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When efforts to clean up debris from the fire that leveled much of Lahaina in August 2023 were still in the early stages, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory sent a team to Maui to better understand what happened and to eventually help create a sustainable energy plan for the rebuilding of the historic town.

The result, unveiled at a recent community meeting in West Maui, is the Lahaina Energy Partnership Project, a 30-month initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to assist Lahaina in its energy transition post-fire.

NREL researcher Robin Burton described it as “a project intended to give the Lahaina community the opportunity to co-design what you would like to see in your energy future as part of rebuilding Lahaina” during the county’s weekly disaster recovery update meeting.

NREL, one of 17 labs within the Department of Energy, is a government-owned, contractor-operated
facility funded and overseen by its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

It has worked with thousands of communities across the country and abroad. About a month after the Lahaina fire, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm visited Lahaina. Following her visit, the DOE asked NREL staff to “explore how you can offer support to the Lahaina community as that community is thinking about how to rebuild their energy system,” according to Burton.

To get a better grip on the community’s wants and needs, NREL joined forces with three local organizations.

“We’re just at the very beginning of this effort where we’re now working with Lahaina Strong, with Ha Sustainability and with Shake Energy Collaborative to do that work with the community to understand what the priorities are, so that then we can come in with some technical assistance to help answer their questions,” Burton said last week.

The goal is to create an implementation plan balancing community desires with practical considerations, including potential collaboration with Hawaiian Electric Co.

The process started with individual conversations earlier this year. Then Burton, based in Denver, moved to Maui for three months, March to May, to continue the process in person. NREL will not directly plan the electrical grid, but can provide technical support in areas such as power system modeling, grid modeling, resource assessment and load forecasting.

“We’ll work with all of you to develop an implementation plan on how to put those solutions into action,” Burton said at the meeting.

The project aims to give the community an opportunity to voice their desires, which can then be used to collaborate with HECO.

“We are looking forward to working together on the Lahaina Energy Partnership Project and collaborating with the Lahaina community and all the partners,” Shayna Decker, HECO’s Maui director of government and community affairs, told Civil Beat last week.

Paele Kiakona, organizer of Lahaina Strong — a grassroots organization focused on resilience, recovery and rebuilding efforts in Lahaina — acknowledged there has been community criticism of HECO regarding the fire, but emphasized the need for collaboration, given its current grid ownership.

“We understand that we’re going to have to work with them at some point when it comes to that, for the planning in general, because we are all tied to HECO at the moment,” he said.

Burton said NREL and HECO have a long-standing relationship, having worked together on other projects.

“The Lahaina community, all of you, are the decision-makers,” Kiakona said at the meeting. “You’ll basically lead the process going forward. He added Lahaina Strong’s role is to make sure everyone is involved in the project and is continually informed.

Ha Sustainability and Shake Energy Collaborative are on-the-ground experts in Hawaii as far as what the grid looks like and what it can be, he said. They can take the community’s goals, wants and needs and put them into a “chewable form,” but first offer opportunities to educate people on how it actually works.

Ha Sustainability co-founder and principal Alex de Roode said the plan will address the needs of the entire Lahaina community, including commercial and residential customers.

Headquartered on Maui, the organization is a sustainability and climate action consulting firm.

De Roode told Civil Beat that Ha Sustainability is a relatively new firm, having been around about a year and a half. But he and his partner, Hannah Shipman-Peila, have worked for Maui County under the Office of Climate Change and Sustainability, where they were involved in many projects dealing with climate change, resiliency planning for hubs and electric transportation initiatives.

“We bring a lot of experience from our local government work,” he said.

The hope is that community leaders in Lahaina would be empowered to take the lead and guide their energy future even beyond the project’s 30-month period, de Roode said.

The third partner, Shake Energy Collaborative, based on Oahu, is a community-based renewable energy developer. Among other projects, the organization was involved as resource partner and technical adviser for the Molokai Community Energy Resilience Action Plan.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.