Hawaiʻi residents currently pay an average of 43 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, the highest rate in the country and 2.4 times the U.S. average, according to EIA. Hawaiian Electric Co. also has a rate reset proposal pending before the Public Utilities Commission that would add another $11 to $15 to the average household monthly bill by 2028.

For many local families, this presents a big hardship that results in a monthly decision about what gets paid first. Electric bill or groceries? Rent or car payment? High prices for energy, including gasoline and diesel, are a key driver of our affordability crisis.

There is a direct way to help bring these prices down: make it easier and faster to permit and build clean energy in Hawaiʻi.

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The problem is simple. We import nearly all the fuel we burn to make electricity, so when global oil prices rise, our bills rise too.

Meanwhile, some of the cheapest power in the world now comes from solar-plus-storage. Developer testimony indicates Hawaiʻi utility-scale renewable projects can take seven to 10 years to come online, roughly double the mainland average. Geothermal, a promising source of clean firm power, requires decade-scale timelines to deploy due to the regulatory and permitting hurdles that even preliminary resource exploration faces.

Every extra year of delay keeps us stuck paying higher oil prices.

Hawaiʻi has ambitious goals to accelerate our transition to renewable energy. Act 97 of 2015 set the nation’s first 100% renewable portfolio standard for electricity by 2045. Gov. Josh Green’s Executive Order 25-01 accelerated the neighbor islands’ deadline to 2035 and even set a target of 50,000 distributed renewable installations by 2030.

The goal is not the issue. The holdup is permitting. The current process is lengthy and is, in effect, a barrier to the deployment of energy projects, especially utility-scale ones.

This is why Congress should push federal permitting reform over the finish line. On March 5, Sens. Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse reopened negotiations that were paused in December. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on Jan. 28, where senators on both sides of the aisle agreed that energy projects need to move faster while maintaining environmental review and community input. Rep. Ed Case sits on the House Problem Solvers Caucus, which also has its own permitting framework.

Congress must act with urgency. The 30% federal investment tax credit expires for utility-scale solar projects that fail to start construction by July 4. Projects placed in service after Dec. 31, 2027, lose the credit entirely.

Hawaiian Electric Co. has multiple utility-scale solar projects in the pipeline right now. Federal tax credits covering 30% of the project costs are at risk. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono, and Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda, should fight to make permitting reform into law.

Our state leaders have their own job to do. The Simplifying Permitting for Enhanced Economic Development task force, chaired by Rep. Greggor Ilagan, has done useful work on building permits, historic preservation, and wastewater. Now it should take on energy permitting as part of the 2027 legislative package.

The Geothermal Working Group, requested by House Concurrent Resolution 58 in April 2025, must deliver a plan with specific legislative recommendations to modernize the regulatory processes to accelerate geothermal exploration and development. Gov. Green’s Executive Order 25-10 also created an energy permitting task force, chaired by the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office. That group should come back with real recommendations for 2027.

The Legislature should also revive the clean-energy measures that died this year. Bills to implement the federal SolarAPP+ permitting platform, speed up interconnection for grid-ready homes, create a self-certification process for behind-the-meter solar and storage, and allow balcony solar stalled in committee.

Every one of these measures would make it easier for local households to generate their own power and cut their own bills. Bring them back and pass them in 2027.

Modernizing the regulatory framework that governs what, where, and how we build our local energy systems is an important step in reducing our dependence on imported fuel and the price we pay for electricity and fuel. Lawmakers at our Capitol and in Washington should hear that clearly from the people they represent. And act.