Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa said he is considering turning Maui Electric Co. into a publicly owned utility.
Arakawa said making MECO a public utility would help Maui adopt renewable energy resources at a faster pace and save customers money.
"We have come to the conclusion that we have to start looking at this thing very seriously as to what our potential is in actually investing and creating our own utility," Arakawa said in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Maui is the second of Hawaiian Electric Industries’ three service areas looking at possibly stepping out from underneath the HEI umbrella.
A group on Hawaii island said in February it is considering turning Hawaii Electric Light Co. into a cooperative.
The steps toward energy independence on Maui and Hawaii island were prompted by the potential sale of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. — parent company of MECO, HELCO and Hawaiian Electric Co. on Oahu — to Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc. for $4.3 billion.
Arakawa said he is worried about money leaving the state if NextEra buys MECO.
"If NextEra buys it, we’re just sending all of that profit to another big company," Arakawa said.
Arakawa, speaking Wednesday after an event at the Capitol, said he is frustrated with the pace of MECO’s adoption of renewable energy sources. Maui is capable of using renewable sources for 100 percent of its power, and the utility has been delaying the county’s move in that direction, Arakawa said.
"The electric companies have been delaying — delaying even the photovoltaics on the roof," Arakawa said. "We know that there is over a 100 percent capacity within our community. There is no reason why we can’t produce the vast majority of the power we need."
That’s why Maui is considering "taking control of (its) electric future," Arakawa said.
HECO did not return calls seeking comment. A NextEra spokesman declined to comment.
Arakawa also said he isn’t pleased with the HEI and NextEra plan to use liquefied natural gas as a bridge fuel on the way to adopting more renewable sources of power.
"All that does is replace one bad product for another bad product when we could produce 100 percent of all of the energy we need locally," Arakawa said. "Why are we working in a direction to substitute purchasing something outside of the state and just changing the form to make the electric companies, their stockholders wealthy while the taxpayers and users here are paying roughly three times more than the rest of the United States?"
The latest figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration show Hawaii residents paid an average of 33.34 cents a kilowatt-hour for power in January, while the national average was 12.10 cents.
Arakawa said the county is looking into a variety of options and is still researching what would be the best fit.
"There are any number of ways we can do this," he said. "We need to research it. We could start our own utility. We could purchase the electric companies. We could form cooperatives," Arakawa said. "We’ve been talking to Kauai and Big Island and some of the other users, potential power producers. We feel we could put it together."
Maui County has been looking at Kauai’s model and talking to Parker Ranch Inc. on the Big Island, Arakawa said.
Kauai launched the nonprofit Kauai Island Utility Cooperative after Kauai residents bought their electric utility for $215 million in 2002 in a completely debt-financed deal. The co-op is guided by a board elected by its 33,000 ratepayers, who each get one vote.
Parker Ranch is considering building its own "micro-grid" to break with the utility and potentially reduce costs.
"There are a number different proposals we have been talking to different people about," Arakawa said.
The sale of HEI to NextEra, first announced in December, needs to be approved by the state Public Utilities Commission, which is expected to make a decision by June 2016.
