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Gasoline prices in Hawaii have been a headache for locals for as long as most of us can remember, but these days, filling up a tank can mean blowing cash that many residents need for food or rent.

In Honolulu, the average price of gas is roughly 81 cents higher than the national average. And while 81 cents doesn’t sound like that much, it’s worth remembering that during the height of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Hawaii, Honolulu gas was $2.90 per gallon on average, compared to $3.88 now. Last month,  was $3.76.

 is primarily driven by four factors: Costs of distribution and marketing; refining costs and profits; federal and state taxes; and, as everyone knows, , which accounts for almost half of the price.

Since the Linda Lingle administration, Hawaii government has earnestly and bipartisanly sought to pivot the islands toward cleaner, renewable and sustainable energy sources. But while one dreams of unicorns and an energy utopia in 2045, the fact of the matter is that locals are very much in anguish right now over the high cost of everything.

There is no need to remind our readers how national monetary policy, global speculation and artificial scarcity make crude oil, and in turn, gas, expensive. Sadly, Hawaii can’t do much about those factors.

Much like real estate, the price of oil is something with which Americans have a love/hate relationship. We don’t want politicians to let oil get too expensive, but at the same time, we don’t want oil to get too cheap, because then – supposedly – people will be out of jobs, energy giants will collapse, retirements will unravel, the dollar will implode, the Middle East will ignite into world war, and so on. (None of that will actually happen, but people ignorantly think it will.)

So while we have to, for now, simply deal with the fact that  one way or another because the economic cards are stacked against us, there is a way that local government can immediately help Hawaii residents save a little money and possibly even lower the price of gas by a few cents or so.

Taking A Page From The COVID Playbook

One way to help locals might be to steal a page from the COVID-19 playbook and use the emergency powers of the governor and the county mayors to artificially tweak the demand for gas in the islands by implementing a statewide public telework policy. Yes, yes, it’s “evil” to suggest continued use of emergency powers, but we are still very much in an emergency.

Both state and county governments , and keeping them at home will make a difference. Drop consumption and demand, and gas supply will go up and prices will go down.

Anyone who has the capability to work from home, who doesn’t provide in-person customer service, should have the option to work from home. This not only keeps people off the roads and reduces the need for constant trips to the gas station, but it also reduces the energy consumption of government buildings, since vacant offices can have the lights off and air conditioning deactivated.

Private companies in Hawaii can also consider employing telework, again, to reduce the number of employees on the road, which would be beneficial for their workers and for the public, in terms of fuel consumption. If we could all lower the price of gas in Hawaii by so much as 20 cents through behavioral modification, that could be construed as a victory.

This being said, if we really want to drop the price of gas in Hawaii over the long-term, the Legislature and the counties will ultimately have to lower taxes on liquid fuels, but that’s likely not going to happen, since legislators hate losing any source of revenue.

Still, if the objective is to help with energy costs, repealing, or at least reducing, taxes is a more decisive way of keeping costs low over the long term, and someone should introduce legislation to this effect.

The Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises once warned that , but rather,  of goods preemptively, because they believe “if I don’t buy it today, I may not be able to buy it tomorrow” – .

We should do everything that we can, emergency powers included, to help slow or reduce the price of fuel in Hawaii. Call it whatever you want – “flatten the gas demand curve” or “saving fuel with aloha” – but let’s act.

Re-instituting telework as a way to diminish the need to be on the roads will at least buy us some time to save money and give legislators time to think of next steps for Hawaii’s price crisis.