ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

Important clean energy projects have opened a rift in Hawaii’s environmental community.

Some ambitious efforts designed to help Hawaii kick its addiction to imported oil have met with lukewarm support or even outright opposition from some erstwhile allies.

Many share the desire to slow climate change using solar photovoltaic facilities, large-scale wind farms, geothermal energy, and biomass or biodiesel crops. But that desire can run up against competing interests, splitting those who are generally referred to as “environmentalists” into smaller subsets.

“All these other issues that we care deeply about — protecting wildlands, species protection, clean air and clean water — all that is academic if we don’t figure out the energy problem,” says Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a clean energy advocacy group. “The car is about to go off the cliff and we’re arguing about which radio station we’re listening to.

“I think the challenge for us, for residents in Hawaii, is to sort out what the priorities are,” he said.

That challenge may be especially pronounced in Hawaii due to the islands’ geographical isolation, but it is not unique. Perhaps the most high-profile and long-running debate worldwide centers on the safety of one controversial energy source: nuclear power. Nationally, groups are split over another technology — wind.

The 440-foot-tall turbines of the recently approved off the Massachusetts coast created some unexpected battles. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace are on one side and the late “Liberal Lion” Sen. Ted Kennedy, a Cape Cod resident, joined some conservationists, fishermen and Native American tribes in opposition. After years of hand-wringing, the Obama administration announced in April 2010 that the project could proceed, and a utility signed on to distribute the electricity within days.

Back in Hawaii, Mikulina spent a decade as the director of the state’s largest environmental advocacy group, the Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter. Though he said he loved his time with the Sierra Club and still serves on the organization’s executive committee, Mikulina started to get “antsy” about energy issues and moved to the more energy-focused Blue Planet Foundation in the fall of 2008. He bristles at the suggestion that his organization is an environmental group.

Mikulina and some environmentalists have staked out divergent positions on what could be Hawaii’s largest and most controversial project. A proposal to harness 400 megawatts of wind energy on Molokai and Lanai and transmit it to the population center of Honolulu via a billion-dollar undersea cable is on the table.

He says Blue Planet has yet to take a formal position on the cable, but would “obviously” support it if the wind farms are built. He chalked up disagreements to the economics of an “expensive bit of infrastructure,” but said Hawaii will need large-scale projects as well as a smart grid and decentralized power generation.

Local nonprofit environmental organization Life of the Land has expressed its opposition to the undersea cable, Executive Director Henry Curtis said, disagreeing with Mikulina’s position that the inter-island connection is needed.

“Why should those communities (Molokai and Lanai) power Oahu, when Oahu could provide all of its own power on its own?” he said. While there has been little opposition to wind, solar and ocean power, Curtis focused his complaints largely on the price tag, saying there are better alternatives.

Like Mikulina, state Sierra Club Director Robert Harris said his organization has not yet taken a position, adding that the club was cautiously supportive of other wind farm projects despite some not-in-my-back-yard community concerns.

“Climate change is such a massive issue that some groups like the Sierra Club are saying that if we don’t take steps to solve climate change … we might not have a planet left to worry about,” he said. “A lot of these other issues become secondary. We’ve adopted a national policy that we will support some renewable energy on public land. That’s a pretty big concession from where we used to be.”

However, Harris noted that policy does not provide a blanket approval for every proposal. Asked about the undersea cable, he said the Sierra Club is “trying to do a detailed analysis of the impact on endangered plants and endangered animals.”

Another local argument has centered around cultural sensitivity for an operating on the Big Island. Harris said his group was opposed and that there was a “fair amount of consensus” between other environmentalists and the Native Hawaiian community. Curtis said the project represented a “total disregard for the environment.” Mikulina said cultural concerns “are a different animal,” making taking positions on such projects much more complex.

On Kauai, threats to endangered seabirds from small-scale windmills have split the green community and killed a proposed county ordinance that would have made it easier for homeowners to generate their own wind energy.

Despite the differences, Blue Planet’s Mikulina said the groups share a common commitment to energy self-sufficiency.

“The Sierra Club and the other groups that are active on environmental issues, I think we’re all on the same page,” he said. “Nothing has really flared up yet, and we hope to avoid that.

“We both have our eyes on the prize, which is an energy-independent Hawaii.”