A now-retracted paper on solar energy offered "nothing serious" for discussions about the future of energy on O‘ahu, the state's chief energy officer said.
Last month, the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization published a paper about how O‘ahu will meet electrical demand through 2050 while also transitioning to net zero carbon emissions.
In particular, the paper posited that extensive solar power development on O‘ahu is sufficient to meet the island’s projected power needs, and that plans for additional fuel-burning power plants — such as, for example, a liquid natural gas facility proposed by Japanese company JERA — are less cost-effective and less energy-efficient than solar buildout.
On Tuesday, the paper’s lead author Michael Roberts withdrew the study following criticisms about its methodology and data from the Hawai‘i State Energy Office and Gov. Josh Green.
Mark Glick, chief energy officer of the HSEO, told Aloha State Daily that the paper was favorable to solar energy to a reasonable degree.
“There are a lot of players that are looking at this system and agree that there need to be major and not incremental changes,” Glick said. “And we’re kind of wondering why some people are proposing solutions that almost perpetuate the status quo, when we know it needs to change.”
Glick said the report's supposition that an island-wide energy grid could operate primarily with solar and batteries and with a minimum of new sources of "firm" energy — reliable sources of electricity that are unlikely to be interrupted, such as power plants — is drastically at odds with reality.
"I would say, that is not a common sort of engineering practice," Glick said, before amending his statement: "It's not 'not a common practice,' it's not a practice, it's not utilized anywhere."
The HSEO released on Wednesday a review of the paper enumerating its various inaccuracies and poor assumptions, such as the paper’s “centerpiece assumption” that O‘ahu can simply increase its utility-scale solar generation twelvefold by building solar infrastructure across about 31,500 acres.
“The … report appears to treat the hardest constraint in Hawai‘i as though it were a secondary implementation issue,” the HSEO review read, adding that such a colossal buildout of solar infrastructure would face resistance every step of the way. “Land use is not a minor implementation detail in Hawai‘i; it is often the central constraint.”
The HSEO also challenged the paper’s estimates on the cost of solar procurement — drawn from 2018-2019 data instead of more recent and expensive figures — and its interpretation of the projected cost of JERA’s LNG plant.
The energy office’s report also found the paper made unsupported claims about the JERA facility’s projected emission rates, while overestimating the durability and resilience of not only its imagined all-solar infrastructure, but also the island’s existing oil-burning power plants, on which that solar infrastructure would rely during the buildout.
The HSEO report concluded with 56 unanswered questions about the paper’s findings, and warned that the paper’s conclusions “may be true only within the model’s assumptions.”
Glick noted that the paper heavily relies on contributions by one Matthias Fripp, an energy industry researcher with reported ties to an environmental NGO with a history of lobbying against the JERA plan. The paper specifically cites a pair of papers Fripp co-authored several times, and includes a brief acknowledgement thanking him for “his contributions to [the] report,” a gesture not granted to any other person cited.
Glick said Fripp’s previous assertions about JERA — including a claim in March that the HSEO erroneously presented the costs of JERA to be $1.2 billion less than reality — have been “clearly false,” and “fiction.”
With the paper now rescinded — a UH Mānoa statement claims Roberts withdrew the paper to correct identified errors, complete a comprehensive review, seek additional input and feedback from stakeholders” before republishing a revised draft — its potential impacts on future energy discussion remain to be seen. But Glick said he was surprised the paper got that far at all.
“UHERO has had a long history of providing credible and generally unbiased information that has helped inform,” Glick said. “But this clearly does not fit into the level of that kind of product.”
UHERO is reviewing its publication standards, according to a UH statement released Tuesday.
"The findings and conclusions in any UHERO publication are those of its authors, not of UHERO or the University of Hawaiʻi," the statement read. "UHERO does not take positions on policy questions. UHERO’s role is to provide the evidence and analysis that decision-makers and the public need, not to advocate for particular outcomes."
Meanwhile, JERA still seeks permits to begin development of its planned 500-megawatt LNG facility in Kapolei.
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