Disappeared News

“
Yes, even though coal, oil and gas are not renewable, they will still be in use in Hawaii in 2045 even if Hawaii makes it to 100 percent.—Richard Borreca in Star-Advertiser
”

Too late for a spoiler alert. The pull-quote is how the plot ends. Sorry about that.

I wish Henry Curtis, ED of Life of the Land and the only person in Hawaii who truly understands these things, would explain this on his own blog.

I thought, as you might have also, that by 2045 Hawaii is supposed to be getting all of its energy from renewables. Like solar, wind, waves. But this is not so. Doesn’t 100% mean 100%? Yes but not in this case. Not the way the law was written.

Henry has kind of explained this in a couple of articles on his own blog, for example here, but his explanation to Star-Advertiser political columnist Richard Borreca was much simpler. Unfortunately, that explanation is paywalled and most people can’t read it. Since it is copyrighted material, I can’t quote more than a little bit of it, for educational purposes.

So I wish Henry would write something that I could link to. If he does, I’ll amend this article with the link.

This snip is a fraction of the explanation. If you have a copy of the paper, check out the editorial page in the 9/1 edition. It’s an easy, if shocking, read.

It all seems complex to the extreme, but the result, as Curtis explained, is that a renewable standard does not mean renewable energy.

“An RPS [Renewable Portfolio Standard] of 100 percent occurs when the kilowatt- hours of rooftop solar generated equals the kilowatt- hours of fossil fuel derived electricity sold by the utility.

“Ironically, the more rooftop solar produced, the higher the amounts of fossil fuel-derived electricity that can be sold by the utility,” Curtis said in an interview.

[Star-Advertiser, Sometimes in Hawaii we do math differently, 9/1/2015]

Why, oh why, do they have to write laws like that?

Permalink posted by Larry @ 9/03/2015 06:49:00 PM