Life of the Land’s Henry Curtis has been doing some very good reporting on energy, environment, and politics at his Ililani Media blog.

Yesterday he flagged a fresh conflict of interest at the Public Utilities Commission. It seems that the PUC sent out a notice on Monday that staff attorney Ryan D. Hurley has been assigned to handle to docket for the commission’s proceeding “to Investigate whether an Oahu-Maui Interisland Transmission System May Be in the Public Interest.”

But Curtis reports:

LinkedIn stated that as of October 4, 2013, Ryan Hurley was the Wind Energy Specialist at DBEDT. That is, Hurley was working for one of the parties in this docket.

An HPU publication from last summer quoted Hurley. “I help wind and solar developers navigate the often complex permitting process when developing utility-scale projects.”

He said his two biggest accomplishments so far are his work with the Kawailoa Wind farm on O‘ahu’s north shore and the Auwahi Wind farm on Maui.

Another substantive recent post assessed the shortcomings of Hawaiian Electric’s Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process and report. An independent evaluator declined to certify the results, finding that “the IRP Report and the Action Plans are not compliant with specific [IRP] Framework requirements and do not meaningfully address several of the Principal Issues.” Curtis then explains the specific elements that were flagged as concerns.

The bottom line here is that anyone even mildly interested in the transition to a renewable energy economy should put Ililani Media on your regular reading list.