WAILUKU — Maui Electric is already nearly 40 percent on the way to using completely renewable energy by 2045, but the road to the finish line still is being mapped.

Among the challenges that energy officials face is decommissioning old power generators while contracting for new ones, all the while ensuring affordability amid rapidly changing technologies.

“I haven’t met a person yet who’s said renewable energy is bad,” said Chris Reynolds, MECO director of system operations. “But a lot are concerned about the cost of energy and whether they would be able to afford energy in the future.

“As a customer-oriented utility, MECO is working on acquiring low-cost renewable energy to ensure the affordability of renewable energy to our community.”

More than 100 people came to mull over Maui’s green energy goals during a discussion titled “100% Renewable Energy: What Will Maui Look Like?” presented by MECO, Maui Tomorrow Foundation and Sierra Club of Hawaii Maui group, at J. Walter Cameron Center last week. The group of utility, governmental, environmental and cultural panelists offered ideas for an hour on what the future may hold for Maui County and took questions from the audience for another hour.

Speakers featured included Reynolds; kumu hula Kapono’ai Molitau; Albert Perez, executive director of Maui Tomorrow Foundation; Alex De Roode, county energy commissioner; Dana Sato, Kamehameha Schools asset management director; and Rob Weltman, Sierra Club Maui group chairman. Topics ranged from electrical reliability to cultural and land use impacts.

Bigger questions arising from last week’s meeting included what will happen to existing power generation infrastructure, such as plants in Maalaea and Kahului, and who will be financially responsible for their decommissioning and possible disposal.

“We can’t say for certain what will happen to these plants,” Reynolds said. “Will they be shut down or removed? Will they use the biofuel? Will they be repurposed for other type equipment? We can convert some of these generators to synchronous connectors and provide grid services. There are still a lot of options.”

He said that MECO is currently working to shut down generators at the Kahului Power Plant, which came online 1949.

“I think it’s pretty much done,” he said. “But going forward I can’t say all of them will be shut down. We are getting to a point where that generator is not meeting our renewable energy goals, it will be decommissioned.”

De Roode, who discussed electrification of transportation, was asked what the county will do with all the electric vehicle batteries once they reach their end of life.

He said the question applies to a lot of the technologies coming online, including EVs, utility-scale and home batteries, and photovoltaic panels.

De Roode said the challenge provides an opportunity for innovation and hopes in-state entrepreneurs will help find solutions.

“These systems are going to become smaller and more condensed and hopefully, more environmentally friendly,” he said. “How they are recycled, or the need for recycling, how long their life cycle will be, is a moving target or a changing landscape over time.”

He added that if the county were to recycle large numbers of PV panels, it would likely ship them to the Mainland or foreign markets.

“For large-scale, utility-scale solar projects there is a requirement for independent power producers to decommission those systems afterwards so they’re not just off the hook — they can’t just install them and walk away,” De Roode said. ” Ideally, that’s done in an environmentally responsible way. Continuing that type of regulation attached to these projects makes sense.”

In discussing the need for electric transportation, De Roode said ground transportation today accounts for more than a quarter of Hawaii’s imported fossil fuel consumption and more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

“Although we have reduced the amount of imported fossil fuels for electricity generation we’re talking about today, we have increased the amount of imported fossil fuels for gas and diesel use in vehicles,” he said, citing increases in the visitor and resident population.

Hawaii counties committed in 2017 to 100 percent renewable fuel use in county ground transportation fleets as well as in private vehicles by 2045, De Roode said. He said the county is in the early stages of working on the transition and he emphasized the benefits of EVs for all residents, including less maintenance and cheaper out-of-pocket fuel costs, along with tax credits to curb higher upfront costs.

“When the grid can no longer accept renewable energy, electric vehicles can charge then power homes in the evening,” he said. “If we have a natural disaster, you could draw from your vehicle for a certain amount of time, especially if coupled with solar on rooftop.”

In marching toward a greener future on Maui, MECO said Monday that it’s willing to consider all viable options — including wind, solar, geothermal and wave energy — to make up the remaining 60 percent renewables by 2045.

“We’re open to evaluating renewable energy resource opportunities that work toward lowering generation costs when compared to staying on imported fossil fuel,” spokeswoman Shayna Decker said.

Recently, MECO announced that it is seeking more renewable power and storage projects. Requests for proposals, pending the state Public Utilities Commission approval, will target 295 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy and 58 GWh a year of power storage. The state is urging utilities to hasten the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gases and customer costs.

“In this next stage of procurement, we’re proposing a 40 MW, or 58,000 MWh a year, of energy storage to replace part of the firm generation currently provided by (Kahului Power Plant),” Decker said.

Energy officials said the meeting was the first of its kind and subsequent discussions will be held.

Attendee Bruce Martin said he was glad to begin to see what organizations are “intending and planning.”

“I think there’s a lot of interest in the subject,” he said “People are struggling with aspects of how to move forward and how to effectively implement solutions.”

Kenneth Yamamura, another attendee, said the event showed the discussion is off to a good start.

“For a first community meeting, they answered a lot of questions,” he said.

* Kehaulani Cerizo can be reached at kcerizo@mauinews.com.