Judging from recent online comments with reference to the protests over the latest Na Pua Makani wind farm project in Kahuku, there’s a segment of the public that perceives the wind energy project as just another corporate power grab representing a large national corporation putting its own interests ahead of the community.
It seems to me that this kind of general rejection of the project fails to appreciate the actual nature of the problem we’re facing.
So I have to wonder: How did wind power, one of our few available alternatives to the continued use of fossil fuels and the adverse climate changes they have wrought, go from being seen as part of the solution to global warming and instead vilified as an essential expression of corporate domination?
For years, Hawaii has been burdened by the highest electricity rates in the country, due in large part to our isolation and our almost total reliance on imported fossil fuel.
And with the impacts of climate change highlighted the costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels, the state has been pushing to ramp up its investments in clean and renewable power sources, including solar, wind, and geothermal.
So it was a big deal when Hawaii became the first state in the country to pass a law with a firm timetable for eliminating the use of fossil fuel to produce electricity.
Here’s how a press release from the Blue Planet Foundation put it at the time (June 2015).
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/historic-hawaii-enacts-nations-first-100-renewable-energy-requirement-300097583.html
Hawaii enacted a law this week that requires all of the state’s electricity to be produced from renewable energy sources no later than 2045. The new policy, Act 97, makes Hawaii the first state in the nation to adopt a 100 percent renewable requirement, further solidifying Hawaii’s role as a global clean energy leader.How did the solution to the continued use of fossil fuels become seen as simply part of a corporate, profit-making conspiracy?
“Hawaii is making history, not only for the islands, but for the planet,” said Jeff Mikulina, Executive Director of the Blue Planet Foundation. “We are making a promise to future generations that their lives will be powered not by climate-changing fossil fuel, but by clean, local, and sustainable sources of energy.”
Blue Planet Foundation, whose mission is to clear the path for 100% clean energy, drafted the legislation and led the grassroots campaign to pass the bill, which included channeling the support of over 500 students statewide in the form of letters and illustrations delivered to lawmakers. The organization praised both the Governor and legislative leaders for their resolve in establishing the new target.
According to Pacific Business News: “As of 2018, Hawaii’s energy use consisted of 61.3% petroleum, 11.9% coal, 11.2% utility and small-scale solar, 4.9% wind, 2.9% bioenergy, and 2.8% biomass.”
We’ve got a long way to go to meet the state’s 100% renewable goal within 25 years. Wind power is almost necessarily part of the solution, at least with the current state of available technology. And mining the wind, like drilling for oil, requires going to where the resource is found.
Kahuku is one of those places.
So instead of the good community versus the greedy corporate powers, we’ve got the positive goal of reducing fossil fuels versus the equally positive goal of protecting a rural neighborhood from carrying an unfair share of the negative effects of the state’s energy goal.
I’ll be back to this subject, hopefully tomorrow, with more thoughts on this sticky issue.
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What is the factual basis for your statement that “wind is almost necessarily part of the solution…?” Why not keep adding roof top photovoltaic and battery storage first before adding massive industrial turbines and new transmission lines next to the James Campbell Wildlife Refuge (killing endangered species)?
Also, have you looked at the wind maps for Hawaii? Is the State truly “going to where the resource is found?”
Something is seriously wrong when we are asked to allow the killing of endangered species and the industrial transformation of a rural community in order to “save the environment.”
Lastly, do you have data demonstrating that these particular wind turbines will appreciably contribute to “solving” global climate change?
Windmills are killing our bats.
And every year they keep raising their estimates of how many they will kill, and regulators allow them to do it.
Great topic. We need discussion here. I generally agree, but it does not seem fair for one small rural community to bear the brunt of renewable energy goals for the rest of the energy consuming island/state. I hear the protesters on that front. When you drive through Kahuku (I’m a townie) those turbines are startling. Let’s put some massive wind turbines on Diamond Head, Koko Head, Hanauma Crater, Makapu’u, or offshore of Waikiki, Diamond Head, Kahala – all very windy, beautiful and, one could easily argue, priceless. Spread the renewable energy burden and then we can have a fair conversation about NIMBY.
How about a law mandating every newly built (since 2010) massive condo tower in Ala Moana/Waikiki/Kakaako have a windmill planted on top?
Not just the tops of those buildings.
Those towers channel wind between them, so mounting windmills along the sides of those towers would take advantage of that.
Nicely framed, Ian
Aloha Ian – Mahalo as always for a thought provoking column. I live on the North Shore though not in Kahuku. We were most upset with the visual blight that the Kawailoa wind mills proved to be on our community. The visual impact was very much misrepresented by the original company and they did agree that they did a very poor job of being clear on the visual blight. Part of the charm of the North Shore are the beautiful vistas. This vista is seriously marred at Waimea Valley with the blades turning overhead.
If you want good wind, Portlock is one of the best places as is Sandys. No one is looking to put wind mills there. As you can imagine the hue and cry if they tried. What about social and environmental justice? Why not a wind farm in Portlock or Hawaii Kai? Why only North Shore?
We are an island and these wind mills are too tall and too big. There is not enough room to accommodate them and the surrounding community. It is easy to judge when you are not in daily view of these monstrosities.
The output is also significantly less than what was touted at Kawailoa – about 34% only. They are an inefficient way to reach our energy goals. Solar and mini-grids are and would be more effective but that means less money for HECO.
As a board member of Keep the North Shore Country, we support clean energy but put the right solution in each community do not shove it down our throat or lie about its impacts to the community. As stated above, we embraced the Kawailoa project until it went up and we realized we had been had.
And where is the justice for the opaepae – going from 60 to over 200 dead bats per year? How is that pono? This is all about the money and not about what is truly best for the community and our energy goals.
Mahalo for letting me state my thoughts.
Even though wind is a renewable energy source, the massive scale of the turbines creates an environmental burden. This is an issue of environmental justice for the impacted residents. Imagine the outcry if the location was the Wai’alae Country Club.
I think one of the issues against wind turbines is the constant noise they produce….and if these turbines are too near homes that becomes a pretty big annoyance.
This is about saving the sacred bats. Nothing else.
I agree with the comments here criticizing the siting of these monstrous things in the currently planned locations. (And if you think they aren’t monstrous, try spending some time alongside one in operation–and then imagine living and sleeping and having your kids go to school with a bunch of them nearby.) It’s hardly coincidence that these are generally planned for lower income communities predominantly populated by people of color. There’s a term for that we don’t hear enough of these days. It’s environmental racism, the same racism that creates black and Latino “cancer alleys” in Arizona and Louisiana, toxic waste dumps on American Indian reservations, poisonous water systems in black inner-city communities, and much more.
No doubt we need to convert asap to clean energy, and if competent professional studies show that wind energy is a necessary component of that conversion then we’ll have to go that way–and, in the process, generously compensate and/or relocate the people in the impacted locales. But (and pardon my ignorance if these exist) I would first like to see solid, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence that the wind patterns in Manoa, Kahala, Pacific Heights and demographically similar racial/economic communities aren’t also appropriate places for generating wind power.
I think there’s a lot of conflating of generic capture of wind energy and the specific Kahuku installations, both the existing windmills and the Na Pua Makani project.
It seems that most of the objections to the Kahuku windfarms are specific to those projects. Killing bats, and physiological harm to humans due to the sound and light patterns caused by the windmills won’t happen at all windfarms.
It might be useful to compare this to the Ma’alaea windmills on Maui. I don’t think those encountered much if any resistance, but they aren’t located near any residences or schools. They have killed hoary bats and nene.
I wonder why the only wind energy capturing systems we’re seeing here are these huge windmills. With such large blades, the tips of those blades must be moving very fast, which probably is a big reason they are so deadly to bats.
There are also those pesky minor issues of pre-existing population density, authorized land uses, and land values, which I dare say could potentially figure into this delicate conversation regardless of the sexier and more virtuous issue of inhabitant genetic composition.
Maybe Hawaii should consider building a nuclear energy power plant. It’s more effective than solar and wind. Our energy bills will drop and HELCO will have to learn to manage it; or maybe not.
Are you kidding me? There’s been enough press to know nuclear power plants are NOT a viable choice.
I hope I am permitted to add two follow-up comments.
First, the protection from damaging development that elite communities (again, in racial/ethnic/economic terms) enjoy, while less privileged communities are forced to sacrifice, is nothing new here or elsewhere. For one among many local examples that I mention only because it is now long-forgotten, decades ago there was a plan for what was called a Deep Water Cable that would tap geothermal energy on the Big Island to bring power to O`ahu. Before it was abandoned for financial reasons, a design map was released showing the routes of the undersea cable. One them, as it approached O`ahu where the power plant would be located, was headed in a straight line for Kahala/Diamond Head. But then, a revised plan abruptly veered that cable off in a leeward direction to…Waimanalo/Makapu`u. Other such instances of this sort of thing are legion.
My second point refers to the scholarly work of one of the people who has a brief comment above on Ian’s initial post, Neil Milner. In an important article of about a dozen years ago entitled “Home, Homelessness, and Homeland in the Kalama Valley,” Professor Milner writes about the importance of “place” to people as “containers of experience,” and how “a loss of home may produce a strong sense of dislocation and even grief.” If the people of rural Kahuku are forced by the State of Hawai`i to accept the visual and sonic blight of towers taller than those of any existing or proposed buildings in urban Honolulu, they will in effect have lost their homes. And the lives to which they and their families have been long accustomed will be permanently destroyed. That is true cost–the human cost–of this project.
That is a good point about people effectively losing their homes -in a psychological sense- by the intrusion of the massive wind turbines. This is why, of the three current protest actions, the one in Kahuku seems most righteous to me. This is a direct attack on one geographical community that will create a permanent intrusion where they live.
Traveling on the express train in japan recently I observed miles of solar panels installed in the median between the rail tracks and the nearby parallel high way. It should seriously be considered here. Japan has had to shut down certain style nuclear reactors so they are pushing solar as an alternative and its working. They have very high demands and a need to shift away fro older style nuclear plants. We want to shift away from fossil fuel power. Similar goals. Maybe similar solution. Large scale solar can work.
Interesting historical note: when top down rulers in post-contact times allowed cattle, sheep and goats to roam free across the landscape they trampled and grazed the kuleana gardens of the people. In Kahuku, in fact (see Rev. Emerson’s annual reports on Mission House website), the Hawaiian residents were forced to abandon their homes due to cattle trampling…they had technically legal recourse but effectively could do nothing (makainana, no cash, just learning literacy). Now the windmills are doing the same thing to the primarily Hawaiian and Polynesian residents. They had technical legal recourse but could do nothing. AES needed to start construction to get the tax credits. That’s public funding, effectively, and from the top down (a handful of legislative committee leaders and a governor, far away in Honolulu, run the show, mostly behind closed doors, and hearings are obscurely noticed and not easily attended by working people). History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. Would you stay in your house next to one of those things?
2nd point about why windmills are not so good – if you’re not pumping water for release on demand….or creating some other kind of reserve (2 giant batteries have burned up out at Kahuku, massive chemical fires they could not put out)….much of the windpower is wasted, and when wind is not turning them you need base load from fossil fuels so you haven’t really changed the equation. Plus massive tax credits are the only way they work. What we need (if windmills) is pumped storage for hydro power, combined with nuclear power for zero carbon combustion (better, safer designs are already available, and Navy has been running them out of Pearl Harbor for decades). Notice that the lovely news writers ALWAYS cite the power potential (16,000 homes, in this case) and NEVER cite the actual output (Kawailoa mills operate at 22% capacity, per Sen. Riviere recently). 22% of 16,000 is 3,420 homes, not 16,000. See the propaganda action here?