There’s still a long way to go
Did you know that almost a third of Hawaii’s single-family homes have rooftop solar panels now? On May 30, the New York Times published an interesting article featuring one Honolulu woman who decreased her home’s electricity bill from more than $500 a month to only $26 — by installing solar panels and battery storage packs and then recouping most of her costs through state and federal tax credits.
The article discussed how Hawaii has moved from its public utilities fighting rooftop solar to encouraging the use of such small-scale energy systems. The writer did a good job outlining why the state, where we currently pay almost three times the national average for electricity, is now encouraging rooftop solar panels.
Affordable energy for everybody is our goal at Sustainable Energy Hawaii, the grassroots non-profit where I’m chairman of the board. We aim to raise public awareness and the political will to dramatically increase this island’s capacity for renewable energy, especially geothermal. We want to improve the quality and security of life for Hawai‘i Island residents by helping the state transition to 100% clean, locally-sourced, renewable energy and help create a thriving hydrogen economy.
Hawaii’s electricity rates, already high, jumped 34% in April compared to the year before because so many of our power plants rely on oil, a third of which we’d been buying from Russia. Last year, oil-fueled power plants supplied almost two-thirds of Hawai‘i’s electricity. That’s down from nearly three-quarters a decade earlier. We’re on the right track for a state that has mandated all its electricity must come from renewable sources by 2045. But there’s still a long way to go.
Richard Ha
Chairman, Sustainable Energy Hawaii
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