UH Mānoa is particularly strong in energy, environment and resource policy, which often requires interdisciplinary research. This workshop is organized by UHERO and facilitates interaction among faculty and graduate students in UHERO, Economics, Engineering, NREM, DURP, SOEST and more. We also hope to draw participation from visitors and professional economists and policy analysts around the State. Work in progress is strongly encouraged!
Seminars will take place at the Miller Room. The seminar can also be attended online via Zoom on Mondays from 12:00pm – 1:15pm. Subscribe to the WEER mailing list to receive the Zoom link and further information on upcoming sessions.
Class Credit:
Graduate students can obtain ECON 696 credit from Professor Roberts.
Fall 2026
Research presented at WEER seminars is preliminary with the intention of stimulating discussion and critical comment. The findings and recommendations are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or official positions of UHERO, the University of Hawai’i, or any funding or supporting organization.
For graduate students taking the seminar for course credit. Discussing logistics for the seminar.
Hawaiʻi’s Electricity Future: Solar Reform, Enhanced Geothermal, and the JERA LNG Proposal
Abstract:
Oʻahu pays the nation’s highest electricity prices while three costly commitments sit before its regulators: a $2 billion LNG plant and import terminal proposed by JERA, the approved repowering of the Waiau oil plant, and a stalled utility-solar program. Using an open capacity-expansion model of the island grid, we solve more than 500 scenarios for 2027–2050 — spanning oil prices, solar and capital costs, land rules, and rooftop-adoption paths — with hourly operations and reliability enforced. No proposed fuel plant pays for itself on any defensible price path; the proposals add $0.4–3.1 billion to system cost. The robust least-cost system pairs utility-scale solar and storage with the existing fleet, plus about 100 MW of enhanced geothermal. If LNG imports proceed, converting existing plants beats new construction — though measured methane leakage erases LNG’s greenhouse advantage. The binding constraints are rules, not resources: land-use restrictions, procurement design, and rooftop compensation. All data, code, and results are public.
No Seminar
Ownership and Electricity Prices under Regulation: Evidence from Hawaiʻi
Abstract:
On November 1, 2002, Kauaʻi’s electric utility changed from investor-owned to cooperative ownership. I examine how this change affected retail electricity prices using a panel of Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi’s three other vertically integrated electric utilities, which remained investor-owned. Difference-in-differences and synthetic-control comparisons estimate Kauaʻi’s price trajectory under continued investor ownership. Comparisons of fuel and purchased-power costs, generation, procurement, and financing help explain the subsequent price differences. Estimated effects are small or sensitive to specification during the earlier post-conversion years, but Kauaʻi’s prices fall substantially below the estimated counterfactual beginning in the mid-2010s. Across two main specifications, average prices in 2025 are an estimated 9.5–12.2 cents per kWh lower, measured in 2024 dollars—approximately 21–25 percent below the counterfactual. The divergence coincides with Kauaʻi’s expansion of renewable generation and reduced reliance on oil. The findings are consistent with cooperative ownership changing incentives for investment and procurement, although attributing the price difference to ownership requires distinguishing these decisions from other island-specific changes.
Slow Violence of Waste: Evidence from Chinese Environmental Policy in Waste Trade
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, China has been the largest importer of waste in the world. However, in 2018, China changed its policy to prohibit the import of plastic, paper, and textile waste. This policy change raises the question about where the waste will go now. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I analyze the effects of the 2018 Chinese policy change on global waste exports and re-exports. The evidence suggests that the policy has a positive impact on both the extensive margin (probability of waste export) and the intensive margin (quantity of waste export), particularly with substantial effects on the intensive margin of exports and re-exports to upper-middle-income countries and the East Asian & Pacific regions. I also uncover evidence of pollution haven effects, indicating that waste is exported to countries with lax environmental regulations, potentially affecting residents in those regions.
The Environmental Costs and Geography of U.S. Data Center Expansion
Abstract: (View PDF)
Data centers powering artificial intelligence are growing rapidly across the United States, raising concerns among policymakers and local communities about their environmental and social costs. These costs depend on where data centers locate, and strategic siting has been proposed as a way to limit them. Using a comprehensive facility-level dataset of past, operational, and announced U.S. data centers, we characterize how the environmental and community characteristics of data center locations evolve over 2010–2030. We quantify how much of the projected growth in environmental damages can be attributed to changes in data center locations versus growth in power requirements. Decomposing projected carbon emissions and monetized local air pollution damages into scale and location-driven composition effects, we find that over 2010–2025, composition changes reduced carbon and local air pollution damages by 4 and 12% respectively. Over 2024–2030, scale accounts for approximately 97% of projected pollution growth, with composition changes contributing around 3%. We further find that data centers consistently locate in less densely populated areas, with planned facilities entering census tracts roughly five times less dense than tracts without data centers. Contrary to patterns documented for other disamenities, data centers are not systematically located in lower-income, higher-poverty, or higher non-White-share communities. Our results imply that policies nudging the location of data centers would do little to mitigate their aggregate environmental footprint, which is governed instead by the scale of buildout, and that permitting and community negotiations over siting will increasingly concentrate in the nation’s least population dense communities.
Commodity Prices and Volatility in Response to Anticipated Climate Change
Abstract:
Climate change is projected to make crop yields more volatile, raising concerns about global food price stability, yet higher storage levels have the potential to buffer against this volatility. We extend the standard competitive storage model in two ways. First, we relax the canonical assumption of i.i.d. weather-induced yield shocks. Under a changing climate, rational market participants should anticipate that the yield distribution itself is evolving over time. Second, we allow for a supply response to long-term price movements. We project that average global yields fall 10% by 2100 while their coefficient of variation rises 37%. Market-driven storage adaptation absorbs much of the resulting risk: storage levels increase by 150%, dampening price fluctuations through intertemporal arbitrage. Even so, price volatility rises by 75% and large price spikes become roughly 50% more frequent. Absent storage adaptation, price volatility would double and large spikes would be three times more frequent. The results underscore the importance of storage infrastructure and global market integration in buffering food systems against climate-induced production risk.
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