Ige echoed those points Monday at a press conference at the Capitol, and he praised the PUC for expanding the comment process on the NextEra-HEI docket to hear from a variety of interests.
Gov. David Ige talked about Hawaiian Electric with reporters Monday at the Capitol. Cory Lum/Civil Beat
The governor said he wants a company that is committed to a 100 percent renewable energy portfolio by 2045, a goal he said he did not believe NextEra shared.
“I think NextEra is a good company,” he said. “I just didn’t think it was a good company for Hawaii.”
Ige added that the future process for selling HEI should go beyond what is important to the company’s shareholders and consider the broader community.
He said that he believed there was “lots of capital available” for investment in Hawaii’s energy infrastructure and that “the model going forward” should be about a smart grid, distributed energy generation and “having different people owning different parts of that rather thanthe utility owning all parts.”
That ownership, said Ige, should include some measure of local control.
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Chad Blair is the Politics and Opinion Editor for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at cblair@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @chadblairCB.