Bigger isn’t better, when it comes to the future of Hawaii’s utilities.
Our electricity utility, the biggest company in town, has stuck ratepayers with the highest electricity prices in the country, while raking in record profits year after year. Over the past five years alone, HECO has made $2.3 billion in profit.
But now HECO’s leaders want to sell out to a far bigger utility, NextEra.
It’s no wonder that NextEra wants in on this action — and more.NextEra has claimed a $30 billion price tag to meet Hawaii’s goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, on which it would collect double-digit (around 12 percent) in profits from Hawaii ratepayers, or $3.6 billion.
That could pay for the entire Honolulu rail shortfall ($1.1 billion), the Obama Presidential Library ($1 billion), the University of Hawaii facilities backlog ($400 million), the state Department of Education’s facilities backlog ($265 million), and the rebuilding of Aloha Stadium ($192 million), with more than enough left over to hire the nation’s highest-paid coach, Nick Saban, to take over the UH football team for 20 years ($146 million).
The truth is we don’t need to continue feeding bigger corporate profits and customer bills. We could embrace the new business model that our state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and other leading national experts have championed.
Such a “utility of the future” would step back from owning and generating all our power, and instead evolve into an energy “network” company that manages the grid and enables healthy competition for more affordable renewable power. So customers with solar panels and batteries, for example, would be encouraged to participate in the grid, rather than suffering repeated roadblocks from their utility.
Just last year, the PUC told HECO to start moving to this new model. But instead of moving to the future, HECO’s leaders are trying to sell out to a bigger utility of the past.
NextEra’s takeover strategy is all about double dipping. It wants to build power plants in its development business, then sell that power to ratepayers in its utility business.
It’s a wonderful deal for NextEra, but not for everyone else in Hawaii’s growing clean-energy economy, including consumers who have to pay monopoly prices.
Further, because the utility under the traditional model makes money when it spends money, it has a strong bias to overbuild infrastructure and charge ratepayers for the bill. This will only get worse with a bigger HECO.
Indeed, the PUC recently rejected HECO’s proposed plan of $8 billion.
Now NextEra is trying to sell us a $30 billion plan?
Look no farther than its home territory of Florida to see that NextEra is just a bigger utility of the past.
There, NextEra has used its political muscle to block rooftop solar and energy efficiency, while charging its customers mega bucks for ballooning nuclear plant costs and gas fracking ventures.
We hope the PUC will stand firm with its vision for a new utility, reject the NextEra takeover, and lead us on a more sustainable and affordable path to achieving 100 percent renewable energy.
