State officials have a new roadmap to decarbonize the cars, planes and ships that form Hawaiʻi’s transportation sector, they told legislators on Wednesday – almost exactly one year after they signed a landmark settlement with youth climate activists to ramp up those efforts.
That plan, Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation Director Ed Sniffen said, will be released Friday. It largely involves converting those vehicles to cleaner fuels, plus adding more pedestrian paths, bike lanes and public transit options, to help the state hit its goal of phasing out carbon emissions by 2045.
It comes after a group of 13 local youths, including many Native Hawaiians, sued Sniffen’s department in 2022, saying transportation remained the state’s largest emissions polluter, was on the wrong track and threatened their traditional ways of life and rights to a clean environment.
📷Vehicles head east bound on H1 Lunalilo Freeway before the Punahou offramp.
Vehicles clog the H1 Freeway near the Punahou offramp. The state’s Department of Transportation is ramping up efforts to decarbonize vehicles across Hawaiʻi, but lawmakers want to balance those efforts with local affordability. (Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022)
The parties settled last year, however, and agreed to work together on the state’s ambitious goals. Isaac Moriwake, an EarthJustice attorney who represented the youth in the lawsuit, Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, helped Sniffen deliver the briefing on Wednesday.
Lawmakers lauded their joint efforts under the first-of-its-kind climate settlement, but they also expressed concerns over cost increases to fuel and everyday goods that local residents would face as a result.
“I’m all for the decarbonization of Hawaii, but this has always been my main issue,” Nānākuli Rep. Darius Kila said, “You (are) asking folks to move toward a green infrastructure who don’t have green, right? Not everybody can afford an electric vehicle.”
“It’s this constant moving forward,” Kila added. “You forget that there are people who are still trying to catch up.”
Other legislators echoed Kila, saying the state’s ambitious and aggressive steps to decarbonize had to be equitable and assist many Hawaiʻi residents in that transition, particularly those in rural areas, so that they don’t get left behind.
“We don’t just want a transition,” Rep. Tina Grandinetti said. “We want a just transition.”
📷State Rep. Darius Kila holds a West Oahu Town Hall on public safety Monday, Sept. 16, 2024, at Nanakuli High and Intermediate School in Waianae. He was joined by City Council member Andria Tupola, Honolulu Police Department Chief Joe Logan, Major Gail Beckley and Department of Law Enforcement Deputy Director Jared Redulla. Nānākuli Rep. Darius Kila: As the state surges forward with decarbonization goals, “there are people who are still trying to catch up.” (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2024)
Cost Of Compliance Remains Unknown
It’s not yet clear exactly how the state’s zero-emissions goals might impact local families’ pocketbooks. Laura Kaakua, the transportation department’s energy security and outreach manager, said the agency aims to have some financial figures for the Legislature to review before its session next year.
Nonetheless, the cost affiliated with converting Hawaiʻi’s transportation sector are expected to be relatively short-term so that residents can benefit from long-term savings in their fuel and energy costs, Sen. Chris Lee and Rep. Nicole Lowen said during the briefing. They’re among the Legislature’s most outspoken proponents for climate action.
Brenton Awa, a Republican senator who represents much of Oʻahu’s Windward side and North Shore, said the decarbonization plan shouldn’t proceed at all if it results in any cost increases, even if those costs are short-term. Awa said he’s particularly worried about the continued, gradual exodus of Native Hawaiians off of the islands.
The lawsuit that helped spur the transportation department’s new decarbonization plan, however, was largely brought by Native Hawaiian youth, represented by environmental legal advocacy groups, who fear climate change is already eroding their ability to live in the islands as their families have for generations.
Sniffen, meanwhile, said that the aviation industry has reported it would cost about $1 billion more to convert to sustainable fuels by 2045 instead of five years later, in 2050.
He told lawmakers that he needs to get a better sense of how locals would be hit by the short-term costs before recommending whether to keep the 2045 goals or push some of those goals out to later years. In the meantime, he said, he’s following the state’s climate goals as laid out by law.
“Once I get that opportunity… then I can recommend to you what I would (support) based on getting to that green future that we want,” Sniffen said, “but also making sure that people can actually live here.”
“I mean, that’s where I want to get to.”
Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.