Richard Ha writes:
The Big Island Community Coalition is going to advocate that Hawai‘i County pay the electricity bills of people who choose to live in close proximity to any of the island's geothermal projects.
It makes perfect sense that if we are going to use our geothermal resources to provide electricity for our island population, we also use some of it to benefit those who live nearby and have to deal with the inconvenience and noise.
Our proposal is that the County Council tap into funds that come from geothermal to cover the first 600kw of electricity for families, perhaps for those that live within the one-mail radius previously identified by the County (this is the area where they have offered to buy back homes). Six hundred kilowatts is the figure HELCO cites as an average monthly home usage.
It would be a win for the people, and also for the County. Instead of buying homes, which would mean putting out $250,000 up front to buy back a home, the County would pay approximately $250/month or $3000/year. That original $250,000 would last about 80 years.
Everybody benefits.
Geothermal is the only alternative energy that is paying royalties. The original settlement that Hawaii county is using as direction expired a long time ago, but nobody will challenge it. The governor really needs to take some official stance on the whole topic of geothermal power, including settlement clauses that have long expired. He won’t though because this is an election year, so don’t rock the canoe.