Honua Ola Bioenergy on Tuesday filed an objection to an order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth J. Mansfield denying its request to add three subsidiaries of Hawaiian Electric Industries as defendants in an ongoing lawsuit.
Honua Ola, formerly known as Hu Honua Bioenergy, was given permission by the U.S. District Court in Honolulu to file by April 23 a third amended complaint in its longstanding lawsuit against Hawaiian Electric, but was denied permission to add Pacific Current, Hamakua Holdings and Hamakua Energy as named defendants.
The judge’s order also denies Honua Ola’s request to claim injury under sections of U.S. antitrust law by HECO’s acquisition of Hamakua Energy — the former Hamakua Energy Partners powerplant, a 60-megawatt facility.
“(Honua Ola) … asked the District Court to override an initial ruling by a magistrate judge that gives Hawaiian Electric carte blanche to engage in monopolistic conduct — conduct that has already inflicted serious harm on Hawaii Island by reducing power generation to the point of repeated blackouts,” Daniel Swanson, a Los Angeles attorney representing Honua Ola, said in a statement. “Hawaii Island’s residents should no longer be forced to endure an ongoing electricity crisis caused by Hawaiian Electric’s anti-competitive behavior. As (Honua Ola) recently pointed out in a letter to the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, (Honua Ola’s) renewable biomass plant is the solution to resolving this crisis. We look forward to the District Court’s review of the erroneous initial ruling.”
Warren Lee, president of Honua Ola, wrote an April 1 letter to the PUC, saying the island is in “the grips of an energy crisis” and urging commissioners to immediately allow Honua Ola to go online.
The objection by Honua Ola stops the clock on the April 23 deadline for its lawyers to file a new amended complaint until the court rules on the objection itself.
Honua Ola is seeking more than $1 billion in damages from HECO, claiming in federal court the electric utility has used monopolistic measures to keep Honua Ola’s completed but idle biomass power plant from going online.
Honua Ola filed a motion in November 2023 in U.S. District Court, asking that its 2016 civil suit against HECO be reopened to consider antitrust claims Honua Ola says it has discovered since the lawsuit was originally filed.
A tentative settlement of that suit was reached in 2017, and the litigation was closed by the court in 2019.
In March 2023, the state Supreme Court voted 5-0 to reject Honua Ola’s appeal of the Public Utilities Commission’s denial of the company’s power purchase agreement with Hawaiian Electric. The high court concurred with the PUC that the high cost of electricity and greenhouse gas emissions from the wood-burning power plant weren’t in the public’s interest.
The 21.5-megawatt plant in Pepeekeo was financed by a group of wealthy mainland investors led by Jennifer Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Resources — parent company of Franklin Templeton Investments — an American multinational holding company with a reported $1.53 trillion in assets.
Honua Ola estimated that over the 30-year term of an energy contract with Hawaiian Electric, its electricity would be supplied at an average of 22 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s considerably higher than estimates of recently approved solar contracts, with projected costs of 8 cents to 9 cents per kilowatt hour.
There have been public notices by HECO since March 25 asking utility customers to save energy. Hamakua Energy said shortly thereafter that its facility, which supplies about a third of the Big Island’s 180-megawatt peak demand, was offline due to “mechanical issues with our generators.”
Hamakua Energy and other facilities producing another 62 megawatts were offline last Sunday when HECO instituted rolling blackouts affecting more than 21,000 customers islandwide.
On Monday, three state lawmakers wrote the PUC calling for an investigation of HECO, noting the 21,000 affected by the rolling blackouts on the Big Island and another 13,000 on Oahu who lost power last Sunday night.
“The lack of reliability due to insufficient energy generation, HECO’s aging equipment, unreliable oil-fired power generation, and immediate and long-term solutions should be investigated,” the letter by Sens. Glenn Wakai, Jarrett Keohokalole and Lynn De Coite, all Democrats, stated.
On Wednesday, HECO again advised Big Island customers to conserve energy to avoid outages that evening. Because of abundant wind energy, Sunday’s outages were the first time HECO has had to initiate rolling blackouts once since March 25, when Hamakua Energy first went dark.
HECO has said a lack of power will be a problem until the end of April, when one of the offline generators will return to service after an overhaul.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.