By Representative Amy Perruso / June 3, 2026
As graduation season arrives across the North Shore and Central Oʻahu, I’ve been thinking a great deal about what it means to send young people into adulthood during a period of profound transition — economically, politically, environmentally, and technologically.
To the graduates of Waialua, Leilehua, Kahuku and all of our schools: congratulations. You are stepping into the world at a moment when many of the systems that shaped previous generations are changing rapidly. That reality can feel uncertain. But it is also an opportunity.
This legislative session revealed something important about Hawaiʻi’s future. Increasingly, many of our hardest public debates are not really about isolated bills or political personalities. They are about the kind of economy and society we are building — and who that future is actually being built for. One example is the ongoing debate around rooftop solar and the Renewable Energy Technologies Income Tax Credit (RETITC) under SB 3125.
Over the last two decades, Hawaiʻi helped build one of the most successful rooftop solar markets in the country. The RETITC became one of the primary tools that allowed families and businesses to invest in renew- able energy systems. According to a recent analysis of SB 3125 CD2 by Hawai’i Appleseed, Hawaiʻi taxpayers claimed roughly $100 million annually in RETITC cred- its in recent years, making it one of the state’s largest clean-energy tax incentives.
But the same report also showed something more complicated: nearly half of all individual RETITC claims went to households earning over $200,000 annually. That reflects a deeper structural challenge in Hawaiʻi. The people most able to access clean-energy technologies are often the people with enough wealth, tax liability, credit access, and housing stability to participate in the first place.
At the same time, the solar industry itself supports local jobs, electrical contractors, installers, engineers, financing professionals, and resilience infrastructure that becomes critically important during disasters and outages.
This is why the debate over SB 3125 became so intense. The bill imposed a $40 million annual cap on new renewable energy credits beginning in 2027, phased out eligibility for higher-income households, and sunsets the program after 2029. In exchange, the state projects approximately $360 million in savings over five years.
That savings matters because Hawaiʻi is entering a period of serious fiscal pressure. Federal uncertainty, slowing tourism growth, climate-related infrastructure costs, and longstanding affordability challenges are all converging at once. The Legislature is increasingly confronting difficult questions about how to stabilize state finances while also protecting working families from rising costs.
That broader tension is part of why conversations about a possible special session on SB 3125 continue. Some residents, contractors, and clean-energy advocates are asking whether portions of the law should be revisited, especially the retroactive provisions affecting rooftop solar projects already underway. Others argue the state simply cannot continue sustaining tax expen-ditures at prior levels given the larger fiscal pressures ahead.
Both concerns are real. And this is what I hope graduates understand as they enter adulthood and public life: democracy is not about pretending difficult tradeoffs do not exist. Responsible citizenship requires learning how to think critically, compassionately, and honestly inside those tensions.
The future of Hawaiʻi cannot simply become a fight over shrinking resources. We need a larger vision than that. We need to ask harder questions about how to build systems that allow ordinary working families — not just affluent households — to participate in clean energy ownership, resilient infrastructure, and long-term economic stability.
That may mean community solar, public green financing, low-interest energy loans, neighborhood battery systems, utility reform, or entirely new models we have not yet fully imagined. But none of those systems will emerge automatically.
Democracy is not something that exists somewhere above us. It is something communities continuously build together through participation, organization, analysis, and care for one another.
And if the last few years have taught us anything — from fires to floods to economic instability — it is that resilience ultimately begins locally. It begins with neighbors knowing neighbors, with communities organizing before disaster strikes, and with young people deciding they are not powerless spectators to history.
So to this year’s graduates: congratulations not simply for finishing school, but for entering public life at a moment when Hawaiʻi genuinely needs your imagination, your courage, and your willingness to help shape what comes next.
The world you inherit will not be stable in the ways previous generations expected. But it can still become more just, more democratic, more resilient, and more humane — if your generation chooses to help build it together.