HONOLULU (KHON2) — Decarbonizing Hawaii’s transportation by 2045 is a bold proposed plan from the Hawaii Department of Transportation, but there are concerns over how certain strategies could impact the cost of living for local residents.
The plan is over 200 pages long and lists strategies to reach net-negative emissions in the Islands by 2045 — overhauling Hawaii transportation by ground, air and sea.
House Transportation Committee chair Darius Kila supports the vision, but has concerns about who will pay the cost.
“But when you’re also asking other industries that we don’t have control over, such as our aviation or our maritime partners, to decarbonize or reduce their waste and fuel consumption,” Rep. Kila said. “Companies always comply because they’re going to pass the cost off to consumers. And here in Hawai’i, we feel every pinch when it’s touched just by a penny.”
Converting public transit to all-electric and increasing access to biking and walking paths are a few strategies to reduce fuel consumption, but there are more challenging proposals like setting clean standards for airlines and reducing cruise ship operations.
“That being said, we’re not telling cruise ships don’t come, but we’re telling them if you come, we’ve got to look at investing in clean, cleaner technologies with the ships that you have,” said HDOT director Ed Sniffen.
Sniffen said he is optimistic about investing in cleaner fuels across all modes of transportation, though there are some financial and economic implications that need to be figured out before going completely green.
“We all know that in the long term, when we get to a more sustainable community with more alternative fuels, in general, power should be cheaper. But in the short term, there’s going to be additional costs. So, we want to make sure that we balance out those potential costs with the long-term goals,” Sniffen said.
Rep. Kila pointed out that it is going to take a lot of work to produce the infrastructure needed on a statewide scale while not increasing the price of paradise.
“Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of mandates that are being set forth in the plan for us as a state to adopt all EV vehicle usage, for our counties to do the same thing. And I think it’s great when we can lead the way on certain things, but just as we know, some of these technologies aren’t there,” Rep. Kila said.
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Residents can weigh in during a public comment period with the DOT. There will be three virtual sessions, and the first starts at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, July 15. Click here for more information.