To hear Hawaii’s governor tell it, the state is making tremendous progress in moving toward an energy independent future.

For 20 minutes on Monday, Neil Abercrombie told attendees at an Asia-Pacific clean energy conference how his administration has made good on his 2010 campaign platform to wean Hawaii off of fossil fuels. That goal, he said, is “fundamental to our survival” in an age of climate change and global warming.

“Energy holds the key to Hawaii’s long-term financial sustainability and our ability to control our own destiny,” he said, his voice rising with passion.

The governor might be forgiven for sounding at times as if he was campaigning for re-election. He is.

But has the administration really made good on its promises on alternative and renewable energy, as detailed in his New Day in Hawaii Plan, his state of the state addresses and his legislative packages?

While Abercrombie said in his speech at the Hawaii Convention Center that “we are on our way” to meeting the 2030 benchmarks of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, the state he governs still pays the highest electricity rates in the nation. A gallon of unleaded gasoline, meantime, sells for about $4.30 a gallon — this in a state blessed with an abundance of wind, wave, solar, geothermal, hydro, bio-energy and biomass resources.

Indeed, the governor himself said Hawaii’s cost per kilowatt hour “is probably the highest anywhere in the developed world, certainly in the United States — in some instances 40-plus cents a kilowatt hour.”

A Leadership Vacuum?

Introducing the governor at the fifth-annual Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo was Mark Glick, who heads the state energy office. While the conference is heavily attended by energy executives and policymakers, the introduction was reminiscent of a political rally in which the governor would deliver a stump speech.

“The truth of the matter is that Hawaii’s energy commitment starts at the top,” said Glick. “Since taking office three years ago, Gov. Neil Abercrombie has provided the leadership and foresight to steer our clean energy economy.”

The governor took the podium and quipped: “You got that last sentence out about the great governor almost just the way we discussed it.” The crowd chuckled.

But Glick’s remarks come amid grumblings within Hawaii’s clean energy sector that there is a lack of leadership and no clear vision for Hawaii’s energy future.

In 2010, as Abercrombie campaigned for governor, he pledged to create an Independent Hawaii Energy Authority that would lead the state’s transition to renewable energy. But the new state agency never materialized.

And while Abercrombie pledged to make clean energy a top priority, he was criticized in the early months of his administration for not delivering on this promise. Some felt that the momentum behind the push for clean energy waned.

And when the governor announced in his 2012 State of the State speech that his administration was looking to import liquefied natural gas, a fossil fuel, environmental groups lamented that Hawaii’s push for clean energy may even be derailed.

But Abercrombie also gained the accolades of clean energy groups like Blue Planet Foundation for his appointments to the Public Utilities Commission, which has the authority to approve or deny energy agreements and has increasingly taken a lead on state energy policy. And in January of last year, Abercrombie announced that he was putting his second in command, Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz, in charge of coordinating state energy policy.

Schatz excelled at articulating the state’s energy policy. But he was appointed by the governor to the U.S. Senate in December and Abercrombie hasn’t announced a new point person for energy policy.

Meanwhile, renewable energy contracts have sat before the PUC since Abercrombie took office. The much-touted Big Wind project, which proposed to bring wind energy from Lanai and Molokai to Oahu, has in many ways disintegrated.

And Abercrombie’s overarching vision — connecting the islands’ electric grids via underseas cables — has come into question in recent months.

Hawaiian Electric Co.’s five-year energy plan, released in July, concluded that Oahu could affordably meet its own energy needs without tapping neighbor island resources. The state energy office quickly retorted that the office had “no evidence that remotely supports that contention.”

The conflicting messages have led to questions about who is really in charge of policy. Meanwhile, energy and cable developers have been waiting for more than two years to bid on the state’s interisland energy plan.

In his speech Monday, Abercrombie made it clear that interisland cables remained a pillar of his energy policy.

A C-Minus For Energy Progress

The day after Abercrombie’s speech, Blue Planet Foundation, a clean energy advocacy group, released a 2013 “energy report card” for Hawaii. The overall grade: C-.

Abercrombie touted Hawaii’s commitment to reducing petroleum use in transportation by 70 percent by 2030. But the state scored a D in this area. So did the much touted “smart grid” that is supposed to help usher Hawaii into a modern 21st-century electricity system.

In the category of renewable energy, Hawaii scored the highest with a B-. But the report noted that on Maui large amounts of wind energy is being dumped in favor of fossil fuel generation. And since the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative was signed in 2008, fossil fuel generating capacity has actually increased. (HECO has recently pledged to begin retiring its units.)

A New Plan for a New Day?

Abercrombie used his speech to announce that Hawaii was going to “go beyond” the goals of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, which mandates 40 percent renewable energy by 2030 and a 30 percent reduction in electricity use.

“Yes, it’s ambitious, but not ambitious enough given the realities,” he said. “We are going to go farther than what we have stated to this point.”

The governor’s plan is fivefold:

• to expand diversification of the state’s energy portfolio by taking “full consideration” of liquified natural gas “as a carbon based bridge” to an alternative and renewable energy future;

• to connect the islands to an “integrated modernized grid” at a scale that will reduce neighbor island energy costs;

• to “balance technical, economic, environmental and cultural considerations” but relying on science-based opinion;

• to leverage our positions as “a test bed launch” for energy innovation; and

• to step up investment with the private sector to move away from oil by confronting “existing corporate models that have outworn their utility and usefulness.”

Abercrombie says he’s against maintaining the status quo. He told expo attendees that he has put his own political appointments on boards and commissions including the PUC, dismissing calls for continuity. “It’s continuity in the past that has led us to the dead end of a failure to have an alternative and renewable energy future,” boomed the governor.

The governor said that the energy sector has become “a significant driver” of the state’s economy, noting that photo-voltaic installations this year comprise one-quarter of the the construction industry.

Abercrombie began his talk on Hawaii’s energy future by revisiting its past. As a state legislator in 1977, he said Hawaii had a plan to address its energy needs by 2010. At that time, the state was spending $500 million a year on oil imports; today it spends more than $5 billion, though the population based has not increased that dramatically. Imagine, he said, if the $5 billion could be spent elsewhere.

“The plan was there, but the will to carry it forward was lacking,” said Abercrombie of Hawaii 36 years ago.

Does Hawaii now have the will? That’s a question certain to surface in the 2014 election, but the answer may prove harder to come by.