Monday, November 05, 2007
DBEDT de-energized?
When energy issues have come up at the Legislature, quite often three key people from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) were there to give testimony.
Maurice Kaya and his deputies John Tantlinger and Steve Alber probably have something like 70 years of experience in this area all together. They have just announced their retirement.
As Program Administrator of DBEDT’s Energy, Resources, and Technology Division, Kaya was appointed by former U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to a two-year term as Chair of the federal State Energy Advisory Board.
Dr. Tatlinger, recently contributed some key figures for climate change analysis. I hope his replacement is as good at math.
They'll be gone by year-end, just before the legislative session begins. DBEDT will need some time to go through the process of replacing them, and their many years of experience will be hard to make up.
Of course, one wonders. Retirement or resignation? Maurice Kaya looks kind of young to me.
I'll leave it to newspaper reporters, who are paid to dig up anything that might be behind this, to figure out if they just want to "spend more time with their families" or whatever.
Hawaii could do so much better on alternative energy issues that any change like this should be cause for concern. <.div>
Yikes! This is a huge loss.
Mebbe the prospect of another emissions inventory was daunting. After all, 10 years ago, they did the work that should have put Hawaii first in emissions reduction. Oh well.
Thanx for the link to my SusHI post about their contributions.
Thanks for your great post -- with all those references attached. Makes me look like a lazy blogger, in comparison.
Anyone reading this far might want to click on the link to Ken's article if you haven't already done so.
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