On Sept. 28, Hawaii Public Utilities Commissioner Leo Asuncion Jr., Hawaiian Electric Co. President Shelee Kimura and Hawaii State Energy Office Administrator Mark Glick appeared in Washington before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on the topic of the deadly and devastating Lahaina fire.
Anyone hoping to hear any noteworthy answers or analysis would likely have been disappointed.
A public safety power shut-off program to minimize deadly and destructive fires? Not in our protocols. Other phrases uttered during the hearing: Not my area of expertise. Too early to speculate. I don’t know the exact answer. Hard for me to say. A lot to unpack. I really don’t know.
The two most important energy players in Hawaii are the PUC and HECO. And the relationship between the two and how each is performing has an oversized impact on the state’s overall well-being and economy.
Starting with the PUC, one can make the case that the priorities of the chair, who also acts as the commission’s chief administrative officer, can and do make a significant difference in the conduct and performance of the PUC.
Hawaii’s Public Utilities Commission reflects its chairperson — and over the years, PUC leaders have oscillated between reformers, who have tried to hold the utilities to a higher standard; and protectors of the status quo, with whom the utilities have a more comfortable relationship.
Case in point: Under the previous chair, the PUC focused on improving Hawaiian Electric’s business model and requiring greater accountability.
Under the current chair, there appears to be a different relationship between the commission and HECO with the return to a more business-as-usual approach to regulating Hawaiian Electric.
In light of the monumental energy, environmental and economic challenges facing the state, even before the fire, to what extent this serves the best interests of its 470,000 ratepayers and the state writ large is an open question.
Critically important dockets are languishing. Slow-walking and seemingly endless delays are the coins of the realm. Reactiveness and pushback, versus proactiveness, dominate. It’s far easier to oppose initiatives and projects than to complete them. Exemplary public servants are vilified and torpedoed. All while very few dare to call out these key institutions for fear of retribution in this decidedly insular and parochial business and regulatory community.
Put bluntly: The energy status quo in Hawaii does not work.
A Potemkin village strategy at Hawaiian Electric and the Public Utilities Commission cannot work for the benefit of all who call this place home.
If the top priorities for the state’s electric utilities are effective execution and accountability, greater responsiveness to pressing priorities, more direct local control and transformational change, we can and must do better than what exists now.
Hawaiian Electric as a largely institutional-based investor-owned utility with shareholders focused on profits and dividends at the expense of ratepayers no longer best serves the 95% of the state’s residents and five islands where it operates.
Fiddling at the edges, as we’ve been doing for decades, has still left us dangerously dependent on imported oil, insular leadership and leaves us with vulnerable and at-risk electric grids.
We’re in a hurricane zone here in the middle of the Pacific. How many more Lahaina-like tragedies do we need to experience for real change to take place here in the Aloha State?
Doing more of the same will not work.
Hilo resident Marco Mangelsdorf is a lecturer in the politics department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as the responsible managing employee of ProVision Solar, Inc.
