(BIVN) – Hu Honua Bioenergy, LLC is asking the Hawai‘i Public Utilities Commission to direct Hawaiian Electric to immediately negotiate with Hu Honua to “forge a long-term contract for Commission approval that will quickly alleviate the electric power reliability crisis on the Island of Hawai‘i.” 

Over the last several years, Hu Honua has been planning to burn harvested trees at its refurbished Pepeʻekeo power plant in order to produce energy to be sold to the Hawaiian Electric grid. However, a series of project delays and legal battles – most recently in the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court – has stalled the effort.

The Hu Honua letter to the PUC comes as the Big Island faces a “tight supply” of power over the coming weeks. Hawaiian Electric customers have been asked to conserve energy through April.

Already this year, generation shortfalls on the Island of Hawaiʻi required energy conservation and rolling outages on January 30 and February 13.

Here is the letter from Hu Honua president Warren Lee to the PUC:

Re: Hu Honua Bioenergy Can Solve Hawai‘i Island’s Electric Power Crisis

Dear Honorable Commissioners,

Like all of the residents of our community, I have watched and read with frustration and anger about the unprecedented electric reliability problems plaguing our Island of Hawai‘i. This electric power crisis never had to be and it does not have to continue one day longer.

For years, there has been a solution for Hawaiian Electric Company’s (HECO) mismanagement of the Island’s electric capacity and supply, but HECO has fought this solution in a determined effort to protect its monopoly over the Island’s electric power supply and to maximize its monopoly profits. It is becoming blindingly obvious that HECO’s monopolization of the firm power generation market on the Big Island has come at the intolerable cost to our residents and businesses of prohibitively high electric rates – the highest rates in the country – and now, literally, HECO’s inability to provide even the basic electric power service needed by our Island community.

As the Commission knows, Hu Honua Bioenergy, LLC (HHB) owns a 30 MW firm renewable biomass electric generating facility (Hu Honua) on Hawai‘i Island that has long been ready to provide a new, trustworthy, and dependable supply of electric power for the residents of the Big Island. Hu Honua can provide firm dispatchable electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, night or day, rain or shine.

Hu Honua is a state-of-the-art, renewable biomass generating facility that uses natural feedstocks that are grown, harvested, and then regrown locally, in a virtuous cycle for the Island’s economy. Hu Honua and its interconnection switchyard are fully constructed and available and ready to generate power to meet the needs of the Island’s residents and businesses. Ninety-nine percent complete, Hu Honua needs only to finish final permitting and commissioning to begin commercial operation.

Biomass is precisely the firm renewable power source the Island needs at this moment to meet the electric power needs of the Island’s residents. In fact, finally, under increasing public pressure for its failures and belatedly in recognition of its failure to bring biomass electric power sources online in particular, HECO recently announced it will be seeking supply from biomass suppliers exactly like Hu Honua in its upcoming Integrated Grid Planning Request for Proposals (IGP RFP).

It is now obvious to all of us that Hawai‘i Island is in the grips of an unprecedented electric power reliability crisis that never should have happened. In January and February, the Island’s residents and businesses faced unplanned rolling blackouts. Just last week, HECO announced that residents should expect more unplanned rolling blackouts at any time and that customers need to limit their use of electricity in the weeks and months ahead. The continuing crisis was reported by the Hawai‘i Herald Tribune last Monday – “Tight Supply of Electricity” – and in a front-page article last Tuesday – “Utility Warns of Energy Deficit.”

Our Island’s crisis is not the result of environmental conditions or an extreme weather event. This crisis was caused by HECO. It is the consequence of HECO’s steadfast refusal for many years now to replace or transition from the Island’s electric power supply that comes from HECO’s own aging, unreliable, and now failing portfolio of oil-burning power plants. Indeed, HECO’s own proven unreliable affiliate Hamakua is the poster child and root cause of the acute electric power reliability crisis on the Island of Hawai‘i today.

HECO publicly refers to Hamakua as an “independent” supplier of electric power on the Island. But it is not. Hamakua is an affiliate of HECO itself. HECO has long sought to hide the fact that Hamakua is its affiliate, but HECO’s ownership of Hamakua was reported last week in the Hawai‘i Herald Tribune in an opinion piece entitled “HECO Failed to Disclose Ties to HEP.” HECO and its subsidiary HELCO originally were going to buy the Hamakua plant, but this Commission denied their request as not being in the public interest. In an end-around of this Commission, HECO instead bought Hamakua through the backdoor, through another one of HECO’s affiliates, Pacific Current.

Compounding the harm to the Big Island and its residents caused by HECO’s end- around acquisition of Hamakua, while at the same time fortifying the impregnability of its monopoly over the Island’s electric power supply, HECO, in a brazen act of self-dealing to protect its monopoly just recently selected the star-crossed Hamakua facility as the beneficiary of a decades-long power contract to commence almost seven years from now, in December 2030.

Notably, HECO’s selection of the famously unreliable Hamakua brings zero new firm capacity to Hawai‘i Island at the very moment when the Big Island desperately and urgently needs more electric generation capacity. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, HECO’s choice of Hamakua has proven nothing short of disastrous for the residents of Hawai‘i Island.

HHB has a case against HECO pending in the Federal District Court in Honolulu demonstrating that it is HECO’s relentless pursuit of monopoly power – including the surreptitious acquisition of its then-main rival, Hamakua, and the foreclosure of Hu Honua and other independent power producers – that has caused the dire circumstances facing Hawai‘i Island today. The story of HECO’s anticompetitive conduct is set forth in HHB’s proposed Third Amended and Supplemental Complaint, which HECO has sought to suppress.

Ensuring that the residents and businesses of Hawai‘i Island have the kind of reliable, dependable electric service that a competitive market would deliver is this Commission’s highest responsibility. As of today, HECO’s over a decade of mismanagement of the Island’s electric power capacity and electric power supply for the purposes of protecting and extending its monopoly over firm electric power generation on the Big Island has prevented the Commission from achieving its animating purpose of promoting competition and ensuring reliable electric power services at a cost that is affordable for the Island’s residents.

The Commission should act immediately to bring Hu Honua online, to ensure and assure the residents of the Island of Hawai‘i that they will have reliable and competitive electric power service on the Island in the months and years ahead. See Integrated Grid Planning, Framework for Competitive Bidding, Sections II.A.2.c, II.A.2.d and VIII.A. To this end, the Commission should direct HECO to immediately enter into expedited negotiations with Hu Honua to forge a long-term contract for Commission approval that will quickly alleviate the electric power reliability crisis on the Island of Hawai‘i. Hu Honua has already prepared a contract with fair pricing that will provide a just, reasonable, and competitive solution to the current crisis for HECO, the PUC, and most importantly, the residents of the Big Island. Hu Honua is prepared to enter into expedited negotiations with HECO immediately and accelerate commissioning of the Hu Honua plant so as to bring to an end the electric reliability crisis that besets our Island today and promises to beset our Island for years to come.

It would be our honor to serve the People of Hawai‘i Island.