Richard Ha writes:
Geothermal energy costs half what oil does to generate electricity – yet our electric bills on the Big Island are 25 percent higher than they are on O‘ahu.
This is unacceptable.
The Big Island’s rate is close to 43 cents kWh, while on O‘ahu it is close to 33 cents per kWh.
At a minimum, our electric bills should be equal to those on O‘ahu.
There are a thousand reasons why NO CAN. We are looking for the one reason why CAN!
Richard, you are so right on looking at the link between high electricity costs restricting business activity making it necessary for the keiki to go to the mainland. I watched your Youtube video about some local produce and saw how much refrigeration you are using. It doesn’t occur to a lot of people that small individual farmers need a bigger one like yours to get to market. This was a senate resolution to the attorney general asking for an investigation into geothermal energy pricing and one paragraph even makes charges of fraud, don’t think this went anywhere last session, even though it went directly to the attorney general:
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2011/bills/SCR85_.pdf