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]
Chatgpt generated island town showing the solar-and-storage backbone of Hawaiʻi’s broader transition.
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]
Chatgpt generated: Workers installing solar and grid infrastructure representing the execution phase of the transition.
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]
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]
Cost challenges with LNG to hydrogen import scenario for Hawaii, AI assistance with image generation
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]
Chatgpt generated: Sustainable aviation fuel storage and fueling at Honolulu Airport for long-haul flights.
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]
Chatgpt generated: Solar panels across rooftops and parking canopies representing the dominant energy source for Oʻahu.
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]
The revelation that the spreadsheet behind Hawaiʻi’s headline LNG savings case appears not to include the cost of the LNG itself is the kind of finding that changes the center of gravity of an entire policy debate. The Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi press release on March 12, built around comments … [continued]
Chatgpt generated: Aerial view of Oʻahu’s H-POWER waste-to-energy plant showing the scale of the facility that converts garbage into electricity.
The starting point for evaluating Oʻahu’s waste-to-energy plant is the fully electrified energy system developed earlier in this series. Once overseas aviation fuel, international maritime bunkering, and military energy consumption are removed from the accounting, and once transportation, buildings, and industry are electrified, the island’s civilian electricity demand settles at … [continued]
