By Naoki Nitta for Grist.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Hawaii News Service reporting for the Grist-Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Like many homesteaders on the island of Molokaʻi, Kailana Place grew up off-grid, on 40 acres of family land designated for Native Hawaiians. Living in repurposed school buses surrounded by fields of red volcanic clay and kiawe trees "was a glamping lifestyle," joked the social worker and mother of three, a way of life powered by kerosene and propane.
Three years ago, those fuels sparked a devastating fire. Neighbors helped Place and her husband, Ikaika, build a new house with rooftop solar and a battery. Even now, the buzz of constant, reliable power has yet to wear off. Beyond ensuring continuous internet access and a freezer for fish and venison - most residents depend upon subsistence fishing, hunting, and farming - their asthmatic son no longer relies on a generator to power his inhaler. "It's unreal," said Ikaika Place. "My wife has never had a house where she could just switch on the lights."
It's been a radical change. When it comes to electricity, residents of Molokaʻi get by with as little as possible. Consumption rates on this rural island are the lowest in the Hawaiian Archipelago, and energy costs are the most expensive in the state, which pays the nation's highest price per watt. For the 7,300 or so residents, that often means forgoing the luxury of reliable power. In fact, the cost and challenges of accessing utilities prompt many to live off the grid altogether.
But locals have begun taking charge of their energy security. Four years ago, many of them came together to develop the Molokaʻi Community Energy Resilience Action Plan. The blueprint, backed by the state's primary utility, maps the island's transition from fossil fuels to renewables, largely through micro- and nanogrids of photovoltaic arrays with batteries. Beyond that, Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative Molokaʻi is establishing a subscription-based, collectively owned solar system, which eliminates the burden of buying expensive hardware and keeps funds invested locally. Two projects now underway are set to supply one-fifth of the island's electricity. Implementing this plan, touted as a national model for community-driven renewable energy planning, falls to a growing number of locals who have become certified technicians.
These goals align with the state's ambitious mandate to abandon fossil fuels, which provide 85 percent of Molokaʻi's power, by 2045. Rather than let regulators and policymakers shape their future, island residents, known for their resilience, independence, and activism, have taken charge. Hoʻāhu - Hawaiian for "to capture" or "collect" - is "a community effort to achieve energy equity" says Lori Buchanan, a founding board member of the co-op and Native Hawaiian community leader.
Native Hawaiians have a long history of oppression and colonization. American and European industrialists, along with missionary families, established the plantation economy in the early 1800s, displacing Indigenous peoples throughout the archipelago. With the backing of the U.S. government, they overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1893, depriving an internationally recognized nation of its right to political self-determination.
But even within this context, Molokaʻi has been uniquely exploited. Starting with early invasion by Native Hawaiians from larger islands, the Hawaiian legislature designated its northern reaches as a leper colony in 1865. The island has since been mined for sand to replenish Waikiki Beach and served as an open-field lab for GMO seed testing; 11 years ago, locals stopped a proposed state-backed wind farm intended to send power to Oʻahu via undersea cables, but the experience left the community ever-wary of outside interests.
When it comes to resource decisions, "we've [long] been what was eaten for dinner" rather than having a seat at the table, Buchanan said. For Native Hawaiians, who comprise 65 percent of Molokaʻi's population, in particular, energy sovereignty is central to self-determination. "We are taking control of our own destiny as a grassroots cooperative, as a people, as an island, to care for our own resources."
As one of the world's most remote places, Hawaiʻi relies heavily on imported oil and other fossil fuels, which results in exorbitant electricity rates, even as rising seas and intensifying storms place the archipelago on the front lines of climate change.
Accordingly, the state has fast-tracked its clean energy transition through comprehensive utility reforms, including a 2020 ban on coal and shuttering its last coal-fired plant. Solar panels dot the landscape and sprout from rooftops, bolstered by loans that help finance installations. Renewables account for one-third of the state's energy mix, though that figure is higher in places like Kauaʻi, where nearly 60 percent of the power is green.
On Molokaʻi, about 500 rooftop arrays generate 15 percent of the island's power, with the rest produced by Hawaiian Electric Company's diesel-powered plant. These two sources supply energy to 93 percent of residents; the remainder live off-grid with diesel generators and propane. Despite the appeal of cheap, reliable power, adoption of solar is often hampered by the high cost of buying and installing the equipment, and by the fact it isn't an option for renters or those who live in apartments, condos, and the like.
Community-based renewable energy, or CBRE, programs, are changing this dynamic. They offer monthly subscriptions, with no money down, to the power generated by solar arrays, bringing green energy to more people. Such programs "will be an integral part of Hawaiian Electric's overall clean energy planning and efforts," said Rebecca Dayhuff Matsushima, the utility's vice president of renewable procurement.
The state Public Utilities Commission, or PUC, launched a statewide push for these community-based approaches in 2020. When it sought utility-scale proposals from Hawaiian Electric and solar companies, residents of Molokaʻi insisted that they have a voice in the process and an opportunity to shape their green energy future.
"We wanted to create a high-level roadmap reflective of local values and needs," said Leilani Chow of Molokaʻi Clean Energy Hui, the volunteer organization that led the community planning process. ("Hui" is Hawaiian for "group.) Guided by local leaders and technical experts from the PUC and Hawaiian Electric, it spent two years facilitating nearly 3,000 community conversations, conducting hundreds of surveys, and organizing several focus groups.
The resulting Molokaʻi Community Energy Resilience Action Plan outlines a renewable power strategy that prioritizes equity, critical infrastructure, and disaster resilience. The state-approved plan identifies 10 projects, including residential and utility-scale micro- and nanogrids with enough battery capacity for water pumping stations, wastewater treatment plants and the hospital. It also calls for developing a local workforce to build and maintain these systems.
This endeavor helps counter Molokaʻi's stubborn "anti-development" reputation, said Chow, who is Native Hawaiian. Past utility development proposals "were so misaligned with what we need," she said. "This island isn't opposed to progress, but we have extremely high standards of aloha ʻaina - how we care for the land and for each other."
The Hoʻāhu cooperative emerged in 2020 alongside the community energy planning process, driven by a local desire to develop and own the resulting projects. The organization, led by a volunteer board, held nearly 40 public workshops to design the island's first two community microgrids. Those projects, backed by Hawaiian Electric and a Department of Energy grant, include a 250-kilowatt solar array atop a carport at the Kualapuʻu recreation center and a 2.2-megawatt array in Pālāʻau, on seven acres the utility owns alongside its power plant. Each features battery storage and will be integrated into the island's grid; together, they're expected to produce 20 percent of Molokaʻi's power supply - enough for 1,500 households.
Both will be owned by the cooperative, which individuals, businesses, government entities, and nonprofits are free to join. "Essentially, every subscriber will own a piece of the project and hold a stake in its success," said Christopher O'Brien, Hoʻāhu's executive director.
He estimates that subscriptions will shave at least 20 percent off residential electric bills, which currently average $450 a month. (About half of that amount pays a fee to operate and maintain the HECO grid, a surcharge that will remain.) However, the main benefit will be stable rates, O'Brien says, as power generation becomes independent of spiking oil prices.
The co-op is ensuring that the 100 or so off-grid homesteads benefit too. Building upon the prototype system powering the Place's home, it plans to roll out 15 nanogrids in the next year through a $300,000 grant from the federal Energy Storage for Social Equity Initiative, with additional funding expected for 45 more. These standalone solar and battery systems will be collectively owned and maintained through subscriptions that O'Brien said are "significantly less" than the $500 the Place family spent each month on propane and diesel fuel.
To further ensure energy sovereignty, the co-op is cultivating a workforce to build and maintain its solar infrastructure. Hoʻāhu provides free in-person and online courses through the Energy Department and Arizona State University to train installers, technicians, and sales representatives, with an advanced microgrid course that includes a week at the university's Laboratory for Energy And Power Solutions. More than 30 technicians have been certified in the past two years; graduates have come from fields like construction, retail, hospitality, and agriculture, and most have been homesteaders, O'Brien said, including a 73-year-old woman.
Since completing his certification last year, Kaʻohele Ritte-Camara has helped install several systems. He hopes to combine his agricultural background with his new skills to create a youth program that integrates renewables and food production. Clean energy aligns with the sustainable living practices that many homesteaders cherish, helping "keep us more rooted to the land," he says. "It's been transformative. I'm grateful to be part of this movement."
Given Molokaʻi's near-14 percent unemployment rate, clean tech jobs offer promising prospects in a fast-growing sector, especially for a Native population whose average household incomes fall more than 25 percent below the island median. But while workforce development programs can foster economic self-sufficiency, research suggests Native peoples often face limited advancement opportunities.
"Our end goal is an island workforce that can operate on all levels of the chain," O'Brien said, from individual technicians to full-service enterprises capable of building, maintaining, and marketing the systems. The cooperative has applied to the Apprenticeship Building America program, a $95 million pool of Labor Department grants to promote apprenticeship programs in energy and other fields, to continue fostering "a garden of different opportunities," he said.
Although the larger projects will initially require off-island contractors with utility-scale experience, Hoʻāhu will prioritize those that hire from within the community, and tighten stipulations as the local labor pipeline becomes more robust.
"Most decisions about our energy infrastructure are made in boardrooms of utilities or big companies, yet community expertise offers a perspective that outside entities don't conceive of," said Ali Andrews, head of Honolulu-based Shake Energy Collaborative, Hoʻāhu's development advisor. "The people who live there simply know their resources - sun and wind patterns, culturally sensitive sites, local labor dynamics - better."
Fueled by grit, aloha 'aina, and a quest for sovereignty, Molokaʻi's path to energy independence stands as an illuminating model of community-driven change, especially for other remote and rural locales. Still, the opportunity to forge it could have only happened there, said Chow.
"The PUC recognized that [traditional] approaches do not work at all on Molokaʻi," she says. "They didn't have much to lose by letting us do it our own way - but everything to gain."
Naoki Nitta wrote this article for Grist.
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As the end of October approaches, parts of Arizona are still grappling with relentless heat, which is why environmental advocates are congratulating Tempe leaders on the investments they've made to battle the effects of the climate crisis.
Paul Coseo, associate professor of landscape architecture, urban design and environmental design at Arizona State University, said this year Tempe and the Phoenix metro area experienced the hottest summer on record.
He added with prolonged, extreme heat comes diminished quality of life, risk of illness and even death. Last year, 645 people died in Maricopa County from heat.
"We work with our partners, like the City of Tempe and others. to identify the key research questions that need to be answered for more strategic climate adaptation," Coseo explained. "And also, I would say, faster."
Coseo said the university's federally funded Urban Nature Project has led to a regional approach in planting trees in strategic places, expanding shade where people need it the most and reducing what is known as urban heat island effect. The City of Tempe has a goal of reaching a 25% tree and shade canopy by 2040.
Tempe Mayor Corey Woods contends cities in Arizona, as well as across the nation, need to start designing cities with what he calls "intention" to address the climate crisis. He said federal dollars are helping Arizonans make weatherization upgrades to help lower utility bills, all while decreasing carbon emissions and protecting the environment.
Woods pointed out the city has been working on increasing the number of affordable housing units, but begs the question, "What is it worth if the city is unlivable?"
"We know that with the added risk of extreme heat, utility bills skyrocket," Woods acknowledged. "But we are going to do everything we can to protect our most vulnerable residents and, more importantly, make sure that they can stay in their own homes."
Tempe received an Inflation Reduction Act grant of almost $240,000 to weatherize mobile homes in three different parks throughout the city. Housing affordability is an issue Woods stressed must be tackled from all angles.
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By Michaela Haas for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
By any definition, Leah Garcés considered Craig Watts her enemy. As CEO and president of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals, Garcés has devoted her life to protecting animals. When she met Watts in the spring of 2014 at his poultry farm in North Carolina, he was one those factory farmers she deeply despised. In fact, she was so worried that his invitation to meet was an ambush that she gave her husband the address with the reminder, "If I don't come back, look for me rotting away in the chicken litter."
Watts had raised over 720,000 chickens in 22 years for Perdue, the fourth-largest chicken company in the US. He had been searching for ways to stay on the family land in one of North Carolina's poorest counties, and when Perdue offered him a contract to raise chickens, it sounded like a lucrative opportunity. He took out a $200,000 bank loan to build four giant chicken houses. But soon the chickens, crammed 25,000 wall-to-wall in the ammonia-laden air, started to become sick or died, and squeezed by Perdue's profit margins, Watts struggled to pay the bills.
To her surprise, Garcés realized that Watts was not her enemy, but an ally: Chicken farmers like him wanted to end chicken farming as much as she did. He described the enormous toll this kind of farming took on his physical and mental health. Yet because of his hefty loans, Watts saw no way out. "I realized he was trapped in a system I am advocating against," says Garcés. Their meeting in 2014 changed the trajectory of both their lives.
Together, they released footage from the horrors of chicken farming in the New York Times. In the first 24 hours, a million viewers saw the panting birds at Watts's farm living in their own excrements. Two years later, the whistleblower quit the chicken business for good and took a paid job for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, warning other farmers not to trust the promises of the chicken industry while still paying off his debt from the chicken houses.
A farmer at heart, Watts has now become one of the poster farmers for the Transfarmation Project, which Garcés founded as an offshoot of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals in 2019. "I remember standing in his barn and thinking, could we make it into a strawberry farm? Repurpose the land?" Garcés shares. Watts started small by installing a 300-square-foot shipping container in his large poultry house with a small grant from the Transfarmation Project and cultivating specialty mushrooms like shiitake. He told Garcés he wanted his new operation "as removed from the industrial model as it can be," while not abandoning farming: "It's part of me, in the blood. It's a calling. I like to watch things grow."
Garcés describes the story of how she helped Watts leave factory farming in her new book, Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us From Factory Farming.
As she details in the book and as Watts can attest, it is surprisingly difficult for contract farmers to abandon factory farming. More than 70 percent of poultry farmers live below the poverty line and have to pay off crushing loans. When given the option, an increasing number of farmers and their children want to quit factory farming. "Though we didn't advertise the Transfarmation Project, as soon as we rolled out the website, hundreds of farmers immediately contacted us," Garcés says. "We had no idea interest would be that high."
But collectively, the poultry farmers owe $5.2 billion. "As long as they have too much debt, they can't leave because their farm is at risk," says Garcés. "We can't override so much debt as a small nonprofit. There has to be government action, like it did with the tobacco industry."
The farmers need to find an alternative source of income that is healthier and more lucrative in order to keep their land. "It's a solutions-oriented project where we're rolling up our sleeves and testing what works," Garcés says. "Many times, when people are tackling systemic challenges, they write about either the problem or the solution. But a gulf is left in the middle: the complexity of how."
Garcés hired the consulting firm Highland Economics to analyze which crops are likely to succeed, ideally while using the large structures already built. Specialty mushrooms, including shiitake, oyster, reishi and lion's mane, top the list while microgreens came out second, followed by produce like tomatoes and hemp last. Two transformation hubs serve as a blueprint for other farmers to copy.
As a chicken farmer, Watts made $0.05 per pound of flesh. Now, he can get $6 per pound for shiitake mushrooms. The switch to mushrooms is a compelling exit strategy because mushrooms need a similar temperature, humidity and lighting. "But unlike the chickens, mushrooms can't suffer," Garcés points out. "They don't have to be killed and incinerated when things go wrong."
For Garcés, her mission is not just about the "80 billion land animals that die for people's palates in the most horrific conditions" every year worldwide, but also about climate change. "Collectively, farmed animals emit more greenhouse gases than the world's planes, trains and cars together," Garcés reasons. "A third of our precious arable land is used to grow feed for factory-farmed animals rather than food we humans could eat directly." Considering all this plus the considerable amounts of chemicals and logging of ecologically important habitats like rainforests, Garcés concludes, "industrial agriculture is one of the most destructive industries on our planet."
The suffering is not reserved for animals. The ammonia in chicken waste harms farmers and ecosystems. "Agricultural work is some of the most dangerous work in the country," Garcés knows. Suicide and depression rates are 60 times higher for male farmers than for the average male American, and she recounts with sadness the suicide of a Texas farmer she was trying to help, Bo Halley. With failing physical and mental health after decades of poultry farming, he did not live to see the transformation of his family farm into a hemp farm and dog rescue.
Duped by ads of happy cartoon chicken, consumers love their cheap chicken, with an average of 182 million chickens slaughtered every week in the US. "The typical American still believes their meat is raised on a family farm," Garcés says, "though the data clearly shows that 97 percent of chicken come from factories." While 90 percent of farmed animals are chickens, the situation presents similar challenges for hog and dairy farmers. Living near hog farms shortens the lives of farmers and neighbors. "When it comes to the meat, dairy and eggs we eat, the price at the grocery store or restaurant is never a fair reflection of the true cost," Garcés points out. "In factory farming, risks and liability are mostly externalized by the industry, and most often to the most vulnerable among us. This damage, this harm, is borne by many - from the workers to the animals to the farmers."
Ultimately, Garcés's vision is not just "helping a few dozen farmers transition to a healthier and more sustainable model, it is about how we transition away entirely from factory farming." The Transfarmation Project connects farmers with consultants and is producing resources and pilots to model successful transitions.
In the same warehouse where Watts once had to kill chickens and where he and Garcés filmed the whistleblower video, he is now harvesting mushrooms. In front of rows of corn, squash and okra he planted on his land, Watts describes how much happier he feels now.
He has named his mushroom farm "Victors' Village Farms" after the Victors' Village in The Hunger Games. He told Leah Garcés that "leaving contract poultry on my own terms was like winning The Hunger Games." But a victor is "a triumphant decider of his fate."
Michaela Haas wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.
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