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Being an archipelago, powering Hawaii's energy grid is a notable economic and technological challenge. As local resources and infrastructures for electricity production are limited, the state consumes nearly 7x more energy that it produces (EIA 2023). Much of Hawaii's power plants are powered by different forms of imported petroleum (including 76.4 Btu of jet fuel! (EIA 2023)), which makes up about 4/5 of the state's energy resource mix (EIA 2023). While they are comparatively easy to ship, these fuels are also much more expensive than other fossil fuels (such as natural gas or coal), which power many of the grids in the continental US. As a result, Hawaii has the highest retail price of electricity of any state in the US, at about 3x the national average price (EIA 2023). Another of Hawaii's energy disadvantages is that each island is run as a separate electricity grid, with no undersea electricity transmission cables. This means that, for grid security reasons, each separate island has to produce a surplus of energy (what's called an energy reserve margin target) to ensure grid reliability against unpredictable factors (such as a sudden operation failure of a power plant coinciding with an upswing in energy demand). For comparison, Hawaii Electric, which powers about 95% of the state's electricity (EIA 2023), set's its energy reserve margin at 30% (Hawaii Electric 2021), while most grids in the contiguous US shoot for a reserve margin of about 15%-20% (Energy Knowledge Base ND). 

That said, due in part to these stringent techno-economic challenges, Hawaii has also pushed quite strongly for the state's transition to renewable energy. Hawaii has set the date for 100% renewable energy to 2045, the earliest target date for this transition in the US. Oahu and Maui hit 34.5% renewable energy in 2021, surpassing the goal to hit 30% by 2020 (Oglesby 2021). A smaller electric coop reported that its energy mix achieved a whopping 60% renewables in 2020 (Oglesby 2021). Interestingly, rooftop solar (which is often seen as a less practical/less significant strategy for achieving renewable energy transition) made up the highest source of renewable energy (EIA 2023).

While these facts show promise for a cleaner and more sustainable and energy-independent energy system in Hawaii, these energy transition efforts have also posed new sociotechnical and ethical challenges of their own. Back n 2022,  the Hawaii State Senate passed a renewable energy bill that threatened to severely limit the state's ability to plan and implement a "just transition" to renewable energy. Rehashing many of the arguments against renewable energy in the contiguous US, the bill cited the "intermittency" of solar and wind power as a threat to grid security and thus proposed a policy that would require the state to produce at least 1/3 of its power from more "firm" renewable resources that can produce energy around the clock (i.e. hydroelectric dams, geothermal, and also biomass, renewable biodiesel, and renewable natural gas). While technically renewable, many of these so called "firm" sources continue to emit GHGs and other harmful pollutants that threaten the climate, ecosystems, and public health (Kane 2022). Others, like the hydro electric project in Kauai, continue to threaten the fishing and agricultural operations that many residents rely on for their own staples or for growing cash crops to produce their income (Lyte 2023). Using plantation-era ditch systems, Kauai's hydro project planned to divert an estimated 4 billion gallons of water from the Waimea River watershed, which would all but dry up the river's numerous braided streams upon which many residents depend. As Brittany Lyte notes in her article covering the issue (2023), this plantation-era practice reproduces the cultural and ecological destruction native Hawaiians have been facing and fighting against for over a century.

While activists continue to struggle to ensure that the Kauai hydro project will be ecologically and socially just, to the relief of many environmental and renewable energy advocates, the Hawaii Governor vetoed the aforementioned renewable energy bill in July of 2022. That said, the very fact that this bill passed the state senate illustrates the potential for "renewable energy" transitions to reproduce many of the same social, economic, and even climate and environmental justice issues and challenges that these transitions are (at least superficially) intended to mitigate or resolve.

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It seems to me that our era is one of dispersion and disarticulation. This is not the same as the siloed domains of disciplinary society. These siloes are what has been undone. Cultural critique and also even transdisciplinarity have, I think, at times, been both symptomatic and catalyst of this wide-spread historical trend of dispersion. That doesn't mean we need to return to the siloes, it means we need to be smarter and more intentional in the way we coordinate our critiques and our collaborations.

It seems to me that what we need are new skills and expertise in what could be called "regrouping." This is a key dynamic of anthropology and ethnography since its very beginning. But it's even more apparent in contemporary, multi-sited/sighted ethnography: i.e. the intentionally constructed research designs inspired by Marcus's early work on the method.

I think we need theoretically informed coordinational capacities. Experimenting with new kinds of partnerships, organizational designs, production and flows of information.

I hope to build relationships within and beyond the lab, making connections with people who are directly invovled the environmental justice community. I also hope to continue expanding my knowledge about the different frameworks and methodologies the lab uses as well as gain more experience with community-engaged research and apply that to my future career.