Land

Land in Hawaii is limited and some renewable energy sources require a lot of it. Also, most renewable energy projects must be located where the renewable energy source (wind, geothermal, solar, etc.) is located. This may be in a remote area away from existing power lines where new substations and transmission lines must be built to get power to the grid. That leads to higher costs.

With increasing residential and commercial development on our islands, especially Oahu, it is hard to find “remote,” less populated space for energy projects like wind farms that have a high profile and visibility.

Efforts to locate a wind farm on the ridges above the Kahe power plant in Leeward Oahu were blocked, in part, by residents who did not want to see a wind farm on the hills near their homes.

Estimated acres needed for generation facilities to produce one megawatt of electricity:

** Acres for biomass are based on utilizing crops that are dedicated to biomass-to-energy conversion plants (i.e., crops like eucalyptus trees that are grown and harvested exclusively for electrical energy production).

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