These bills look great. They appear to help the environment — or at least not harm it. But upon close inspection, these are stealth bills that use terminology designed to make them fly under the radar.
They use appealing terms like “firm energy” and “renewable energy.” But did you know that under Hawaii law, “renewable energy” includes the burning of trees? Burning trees is a dirty source of energy — even dirtier than coal, and coal is one of the dirtiest of all forms of energy. “Firm energy” also includes the burning of trees.
These stealth bills are really designed to promote projects that would burn trees to generate electricity. One of the projects is the Hu Honua proposal on the Big Island. The other is the proposed conversion of the AES plant on Oahu, which is now burning coal. This facility has been ordered to stop burning coal. and the owners are looking for something else to burn.
The burning of trees to generate electricity will, of course, decimate forests. With climate change upon us, that is exactly what we do not want to do. Mature forests take lots of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, largely responsible for climate change. Trees are much more valuable alive than dead.
To meet Hawaii’s net-zero emission goal, forests should be preserved, not burned. In fact, environmentalists throughout the world are planting young trees over large areas to create forests. In Hawaii, these forests would consist of native Hawaiian species. The considerable effort required to plant a forest would be nullified if another forest were cut down and burned to generate electricity.
The stealth bills are as follows:
>> Senate Bill 2510 statutorily adopts “firm energy” as a state objective and requires much of the energy used to generate electricity in Hawaii to be “firm energy.”
>> Senate Bill 2057 creates an expedited process for the approval of certain kinds of “renewable energy” projects.
These bills should be stopped. Their beneficiaries include multinational corporations that are in the business of cutting down forests to manufacture pellets made from trees to be used as “renewable energy.”
These multinationals have as their highest priority the maximization of profits for their shareholders.
They may say they care about the environment, but that is only for public relations purposes.
Other beneficiaries of these stealth bills are the corporations that use tree pellets to generate electricity. They need government approval for their projects, so they have worked to develop political clout, and they have lots of money to donate to the campaigns of politicians.
The stealth bills have started a battle in the Legislature. In a nutshell, the battle is between corporate profits and the environment.
Many climate scientists say that we have less than 10 years in which to take the drastic action needed to keep climate change from becoming a global calamity. Preserving the forests is a major component of an effective strategy that will keep the Earth livable for all of us, and also for future generations.
Honokaa resident David Hunt is a retired counselor, educator and musician; Koohan Paik-Mander, a Hamakua-based journalist and media educator, is a co-founder of the Green New Deal project of the Democratic Party of Hawaii; Charley Ice is a retired civil-service ecologist, hydrologist and planner, active on environmental issues.
