Pacific Business News – Hawaii continues to make progress on its renewable energy goal, report says
First Wind’s Kawailoa Wind project is seen in this file photo. Wind supplied 29.1 percent of all renewable energy in Hawaii in 2014.
Hawaii is a little more than a fifth of the way — 21.1 percent — to its new landmark goal of achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, according to a new report.
The state’s previous target of 15 percent was surpassed two years early, in 2013, and in 2014, the figure increased to 21.1 percent.
In terms of resources, wind led the way by supplying 29.1 percent of the total renewable resource pie in 2014, followed by rooftop solar photovoltaics (27.3 percent), biomass (21.7 percent), geothermal (12.3 percent), hydroelectric (4.3 percent), commercial solar (3.4 percent) and biofuels (1.9 percent).
The 2015 Energy Resources Coordinator’s Annual Report, which highlights the state’s clean energy progress in the last 12 months, among other things, noted that Hawaii achieved 16.8 percent of its efficiency goal at the end of 2014.
The state must double this percentage by 2030 to reach the goal of a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption through efficiency measures.
The report also highlighted the 60 renewable energy projects located across the state, including 19 hydroelectric, 17 solar, nine wind, seven biofuel, three biomass, two waste-to-energy, two ocean and one geothermal.
These projects have the capacity to generate an estimated 150.5 million kilowatt-hours per month, which is enough to power about 292,874 Hawaii homes a year for the next 10 to 20 years.
The value of solar projects to the construction industry also was highlighted in the report, with a projection that $350.1 million, or 8.6 percent of total construction spending, will be spent on these types of projects by the end of 2015, up from $244.6 million, or 7.4 percent of total construction spending. The peak was reached in 2012, with $753.7 million, or 28.5 percent, of total construction spending.
Download Report: http://energy.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DBEDT_2015ERC-Report_Nov2015.pdf
