Three findings on Hawaiʻi’s electricity future

(It took me about one hour to debunk this UHERO report.  It just wasn't that hard. --Editor)

By Ethan Hartley and Michael J. Roberts, UHERO, June 29, 2026

Three big electricity decisions are in front of Hawaiʻi’s Public Utilities Commission this year: whether to rebuild the aging Waiau power plant on the scale Hawaiian Electric proposes, whether to accept JERA’s $2 billion proposal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) and build a 500-megawatt gas-fired plant to use it, and how to design the retail wheeling reform the Legislature mandated under 2025 Act 266. Each carries a multi-billion-dollar price tag and locks in choices that will shape Oʻahu’s electricity system for two decades.

A new report by Ethan Hartley, Michael Roberts, and Matthias Fripp uses a (stacked and rigged) planning model — the same kind utility planners and grid regulators run — to test what (con you into believing that) Hawaiʻi should build (what the solar lobby wants). The  model is solved more than three hundred times under different assumptions about oil prices, solar and battery costs, land-use rules, and the Waiau and JERA decisions. Three findings hold across every variation (thus proving it is stacked and rigged).

(Hype about imaginary) Cheaper solar is by far the biggest lever (the) Hawaiʻi (solar lobby) has. Hawaiʻi pays more per watt for installed solar than the U.S. average (ooops!), but a look at the underlying costs — published retail prices from Tesla, EnergySage, and SolarReviews, and Hawaiian Electric’s own utility-scale contract awards — shows the gap sits in soft costs (procurement-cycle length, permitting, interconnection, customer acquisition), not in hardware, labor, or land. Soft costs respond to regulatory and market-design reform. (Magically) Closing the gap between what Hawaiʻi pays today and what mainland fundamentals support would save Oʻahu electricity customers about $3.4 billion in present value over 2027–2050 — (imaginary savings you will never see) about three times the value of any other single intervention the report examines. The retail-wheeling reform now in PUC implementation is the largest near-term lever.

(TRANSLATION: Just keep staring at the imaginary $3.4B while I pick your pocket.)

Oʻahu doesn’t need a new fuel-burning power plant beyond what’s already committed. The 99-megawatt Puʻuloa plant — a fuel-flexible facility Ameresco is building under federal backing — is enough new firm capacity on top of the existing fleet. At every oil price tested, in every land-use scenario, and across a wide range of solar-and-battery cost levels, the cheapest overall system for Oʻahu builds no additional combined-cycle plant. The JERA LNG bundle — a 500-megawatt gas plant plus a floating regasification unit plus a 20-year supply contract — is the most expensive trajectory tested. The Waiau + JERA LNG bundle costs roughly $3 billion more than building no new fuel-burning plant at all.

(REALITY:  Solar is diesel.  According to its developer, the “99-megawatt Puʻuloa plant” being built on base at Pearl Harbor consists of “11 dual-fuel reciprocating generators.”  ‘Reciprocating engine’ is just a deceptive word for an internal combustion engine.  The dual fuels are diesel and biodiesel.  So in reality, the answer is 11 giant diesel generators.  Why?  Because they start up quickly and can go on or off in combinations of 1-11 units to counterbalance erratic wind and solar energy.)   

(BONUS REALITY: UHERO is claiming that the Waiau repower is unneeded.  HECO just announced a $1B ‘simple cycle’ power plant project at Waiau.  They didn’t pick the ‘newer, more efficient’ combined cycle design.  Why?  Because ‘simple cycle’ is designed for quick power up and power down as a peaker plant to counterbalance erratic wind and solar supplies.  The point?  Intermittent wind and solar power REQUIRES the less efficient ‘simple cycle’ system.  And now, to make this bogus ‘analysis’ work, UHERO simply waves its hand and makes Waiau go away.  It will reappear as soon as you finish reading.)

Enhanced Geothermal is an option worth preserving (pretending to consider but ultimately doing nothing with). Oʻahu has hot dry rock at depth that can be tapped through Enhanced Geothermal Systems — a technology that achieved its first (and only) commercial-scale stimulation in Utah in 2024 and is expected to deliver its first U.S. grid electricity in late 2026. If the technology lands on the optimistic cost trajectory NREL projects, an Oʻahu demonstration would save Hawaiʻi about $189 million in present-value system cost. If the technology disappoints, federal cost share and existing tax credits keep the downside modest — roughly zero to $30 million. The asymmetric payoff is worth funding now, while federal support is still available. Any Enhanced Geothermal pathway on Oʻahu should be developed in partnership with Native Hawaiian community members; while EGS is technologically distinct from the conventional Puna geothermal plant on the Big Island — closed-loop, with no continuous release of volcanic gases — cultural relationship to the land remains central.

(TRANSLATION:  Don’t build geothermal.  Instead, ‘preserve’ –IE do nothing with--the ‘option’ for ‘enhanced geothermal’ which is a developing technology with only one plant in operation.  Why?  Because somehow this new tech will mollify protesters.  Nonsense.  The protesters are just a bunch of money-grubbing grifters.  They will always find an excuse to protest whatever they want to protest.  Meanwhile, UHERO wants Hawaii to abandon any interest in the existing proven geothermal technology which has dozen of potential drill sites on the Big Island and maybe Oahu as well.  Why?  Obvious.  Geothermal is cheap, clean baseload electricity.  Wind and solar don’t stand a chance against it.)

What about the 20 percent bill cut? The Governor’s office has endorsed JERA’s proposal on the basis of an asserted 20 percent reduction in residential bills. Simple arithmetic shows why that ceiling is unreachable: about half of a Hawaiʻi electricity bill pays for wires, meters, and grid services that LNG doesn’t change. Of the other half, fuel is only about a third in the early years and under 10 percent by 2050, as (imaginary) solar and batteries (pretend to) displace fuel-burning plants. And LNG is only about 25 percent cheaper per million BTU than the low-sulfur fuel oil it would replace. Multiplied together, the realistic bill-reduction ceiling from LNG’s actual price advantage is roughly 5 to 6 percent in the early horizon, falling to about 1 percent by 2050 — three to four times short of 20 percent.

(TRANSLATION:  Even while flacking for the solar lobby, UHERO admits LNG would be 6% off your electric bill.)

What this means. (We are trying to fool you into believing that non-existent) Solar-procurement reform, a (non-existent) Enhanced Geothermal demonstration, and (really) not committing to the JERA LNG bundle together describe the cheapest path (to maximize solar industry profits) for Oʻahu through 2050. The system-cost analysis cannot answer every question — local siting, community acceptance, and longer-than-historical weather extremes lie outside the model — but the no-new-thermal answer holds (gives the solar lobby what it wants) across every variation tested.

The full report, with data, code, and figures, is available here.

REALITY:

2026: Complete Debunk: UHERO Tries and Fails to Make the Case Against LNG

2024: Green Energy: 11 Giant Diesel Generators at Hickam

2020: UHERO: Ratepayers Pay $1.15 More for Every $1.00 Saved by Solar Users

COVERAGE:

KHON: UHERO report on clean energy future costs, plan in Hawaii

CB: UH Report: Oʻahu Needs More Solar, Not New Power Plants - Honolulu Civil Beat

SA: New Oahu power plant not needed, report says | Honolulu Star-Advertiser