The following testimony was submitted by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii for consideration by the Honolulu City Council on Oct. 9, 2024.
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Oct. 9, 2024, 10 a.m.
Honolulu Hale
To: Honolulu City Council
Tommy Waters, Chair
Esther Kiaʻāina, Vice Chair
From: Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
Ted Kefalas, Director of Strategic Campaigns
RE: Bill 40 (2024) — RELATING TO PROFESSIONAL SELF-CERTIFICATION
Aloha Chair Waters, Vice-Chair Kiaʻāina and other members of the Council,
The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii supports Bill 40 (2024), CD1, which would allow building permits for solar, energy storage and energy-efficiency projects for multi-family dwellings and commercial buildings to be approved through self-certification.
The Council created a self-certification program for certain projects at the end of 2023 with Ordinance 23-29, which allows qualified architects and engineers to self-approve their building permits, subject to several requirements.
Consider that 47% of the permits issued between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 were tagged as “solar” or “solarPVinstallation” in the Department of Planning and Permitting’s building permit database. These permits waited 38 days from application to issuance, on average, compared to 239 days for all other permits.[1]
As a result, expanding self-certification to energy-related projects would speed up their deployment and cut down the existing permitting backlog by giving DPP staff more time to focus on other, more complicated projects.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Ted Kefalas
Director of Strategic Campaigns
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
[1] Calculations performed using: “Building Permits – January 1, 2005 through June 30, 2024,” Data.gov, July 13, 2024.
