Hawaiʻi is known for having some of the nation’s cleanest air, but certain parts of the state experience haze that can affect tourism and public health.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently halted a long-standing initiative aimed at enhancing visibility and decreasing man-made pollutants, including fine particulates.
On May 15, the agency revealed its partial rejection of Hawaiʻi’s 2024 Regional Haze State Implementation Plan, a comprehensive proposal outlining the state’s strategy to adhere to the federal Clean Air Act. This plan specifically targets reducing haze in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island and Haleakalā National Park on Maui.
These parks are designated as Class I areas under the Clean Air Act, granting them the highest level of air quality protection by law.
While some elements of the haze plan remain, the EPA has discarded the core strategy: a long-term plan to close at least two of Hawaiian Electric Co.’s oil-fired power units at the Kanoelehua-Hill and Kahului plants by 2028. These units, including the Kahului plant commissioned in 1948, are among the oldest in the industry.
The agency labeled these closures as “unconsented,” indicating they might jeopardize Hawaiʻi’s power grid reliability and infringe upon the U.S. Constitution’s Takings Clause, which prohibits taking private property without fair compensation, as stated in their press release.
This decision is not unprecedented for the EPA; a similar plan involving a coal plant closure was rejected in Colorado. However, this is one of the first such decisions affecting Hawaiʻi under the current EPA, aligned with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s plan to implement President Donald Trump’s executive orders promoting “energy dominance.”
“This is one of the biggest bombs to drop in Hawaiʻi so far from the EPA,” said Isaac Moriwake, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s mid-Pacific office, to Civil Beat.
Earthjustice, partnered with nine other national environmental advocacy groups, including the National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity, plans to respond to this decision, arguing it will worsen air quality in the parks and harm local communities.
Mike DeCaprio, HECO’s vice president of power supply, characterized the situation as a trade-off. He mentioned that the company still intends to retire the old plants, but additional biofuel plants, solar farms, and battery storage need to be operational first.
“We felt that having a contingency to run these units longer if needed was in our interest, and in our customers’ interest, so that we don’t end up in a grid reliability issue,” DeCaprio stated.
He added, “Reliability on an island grid is a really tough issue, right? They’re very small grids. With size comes stability, and they don’t have size. Making sure that the lights stay on is the most important part.”
Regulation or ‘total regulatory taking’?
In a comprehensive 67-page comment on an earlier draft of the EPA’s decision, environmental advocates accused HECO of leveraging the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda.
They argued that the Clean Air Act already allows for contingency plans if renewable energy isn’t forthcoming. They also noted that HECO had previously agreed to retire three of its oldest units after the health department requested a plan to enhance air quality technology.
“HECO was the one coming to the Department of Health and saying, ‘Hey, we will commit to shutting down these plants in lieu of having to spend all kinds of money, which the ratepayers are going to pay for at the end of the day, to upgrade these plants to try to clean them up. It’s cheaper, it’s more reliable, it’s more affordable for our ratepayers to just shut them down,’” Moriwake explained.
Last August, Karin Kimura, HECO’s director of the environmental division, sent a letter to the EPA’s regional administrator, stating the company had been “forced under the SIP to accept enforceable retirement deadlines.”
Kimura mentioned that the retirement deadlines were no longer feasible due to “actual or potential cancellations and delays” of renewable energy projects that were meant to replace the power plants. These projects faced delays due to permitting issues, tax incentive changes, and supply chain adjustments, she noted.
“Following this notification, Hawaii … needed to provide assurances that EPA’s approval of the unconsented source closure would not amount to a taking without just compensation under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the EPA press office stated to Civil Beat in an email. “Hawaii did not provide such assurances, and EPA was therefore required to partially disapprove the state’s long-term strategy.”
The haze plan was managed by the Department of Health, but HECO sent the letter without involving the department.
The health department did not respond to Civil Beat’s request for comment, but highlighted this omission in its own letter to the EPA in April, after realizing the EPA was considering HECO’s request to drop the plan. Kenneth Fink, the state’s health director, criticized the EPA’s response for being “not consistent with the purpose of Clean Air Act Section 169A” and conflicting with previous EPA guidance for such plans.
Moriwake noted that HECO has already indicated it will raise rates to compensate for the plant closures.
“HECO has a pending request right now,” he said. “It’s sitting in front of the PUC to increase customer rates by $45 million a year for this purpose.”
Jeff Mikulina, executive director of Climate Hawai‘i, acknowledged that renewable energy in Hawaiʻi faces challenges, largely due to tariffs imposed during the Trump administration and reductions in federal support and tax credits. Nonetheless, he remains optimistic about Hawaiʻi’s leadership in renewables, particularly noting progress on Kauaʻi, where local lawmakers recently approved two new solar-and-storage projects aiming for 90 percent renewable energy by 2030.
“It’s important to look at the long-term signal as opposed to the near-term noise, and that long-term signal tells us that this technology is getting cheaper by the day, particularly energy storage, which is really that secret sauce that’s going to allow us to achieve our 100 percent renewable energy future.”
According to an EPA email, the agency is “committed to working with the state of Hawaii to revise the SIP, in order to both follow the law and achieve clean air for all in the state.”
However, the legal justification for stepping back from a strict haze rule raises concerns among environmental advocates. The federal agency argued that the haze plan imposed unfair restrictions on HECO’s use of its private property, describing it as “a total regulatory taking.”
“By asserting that the retirement deadlines in the 2024 SIP are now ‘forced,’ EPA opens a massive loophole in the Act’s requirements, allowing facilities to entirely evade compliance with the Regional Haze Program,” the environmental groups wrote in April. They expressed concern that the agency might dismantle other parts of the Clean Air Act, like the National Ambient Air Quality Standards Program.
“They are signaling that they want to overhaul this entire regulatory scheme,” Moriwake remarked.
Not to be confused with vog
When Kīlauea volcano erupts, vog — a type of volcanic smog — releases sulfur dioxide and fine particulates into the air, especially on the southern side of Hawaiʻi island. The Hawaiʻi Department of Health warns that even brief exposure can lead to respiratory issues such as shortness of breath and chest tightness.
Industrial facilities and power plants, including the Mauna Loa processing facility mentioned in the state’s 2024 SIP, also release sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which can exacerbate heart and lung conditions.
Determining the contribution of these natural and human-made emissions to regional air quality involves complex and evolving mathematical calculations. Previous EPA administrations employed specific tools to assess “natural visibility conditions” while factoring in episodic volcanic events.
However, when the current EPA proposed its disapproval of the haze rule in February, it claimed that no adequate methodology exists to fully exclude volcanic impacts and isolate the visibility impairment caused by human activities.
Environmental groups disagree with this assertion, deeming it “arbitrary and capricious” in their comments.
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.
