Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are not abstractions for Hawaiʻi. They are a reminder that the state still buys its energy from global fuel markets it does not control. The International Energy Agency described 2022 as the first truly global energy crisis, and recent reporting on the Gulf shock … [continued]
Naturally, just when Hawaiʻi’s decarbonization pathway starts to look complete, another chapter occurs to me. After the generation mix, the island-by-island resource story, the transport implications, and the logic of electrification, what remains is the part of the energy transition that fossil systems used to provide almost by accident. Hawaiʻi … [continued]
Oʻahu was the test case, but it was never the whole question. The real question for Hawaiʻi was always whether the same logic that makes decarbonization viable on the most populous island would also hold across the rest of the inhabited archipelago. If Oʻahu could get to a clean, resilient, … [continued]
This is the culminating article in a series exploring from the outside a decarbonization solution set and coarse roadmap for Hawaiʻi. It is a set of possible next actions that a Hawaiian agency, utility, authority, or coalition could undertake if the roadmap outlined in this series is worth exploring further. … [continued]
Nature-based solutions work. They’re cost effective. They advance climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity protection. They do need more financing strategies, however. To meet global biodiversity, climate, and land restoration targets, nature-based investment must increase 2.5 times to $571 billion annually by 2030—equivalent to just 0.5% of global GDP, states the … [continued]
What follows is a draft roadmap for a decarbonized O’ahu. This roadmap does not appear out of nowhere. It follows a long chain of analysis that rebuilt Oʻahu’s energy system piece by piece. Earlier articles stripped away overseas aviation fuel, international maritime bunkering, and military demand to isolate the island’s … [continued]
Hawaiʻi’s debate over importing liquefied natural gas has turned on a state study that was supposed to show whether LNG could lower electricity costs on Oʻahu while serving as a bridge to a cleaner system later. The scenario sold for the past year turned out to be based on a … [continued]
The clean energy future for Oʻahu is no longer blocked by missing technology. The architecture is already visible. Once overseas aviation fuel, international bunkering, and military energy use are taken out of the frame, and once transportation, buildings, and industry are electrified, the civilian Oʻahu system settles into roughly 6,000 … [continued]
The final piece of Hawaiʻi’s decarbonization puzzle is not on Oʻahu’s domestic grid. That part of the work is already largely bounded. In the earlier articles in this series, I stripped out overseas aviation fuel, ocean-crossing ship bunkering, and military energy use, then electrified ground transportation, local marine transport, buildings, … [continued]
The debate over LNG in Hawaiʻi persists because it sounds like a practical answer to a familiar problem. Oʻahu still relies heavily on imported fuel for electricity, so a different imported fuel can appear to be a reasonable bridge. LNG is marketed as dispatchable, cleaner than oil, and compatible with … [continued]
