Grassroots energy panels make their debut

By Lauren Ballesteros-Watanabe | Reading time: 7 minutes

In June, we held two panels in partnership with community leaders from Molokaʻi and Kahuku, Oʻahu, who’ve been gathering for several months to connect, commiserate and develop solutions to injustices within Hawaiʻi’s energy system. Our energy system is in dire need of an overhaul. We’ve seen over the last few years that our energy powers-at-be are in no hurry to turn off fossil fuels, or their profit-driven model. After all, here we are six years after the State Legislature passed a law to become 100% renewable energy powered by 2045 and the islands are still largely reliant on imported oil from the middle east and coal from Indonesia—making our electricity bills the highest in the nation. 

Energy burden and oppression run deep in Hawaiʻi’s colonial history and no matter how much the Public Utilities Commission regulatory power twists their arms, Hawaiian Electric’s actions expose many shortcomings. The clock is ticking on Hawaiʻi’s just transition to clean energy, especially as hotter summers come and the financial devastation of the pandemic continues for residents.  

Enter the inspiring dedicated grassroots leaders causing waves in the energy sector—rejecting  capitalist perspectives and holding energy in a much deeper, grounded, value-based perspective. As bleak as an outlook that Hawaiian Electric gives us, the panelists demonstrate how much we have to gain by losing the status quo.  

We hosted these discussions as an independent complement to the 20201 Hawaiʻi Energy Conference, with the goal to raise up community voices that are often ignored in energy production decisions. If you haven’t watched them, I invite you to do so. The presentations were powerful, the conversations were transformative, and the passion and reverence for ʻāina and community was palpable.

Here is a little snapshot:

Energy Sovereignty

The panel began with moderator Todd Yamashita, President of Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative Molokaʻi asking a few simple questions to panelists and the audience. What if we treated our energy resources as sacred that belong to no one but are generously shared? What would our energy future look like and then what is our individual kuleana to that vision? 

Ikaika Hussey, labor organizer and Hawaiian rights and sovereignty activist, responded by  honoring the legacy of sophisticated engineering and science of kupuna. Traditionally, wealth was built through a shared kuleana over resources meant for sustenance, reverence, and regeneration. Profit was not the goal because commodifying nature and possession are colonial concepts. Ikaika also offered elements of energy sovereignty through design and projects, that should be controlled by working people and indigenous communities, as the solution to corporate run systems. Ancestral and cultural knowledge is not something added after the fact but should be at the inception or lead to the conception of an idea.

Tēvita Kaʻili, a kiaʻi of Kahuku, shared practical ways to honor our energy sources by first recognizing that they have a name and story. For example, Kahuku’s goddess of wind is Lewa and the name of their wind is Ahamanu—both carrying their own genealogy. Caring to know their name and story, might be the beginning to a new relationship to how they are harnessed for power, synchronizing our activities with Mother Nature, without forcing our needs but instead respecting that nature’s gifts have a limit. 

Dr. Pualani Kanahele used Hawaiian chants and the kumulipo to describe energy as akua, the life force of nature. Akua are the backbone of all things and are cyclic—continuum is a necessary part of our energy. She explained that we ourselves live because we carry energy. If we can understand the ways in which energy cycles, how it includes us as beings and what our role in the cycle is, then we can understand ways in which we can give the energy back to nature. The chants that Dr. Pualani shared are one way of demonstrating these cycles.

The discussions during this panel drove home the importance of including traditional knowledge and cultural practices as the blueprint for pono energy development decision making processes. The right foundation of knowledge can steer us back to the path that worked in the islands for thousands of years before colonial contact, corporate power, and profit driven models. 

Community-Owned Energy

Valuing the well-being of our natural resources, culture, and community over the profits of power production is directly tied to the Community-Owned Energy panel that featured the fearless mother and kiaʻi Sunny Unga of Kahuku and the founders of Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative.

To start her talk, Sunny shared a bone-chilling film documenting the 2019 arrests at the Na Pua Makani construction site. Her first comment is, “why would mothers, fathers, aunties and uncles, kupuna, teachers and law abiding citizens go through this extreme to protest a renewable energy project?” 

Na Pua Makani is a reflection of the dehumanized, top-down approach to energy development that is ongoing in Hawaiʻi. By the time construction began, the Kahuku community had been opposing the Na Pua Makani wind turbine development for over 10 years. There have been recent attempts by government agencies and power producers to make the energy system better. But communities need more than a philosophical conversation on equity and justice—communities need to be seen as partners and not obstacles in the renewable energy development process. This means three things: 1) Communities need to be consulted before any permits or approval are ever granted, 2) Communities must consent to the development of energy projects in their area, 3) Communities have the opportunity to develop, control, and benefit from projects they develop themselves.

A quote from Aunty Lori of Hoʻāhu says it best: 

“Why community owned? My reaction is ‘why not?’ Who better to steward and care for their neighbor? Outside organizations don’t understand the culture, the reciprocal relationship between people and ʻāina. Only community can do that, that is why it has to be community owned.”

Hoʻāhu’s founders demonstrate that community-owned energy is the best way to ensure that community concerns will hold value and be at the core of decision making. In this way, ethical and equitable considerations are present at all levels, including where the products/resources come from, workforce development, and eventual project decommissioning. Community-centered power production is about circularity and regeneration of energy but also community growth: skilled labor, living wages, and keeping the money circulating within the community.

Todd, Lori and Christopher shared that the Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative is in the process of bidding to develop a grassroots power production project through Hawaiian Electric’s Community Based Renewable Energy program. This program was designed to promote broader participation in renewable energy projects through small-scale solar grids but has yet to see a project come to fruition. But Molokaʻi is leading the charge. The community has been working together for years to build their energy cooperative as part of a larger group that is creating an island wide energy transition plan for Molokaʻi as a pathway for self-determination and bottom-up decision making. It is a model by which we can follow.

But of course, Hawaiʻi’s broken energy system strikes again. Hoʻāhu is bidding against Hawaiian Electric’s self-build team for the development of their Community Based Renewable Energy project. The kicker being that Hawaiian Electric also determines who wins the bid. Yes, Hawaiian Electric determines who wins the bid, while also bidding. 

This is the perfect example of how the system is broken and how Hawaiian Electric is unwilling to change. In their own program designed to promote smaller scale, accessible renewable energy made just for communities, they still aim to make a profit and have complete control. Hawaiian Electric is a public utility not servicing the public but maximizing profits and deepening the pockets of their executives. Taking back our power is a difficult fight but we must do it for our children and the planet. 

Ending note:

Hawaiʻi’s transition to renewable energy is an opportunity for communities and decision makers to rethink how our energy system should be transformed to be affordable, ethical, culturally conscious, and steward our environment as much as its infrastructure impedes on it. 

This may seem far fetched in a world where we are mostly positioned as consumers with little say in governmental affairs. 

But for grassroots leaders working on the ground, if we don’t all join hands towards a system that is more regenerative, our capitalist profit-seeking system will continue to aggravate injustice. 

The energy system touches virtually every facet of our daily lives. Right now it's doing harm to communities, our akua, and pocketbooks. It has failed us. What’s left is our kuleana to engage to make it right. A good place to start as each panelist suggests in their deep reverence for ʻāina, their keiki, and future, is by reflecting on what you love. What is your relationship with the things that you love? Whether it is through chant or your own protocol, learn its name and story—set a ritual honoring it. Get out of your head and into your heart and ask yourself, what are you willing to do to defend it?