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It seemed like a great idea — a day-long session called “Clean Energy Reality Check: Gamechangers or Longshots?”

There was an impressive list of speakers from a variety of backgrounds: state agencies, legislators, energy developers, energy regulators, the media, nonprofits and more. What a powerful opportunity to learn about our state’s efforts to break its dependence on fossil fuels!

The first sessions were helpful. Each topic had one speaker at a table in the YWCA’s restaurant. Although overcrowded and hard-to-hear, I took this as a good sign of community interest. (Or, as several speakers suggested several times, had everyone simply showed up to meet Larry Ellison?)

The table that appeared to receive the most attention was all about liquified natural gas (LNG), which as most of you know, is not really “clean” nor “renewable” but it’s WAY cheaper than really dirty oil, so understandably there’s a lot of interest in developing LNG. The panel that later handled this topic was balanced and fair; Blue Planet’s Executive Director — an ardent advocate for Hawaiian sources of truly renewable energy — raised several good points, backed by factual data, to refute the rush to LNG, arguing that moving down this path could shift our momentum away from solar, wave and other truly Hawaii-based renewable energy sources.

But I really went to listen to the session on the undersea cable, in part since Jay Fidell, the day’s moderator, had acknowledged in an article he wrote just prior to this event that Big Wind was “…stalled because of opposition on Molokai and Lanai.” As we all know, if there is no undersea cable, there is no Big Wind on Lana’i. So, I wanted to see if anything had really changed, given the recent change in ownership of Lana’i and considering that Jay is absolutely correct: there is significant (and growing) opposition on Lana`i and Moloka’i.

Robbie Alm from HECO spoke first (HECO helped write the legislation for the undersea cable, of course, and has been an active and vocal proponent for it, since it has no risk whatsoever regarding the financing of the cable — a shareholder’s dream), but he said little new. He is still maintaining that Neighbor Island electric rates will be “levelized” to O’ahu’s, never mind the recently-legislated “rate increases, rate surcharges and rate adjustments” that HECO ratepayers will have to pay for the billion dollar price tag of the undersea cable.

And he still maintains that Neighbor Islands residents will benefit from “increased reliability.” This is strange, since both he and the Lana’i Renewables representative kept saying that any power generated on any Neighbor Island, like tiny Lana’i, can’t possibly stay on island “without storage.” But if this cable is really a “two-way street,” as Alm said several times, why couldn’t the energy produced on a Neighbor Island be sent to O’ahu, integrated into its very big grid, and be sent back to the island to be integrated into our grid as firm power????? Some of us have been asking this question for four years now. We never get an answer, and the Hawaii Clean Energy Policy Forum’s Conference was no exception. Just more of the same.

But never mind, I’m sure it has something to do with cost, consideration of which was conspicuously absent from the day’s cable discussions.

After HECO, an engineer from ABB talked a lot about how many cables there are all over the world working just fine, sending all kinds of power all over the place, between countries, regions, etc. (This was no surprise, since ABB is a manufacturer of undersea cables and is very likely to be a potential bidder for the RFP HECO will release sometime soon). He did admit that there is none so deep as would be required for a connection from the Big Island to O’ahu, but he was hopeful this kink would get worked out shortly — especially if the potential financial reward made it economically viable (i.e. a healthy return on investment). But he did raise the challenge of repairing a damaged/broken cable, pointing to the enormous engineering problem of lifting a heavy cable off the ocean floor, especially if it were to lie in the great depths between the Big Island and Oahu.

Then came the real meat of the session: What would happen on Lana’i? What “rights” did David Murdock really retain? What did Castle & Cooke propose to do about all the growing opposition? In response, Castle & Cooke’s representative, CPA Chris Lovvorn, essentially said, “What opposition? If you come to Lana’i, you’ll be stunned, just stunned at the number of ‘pro’ wind signs on people’s houses!” What he didn’t say (completely ignoring the reality that any Lana’i resident could and would have articulated), is that almost every one of those signs in Lana’i City are on Castle & Cooke (now Larry Ellison’s) property — either abandoned homes, C&C owned buildings or C&C rental properties. And all of them were put up by the ILWU — under threats from the previous majority landowner that everyone would be laid off if Murdock couldn’t build his wind power plant. This hardly constitutes “support.”

C&C also talked about “community benefits,” citing the $1,000,000 that would be generated for the community. Again, any Lana’i resident would have quickly pointed out that $1,000,000 (1 percent of C&C’s projected annual revenue from its industrial wind power plant) works out to less than $300 per resident – what many residents pay for their electric bill every month. And the “promise” of a 40 percent drop in Lana’i’s electric rates is mythical, given that neither C&C nor HECO set utility rates — unless they’ve taken over the PUC.

What was most striking about this cable panel though — unlike the LNG panel — was the complete absence of any balance. Was there someone to speak about the economic and environmental concerns associated with a $1 billion, ratepayer-financed electric cable laid directly through the Humpback Whale Sanctuary? No. Was there someone to speak about the implications of that undersea cable for the targeted islands of Moloka’i and Lana’i? Not a chance. Was there someone to highlight how residents on those islands felt about the undersea cable; the loss of use of their land, the impact on their environment and lifestyle? Not.

In fact, there was no one to articulate the concerns many Hawaii residents have (and especially from the two rural targets — Lana’i and Moloka’i). None of the panelists addressed the real costs, either financial or environmental, in any meaningful way. None of the panelists spoke for the communities that HECO, the Governor and all those cable developers envision as transmission feeders for O’ahu. No need, apparently. Let’s just have three “experts” tell us why we need this 70- mile- long extension cord. All that environmental stuff can wait for the individual project bidders (who will be bidding projects to HECO before the just-started Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process figures out which projects SHOULD be bid) and by then we will have spent more federal tax dollars to study, and study some more, why wind is the only answer; we will have spent so much that we can’t stop now.

At the end of the day, I left with one certain “takeaway” (something the panelists kept urging us to do, i.e., “If you ‘take away’ anything, it should be…..”): as an institution housed in a University environment, funded by grants and public dollars, I would think that the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum has some responsibility to be fair and balanced. The undersea cable panel was neither.

A couple of final notes: Senator Gabbard continued his mantra that SB 2785 (the cable bill) merely established “a regulatory structure,” never mentioning the underlying financing scheme in the bill that guarantees an undefined rate of return to the developer on the backs of electric ratepayers. Every penny of the undersea cable will be paid for by you if you’re a HECO ratepayer, thanks to SB2785‘s passage at the closing hour of the legislative session. Next, Lt. Governor Brian Schatz issued an interesting warning: attempts at “shortcuts” in the rush to 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 will end the way Superferry did, and everyone knows how that worked out. Last, Mark Glick, the State’s Energy Administrator continued DBEDT’s party line that the “diverse portfolio” continues to include 1,000 MW of wind. Hmmm. Where would that much wind power come from? Not from Molokai and Lanai if residents have anything to say about it.

About the author: Robin Kaye is a spokesperson for Friends of Lāna‛i.