January, 29 2013, 03:15pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Isaac Moriwake, Earthjustice, (808) 599-2436, ext. 6613
Tim Lindl, IREC, (510) 314-8385
Breakthrough For Hawaiian Solar Power Announced By Clean Energy Groups
Barriers should come down for homeowners, businesses wanting to add rooftop solar
WASHINGTON
Today, national organizations Earthjustice and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Inc. (IREC) commended the Hawaiian Electric (HECO) utilities' path-breaking plans to enable more rooftop solar systems to connect to the grid. The utilities and clean energy stakeholders laid out a new and innovative "Proactive Approach" to planning for rooftop solar growth as part of a multi-party working group convened by the Hawai`i Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which just concluded its deliberations last week.
HECO will take the initiative to determine how continued growth in rooftop solar may affect the utility circuits, and how the grid needs to be upgraded to enable further expansion. This should ease the way for Hawai`i homes and businesses to install more rooftop solar. It also offers a model for other utilities across the country to follow as the levels of renewable energy increase on their grids.
"This proactive approach to distributed solar is the next evolutionary step toward transforming the grid to enable homes and businesses to produce their own clean power," said Earthjustice attorney Isaac Moriwake, who represented the Hawai`i Solar Energy Association in working with HECO, Hawai`i PV Coalition, IREC, and others to develop the recommendation. "This wave is already happening, and it's in the utilities' best interests proactively to move into the future."
"HECO's proposed proactive approach puts Hawai`i on the cutting edge of accommodating high levels of solar energy on the utility grid," said IREC's attorney Tim Lindl. "Few, if any, utilities in the country have taken such a progressive stance on this issue, and this program will position Hawai`i as the nation's leader in the integration of small-scale solar resources."
Utilities nationwide traditionally take an unwelcoming approach to connecting rooftop solar and other on-site generation. They apply conservative blanket limits on renewable energy fed into local circuits (generally 15 percent of peak load), beyond which they may require a customer wanting to install solar panels to pay for a costly and time-consuming study of the potential impacts on their circuits.
As Hawai`i reaches higher levels of rooftop solar, this has led to logjams of studies that burden the utilities while stalling or blocking new rooftop hookups. The Hawai`i utilities' new proactive approach aims to get ahead of such holdups, by having the utility independently track and plan for rooftop solar growth so that when a customer asks to hook up a system, the utility can be ready.
Hawai`i is seeing a boom in rooftop solar, with year-over-year growth over the last several years. In March 2010, HECO reacted to this rapid upsurge by proposing a moratorium on distributed installations on the neighbor islands, which it quickly retracted in response to public outcry. Since then, the penetration of rooftop solar has risen further with no apparent ill effects, and HECO has raised the circuit penetration limit repeatedly to accommodate more customer installations.
In October 2012, HECO again raised the limit to 75 percent of minimum load (which roughly translates to 23 percent of peak) for certain smaller systems. California utilities raised their limit last year to 100 percent of minimum load, which HECO is looking to adopt in the coming months.
This proactive approach, in essence, aims to move beyond arbitrary limits, toward a grid that is planned to fully incorporate rooftop solar and other green energy. The plan filed with the PUC outlines a timetable to implement the proactive approach that continues to 2015.
"While building a clean energy economy won't happen overnight, we have little time to lose," said Moriwake. "We hope this new future-facing approach will provide a roadmap for other utilities to become more rooftop solar friendly."
"Hawai`i is a national trendsetter for renewable energy, and timely and efficient implementation is going to be key for this proactive approach to succeed," said Lindl. "We will continue to track its progress to help keep up the momentum."
Procedural Background:
The proactive approach recommendation was developed in a multi-party process called the Reliability Standards Working Group (RSWG), involving utilities, state agencies, and clean energy groups. The PUC convened the RSWG in September 2011 at HECO's suggestion to deal with reliability concerns arising from increasing levels of renewable energy entering the HECO grids.
At the PUC's direction, the RSWG formally concluded its work this month by submitting an array of recommendations and reports, which included the proactive approach recommendation. Other recommendations included proposed further refinements to the utility rules and practices relating to rooftop solar and other distributed generation, and a set of transparent reliability standards for the operation and planning of the utility grid.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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US- and Israel-Backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Must Be Shut Down, Say 165+ Charities
Distribution points run by the group, warns the NGO coalition, "have become sites of repeated massacres in blatant disregard for international humanitarian law."
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More than 165 nongovernmental organizations on Tuesday issued a joint call to shut down the "deadly Israeli distribution scheme" for humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip, return to relief efforts coordinated by the United Nations, and end Israel's blockade on aid and commercial supplies into the destroyed Palestinian enclave.
The U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operations in late May, over widespread objections. As the joint statement explains, "The 400 aid distribution points operating during the temporary cease-fire across Gaza have now been replaced by just four military-controlled distribution sites, forcing 2 million people into overcrowded, militarized zones where they face daily gunfire and mass casualties while trying to access food and are denied other lifesaving supplies."
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Today, over 130 NGOs have called for the restoration of unified, UN-led aid coordination and distribution in #Gaza based on international humanitarian law, inclusive of UNRWA.👉 www.oxfam.org/en/press-rel...@oxfaminternational.bsky.social @nrc-global.bsky.social @savechildrenintl.bsky.social
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— UNRWA (@unrwa.org) July 1, 2025 at 7:53 AM
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The organizations also stressed that "experienced humanitarian actors remain ready to deliver lifesaving assistance at scale."
In addition to calling on other countries to "uphold their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law," and to "reject the false choice between deadly, military-controlled food distributions and total denial of aid," the groups reiterated their demands for "an immediate and sustained cease-fire, the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained prisoners, full humanitarian access at scale, and an end to the pervasive impunity that enables these atrocities and denies Palestinians their basic dignity."
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"The proposal aims to incentivize and guide different countries to join the initiative and address policy, administrative, and data deficiencies, ensuring that high-net-worth individuals are taxed more efficiently in line with their wealth," the Spanish government explained. "To achieve this, it is necessary to foster international cooperation in multilateral forums to promote and facilitate the implementation of evidence-based reforms and ongoing experiences regarding the taxation of large fortunes in different countries."
The plan—crafted by the governments of Spain and Brazil and presented at the United Nations' Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development being held in the Spanish city of Seville—was quickly praised by an assortment of international nonprofit organizations as an essential tool for tackling global wealth inequality.
Kate Blagojevic, associate director for Europe campaigns for environmental the advocacy group 350.org, described it as "a bold move by Spain and Brazil" that she said could provide funding for clean energy investments around the world, including in countries that lack the resources to make such investments.
"We want more countries to join this coalition so that billionaires and multi-millionaires help to foot the bill for the climate damage they have caused and decrease the huge gap between the rich and the poorest," she said, while also calling for the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to sign on.
Susana Ruiz, the tax justice policy lead at the anti-poverty organization Oxfam, emphasized that international coordination on taxation of high-worth individuals was a serious proposal to address a crisis in global democracy, which she said was being undermined by the corrupting influence of vast sums of money being held by a tiny number of people.
"This extreme inequality is being driven by a financial system that puts the interests of a wealthy few above everyone else," she said. "This concentration of wealth is blocking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and keeping over three billion people living in poverty: over half of poor countries are spending more on debt repayments than on healthcare or education."
Fred Njehu, the global political lead for Greenpeace’s Fair Share campaign, deemed the tax plan essential at a time when nations are behind their renewable energy goals and when wealthy elites such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos can go all-out for a lavish three-day wedding in Venice.
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As the Trump administration has begun the push to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans, legal scholars and advocates are calling it a dangerous step toward using citizenship as a political weapon.
On June 11, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an internal memo written by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate calling on DOJ attorneys to pursue "civil denaturalization" of foreign-born U.S. citizens.
"The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence," the memo said, adding that it should be among the division's top five priorities.
It suggested a wide variety of citizens who could be targeted for denaturalization. This includes perpetrators of violent offenses like "torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations." But it also targets much broader groups of people such as those "who pose a potential danger to national security" or those who "acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations."
It also calls for "any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue."
Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the ACLU's Equality Division, told Common Dreams that "it's another devastating attack by the Trump administration on people who they want to cast as not belonging here."
The memo's vague language has Shah and other legal scholars warning that denaturalization could become a tool to deport political opponents, an effort that would be harder for courts to stop following Friday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hamstrung the ability of lower courts to stop illegal actions by the Trump administration using injunctions.
Joyce Vance, a former United States Attorney, who is now a law professor and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC, warned Tuesday about the possible implications on her blog Civil Discourse:
"It could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers?" Vance wrote. "All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone."
"Anyone could be prioritized," Shah said. "It's really chilling."
Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western University, told NPR that it was "especially concerning" that the administration would plan to pursue denaturalization through civil court.
"Civil denaturalization cases provide no right to an attorney, meaning defendants without resources often face the government without representation," she wrote in a 2019 study on the history of denaturalization along with her colleague Irina Manta. "There are no jury trials, with judges making citizenship determinations alone. The burden of proof is 'clear and convincing evidence' rather than the criminal standard of 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' Additionally, there is no statute of limitations, allowing the government to build cases on decades-old evidence that may be incomplete or unreliable."
Robertson said Trump's approach mirrors that undertaken during the McCarthy era, when those deemed "un-American" were stripped of citizenship due to their political views.
"At the height of denaturalization, there were about 22,000 cases a year of denaturalization filed, and this was on a smaller population. It was huge," she said.
The Supreme Court stepped in to reel back denaturalization in 1967, determining that, in Robertson's words, it was "inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship." After that, the number of denaturalization cases plummeted to the single digits each year. The Trump administration seems to be hoping to reverse that trend.
Republican politicians have not been shy about calling for their political opponents to be stripped of citizenship. Last week, following Zohran Mamdani's shocking victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for the Ugandan-born state assemblyman to be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and "deported," referring to him as an "antisemitic, socialist, communist."
Ogles accused Mamdani of failing to disclose his political "affiliations or sympathies" during the process that led him to become a citizen in 2018. He singled out Mamdani's support for the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders were convicted in a widely criticized "terrorism financing" case in 2008. Notably, the leaders of the group were never accused of directly funding terrorist groups or terrorist acts.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Ogles' call to deport Mamdani, and she did not shoot down the idea.
"I have not seen those claims, but surely if they are true, it's something that should be investigated," Leavitt said.
It was not the first time Republicans have called to deport leaders in the other party explicitly for their political views.
In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called for the Trump administration to "deport and denaturalize" Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, after she criticized President Donald Trump's deployment of the military to quash protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles.
The Trump administration has already targeted lawful immigrants with deportation purely for their political views. In March, the administration abducted and attempted to deport pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil, explicitly because he was a "threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," similar language to what the DOJ now says is justification for denaturalization. The administration has also attempted to deport others, like Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, for as little as co-writing an op-ed calling on her university to divest from Israel.
"The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals," Vance said. "They could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers, like we're seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers."
There are more than 25 million people in the United States who are naturalized citizens.
"They should not have to live in fear that they'll lose their rights," Shah said.
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