The City and County of Honolulu is seeking to generate more than $1 million in annual revenue through a contract it has awarded to Hawaii Gas to capture and process biogas from the Honouliuli Wastewater Treatment Plant in Ewa Beach.
Hawaii Gas said Tuesday it will invest in the infrastructure to process the raw biogas for use and to connect the city-owned plant to the company’s existing pipeline. The project is estimated to take 12 to 18 months to become operational, subject to the permitting process and approval by the state Public Utilities Commission. The contract, which is being finalized with the city, expires Dec. 31, 2024, but there is a provision to extend the term.
The contract will enable the city to receive revenue from a source that previously was unutilized. Currently, the plant produces the equivalent of 800,000 therms of biogas annually that is burned rather than used for any purpose. Biogas can be used as a natural gas for cooking, heating hot water and drying clothes.
City spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said the price that Hawaii Gas will pay the city per therm will be scaled to the quality of the biogas, which will be determined when it is extracted.
That price is still being negotiated, Broder Van Dyke said.
Hawaii Gas President and CEO Alicia Moy called the contract a “win-win-win on multiple levels.”
“It’s a win for the environment because we’re taking something that’s being flared into the atmosphere and cleaning it up and injecting it into our pipeline,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s a win for our customers because they get a cleaner source of gas that is also cost-effective. And the third thing is the city gets a new revenue source for something that was being flared into the atmosphere.”
Moy said Hawaii Gas serves about 33,000 Oahu customers who are connected to the company’s pipeline, which runs from Campbell Industrial Park through Waikiki and out to Hawaii Kai. The remaining 7,000 customers not along the pipeline receive deliveries of propane in tanks. Hawaii Gas said it will install half a mile of pipe at the Honouliuli facility to connect to the existing synthetic natural gas pipeline used by the company.
“This contract is about 800,000 therms per year of energy and we sell about 30 million therms, so we plan on blending renewable natural gas into our existing pipeline into our existing gas source,” she said.
Hawaii has a 100 percent renewable goal for power generation by 2045.
