The plug has quietly been pulled on a plan by a band of entrepreneurs to buy Hawaii’s $2.6 billion electric utility and convert it rather quickly to generate only renewable energy at a savings to consumers.
The bold — some said laughable — endeavor faltered after efforts to raise the money needed to execute the plan failed, according to one person involved, though another person involved disputed that.
Whatever the reason, two of the three co-founders of Ku‘oko‘a Inc., the company formed for the initiative, have left — including the mastermind behind the idea, onetime real estate agent and motivational speaker Roald Marth.
Marth, who was Ku‘oko‘a’s chief executive officer, did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Ted Peck, a former naval nuclear engineer who quit his job as the state’s energy administrator to help start Ku‘oko‘a and was its president, also is no longer with the company.
Peck left in mid-December to take the top job in Hawaii with Johnson Controls, a global firm in the business of optimizing energy for buildings and automobiles. Peck would not talk about why he departed Ku‘oko‘a.
Five other executives also have left the company in the past year or so, along with most board directors, including T.J. Glauthier, a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, and R. James Woolsey, who once headed the Central Intelligence Agency.
Ku‘oko‘a’s directors invested in the company and lended weight to the endeavor, which some observers knowledgeable in the energy industry regarded as impossible.
Aaron Landry, Ku‘oko‘a’s chief operating officer, said in an email that the company remains committed to helping solve Hawaii’s problem with dependency on fossil fuels, though buying Hawaiian Electric Industries is no longer a focus.
"We are restructuring," he said. "Our focus is not on buying out a utility. We are still focused on big-picture solutions for our energy situation."
Landry said only he and Richard Ha, a Hawaii island farmer who was the third co-founder of Ku‘oko‘a and its board chairman, are still formally involved with the company out of a group of 15 who were on board in mid-2011 when the effort gained some traction with the involvement of Glauthier, Woolsey and others.
One person involved with the company said an inability to finance the plan led to its undoing.
Ha disagreed but would not discuss the issue. "I don’t want to get into the details," he said.
KU‘OKO‘A’S faltering was complicated, Landry said. "The energy situation in Hawaii is incredibly dynamic, and there isn’t a straightforward solution."
Landry also works for Olomana Loomis ISC, a Honolulu consulting and marketing company, as director of market engagement. Alan Tang, CEO of Olomana, is a former Ku‘oko‘a executive.
The original vision of Ku‘oko‘a was to acquire Hawaiian Electric, which provides power to about 95 percent of the state’s population, and shift its power generation from mostly imported oil to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years.
Owning the utility was necessary, according to Marth, because the current ownership by shareholders that include banks and investment funds is focused on profit and has a disincentive to invest billions of dollars in renewable energy production.
Some observers who studied Marth’s plan said the idea was good but pulling it off would be financially impossible. Others saw merit in trying. Yet others saw a fallacy promoted by Marth, a self-assured and convincing public speaker who moved to Hawaii in 2010 from Minnesota.
Marth estimated his plan’s cost at roughly $35 billion, which was largely based on developing geothermal energy on Hawaii island and Maui for use on Oahu and other islands via undersea cable. The cost to buy Hawaiian Electric could be about $2.6 billion based on the company’s present stock value.
Marth said that the huge investment would not only insulate electricity consumers from higher rates driven by oil prices, but that it would also lower the cost of electricity by one-third to one-half.
Raising the money to finance the plan was not a problem, Marth told an audience at a Rotary Club of Honolulu meeting last year. "I have 26 investment bankers that want to fund the deal," he said. "I’m fighting off the money right now."
