Hawaiian Electric Co.’s Utility Spin
Upton Sinclair wrote 鈥淚t is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.鈥
HECO generates 99% of its electricity from petroleum.
The history of HECO is to pretend to support renewable things, but to sabotage their implementation. It is talking the talk but not walking the walk. It is framing issues to sound great. It is following in the footprints of the neocon Frank I. Luntz who created buzzwords that sounded nice to mask destruction such as 鈥淐lear Skies鈥 for increased air pollution and 鈥淗ealthy Forests” for clear-cutting.
HECO has their 鈥淐lean Energy鈥 Initiative. There is no definition of Clean Energy anywhere in Hawai`i. Not in state law. Not in the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI).
The HCEI Energy Agreement has all kinds of unpleasant things in it. It proposes tax subsidies for tropical rainforest biofuels, increased pollution, expansion of monopolies into free markets, favoring free market regulation of greenhouse gases, automatic approval, etc. But hey, Clean Energy sounds Smart.
The cornerstone of the HCEI Energy Agreement is Big Wind connected to O`ahu by a single undersea cable. This single cable carrying 400 MW of wind energy violates two decades of HECO, MECO and HELCO reliability standards.
The October 2006 Big Island earthquake caused HECO to immediately lose 230 MW followed by another 68 MW. The four generators that were lost were operating at 95 MW less than full capacity (the ability to increase the output of on-line generators is known as spinning reserve). Losing less than 400 MW of load and spinning reserve caused a cascading failure, resulting in the wiping out of the O`ahu grid.
This is why HECO has always insisted that major loads must be served by three transmission lines. If one is down for maintenance and a second one crashes the power can be shipped via the third line. HECO has insisted that anything else risks catastrophic failure. Relying on one cable risks blacking out O`ahu on a regular basis. It is bad policy.
HECO won鈥檛 propose three undersea cables since that raises the price tag to $3 billion, making it prohibitively expensive.
But the one cable scenario fulfills HECO鈥檚 spin: propose bad renewable energy proposals, get others to shoot it down, and then argue that you tried but failed.
I can understand HECO鈥檚 approach. The only thing they understand is liquid fuel. It is in their self-interest to maximize shareholder return.
What I don鈥檛 understand is why Civil Beat, the exposer of truth, has bought into this Big Lie.
About the author: Henry Curtis has been Executive Director of Life of the Land since 1995, and has a BA in Economics from Queens College, City University of New York. He is a community organizer, videographer, director, producer, peer reviewer, moot court judge, community facilitator, and provides expert testimony on ocean power, biofuels, energy, and externalities at the Public Utilities Commission, where he has represented Life of the Land in over twenty regulatory proceedings. He is committed to Hawaii鈥檚 energy self-reliance and well-being, and is motivated by the values of aloha aina, malama aina, and his love for Hawaii nei.
