First-ever Public Utilities Commission Listening Session Held

By Lauren Ballesteros-Watanabe | Reading Time: 4 minutes

When we bring up energy justice, we are raising the issues of injustice in our current energy system. It’s hard not to talk about these issues, especially since  we have an investor-owned utility with complete control over the entire power grid that services 95% of Hawaiʻi’s population. However, there have been recent happenings that demonstrate energy justice in action!

Hawaiian Electric has monopoly power, but they are regulated by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC was established in 1913 to regulate all public utility companies operating in the islands. It is comprised of three full-time commissioners, and a dedicated staff that do everything from reviewing and approving rates, tariffs, charges and fees; issuing guidelines concerning the general management of franchised or certificated utility businesses; and acting on requests for the acquisition, sale, disposition, or other exchange of utility properties, including mergers and consolidations for the industries of energy, telecommunications, motor carriers, water carriers, and water/waste water.

As a large institutional body, the PUC is also responsible for the integration of new ideas to address the needs and directions of the state now and going forward, from the study and development of new policy to meaningful regulations that implement them. The PUC balances it all by regularly engaging with several involved constituencies - the legislature, the governor, the State Energy Office, the State Division of Consumer Advocacy, academic and scientific communities, state, county and federal agencies, energy industries, business and legal communities, environmental organizations, and, most important of all, the rate-paying public. Now, they are engaging directly with the community and it’s a big deal. 

Since the PUC operates in a quasi-judicial manner, historically it has been unwelcoming of public input unless you were an official party to a specific docket. But the incoming unrest with controversial utility-scale projects created by multinational profit-seeking developers has caught their attention. On September 1, the Commission received a well-crafted letter from the West Oʻahu Clean Energy Ohana (WOCEO) stating a truth we (all energy consumers) can no longer ignore:

“West Oʻahu/Kalaeloa, Central Oʻahu, North Shore and Kahuku, bear the brunt of providing a major share of the energy for the entire island and that these same communities with the least economically... This appearance and validated social and economic injustice drive overburdened communities to demand that our basic rights be acknowledged and confirmed via the decisions that HECO and the PUC makes as we move towards 100% renewable energy.”

WOCEO requested a pause to the Phase 2 CBRE RFP to allow for community education and input. The PUC quickly responded, stating, “[c]ommunity concerns about energy facility siting are serious matters, especially those related to the historically inequitable distribution of health and environmental impacts that some energy facilities cause.” 

Then, on October 13th, history was made. For the first time ever (that we know of), the Hawaiʻi Public Utilities Commission (PUC) hosted a virtual community listening session for the residents of Waiʻanae and West Oʻahu. The attendees included all three commissioners and several staff, numerous members of Waiʻanae and West Oʻahu communities, as well as community members from neighbor islands. Organizational attendees listened in as well, including the State Energy Office, Life of the Land, EarthJustice, Ulupono Initiative, Shake Energy, and the Molokaʻi Clean Energy Hui. The listening session began with formal introductions from Chair Griffin and Hawaiian Electric’s soon-to-be new CEO Shellee Kimura. Cynthia Rezentes, a longtime community leader and neighborhood board member, gave a presentation to reiterate the importance of community engagement and offered several considerations to the RFP to improve transparency, accountability, and input from impacted residents. Afterwards, several community leaders spoke to echo Rezentes’ ideas as well as offer more insight as to how their communities are impacted by the inundation of energy projects, dirty and clean, on the Waiʻanae Coast. Overall, the historic listening session was a success. 

Neighbor islands were also invited to request meetings. Chair Deborah Ward of Sierra Club Hawaiʻi Island Group submitted a letter to the PUC, and on October 27th, the PUC held a community listening session on Hawaiʻi Island. Much of the format was the same, except this time each commissioner introduced themselves, which gave a sense of earnest interest in community input. The formal presentation from the community was given by Hawaiʻi Island Group (HIG) executive committee member Shannon Matson! 

Shannon shared several of Hawaiʻi Island’s unique energy issues including:

• The land space and population are spread over great distances: the current industrial-scale centralized model sends energy further distances and energy is being lost as a result.

• Solar installations are mostly placed on new homes, which are being built in East Hawaiʻi because it is less expensive than other parts of the Island.

• Residents are going off-grid, raising rates for those who remain on the grid.

• Tourism energy increases demands on infrastructure, with ratepayers bearing the burden of having to maintain it.

There were many recommendations made, including upfront consultation with neighbors and surrounding communities, seeking a consent-based approach, bonding decommissioning plans, sourcing ethical materials, and prioritizing environmental and cultural concerns in the evaluation criteria. 

All in all, we will take this as a good sign of what's to come. The urgency to radically end Hawaiʻi’s fossil fuel reliance can’t go away. But our role as energy consumers and environmental justice advocates must be to equally raise the urgency for equity and justice. It is encouraging that the three commissioners - Chair Jay Griffin, Jennie Potter, and Leo Asuncion - are doing exactly what we would expect them to in the face of large and influential corporate interests that seek to maximize profits and shareholder returns at the expense of Hawaiʻi’s residents. Their efforts to move Hawaiian Electric Inc. toward a performance-based, clean-energy business model is one of the key turning points we must all watch as Hawaiʻi moves toward a more secure and healthy energy future. The stakes are incredibly high.

As Cynthia Rezentes stated, “These recommendations reinforce why a community-led process could be of significant benefit to more collaborative solutions and greater trust and transparency within the community...We all have to be cognizant of environmental justice, fairness for all communities and all people, rather than just assuming things are okay.”