2026 Legislative Session: Environmental Legislative Network Debrief
By Lucas Dembart, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi Guest Author | Reading time: 6min 15sec.
This year’s legislative session proved to be both critical and contentious for environmental efforts across the islands, implicating an array of conservation issues from shoreline management, to pesticide regulations, to broad environmental review procedures. On May 13, the Environmental Legislative Network held a 2026 Legislative Session Debrief with a number of environmental advocates, to review and discuss some significant movements and stalemates that occurred at the capitol over the last several months. Read on for a brief summary of some of the highlights that were shared, including wins, losses, and next steps in the continued fight for environmental protection.
Coastal Development, Adaptation, and Management
Hawaiʻi’s coastal zones continue to face great challenges with climate change, issues that are worsened by ongoing disturbances from development and tourism industries. SB2401 SD1 HD2 CD2 was at the center of these debates.
Originally intended to allow for broader shoreline adaptation pathways, amendments to the bill later raised concerns about the risk of undermining key permitting and environmental review processes. After several additional rounds of revision and intervention by environmental advocates, including the Surfrider Foundation, the bill now includes procedural protections that seek to mitigate these concerns while providing for more comprehensive responses to sea level rise and shoreline erosion. This includes several rounds of review overseen by the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development (OPSD), and the establishment of regional mitigation districts and boards to guide shoreline planning.
However, the bill still leaves a degree of ambiguity as to how it will be implemented, including questions around what actions fall under “emergency mitigation” and how the permitting process will unfold at the regional level. Only time will tell how coastal planning and attendant projects attend to these requirements, but shoreline advocates do believe this represents an important shift from ad hoc administrative decisionmaking, to a structured public oversight process in responding to sea level rise and coastal erosion.
For Maui County, HB1823 HD2 SD2 CD2 (now signed into law as Act 70) reflects the continual effort to remove constraints on coastal development projects, even as climate change calls for much more careful coastal planning. This bill redefines “development” under the Coastal Zone Management Act, adding a new and potentially broad category of projects that could be declared exempt from special management area permit requirements. Moreover, the bill could totally exempt 24 types of development and other coastal activities from special management area permit requirements regardless of their impact, including:
The creation of large subdivisions of land (greater than 24 acres);
Structural and nonstructural improvements to large single-family residences;
The demolition of structures;
Public or private “infrastructure” or “maintenance” activities that are “approved” by a government agency;
…among others.
While this bill was initially intended to expedite reconstruction efforts in Lāhainā, its final draft now applies much more broadly, to all of Maui county. Accordingly, this bill may only render Maui’s counties more vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, by reducing protective measures and “streamlining” coastal development activity.
Despite the possibility of significant negative impacts and calls to veto the measure, Governor Green has since signed the bill into law– now requiring Maui county residents to be extra vigilant in monitoring coastal development proposals and mitigating their potential impacts.
Rollbacks on Renewable Energy Incentives & Long-Term Climate Goals
Though Hawaiʻi has long been a leader in our pursuit of renewable energy and emissions goals, this session saw the passage of one highly detrimental measure that could significantly inhibit our progress towards any such goals. As shared by Rocky Mould with the Hawaiʻi Solar Energy Association, SB3125 SD1 HD1 CD2 (now signed into law as Act 24) fully repeals the renewable technologies income tax credit (otherwise known as the “solar tax credit”) after four years, and in the meantime, would significantly slash the tax credit while imposing new requirements to qualify for the credit. Most alarmingly, the final draft of the measure would also apply the tax credit changes retroactively to the beginning of the year. As a result, more than 2,000 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in direct investments in renewable energy projects would immediately be placed in limbo. Notably, such projects include affordable housing, nonprofit organizations, City and County development planning, small businesses, and mid-size commercial facilities (hotels, restaurants, agriculture).
Despite calls for a special session to address the most harmful provisions of this measure, the Governor signed the bill into law, and has most recently issued an emergency order to provide some relief to renewable projects that were commenced before May of this year. However, the longer-term impacts to the tax credit, and the blow this deals to our solar and renewable industries in the long-term, remain at issue unless and until the legislature takes action in subsequent legislative sessions.
As shared by Earthjustice, several other bills focused on making cheap, clean renewable energy accessible to the general public never made it through conference committee. This includes a clean transportation bill to improve electric vehicle affordability for low-to-moderate income families, as well as a bill to incentivize residential cesspool conversion. These initiatives will hopefully continue to appear in future legislative cycles as more families throughout Hawaiʻi realize the need to pursue more affordable and sustainable ways of living.
Wins for Community Stewardship & Water Commission
On a brighter note, we saw a significant victory for community-led environmental advocacy with HB2218 HD2 SD2 CD1, allowing for the authorization of robust community co-management agreements with the Board of Land and Natural Resources to steward public lands. This bill started through extensive coalition-building and advocacy efforts from grassroots community organizations, including a group on Kauaʻi that was initially denied long-term leases on lands they had been stewarding for decades. With additional support from Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo and its network of community partners from across the islands, the bill made it through the legislature in just one session. With the Governor’s signature, many more mālama ʻāina community groups, especially those in rural/remote areas, will be able to develop robust and tailored co-management structures for stewardship, reflecting and honoring their long-held stakes in nurturing and caring for ʻāina.
In other good news, the nominations of Moses Haia III and Juanita Reyher-Colon to the Commission on Water Resource Management were both confirmed by the Senate. Juanita Reyher-Colon is the first commissioner from Molokaʻi to be appointed to the commission and has decades of experience in water systems operations. Moses Haia III also joins the commission as an attorney who has spent his career primarily focused on caring for public trust resources, as well as holding state agencies accountable to the public good.
Stalled Efforts for Public and Environmental Health Protections
Unfortunately, major efforts to curb human-industrial impacts on land and sea alike failed to gain traction this year. As shared by the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action, a collection of several failed bills all aimed to improve regulations on pesticides and contaminants. SB2103, HB1880, HB1570, and SB2333 offered different solutions to further restrict especially harmful pesticides and fumigants (ex: 1,3-Dichloropropene, a known carcinogen banned in over 40 countries). However, none of these bills made it through their respective committees in the House and Senate. Other efforts, like SB2100, called for the creation of a public transparency structures such as public health data dashboards, but these were gutted and killed in committee hearings throughout the session.
Beyond agriculture, a major push to permanently ban commercial aquarium collection formed around HB2101. This was part of a nearly decade-long effort to protect the integrity of aquatic ecosystems, particularly in Hawaiʻi Island and Oʻahu, and garnered the support of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Earthjustice, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, and many other organizations who have been working to defend our nearshore waters from the aquarium trade. Unfortunately, the bill did not make it out of conference committee.
Looking forward, advocates will now focus their efforts on stopping pending administrative rules that may reopen Hawaiʻi’s waters to the aquarium industry, after a nearly decade-long, court-imposed de facto ban.
Looking Ahead
Despite setbacks, ELN attendees made clear they will continue to work with legislators, build community coalitions across Hawaiʻi, and revisit prior legislation to address concerns that popped up during the review process this year. Now more than ever, community voices are one of the most powerful tools for influencing legislative decision-making and holding state agencies accountable to their responsibility to safeguard our ecosystems and environmental relations. As many reflected, the most important action we can take is to watch and listen closely to the activities happening in our ahupuaʻa, and bring these issues to the attention of our fellow community members and others willing to take action, at the legislature and beyond.
More updates and action alert sign-ups:
Be sure to visit the Sierra Club’s Hawaiʻi Capitol Watch page at hawaiicapitolwatch.org for updates on more legislative measures of note this past session, and to sign up for action alerts as we look ahead to the 2027 legislative season.