Up in the Air: Still No Easy Answers For Big Wind

Sophie Cocke/Civil Beat

Editor's note: This is the last of a three-part series on the Big Wind project. Day 1: Molokai Day 2:Lanai.

Big Wind may as well be called Big If.

A "listening tour" earlier this month by a small group of lawmakers to neighbor islands where wind farms might be built seems to have done little to move the project forward or tell legislators anything they didn't already know.

Molokai is still overwhelmingly against a wind farm and Lanai is still split between people who see it as an economic opportunity and people who see it as disrupting the island lifestyle.

The cornerstone of the state's big plans to switch from oil-fired power to renewable sources, Big Wind has been in the works since 2008. Its goal is to power up to 20 percent of Oahu's electricity needs.

Big Wind has generally been envisioned as two facilities on Molokai and Lanai, with the power generated by the giant windmills shipped to Oahu via an undersea cable. But after three years it is still struggling to overcome political problems and financial uncertainty.

One big if is where Big Wind will be built. Molokai now seems to be out of play. Lanai is still an option but the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission recently opened the bidding process to include more possibilities. Maui might now propose a wind farm of its own. And other renewable energy projects, like solar, could also be in the mix.

Another big if involves the undersea cable. Who would build it and how will they pay for it? The Legislature has been trying to head off problems financing the estimated $1 billion project by putting in place a process that would assure any cable developer a guaranteed return on its investment in order to woo lenders. But global economic conditions are so tenuous that it could be tough to attract financing for an undersea cable project in Hawaii at acceptable rates.

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