‘Powering Paradise’ not just another term paper on Hawaii’s energy journey
by Jim Kelly | Feb. 24, 2020
I’m sure there’s been at least 500 news stories, magazine features, engineering journals, government studies, research reports, documentaries, webcasts, blogs and high school term papers produced on Hawaii’s renewable energy transformation.
So with the arrival of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s (RMI) “Powering Paradise: How Hawaii Is Leaving Fossil Fuels and Forging a Path to a 100 Percent Clean Energy Economy,” the impulse might be to toss it on the pile with the rest of them.
Don’t do it — “Powering Paradise” is a keeper.
Authors Dan Cross-Call, Jason Prince and Peter Bronski of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) have crafted a thoughtful and attractively designed overview of Hawaii’s clean energy journey. For anyone who wants to know how we got here and where we’re probably going, “Powering Paradise” is a fairly objective summary of how politicians, regulators, utility operators, developers and just regular people set a remarkable societal goal and through trial and error and the occasional painful collision have kept moving forward.
At 90 pages, it’s no breezy pamphlet but it’s an easy read, made digestible by tight writing, a clean layout, helpful graphics and chapters that are organized around key themes rather than chronologically.
The authors keep the acronyms and jargon and judgments to a minimum, focusing on Hawaii’s “culture of relentless innovation” and “the cohesion required to make change.”
The RMI folks make the case that Hawaii isn’t some weird outlier whose experience isn’t relevant to mainland states. The examples “paint a picture of how the clean energy transition can be managed everywhere,” the authors say.
And that’s the purpose of the report, to show other places how it can be done.
One of the key takeaways is a point we make a lot at Hawaiian Electric: No one company or group or person can do this alone. (And just to be clear, Hawaiian Electric didn’t commission the RMI report or pay for it).
The success we’ve seen so far is the result of the sincere efforts of a lot of people committed to slowing climate change and giving the kids and grandkids a better Hawaii. Some days it’s been a slog, but we’ve pushed through. The climb is getting steeper, so that collaborative mindset will be even more important in the coming years as we try to balance renewable progress with other community objectives.
The report and the accompanying blog “Learning from Aloha: Hawaii’s Energy Transformation” are on the rmi.org website.
Jim Kelly is the vice president of corporate relations at Hawaiian Electric Company.
