In a decision announced Monday, the Public Utilities Commission turned down a proposed power purchase agreement with Hawaii Electric Light Company that would have let the Hu Honua wood-burning-to-energy project move forward to completion.
PUC Denies Power Purchase Agreement for Hu Honua Project
May 23, 2022 – The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission issued Decision and Order No. 38395, denying HELCO’s request for approval of the Amended and Restated Power Purchase Agreement between HELCO and Hu Honua. Commissioner Leodoloff R. Asuncion, Jr. issued a dissenting opinion. For more information, see Decision and Order No. 38395 and the dissenting opinion.
Skim the opinion, and it’s clear the PUC found it could not rely on Hu Honua’s projections of climate impact or cost of the project, and repeatedly noted that promised benefits to the public were back loaded, meaning they would only come late in the 30-year term of the proposed project, making the somewhat rosy promises less reliable.
I highly recommend jumping over over to Henry Curtis’ Ililani Media for today’s post.
This post ticks off the multiple ways Hu Honua is exerting lobbying, advertising, and political pressure in an attempt to breath life back into their costly proposal. Highly recommended reading.
These pressure tactics are not new.
See:
“Powerful state senators pressure agencies to back Hu Honua,” iLind.net, September 17, 2020.
“Who’s Hu?” iLind.net, Sept 17, 2020
“Lawsuit reveals lead investor now skeptical of Hu Honua,” iLind.net, Sept 20, 2020
“We’re learning lots of new details about the Hu Honua proposal,” Sept 21, 2020
“Check out this recent ThinkTech Hawaii program on Hu Honua,” iLind.net, October 8, 2020
“Two recent Hawaii Supreme Court rulings,” iLind.net, Feb 3, 2021
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Thanks Ian. Very informative article.
Ian, thank you for the links, which made all this understandable. The PUC seemed to be concerned with three issues. One is air quality impacts from smoke. Another is cost. The last is the carbon cycle, and that is a complicated issue in this case. If trees are planted to replace the trees that were burned, then this would be a sustainable operation that would not contribute to global warming. But as Henry Curtis pointed out, Ho Honua is a small operation that misrepresents itself by claiming to own sources of wood, and it is not committed to replanting.
A fourth issue not mentioned is that solar and wind are sometimes unreliable and always intermittent because they only produce electricity at certain parts of the day, and so a more reliable source of energy is need to provide “firm” generation. This has become the biggest argument for Ho Honua. But as scientists at the UH have explained, with new technology, this is increasingly not so much a concern. They say that Ho Honua is an old-fashioned concept of what the future would look like.