High court to hear Hu Honua Bioenergy LLC's appeal

Dave Segal, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Apr. 14—Hu Honua Bioenergy LLC's appeal to the Hawaii Supreme Court to allow the company's wood-­burning plant to begin operating on the Hamakua Coast will be heard on April 22 in oral arguments.

The case will be held remotely starting at 2 p.m. and livestreamed for public viewing via the Judiciary's YouTube channel at YouTube.com /hawaiicourts. The case is No. SCOT-20-0000569.

This will be the second time that the case has gone before the Supreme Court.

Hu Honua, which does business as Honua Ola Bioenergy, filed a petition with the Supreme Court in September after the state Public Utilities Commission rejected the renewable energy project in Pepeekeo for the second time in two months after previously approving it.

A legal challenge in 2017 by the environmental group Life of the Land landed the project for the first time at the Supreme Court. The court ordered the PUC in 2019 to reconsider the power purchase agreement and hold an evidentiary hearing because the agency failed to "explicitly consider " the state's goal of reducing greenhouse gases, which is required under state law.

The PUC interpreted the Supreme Court's order as nullifying the waiver and reexamined the case. On July 9 the PUC issued an order reversing its previous decision by denying Hawaii Electric Light Co.'s request to waive competitive bidding. The PUC said that long-term impacts of a 30-year contract would make the energy more expensive than other renewable ­-energy sources and that the public interest would be best served by requiring the project to be evaluated alongside other renewable-­energy proposals. Since the PUC rejected the waiver, it declined to hold an evidentiary hearing.

Hu Honua filed a motion with the PUC for reconsideration, but the agency upheld its order and said the arguments by the company didn't meet the legal requirements for reconsideration. Hu Honua argued that the PUC misinterpreted the instructions from the Supreme Court and shouldn't have nullified its previous decision to grant the waiver and should have held an evidentiary hearing.