“Geothermal has the potential to be our superpower”

Interview and Column by Madeline Henningsen

Q. What is your position on the renewable energy future for Hawaii?

A. Hawaii's renewable portfolio standards, in state law, get us to 100% renewable energy for power generation by 2045, and each utility is on their way to meeting those. As progress is made towards those goals, it increases our resilience, our self-reliance, lowers and/or stabilizes costs and also, of course,  lowers carbon emissions. Each island is going to have a different mix of resources, a different pathway to 100%, and what makes sense for each particular island will vary. At the end of the day, there is a set of regulations in place guided by state policy that balance various considerations like affordability, reliability and greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond that, I don't think it's the role of policymakers to pick or champion specific projects.  I think that the role of policymakers is to set the goals and outline a fair process, and then let that work.  

Q. What do you think is the fastest path to a renewable energy future in Hawaii?

A. You'd have to have a crystal ball to know the definitive answer to that but I think right now it seems pretty clear that, solar plus battery projects are still the low-hanging fruit. There is a need for other "firm" resources too of course, but in terms of what will bring the most decarbonization and cost savings in the least amount of time, and what technology is ready to deploy today—the direction is still for solar projects. Right now, the State of Hawaii, overall, is about on par with Kentucky in terms of how clean the grid is. So, while there will always be a need for resources that are dispatchable 24/7, and the sun will never shine at night, we still have a long way to go with adding more solar before the grid reaches a point where that volume would be destabilizing. In fact, for distributed rooftops solar, it turns out that the more systems you add to the grid, the more that the aggregated generation from those distributed resources smooths out. And with prices coming down for battery storage, that also helps to extend the hours of access to solar energy. So, I think there's still considerable room to build out more solar on our path to 100%. Currently solar is the most viable and affordable project to build on that path to a renewable energy future, and if you look at what's happened in Hawaii in the past decade or so it's clear that the market has decided that as well. I can already hear the voices saying "we can’t get to 100% with solar, the sun doesn't shine at night, etc," and yes, that's right, and no one who knows what they are talking about has really disputed it that I know of. But it’s also true that right now we still have a lot of room for more solar. At the same time, there should be planning around developing other resources as well, while maintaining some flexibility about what the optimum mix of resources is that will bring the best balance of cost, reliability, decarbonization, etc.

Q. What would it take to move geothermal up the action agenda for Hawaii?

A. There's a number of different points that have to be addressed. Geothermal has the potential to be our superpower, at least on Hawaii Island, but there's a lot of obstacles that you can't go around, they have to be worked through, like building community acceptance and addressing cultural and environmental concerns. The upfront cost of developing a new geothermal project is also a barrier so there is a need, I think, for some kind of government investment upfront to help offset that cost and to confirm where the resources are. Those things continue to be significant challenges.  Right now, nothing concrete is actually happening on this, so I think people need to be careful not to get too far ahead of themselves,  If we really want to be serious about geothermal then the work has to start at square one.

Q. How do you feel about the potential use of geothermal energy and hydrogen?
A.  I think this is one of the places where people get ahead of themselves. A prerequisite for making clean hydrogen economical is to have a cheap and abundant source of renewable energy to make it from. If geothermal power production is expanded, it should be first used to replace fossil fuels and more expensive fuels on the grid. That will provide the biggest benefit to the residents of Hawaii, and help bring electric bills down. Once the grid is maxed out, then it might make sense to look at further expanding productions for other purposes, like making hydrogen—if it's economical to do so.  There's a big question mark there. There’s a lot of talk but people need to look at the numbers—of how much it costs, how much energy would be used, what is the efficiency.  There is without a doubt certain use cases where everyone is hoping hydrogen can be a solution, me included, and I believe hydrogen has an important role to play in our energy future. But there's also a lot of misconceptions and magical thinking about its place right now too, in my opinion. There's a lot of lower-hanging fruit in terms of moving the needle on adopting renewables and decarbonizing our economy that is going to come first and deserves our focus.

Q. What can be done to help low-income people who cannot afford the high risk of electricity in Hawaii? What is your opinion of paying Native Hawaiians a percentage of revenues from geothermal electricity as is being done in New Zealand?

A. It's become pretty standard practice that renewable energy projects now have some kind of community benefits that they've negotiated with the community. I don't think to date that any of those in Hawaii have included a direct payment or cost reduction. But that's a possibility--it's certainly been discussed in the past. I think there's arguments both for and against that approach. Preferential rates could lead to higher costs for other ratepayers. There's actually a group working on these equity questions, based on resolutions that the legislature passed in 2022, focused on expanding the Low Income Household Energy Assistance Program. I think that we need to also keep pushing on things I've worked on a lot like energy efficiency, and make sure that we're finding ways for people to reduce costs because they're actually using less. There's a lot of digging deeper we can do on efficiency and things like demand-response programs that hasn't been done yet.

Q. What is your opinion of using geothermal to create hydrogen for the Big Island and use it on the hydrogen buses there?

A. I’d say great, I like that idea, but there’s a lot of questions about how feasible it is, as I mentioned earlier. I know there's been discussion about using the methane gas from the landfill to make hydrogen and that, to me, is maybe a more viable idea for the short term.  I support pursuing the development of more geothermal production, but that is going to be a long-term project—it’s not going to happen fast, and it should go to the grid first. So I think it’s premature to be hyper-focused on one specific end use for excess geothermal power that doesn't even exist yet. If or when we get there, I think geothermal has the potential to open up all kinds of economic opportunities for Hawaii Island, and hydrogen production could be one of them, but we'll have to wait and see what the market has to say about it when we get there.  

Q. What is the trade-off between food production and the rollout of huge solar farms on agricultural land on Hawaii Island? 

For Hawaii Island, this hasn’t come up yet as much as it has on Oahu. There are always trade-offs with land use, but Hawaii Island has a lot of land that is good for solar and not particularly good for farming. There’s also ongoing research about how to co-locate solar farms with agriculture.

A talk with Rep Nicole Lowen