This story was originally published by Capital & Main.
Alert visitors flying into Honolulu’s international airport might spot row after row of suburban rooftops covered with twinkling solar panels. Once they disembark, they can hail an electric vehicle plied by an Uber driver. Traversing the town’s west side, they can ogle the elevated Skyline, Hawaiʻi’s controversial electric-powered light rail.
It marks a sharp contrast to what they can see to the southeast: tankers floating in azure waters that deliver more than a billion gallons of crude oil annually at an offshore terminal.
This island — like so many others in the Pacific Ocean — is on the front lines of climate change. But unlike most others, it is carving out a place at the vanguard of a renewable energy revolution by leading the decarbonization of what has long been the most oil-dependent U.S. state.
In 2015, state legislators became the first in the nation to require electric utilities to gen... Read more
