Henry Curtis on the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative

In essence, the document focuses on strengthening the utility, providing federal tax credits to support crude palm oil biodiesel production, and emphasizes building large-scale central station generation facilities.

It minimizes distributed generation and calls for a termination of the popular net metering program where homeowners can install solar photovoltaic systems on their roofs and use the grid as a battery, paying only on the net difference of what they export to and import from the grid.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the document is the proposed inter-island cable.

Missing from the discussion is the reliability, cost and environmental impacts associated with the cable…

Read the whole article at Civil Beat