THE DOCKET · PMF-26-002 · Apr 2026 · Hawaiʻi State Legislature
Fast Renewable Energy Permitting
One permit, one docket, one year. Consolidates county, state, and utility review for solar, storage, geothermal, and district thermal under 20 MW — with a single hearing and a statutory clock.
The brief
A 20 MW project in Hawaiʻi today collects permits the way a ship collects barnacles: county land use, state land board, utility study, historic review, each on its own calendar, each able to restart the others. The delay is not deliberation — it is the absence of a single docket.
PMF-26-002 consolidates county, state, and utility review for solar, storage, geothermal, and district thermal under 20 MW into one proceeding with one evidentiary record and one public hearing. Every agency files into the same docket on the same clock; none can reset it.
The statutory clock is one year from complete application to final decision. Projects on previously disturbed land — rooftops, brownfields, lava rock — ride an accelerated six-month track. The bill sits in committee with a hearing scheduled for September 2026.