Two recent Island Voices commentaries called for weakening Hawaii’s climate laws (“Ding-Dong! Implausible RCP8.5 climate scenario dead” and “Hawaii’s policies on sea level rise too strict, ease up,” Star-Advertiser, July 12). Both rest on the same claim: that state climate policy is built on RCP8.5, a worst-case climate emissions scenario.
There is just one problem: it isn’t.
RCP8.5 was developed around 2011 as a deliberately extreme, high-emissions “what if” for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was never a prediction. This year, scientists retired it, not because climate science was wrong, but because the world responded. Renewables got cheap faster than expected, and global emissions flattened. RCP8.5 was retired partly because it spurred climate policy. Citing its retirement to abandon that policy gets the lesson exactly backward.
But the deeper flaw is simpler: Hawaii’s climate laws are not based on RCP8.5.
One of the commentaries calls for revising Act 97 (2015), which requires 100% renewable electricity by 2045. RCP8.5 appears nowhere in it. The Legislature’s stated goal is to “transition away from imported fuels and toward renewable local resources that provide a secure source of affordable energy.” Act 97 is an energy security and affordability statute. Hawaii burns imported oil for electricity, pays the nation’s highest rates, and ships hundreds of millions of dollars out of state every year. Those are facts, whether RCP8.5 is alive, dead or was never born.
Also targeted was Act 15 (2018), which aims to sequester more carbon than we emit by 2045. It never mentions RCP8.5 either. Act 15 responds to what Hawaii observes directly: rising temperatures, severe natural disasters, sea level rise and eroding shorelines.
The second commentary, meanwhile, claimed that the state uses RCP8.5 to project sea level rise. That is out of date. In 2022, the state aligned its guidance with NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Technical Report, grounded in tide-gauge and satellite observations. Infrastructure built today will stand in 2075. Planning around robust federal data isn’t “too strict” — it’s due diligence.
With recent analysis showing climate change accelerating faster than predicted, Hawaii’s climate policy should not be weakened, but strengthened, starting in four places.
>> Fix permitting. Rooftop solar in Hawaii costs more than it should, partly because of excessive paperwork. Let qualified professionals approve rooftop solar construction, with final approval to operate remaining with the counties, as many states do.
>> Operationalize wheeling, which allows a producer of electricity to pay a fee to use the utility’s wires to deliver power to a buyer, rather than selling it to the utility itself. After nearly two decades of state Public Utilities Commission study, it’s time to approve the framework. Even limited intragovernmental wheeling would unlock idle rooftops and parking lots statewide.
>> Make solar available to everyone. That means fair compensation for exported energy, battery programs that reward evening-peak support, and legalizing plug-in “balcony” solar for renters and condo dwellers. States from Utah to Maine have passed balcony solar laws, and a national safety standard, UL 3700, was issued in December 2025. Remove unnecessary barriers on community solar so lower income communities can benefit from lower cost solar.
>> Charge fossil fuel distributors a fee on pollution, and return the revenue as a climate rebate everyone may receive — cutting greenhouse gas emissions while helping families transition to a clean energy economy.
Hawaii’s climate laws were passed because of the high price of oil, our island state’s vulnerability to supply chain disruptions, and the ocean already lapping at our roads. The critics are aiming at RCP8.5 — a retired scenario our laws are not based on.
Strengthen the laws that hasten the transition to clean, affordable energy. Don’t weaken them.
Hawaii island resident Ruth Robison, a retired university student adviser, submitted this on behalf of Carbon Cashback Hawaii.
