DOE due big loan to cut schools’ energy use

Gov. David Ige will sign a bill Thursday that pulls one-third of the money from the state’s dormant $150 million green energy loan program to help lower electric bills at Hawaii’s public schools.

Ige’s office said Tuesday the governor will sign House Bill 957, which gives the state Department of Education a $46.4 million, interest-free loan to improve energy efficiency at schools.

The bill is designed to help complement another state initiative that would provide a cooler learning environments for students.

“We continue to invest in our public schools … where our students will benefit from cool classrooms,” Ige said during his speech on the first day of the VERGE Hawaii: Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit. The three-day conference is being held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. Ige said to cool the schools the state combined energy efficiency, air conditioning and photovoltaic systems.

The “cool schools” effort was launched in January 2016 when Ige promised to provide air conditioning for 1,000 classrooms. The project faced delays because initial proposals came in significantly over budget.

Ige said, while speaking at the conference, the state “will exceed our goal of cooling 1,000 classrooms by a few — all by the start of the next school year.”

When lawmakers agreed to fund the 1,000-classroom initiative, they required that a portion of the money be used for “energy efficient lighting and other energy efficiency measures” to help offset energy use.

The signing of the bill Thursday will shift the funds from a program, originally designed to make energy more affordable for low-income families, that has largely been left unused after being created by the state in 2013.

The program, Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, raised roughly $150 million through a bond sale. The program has used less than 2 percent of the funds, failing to meet its goal of lending all the money by the end of November 2016.

The program has spent $2.9 million of electrical utility ratepayer money to pay for administrative costs since it began, and interest payments during the 15-year life of the bonds will total $33 million. The GEMS program, and its 2.99 percent interest on the $150 million in bonds, is paid for by ratepayers through a line item on electric bills.

When drafting HB 957, legislators directed that the funds be “issued free of interest charges” to the DOE, leaving ratepayers to shoulder the $8.9 million in interest payments the GEMS program owes.

The proposed retrofits the $46.4 million of GEMS funds will be used for should save the DOE $114.9 million over 20 years, according to Gwen Yamamoto Lau, executive director of the Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority, the agency that oversees GEMS.

“Implementation of the DOE Energy Efficiency initiative, enabled by the GEMS loan, will have long-lasting positive impacts for the DOE and the state by significantly reducing energy consumption, lowering costs, and contributing to the achievement of Hawaii’s energy efficiency portfolio standards goals,” Lau said.