What Hawaiʻi should ask before building LNG infrastructure.

The Hawaiʻi State Energy Office’s Alternative Fuels, Repowering, and Energy Transition Study finds that imported LNG used in more efficient power plants could reduce lifecycle carbon intensity by roughly 38% to 44% compared with low-sulfur fuel oil. The study also describes uncertainty in fuel availability, costs, and lifecycle emissions, and says further engineering and regulatory work would be required.

That comparison should be stated fairly. A reduction relative to residual fuel oil is not the same as renewable generation or zero emissions. Hawaiʻi’s renewable-energy definition lists wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass, renewable hydrogen, and other named sources; LNG is not on that list and cannot itself satisfy the renewable portfolio standard.

The policy question is therefore narrower than a slogan: can a limited, temporary fossil-fuel option meet a defined reliability need at lower total customer risk than a portfolio of local renewable generation, storage, flexible demand, efficiency, and grid upgrades? The answer must come from a published comparison, not from a fuel-price assertion alone.

In July 2026, Hawaiian Electric described a Commission-supervised, competitive process for renewable energy, storage, and firm capacity. It also stated that any expanded Oʻahu firm-generation procurement should be evaluated transparently without predetermining the resource size or fuel requirement.

That is the right procedural baseline. A proposal for imported LNG should disclose the terminal, ship, generation conversion or construction, grid upgrades, financing, insurance, fuel supply, price-index, hedging, take-or-pay, decommissioning, and stranded-asset assumptions that will be borne by ratepayers.

A full-cost review should use high, central, and low fuel-price and availability cases; a credible renewable-fuel transition case; and a stated retirement or conversion obligation compatible with Hawaiʻi’s 2045 standard. If a proposal cannot survive those cases without shifting risk to customers, it should not receive cost recovery.

The International Energy Agency finds that LNG supply-chain emissions vary widely and that LNG generally has higher emissions than gas delivered by shorter pipelines because liquefaction and long-distance transport require substantial energy. Its assessment covers upstream production, processing, transmission, liquefaction, shipping, regasification, methane, flaring, carbon dioxide, and energy use.

A Hawaiʻi decision should therefore report lifecycle greenhouse gases using transparent 20-year and 100-year methane assumptions, source-specific data where available, and ranges rather than a single optimistic number. It should also report what is excluded, including combustion, distribution, or avoided-emissions assumptions, so the public can see where the comparison begins and ends.

A lifecycle test is not a substitute for a cost and reliability test. It is one required lens. The State should demand that every resource option, including storage, demand response, renewable fuels, and LNG, be evaluated against the same system need and the same disclosure rules.

PMF recommends that the Public Utilities Commission condition any LNG-related cost recovery on an independently reviewed all-resource portfolio comparison. The record should include system reliability need, total customer cost, lifecycle emissions, land and water impacts, fuel availability, public safety, alternatives, and a binding retirement or conversion plan.

The comparison should distinguish energy, capacity, grid-forming capability, reserves, black-start needs, transmission, and distribution constraints. A battery fleet can address some of these needs, but not all. An LNG plant can address some, but it also carries imported-fuel and asset-utilization risks. Clear definitions prevent one resource from being credited for services it cannot actually provide.

This recommendation does not pre-judge a procurement result. It sets a higher evidence standard for an irreversible, long-lived imported-fuel commitment than for a claim that a short-term fuel discount is enough to protect customers.