Life of the Land is Hawai`i’s own energy, environmental and community action group advocating for the people and `aina for 47 years. Our mission is to preserve and protect the life of the land through sound energy and land use policies and to promote open government through research, education, advocacy and, when necessary, litigation.
The role of energy cannot be understated. Both internationally, and in Hawai`i, expenditures on energy account for more than ten percent of all money spent. Energy drives commerce, industry, transportation, and schools. Energy costs are the major financial input for agriculture and moving water.
Life of the Land firmly believes that too often problems are examined using silo mentality. Artificial man-made constructs and boundaries are imposed that fail to provide a realistic picture.
Every energy project has positive and negative economic, environmental, social, cultural, geographic, taxpayer and ratepayer impacts. Every energy project has primary impacts, secondary impacts, cumulative impacts, life cycle impacts, externalities and unintended side-effects.
Life of the Land played key roles in numerous Hawai`i energy struggles:
- Preventing importation of rain forest palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia
- Convincing HECO that climate change is real and caused by fossil fuel use
- Stopping the Big Wind / Interisland Cable Project
- Increasing awareness that the Gas Company is importing fracked LNG
- Halting the proposed Aina Koa Pono microwaved biofuel project in Pahala
- Increasing the number of intervenors in PUC dockets
- Raising health issues associated with geothermal and wind projects
- Protecting O`ahu North Shore from floating wind generation facilities
- Promoting Distributed Energy & Rooftop Solar
- Increasing access to PUC documents
- Promoting transparency in energy proceedings
- Establishing the first web-based site for PUC decisions
- Encouraging the use of electronic filings rather than increasing climate change by mowing down trees
- Raising cyber security issues
- Educating the public on energy issues through a series of community meetings
- Stopping the proposed Wa`ahila-Ridge 138-kV Transmission Line
- Educating on the true costs and impacts of undergrounding electric lines
- Advancing Net Energy Metering
- Publishing the first editable version of the HCEI Energy Agreement
- Opposing secret, automatic approval, and permit-exempted energy projects
- Being the first group to raise climate change issues at the PUC
- Being the first group to raise environmental justice issues at the PUC
- Winning a Hawai`i Supreme Court case: HECO can`t force ratepayers to pay for ads to encouraging the use of electricity
- Intervening in a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) docket opposing a wind generation facility in the Moloka`i Channel
- Promoting Pumped Storage Hydro
- Promoting Distributed Energy Storage Systems
- Stopping the proposed HECO-NextEra merger
- Protecting rural areas from urbanites who want to dump projects “out there”
- Questioning the use of genetically engineered algae for biofuel
- Writing the Energy Chapter in “The Value of Hawaii: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future,” ed. by Craig Howes; Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio. Published for the Biographical Research Center, University of Hawai‘i (July 2010)
- Writing Life of the Land’s “Energy Independence for Hawai`i (2030): An Integrated Approach to Economic Revitalization in a Culturally and Environmentally Sensitive Way” (2011) (234 pages)
- Writing “Wayfinding: Navigating Hawaii’s Energy Future” which focused on a 100% Renewable, Distributed Generation approach (2012)