Energy and fuel costs rise in tandem (yet again)--now what?

If you want a great rundown of Hawaii’s energy conundrum, read Henry Curtis’s new e-book, Navigating Hawaii’s Energy Future. The fact that Curtis has basically written a full-on book (and this isn’t his first!) about how screwed up our energy monopoly is without getting any mainstream recognition is baffling. Especially when you consider how “green” everyone in Hawaii likes to call themselves.

I came across this thanks to a post by Curtis on Disappeared News today. Timely, since Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) reported higher electric rates this month due to fuel costs rising--again (here’s a syndicated version of that story as “reported” by another monopoly--subscription requirement bypassed!).

Full disclosure: the e-book is long, 159 pages to be exact. But you don’t have to commit to reading the whole thing at once, or, at all. Just scroll through it and read whatever tidbits catch your eye. It is jam-packed with useful and rage-inspiring information. If you are tired of having minutes shaved off of your life every month when you look at your electric bill, my opinion is that you should start getting informed and speaking up.

Just my opinion. 

Here’s a short excerpt from HEI’s annual report (as taken from the e-book/Disappeared News) to give you some background. They know they're dinosaurs on the way out. As long as we let them, they’ll sap us for every dollar they can:

“New technological developments, such as the commercial development of energy storage, may render the operations of HEI’s electric utility subsidiaries less competitive or outdated.”

As electric rates continue to go up and up, those who can leave the grid, will leave the grid, by building or installing on-site generation. The fixed costs associated with energy production, transmission and distribution will then have to be absorbed by the remaining (smaller) rate base. Thus, those who remain will see their rates go up even more, causing more people to opt out of a centralized grid, driving the rates for those who remain even higher. Under this scenario, companies such as HECO would be sucked down into a bottomless vortex and ultimately fail as a viable investor-owned corporation."

For more information on Henry Curtis, visit Life of the Land, a nonprofit environmental group which he is the executive director of. I also spoke with and quoted him in a cover story about HECO for the Honolulu Weekly called Energy Vampire some time ago. 

Update on Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 10:45AM by M. Kain

I just noticed that Civil Beat's land beat writer posted a good story about this same "report", which I'd dubbed an e-book because of it's length and depth. I guess one could view it as either. 

No comment from HECO! LOL!