With concern, we have watched Hawaiian Electric companies try to cancel agreements in recent months.
We are puzzled in particular that Hawaii Electric Light Co. on Hawaii island ignores the significant investment and progress made by one in particular — Hu Honua Bioenergy.
Hu Honua has spent about $137 million on the biomass-to-energy facility, which is now nearly 50 percent complete.
That’s right. The project is halfway done and HELCO wants to call it quits. Engineering is complete; components have been purchased and fabricated.
It’s difficult to comprehend how this substan-
tial investment in Hawaii can so easily be tossed aside.
At one point, the utility questioned whether the project had sufficient financing. Yet, Hu Honua has confirmed repeatedly that it has $125 million in completed financing, and could be online producing firm, renewable energy for the island’s grid in 2017.
Hawaii island’s Hamakua Coast was once a major industrial hub.
For more than 100 years, Pepeekeo supported a thriving sugar operation. Refurbishing the old Pepeekeo sugar mill into Hu Honua’s renewable power plant fueled by homegrown biomass has been a bright spot, providing much-needed jobs to a strapped community.
From its early days, Hu Honua has worked with labor and trade organiza-tions to respond to local employment needs.
For the 18,000 members of the ILWU and their families across Hawaii, projects like Hu Honua mean a great deal.
We have members working at the facility, and are keen to preserve the labor agreements and partnerships ILWU has with Hu Honua. The sooner the utility engages to negotiate extensions, the sooner we can put more folks to work.
The project would fuel more than 200 construction jobs for a year. When in service, it would employ 30 full-time operations and maintenance workers. More than 180 ancillary jobs are anticipated in biomass forestry, harvesting and hauling, and at local service shops.
The project would keep $25 million in taxes circulating in the local economy. If Hu Honua leaves, with it will go good-paying, skilled-labor jobs and taxes.
So what’s in the way of Hu Honua producing power that would supply 14 percent of Hawaii island homes and displace 250,000 barrels of oil per year?
Answer: The utility’s apparent unwillingness to provide extensions so that Hu Honua can resume construction with enough runway to finish.
Not only has Hu Honua shown the financial wherewithal to finish, it has proposed price reductions to the utility. Hu Honua’s pricing proposals are designed to provide protection against rising fossil fuel costs, which would mean significant relief for customers.
Canceling Hu Honua would not be in the public’s best interest or our state’s.
Securing investment for energy projects is essential if Hawaii is to meet its
100 percent renewable by 2045 energy goal.
Hawaii can’t attract the innovators and capital to achieve mandates if projects face escalating obstacles thrown by a utility unwilling to partner fairly.
Developers are eager to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in our state.
We urge the state Public Utilities Commission and state consumer advocate to conduct a thorough review of Hawaii Electric Light Co.’s attempt to terminate Hu Honua.
The fate of the bioenergy project must be sorted out so that it is fair to a developer who’s invested so much.
Local jobs are at stake and Hawaii’s reputation for doing business is on the line.
