Utilities panel OKs slight reduction of fee

The fee Hawaiian Electric Co.’s residential customers pay to finance clean-energy installations for low-income residents will decrease slightly starting in July.

The Public Utilities Commission approved the 17-cent reduction Monday. Come July, residential customers will pay $1.13 a month for the Green Infrastructure Fee, which finances the state’s Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, program. The new amount begins July 1 and ends Dec. 31.

The Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority, the state agency created to run GEMS, established programs in 2015 that consumers and nonprofits could apply for to finance rooftop solar-power systems. GEMS uses proceeds from the sale of $150 million in state bonds to investors.

HECO customers are currently paying $1.30 a month to repay the GEMS bonds.

When it launched, the program was expected to have distributed all of the $150 million to applicants by November 2016. But less than six months remains until November, and more than 99 percent of the funds sits unused, according to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser story published Sunday. GEMS has helped fund 11 solar-energy systems; there are 43 applications in the pipeline, representing about $370,000 of the $150 million available.

HECO acts as the agent for the state to calculate the fee every six months, and it submits a proposal to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism for approval. DBEDT reviews the draft and files it to the PUC.