaker who received the release.

The rest of the world remains deeply wary of America’s commitment to tackling global warming after four years in which former President Donald J. Trump openly mocked the science of climate change and enacted policies that encouraged more drilling and burning of fossil fuels.

For weeks, Democratic leaders have vowed that the clean electricity program was a nonnegotiable part of the legislation. Progressive Democrats held rallies chanting “No climate, no deal!”

No Republican Senator, including Republican senators from states without coal and fossil fuel extraction industries have remained absent without leave from the Build Better legislative negotiations and their support in advancing critical climate actions.

A major scientific report released in August concluded that countries must immediately shift away from burning fossil fuels in order to avoid a future of severe drought, intense heat waves, water shortages, devastating storms, rising seas and ecosystem collapse. To avert catastrophe, scientists say nations must keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But as countries continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the average global temperature has already risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Crucial U.N. climate talks (COP 26) next month could end short of the global target for cutting coal, gas and oil emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says, after nearly a year of climate diplomacy that helped win deeper cuts from allies but has so far failed to move some of the world’s biggest polluters to act fast enough.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Kerry credited the United States, the European Union, Japan and others that over the past year have pledged bigger, faster cuts in climate-wrecking fossil fuel emissions ahead of the talks in Glasgow, Scotland, under nudging from Kerry and the Biden administration. He expressed hope enough nations would join in over the next couple of years. “By the time Glasgow’s over, we’re going to know who is doing their fair share, and who isn’t,” he said.