Hawaii is on an improved path toward lower electricity use and greenhouse gas emissions under new state laws enacted Tuesday that include a subsidy to develop hydrogen vehicle fueling stations.

Gov. David Ige signed four bills passed by the Legislature earlier this year aimed at reducing negative impacts on the environment from energy production and use.

The new laws will close a “loophole” in the state’s 100% renewable energy goal, provide $200,000 rebates for hydrogen vehicle fuel stations, fund a study on how to achieve a bigger reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions, and require energy efficiency improvements in more state buildings.

“These measures are critical efforts to transition the state away from imported fuels and towards a renewable, local and secure future from the energy perspective,” Ige said at a signing ceremony attended by clean-energy advocates and some lawmakers in his office at the state Capitol.

“Achieving our clean-­energy transformation goals is something that has been very important to all of us here in the room,” Ige said. “I truly appreciate the efforts to challenge each other to go farther, faster, further, because we do know it’s important for us and our planet.”

Through Senate Bill 2570, now Act 241, the state is offering $200,000 rebates to developers of clean hydrogen vehicle fueling stations that can cost around $2 million or more.

Only one such station in Hawaii exists, at a Servco automobile service center in Mapunapuna. This station was developed in 2018 by Servco, which at the time began offering Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen fuel cell cars for lease.

The bill, which also offers $200,000 to upgrade capacity at existing hydrogen fuel stations, drew some opposition from proponents of electric vehicles who told lawmakers that providing such rebates could reduce subsidies available for adding more electric vehicle charging stations because money for the new rebates would come from a portion of the state’s oil barrel tax previously going to electric vehicle charge station rebates.

Sen. Glenn Wakai, chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, Economic Development and Tourism, said the state has put its “foot on the hydrogen accelerator” that can help decarbonize transportation.

“What an energizing day,” Wakai (D, Kalihi-Salt Lake-­Aliamanu) said at the ceremony. “Today, Hawaii is doing its part to save the planet.”

Another bill Ige signed Tuesday, House Bill 1801, will require more state facilities to implement cost-­effective energy efficiency measures within the next four years, though “smaller” facilities are exempted. This new law also directs the State Energy Office to collect and make public utility bill and energy use data for state-owned buildings.

Another provision in this new law requires new state buildings to be designed for “maximum” energy and water efficiency “where feasible and cost-effective” starting in July 2023.

Rep. Nicole Lowen, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, noted that it has taken the Legislature three years to pass a bill like HB 1801.

“Buildings in Hawaii account for more than two-thirds of the electricity consumed in the state, and yet the state has still not undertaken efficiency measures in many of its own facilities,” she said at the ceremony.

Lowen (D, Holualoa-­Kailua-Kona-Honokohau) said all four bills signed into law Tuesday represent movement in the right direction toward reducing climate-­changing emissions.

HB 2089, now Act 239, amends a definition in a more than 20-year-old state law that aimed to have 100% of electricity statewide come from renewable sources by 2045.

Some renewable energy advocates have long noted that the old law’s language would allow less than 100% renewable energy because it applied to electricity sales as opposed to generation.

The new law applies the standard to generation.

“This has been a long time in the making,” Scott Glenn, the state’s chief energy officer, said at the ceremony.

Hawaiian Electric, the largest private power utility in the state, initially opposed the bill out of concern that the company might be held to a standard that can’t be achieved because some large customers produce their own power using fossil fuel. The company said two such customers exist now, and that in 2020 renewable energy on its grid represented 34.5% of sales and 28.4% of generation. Hawaiian Electric later supported an amended draft of the bill.

The State Energy Office, led by Glenn, told lawmakers that the 100% “renewable portfolio standard” under the old law’s language could be met with 21% of electricity produced from fossil fuel. On Tuesday, Glenn expressed gratitude for the amended statute “so that going forward, 100% will mean 100%.”

A fourth bill Ige signed Tuesday establishes a state goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that by 2030 they are at least 50% lower than what they were in 2005.

This law stems from HB 1800, which was introduced with a greater proposed reduction — 70% — over the same period.

To achieve the 50% reduction, the State Energy Office will receive $350,000 to produce a study before the 2024 legislative session on how to achieve such a goal.

The state Department of Health said in written testimony on the bill that areas where such a reduction can happen are combustion emissions in power generation, domestic and military aviation, ground transportation and carbon sinks such as forests where carbon can be stored.

This new goal follows the state achieving a goal established in a 2007 law to have greenhouse gas emissions at or below their 1990 level by 2020.