A partner in one of the private investment firms is apparently dismissing community concerns about the controversial “Big Wind” project and associated undersea cable simply as distracting “noise.”
The project envisions 11,000 acres of land on Molokai and additional areas on Lanai covered with industrial wind turbines, each as tall as Honolulu’s tallest buildings. Transmission of power from the wind farm to end users on Oahu would require a heavy industrial infrastructure linking to a proposed deep sea cable.
Public meetings on Molokai last month exposed strong community opposition, with more than 90% of residents opposed. Opponents have cited environmental, cultural, financial, and legal concerns.
But an article in the current issue of PBN quotes Michael Cyrus, a managing partner at Steelriver Infrastructure Partners, one of the investment groups hoping to get a piece of the risky but potentially very profitable project.
Company representatives were on Molokai last week holding community meetings on their wind farm proposal.
There also is the added risk of community opposition to the projects on Molokai and Lanai, an aspect that has derailed large projects in Hawaii in the past.
Both Cyrus and Chris Lovvorn, director of alternative energy for Castle & Cooke, say that at some point it’s important for the project, which traces back to 2007, to move forward.
“You have to go through this process of noise, where you let people feel that they had a platform to speak,” Cyrus said. “But you can’t let the noise distract you because time is a nemesis. You have to let the project digest, but there is also an illusive comfort that comes from doing nothing.”
Public discussion and review dismissively referred to as “this process of noise, where you let people feel that they had a platform to speak,” implying that it’s all an act, all show, designed to give people a false sense of involvement while the real powers-that-be chart their course independently.
This is not good.
And those public meetings on Molokai referred to? You can listen to an audio recording available online.
According to I Aloha Molokai:
After three public meetings last week in Molokai, industrial wind
factory developers Pattern Energy and Bio-Logical Capital said they will abandon the Big Wind project if the island’s overwhelming opposition continues.“If the community does not want this project it will not go through,” said Pattern Senior Developer Christian Hackett. “And we will pack up and leave.” This statement was echoed by Pattern Senior Manager David Parquet, who added that if Big Wind could not convince the community to accept the project the developers would abandon it.
The Molokai community’s opposition to the project has continued to harden. In a large March survey, 93% of respondents opposed Big Wind, with 4% in favor. An even larger survey this week is 97% against the project and 2% in favor. This near-unanimous opposition was abundantly clear in last week’s meetings, where over fifty speakers strongly condemned Big Wind and no one spoke in its support.
Regarding the 93% and 97% opposition, Bio-Logical Capital Hawaii Vice President KeikiPua Dancil said, “We believe that those numbers are correct. We are not questioning those numbers . . . Those are real numbers.”
Despite saying they would yield to community opposition, HECO and its partners seem to be doing the opposite.
According to PBN, Hawaiian Electric and the state administration say they are ready to proceed with construction of the undersea cable despite failure of a bill authorizing the project to get legislative approval.
Earlier, HECO decided to abandon the idea of state financing for the project, which would have undoubtedly met with significant opposition, and instead turn completely to private investment capital, potentially much more costly but free of political impediments.
Couple all this with DBEDT Director Richard Lim’s recent reference to the Superferry being “derailed by well heeled NIMBY’s and special interests,” and it is looking like a defining posture of the Abercrombie administration.
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““You have to go through this process of noise, where you let people feel that they had a platform to speak,” Cyrus said. “But you can’t let the noise distract you because time is a nemesis.”
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And then he said,”I love it when the little people make their little arguments. It’s so cute. Fortunately, we’re much more important.
(Full disclosure: I made that second one up.)
I dunno … sounds like pretty accurate paraphrasing to me!
Reminds me of the scene in “Christmas Vacation” at the Griswolds’ when Clark’s boss talks about the “little people, like you.”
Sounds like attending public meetings about rail.
Let’s leave rail out of this!
This is a free country.
Yes, they already plan what they want themselves. They just go through the process of letting people blow their hot air. In the end, big money wins. Same old same old. It will remain the same unless we all speak out and vote the crooks out.
Arrogance runs rampant.
In some respects, this is how things work everywhere, where the elites make up their minds and then there is a sham discussion later to give the illusion of public input.
I am reminded of the account given by John Adams (I think) when he visited colonial Virginia (I think) and was invited to an inn where the elite would gather at night. The inn was literally smoke filled, and you could not see anyone’s faces (relative anonymity might be an actual function of smoke in backroom deals). The business of the colonies was discussed in the fashion of a business meeting, very orderly, and votes were taken. The next day Adams went to the colonial Virginia legislature, and found the same topics were debated, very passionately. But when votes were taken, the votes easily went along the lines of the previous night’s voting in the smoke-filled inn.
“Democracy” does have a certain openness, but it is still something like 80 to 90 percent predetermined by the status quo in terms of who becomes a candidate, who gets support in an election, what becomes an issue, etc. But there is that precious 10 to 20 percent of random openness. In fact, too much openness can be a source dysfunction.
Maybe that’s all well and good. In fact, it’s built into the governmental structure, for example, in the difference between the House and the Senate, with the Senate (supposedly) representing the wise old elite.
One problem is when the idiots take control. Think of the invasion of Iraq, or the Wall Street meltdown. The best and the brightest turn out to be … not the best and brightest. Better yet, think of the public “debates” on the rail project. The politicians onstage were high-fiving each other, while the audience was booing (and this was televised, that’s how confident the status quo was). One is reminded of Frank Delima’s song “Bishop Estate Trustee”, about how community leaders in charge of billions of dollars are really “somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody….”
There is the issue of the conquest of democracy by public relations, and Hawaii might be examplary of that. From what I remember of “To Catch a Wave”, more was spent on advertising by the Burns campaign in the 1972 gubernatorial primary election against Tom Gill than in all of the presidential election of that same year.
The other issue is when the mainstream press becomes totally corrupted, and where newspaper articles read like advertising or propaganda. Thank goodness that it has not come to that in Hawaii, yet.
The Environmental Caucus of the Democratic Party will be hosting some more noise…A Community Conversation On Hawaii’s Energy Options
Series of 4 Round Table Discussions
6pm until 8pm – Upstairs at Ward Warehouse near Kincaids – Honolulu
Sponsored by the Environmental Caucus of the Democratic Party of Hawaii
General public is welcome at this free event
July 11 – Energy Independence – A Plan For The Future
July 18th – Power Visions: Hawaiian Electric and Hawaii Solar Industry
July 25th – Big Cable and Big Wind: The Plan, The Questions and the Concerns
August 1 – Fuel For The Future: What’s Next?
Details and complete agenda of speakers at http://tinyurl.com/3e57yyz
Was about to post my comment when I returned to the page to read Skeptical’s intelligent remarks. I slightly disagree, but appreciate his thoughtfulness.
– – – – – –
Thanks, Ian, for this excellent report. Damn! I hate “Faux Empowerment” processes. And I love it when one of the REAL “stakeholders” lets slip what is going on.
Here’s my thesis. The Abercrombie administration has as its NUMBER ONE priority reducing the unemployment rate. And despite his trappings of “liberalism,” Neil has bought into much of the “neo-liberal” economic outlook and is determined to prove he is “business-friendly” and “tough on public sector unions.”
Protected in part by the misperception of Neil as “pro-Labor” and “pro-Environment,” Abercrombie wants to unsheath his sword and slice through the Gordian Knot of regulations, public hearings and “checks and balances” in order to win fast approval for as many “shovel-ready” projects a he can in as short a time as he can.
“Big Wind,” the Ho’opili Development on prime ag lands in Kunia, possibly an expansion at Turtle Bay, Laie?
For those listening closely, Neil has already said his energy plans will not lead to lower energy costs, but higher ones. Lingle tried to cut through the “red tape” on behalf of the very GOP investors behind the SuperFerry and got bogged down. If he gets his way, Neil will replicate Lingle’s corporate favoritism on a much vaster scale and his environmentalist supporters will find themselves as frustrated and alienated as the public employees who had worked so hard for his election.
Neil has sent strong signals to the business community that “Hawaii is Open for Business.” I fear he will “give away the store” in deal after deal in his eagerness to get the economy going again.
We should be thankful to Michael Cyrus for his brutal honesty. The outside investors who the Abercrombie administration has decided are our ticket to rebooting the economy view public opinion as “noise,” which should not distract them. That’s what politicians and PR professionals are hired to handle. Environmentalists, union members, progressives and Hawaii’s regular folks should discard ANY illusions they might retain about Abercrombie’s alleged “liberalism.” Adopt as cold-hearted a perspective as Mr. Cyrus. Ignore any nice-sounding utterances from the administration as just another form of “noise.” Judge him by the evidence of your senses and logical analysis of his behavior.
And fasten your seatbelts. More and more, it looks like we may have to struggle with the Abercrombie administration even harder than against the Lingle group if we want a say in shaping Hawaii’s future for OUR longterm needs rather than maximizing profits for investors and short-term jobs for construction workers.
On the one hand, you have to respect the wishes on the community. On the other hand, Molokai needs some sort of economic development options. Tourism is not an option. Unemployment routinely is double that of the state average. Poverty rates are high. Big Wind may not be the right thing. But what is Plan B?
I think it has been pointed out again and again that this does NOT really represent development for Molokai, as there really will be no jobs for locals. Hence the ~97% opposition among the population there.
Perhaps true (I find it hard to believe there will be no jobs generated – maintaining a big wind farm takes people) but even if so, could residents of Molokai craft some sort of economic deal? Or could this underwrite other businesses? The model that comes to mind is Alaska where residents enjoy an annual check from the oil companies. I know that this is also controversial (in terms of environmental impact) but its good to consider all options, no?
For some reason your posts, which formerly showed up in their entirety in my RSS feed (Google Reader), are now truncated. Is there a reason for this or is there something I can do to ensure that I see the entire post?
Thanks….
On Lanai, it is a bit different. The Lingle/Murdock Big Wind project is generating lots of “noise”, bu t castle & cooke don’t listen to the community. To them, community is just that — noise. And many residents can’t speak out for fear of losing their home (1/3 of Lanai homes are rented from C&C) or their jobs (+\- 700 jobs held by C&C). But there is and will continue to be more and more noise about this attempt to take one quarter of Lanai to provide 5-6% of O’ahu’s ever-growing electricity demands.
“… O’ahu’s ever-growing electricity demands.”
This reminded me of something I read on the blog of Charles Hugh Smith, dated July 4th.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly11/dependency-self-reliance6-11.html
Smith discusses the dynamics of societal collapse, which might be summarized as due to the diminishing returns on sophisticated investments and increasing costs of raw natural inputs.
He writes:
“In his book Collapse of Complex Societies, anthropologist Joseph Tainter identified two causes of economic collapse: investments in social complexity yield diminishing marginal returns, and energy subsidies, i.e. cheap, abundant energy, decline. In my terminology, the dynamic he describes is one in which the cost structure of a society continues rising due to “the ratchet effect” but the gains from the added expenses are increasingly marginal.
“At some point the additional costs, usually justified as the “solution” to the marginal returns problem, become counterproductive and actually drain the system of resilience as dissent and adaptability (“variation is information”) are suppressed. This feeds systemic instability: on the surface, all seems stable, but beneath the surface, the potential for a stick/slip destabilization grows unnoticed.”
That does read like what is happening with the Big Wind project, where increasingly expensive and sophisticated technological fixes yield lower and lower returns, and where any sort of political dissent against such (doomed) projects are simply suppressed or dismissed by elites.
Now, this might be too grim a picture. There might be room for optimism. It’s not that such grand projects are workable and worthy. It’s that new technology on a smaller scale emerges quietly and spreads for reasons other than energy generation. In fact, it could be argued that this is the logic of technology: efficiency gains through miniaturization.
That’s some that perhaps Americans are less likely to understand than, say, the Japanese, whose appreciation of minimalism and smallness seems to run deep. Americans (and maybe the Soviets, our extinct adversaries) might tend toward giganticism or thinking that Bigger Is Better in their notion of progress. It could be that relatively young societies are like that, or old societies that are still developing, like China (especially with that Three Gorges Dam).
Speaking of Japan, the average Japanese household utilizes half the energy of the average American household. This is largely achieved through discipline. The Japanese family will gather together in the common area in the evening and will not have any appliance on in the other rooms. In contrast, Americans tend to retreat to their own private rooms, with a TV and computer in each bedroom and in the family room and the computer room, etc., with the lights on in every room. One also needs a very big house for this arrangement.
But that is changing. The typical situation now is for the middle-class American family to gather together in the family room. But they do not interact. The TV is off. Instead each person has their own iPad, iPhone and laptop before them, and they tune out the world. To communicate with the person right next to you, you send them a text message because you do not want to disturb them as they play The Angry Birds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/fashion/01FAMILY.html
Now, the family is using energy to do this, but much less than before. In fact, these devices are battery powered, and can be charged at off-peak hours. Also, houses can be smaller since most of one’s time is being spent in a virtual reality, and since there is less of a desire to do other things and thus buy other things, one does not need a massive house to store stuff (and because it is smaller it needs less heating in the winter and less cooling in the summer).
So there might be diminishing returns on societal investments and increasing natural resource costs, but there is also a countervailing tendency toward greater efficiency and ‘smallness’.
This understanding should shift the debate on the nature of societal collapse. Basically, the status quo insists on investing in the same old thing only on a vaster scale when the same old thing no longer works. This is retrenchment, and upping of the ante on a losing hand.
At the level of the masses, there is a similar inflexibility among the less educated. In this housing crisis, it is the more educated home buyers — especially businessmen, who are used to breaking unworkable contracts — who are walking away from their mortgages. Ironically, it’s the least educated people who have the most unfavorable mortgage terms who are hanging in there with their mortgage payments.
That describes Hawaii. Up until recently, there has been no collapse of the housing bubble in Hawaii because … uneducated people are inflexible. But that also explains the popular impetus toward big projects on the part of the less educated citizenry. It’s not just trade union lobbying, but a certain rigid way of thinking by people who are themselves being exploited ruthlessly by the status quo. They cannot imagine change as positive and creative and ‘free’ and spontaneous.
The nature of technology is changing in unpredictable ways, and the response by the elites and the masses is to build a grander version of a centralized system that is already obsolete.
I just checked on Abercrombie’s campaign position paper on “Energy”:
http://www.neilabercrombie.com/index.php/issues/more/energy/
If you str4ip away what Cyrus might call “noise,” he is advocating for “bold” action, unrestrained by regulatory agencies or “political interference.” His proposed “Hawaii Energy Authority” would be “independent” (from whom, I wonder) and gather onto itself many of the oversight functions now held by the PUC. HECO would be given a one percent rise in its return for using “clean” energy sources.
A significant part of the “energy problem” (at least for HECO) comes from a structural dilemma. If consumers switch to alternative energy sources NOT controlled by HECO, the cost of maintaining their infrastructure must be borne by a shrinking customer base. Meaning they will be forced to charge more for electricity, which increases incentives for more customers to flee to alternative energy. Increasingly, the HECO consumer base will consist of renters and mostly low-income people who do not have the ability to escape HECO’s clutches the way homeowners will.
So any “energy solution” acceptable to the entrenched business community will have to provide for HECO’s investors. DIstributed generation of energy, using a variety of competing and/or complementary technologies would only make HECO’s energy problem worse. Only an over-capitalized, highly centralized monopolistic structure with HECO retaining a significant ownership share, will solve HECO’s experience of the “energy problem.”
Hence this soft and cuddly line from Abercrombie’s “plan”:
“We all benefit from a financially healthy public utility.”
Just as Mufi’s Train does not make sense as an efficient use of scarce dollars when judged by transportation criteria, but DOES make sense when you factor in contracts, campaign contributions and jobs for the building trades, so too does “Big Wind” not make sense when we view the costs and benefits from an “energy,” environmental” or cost-effectiveness perspective.
When we examine it as a means of rescuing HECO and providing a long-term stream of “rents” for well-heeled investors, it starts to make sense. Especially if the rate of return is guaranteed and most (perhaps ALL) of the risks are borne by the taxpayer (or “ratepayer”), whichever label best describes the poor everyday schmucks who will be stuck with paying for this thing.
And the “independent” SuperAgency,” the Hawaii Energy Authority, will be hardwired with a built-in imperative to carry out this corporatist, monopolist vision, unencumbered by any “regulations” demanded by the public, undistracted by the “noise” held in such low regard by aspiring rentiers like Michale Cyrus.
Sorry, Doug, but this strikes me as very similar to the “rail” project.
“Big Projects in Hawaii– Why are They Stuck?”
Answer: Too much noise. Must tune out the noise!
I think that there is truth to claim that public utilities may face the dilemma of their customers opting out of the grid entirely as new technology comes on line, especially with the Chinese state investing with an intense focus in things like wind and solar generation (and not out of some desire to be politically correct, but in the cold, calculated interest of the state). If one contrast how the Bush dynasty, for example, is deeply entrenched in the status quo in places like Saudi Arabia and Texas versus the relative distance of the power elite in China to the petroleum cartel, one can see how the relative passivity of the US in not developing alternative sources makes all too much sense. Only science wonks in the US power elite — geeks like Al Gore, who is otherwise a typical conservative — have an interest in alternative energy. Their numbers are small.
But for those in the energy industry — and this includes local utilities — to witness countries like Germany and China (and maybe Japan soon enough, followed almost inevitably by their imitator, South Korea) shift with determination to alternative energy, and the rapid innovation and economies of scale that this implies, must send a shiver of panic through the status quo.
I think I have witnessed this panic myself in Hawaii. I was watching a State hearing on the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, and one of HECO’s engineers was testifying, and he was literally shouting at his audience “We are running out of time!!” It was a bizarre performance, not just for the shouting, but for the sudden intense concern on the part of HECO. The theory of peak oil has been around since the 1950s, and it was largely validated by the 1970s, but up until recently HECO was always notoriously lazy and complacent about developing alternative energy in the face of immanent shortages. All of a sudden everyone is so filled with fear and angst about how “We are running out of time!”
But they are not entirely referring to peak oil, but to the eventual obsolescence of the public utility with the ramping up of new decentralized technology. So “peak oil” becomes a code word within the status quo for changes in production and consumption of energy.
The local utility at long last wants to create a smart grid so that houses can sell the energy they generate through PV to other consumers. But the utility’s motivation stems in part from the realization that with changing battery technology, consumers can just get off the grid by storing the energy they generate and using it for their car or for their home in the evening.
This is what is so amusing about the State’s current and seemingly permanent budget crisis and how this may hasten the shift to on-site generation. Basically, the status quo got (tricked?) a conservative governor to make it a law that a centralized system of alternative energy generation would be created with public (taxpayer’s) funds. But the money is not there, and it might not ever be there again. So now it is going to be a consortium of investors who would build and pay for the centralized system of alternative energy, and it would consequently be ratepayers, not taxpayers more generally, who later compensate these investors.
That’s just fine if the energy derived from this ‘green’ system will be as cheap as the utility promises.
But of course why would private investors invest in something that will be inexpensive to consumers? The production might or might not be cheap as promised, but the price to consumers will inevitably be dear in order to pay back investors. This will only hasten the urge by consumers to … get off the grid!
The “new normal” has undermined much of corporate welfare, and this seems to include the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
Because “ratepayers” are fleeing the HECO system, I do not have confidence the State will only have “ratepayers” pay off the investors. I suspect much of it will be borne by “taxpayers.”
I anticipate a MAJOR announcement related to outside investments in Hawaii’s energy system to be made around the APEC event. My intuition has picked up subtle signals that things are lining up in this way. This would be used to declare the APEC event to be a Great Success for Hawaii (and the Abercrombie-Schatz administration) and put into place an important piece for pushing through “Big Wind” and/or the undersea cable. Watch for the announcement at the conference or shortly thereafter and brace for a “bold” push to rush through the “Big Wind” project and undersea cable shortly thereafter.
By announcing this at APEC, the administration will get a “two-fer.” APEC will appear to have accomplished something after all and they will use the funding as an excuse to push ahead with Big Wind.
Things are lining up. The stage is being set. Get ready to make some noise.
“Big Projects in Hawaii– Why are They Stuck?”
This rang a bell, and I looked it up and it was a conference on June 23 run by Jay Fidell of ThinkTech.
But it also turns out to be an article by Panos Prevodouros in the Hawaii Reporter (which I do not read).
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/big-projects-in-hawaii-why-are-they-stuck/123
Prevadouros argues that “There are 10 basic dimensions that account for the reasons that big projects succeed or fail. Each project has its own complex set of technical, legal, institutional and financial requirements but 10 basic reasons cover the fundamental requirements.”
Here are those metrics in his words:
“A project needs to fulfill a major need (or mitigate a major problem), at a low cost, with a large share of it paid by outsiders, and with minimal environmental impacts and implementation risks.
“It is also important that a project has a strong local advocacy and a weak opposition, and some political support at all levels.
“A project has a better chance if it utilizes advance technology or is ahead of its time based on proven engineering (e.g., maglev trains, fiber based structural components, etc.)
“A sound business plan means that a scenario of reasonable adversity keeps the project’s balance sheet solvent and subsidies are kept to a minimum even for government projects.”
He ranks projects in terms of their viability according to those metrics in terms of an overall score:
1. H3: 36 points
2. Reef runway: 35 points
3. Convention center: 34 points
4. Hoopili: 28 points
5. Big Wind: 28 points
6. TheRail: 27 points
7. TheBoat: 25 points
8. SuperFerry: 24 points
The most interesting criterion is that the technology utilized be both advanced and proven. That is not necessarily a paradox, but it is a doubly rigorous standard. But in some cases of local projects, like Aloha Stadium, it might have been worth asking at the time “Is this really advanced technology? Is it proven?”
The worst case scenario might then be be old-fashioned technology, but on a grand scale, so upon completion the project would end up being both obsolete, on the one hand, and too complex and unwieldy and fragile, on the other hand. Is the Big Wind like that? Under the rubric of “Modern, suitable technology”, Prevadouros gives Big Wind the lowest score of all the projects, but he fails to have a ranking for complexity and scale. (Compared to the convention center, reef runway and H3, the Big Wind is much more complex and massive.)
In terms of technology used, there might be criteria other than how ‘advanced’ and ‘proven’ it is. We might ask “Is the technology flexible?” Copper wire telephone lines might seem obsolete, but they can be re-purposed, as we see with HawTel’s bid to use that for television service distribution. Could the Big Wind have a dual use in the future? It would be hard to imagine that it could, at the moment.
A less technical but more political analysis of Big Wind would involve new dimensions.
1. “Is this project corporate welfare?”
As it was originally envisioned, the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative seems to be a straightforward case of corporate welfare. But it will no longer be paid for directly by taxpayers, so that is more uncertain now. We have not yet read the fine print on how the State (and the taxpayer) will be liable if the project encounters difficulties. Even though private investors would be paying for the infrastructure, if risks are ultimately socialized and profits privatized, once again it veers into the realm of corporate welfare.
2. “Is opposition to the project NIMBYism”?
By NIMBY, we generally refer to the economic problem of the “free rider dilemma”, where the benefits of the project accrue to everyone generally but there are a few freeloaders who don’t want to pay their fair share.
Will Molokai or Lanai benefit from this project? It does not seem so, so they are not free riders. In fact, it seems like it is Oahu that is the free rider here, and in a somewhat economically colonial manner.
However, some claim that those outer islands benefit from Oahu’s largess, and this would be compensation for years of support from Oahu.
But increasingly tourism on Oahu has few repeat visitors, and Oahu’s tourism is dependent increasingly on the mystique of the outer islands. It could be that the outer islands are becoming the pillars of tourism, and they are carrying Oahu, and that this kind of development will hurt the mystique of the outer islands. That’s a worrying trend if it is true.
Any other potential criteria?
“Molokai needs some sort of economic development options.”
no they do not. that is mainland mentality. leave that to da conusa.
Here is a December 14, 2010 article in the Disappeared News blog about Blue Planet Foundation, the local alternative energy advocacy group founded by Henk Rogers.
http://www.disappearednews.com/2010/12/blue-planet-foundation.html
Its advisory board is filled with the local elite (e.g., Ariyoshi, Cayetano). What makes this interesting is that Blue Planet seems to privately disagree with the Big Wind. Henry Curtis writes in the Disappeared News:
“Blue Planet Foundation seeks to work quietly, often behind closed doors, to effectuate change. Thus they immediately and publicly endorsed the Energy Agreement while disagreeing privately with some of the things in the agreement.”
This group seems to oppose HECO on a number of items, like a Feed In Tariff, palm oil as a biofuel, on-bill financing, and they are ambivalent about an undersea cable and wind farms.
Here is the Blue Planet website, by the way, which is celebrating their victory for on-bill financing (at least, getting the government to fund a study of it, which is a modest victory).
http://blueplanetfoundation.org/
This would seem to illustrate the split between the ‘reforms’ of the status quo and energy reforms that stress decentralization away from the utility.
Also, somewhere in my reading on this issue today I came across a quote by Lingle when she signed the HCEI, which stated that no one is really happy with the Initiative, but compromise was needed. That makes one wonder what her own thoughts on the matter were, but she is too disciplined to probably ever spill the beans.
Also, here is a blog by retired UH professor Patrick Takahashi, who was the creator and past director of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) at the UH. He is skeptical of the wind project and nuclear power, but he is big on geothermal and OTEC.
http://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/2011/04/will-renewable-electricity-be-limited.html
Again, this is just to show the different voices out there within the ‘elite’ who keep the Big Wind at arms length.
Here’s an interesting blog entry from the Disappeared News regarding the Big Wind.
http://www.disappearednews.com/2011/07/blowing-in-wind.html
It seems that the PUC has been frustrated with what seems to be habitual sneakiness on HECO’s part.
Here is the first part of the story:
But that is just the first part of the PUCs frustration with HECOs apparent connivance.
The PUC is often cast in public discourse as the rubber stamp of HECO, but the PUC’s reaction would suggest that it is quite independent of HECO and quite critical of both HECO and the Big Wind project, as the rest of the entry would suggest.
(Civil Beat also has a story on this:http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2011/07/15/12106-hawaii-puc-denies-molokai-big-wind-deal/)
In other news, here’s an editorial in the Star Advertiser by Richard Borecca that points out how the Abercrombie administration seems to be moving itself away from its earlier various energy initiatives.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/20110712__Abercrombie__power_plans_seem_to_be_losing_energy.html
Borecca writes of the Big Wind:
What is interesting is that the Big Wind is not in the administration’s plans.
In fact, although Abercrombie has been a strong supporter of the inter-island cable, whenever he talks about the cable, he links it with developing geothermal energy on the Big Island.
The point here is that some of us have been assuming that the fix is in, that the status quo has been conniving to establish a centralized energy grid in the face of immanent change in trends of energy development.
What we find here, however, is evidence that the elite is largely skeptical of the Big Wind project.
Now, HECO is of course big on the Big Wind, but this information would seem to suggest that not many people within government are for it.
These articles would not only suggest fragmentation among the elite on their positions on energy policy, but also ambivalence and even confusion. It would seem that they are making it up as they go along (just like the rest of us…). There is no big conspiracy.
Perhaps eventually we are just going to have to burn more coal. The HCEI might prove a catalyst to change, but not the one that any of us once expected.
Hmm, maybe the projects could be a good thing long-term, but I just don’t like the way some of the parties involved are handling things. Check out the article here http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/563210/Viewpoint–Plans-for-Hana-are-cause-for-concern.html for some rather disturbing information on this.
Also take a look at http://www.keikipuadancilreferences.com; one of the major players involved in the controversy doesn’t seem to be too trustworthy.