Climate Adaptation

Sustainable Development and the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative: An Economic Assessment

March 8, 2013

The connection between the emerging field of sustainability science and the economics of sustainable development has motivated a line of interdisciplinary research inspired by the notion of “positive sustainability.” This notion is founded on three principles or pillars: (1) adopting a complex systems approach to modeling and analysis, integrating natural resource systems, the environment, and […]

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Hawaii’s Proposed 400MW Wind Energy Project Explained

November 1, 2012

HOW WILL THE PROPOSED 400 MW WIND ENERGY PROJECT CONTRIBUTE TO THE STATE’S RENEWABLE ENERGY GOALS? Hawaii has one of the most stringent Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)* policies in the country as well as the highest electricity rates due to dependence on oil for electricity generation (Coffman et al., 2012). As such, renewable energy technologies […]

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An Assessment Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions-Weighted Clean Energy Standards

April 16, 2012

Published in the journal Energy Policy, this paper quantifies the relative cost-savings of utilizing a greenhouse gas emissions-weighted Clean Energy Standard (CES) in comparison to a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Using a bottom-up electricity sector model for Hawaii, this paper demonstrates that a policy that gives “clean energy” credit to electricity technologies based on their […]

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