NextEra Energy’s proposed takeover of Hawaii’s century-old utility has sparked a renewed effort to establish an electric utility co-op on Hawaii Island.
The awnings once sheltered about 20 acres of tomatoes that accounted for about half of all of the farm’s production, owner Richard Ha says, and about 35 employees worked on tomato production.
But Ha and his family shut it down in November 2014. The reason: the cost of electricity needed to upgrade the tomato production process was too high. The average electricity rate on the Big Island in 2014 was about three and a half times times the national average. It just didn’t make financial sense to grow tomatoes commercially because of volatile energy prices.
Like many in Hawaii, Ha has struggled with high energy costs and especially what the consequences are for family farms like his. Energy costs put Big Island farmers at a major competitive disadvantage when they try to sell their goods elsewhere.
Ha has been studying Hawaii electricity issues for years, including attending mainland oil industry conferences to better understand how oil price fluctuations affect electric costs in Hawaii, where most electricity is generated by burning fuel oil. Several years ago, he was part of a group called Kuokoa that hoped to take over Hawaiian Electric, an idea that fizzled.
More recently, he’s been working with others in the community to try to secure less expensive energy prices to give struggling farmers a competitive boost as the Big Island brings more locally generated renewable energy sources online.
“Expensive renewables do nothing,” Ha said. “Cheap energy is the whole thing.”
So it’s no surprise that when Florida-based NextEra Energy announced, just over a year ago, that it wanted to buy Hawaiian Electric, which became a company in 1891, Ha took a renewed interest in utility ownership and management….
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