News

• Electric Vehicles
   on Maui –
   Phoenix Rising
• Making Hawaii
   A Better Place:
   Electric Cars
   Are In Our Future
• Leading the Nation:
   Hawaii’s Clean
   Energy Initiative --
   and Maui’s
   Trailblazing Role
• Mapping the Planet’s
   Last Great Frontier:
   Joe Breman and
   International
   Underwater
   Explorations
• Pan-STARRS
   marches across
   the sky in search
   of asteroids
• Shedding light on
   objects in space
• Palm size technology
   redefining high-speed
   communications

News

Leading the Nation: Hawaii’s Clean Energy Initiative -- and Maui’s Trailblazing Role

As we enter 2009 and a new decade beckons, announcements heralding renewable energy projects have flowed thick and fast in Maui County. Whether it’s a 10-acre photovoltaic farm on Lanai, wind farm projects on Maui and Molokai, a proposed underwater power cable to create an interisland electricity grid, or the introduction of electric cars, these are exciting, cutting-edge times.

A variety of innovative projects will soon be changing the way we live, work, and look at the world here in Hawaii as we witness a new dawn in sources of energy.

Maui County has been leading the way on energy policy, and is positioned to blaze a pioneering trail that will set an example to the rest of the planet. With its steady and powerful trade winds, reliable sunshine, strong currents and ever-present waves – among other natural assets -- Maui is the ideal location to showcase the development of renewable energy technologies and to integrate them on a broad scale.

Following a November 2007 energy conference held on Maui, the County’s Mayor, Charmaine Tavares, announced an imaginative and challenging goal: 95 percent of the County’s energy will come from renewable resources by the year 2020.

Following the conference, the Maui County Energy Alliance was launched to advise the County on strategies to achieve this goal, and working groups made up of volunteer experts and specialists in related fields were established to identify policy recommendations. These experts on Maui agree not only that the Mayor’s goal is achievable, but also that planning must begin in earnest now.

Meanwhile, in January 2008, Governor Linda Lingle announced the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI), an agreement formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding between the State of Hawaii and the Department of Energy. Under the terms of HCEI, at least 70 percent of Hawaii’s energy will come from renewable sources such as wind, sun, ocean, bioenergy, and geothermal by the year 2030. Currently, the state imports fossil fuel to provide more than 90 percent of its energy needs.

Hawaii’s abundance of natural resources and the planned public-private partnerships envisioned by HCEI will be supported by the Department of Energy and the expertise of other Federal agencies such as the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Defense. However, it will be the residents of Hawaii that will be the key players in real and permanent changes that lie ahead.