Business View Civil and Municipal | September 2022

17 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 9 island state in the United States, and one of the most geographically isolated populations in the world. Our island is blessed with incredible natural beauty and zest for life. Visitors and residents alike come for the beauty, but they stay for the people. We are a culturally diverse place with a great legacy and lineage of Native Hawaiian culture, but we have people of every ethnicity you could imagine living, working, and thriving here. It’s not utopia, not nirvana, but it is an incredible melting pot of culture and heritage.” Major economic drivers include tourism and military historically, but recent developments thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed Honolulu to look locally for economic growth. Opportunities in the clean energy sector, Mr. Blangiardi says, are of particular interest. “We have dedicated a lot of time to building on our assets in clean energy. Hawaii is actually a national leader in clean energy laws legislation, and we expect to be completely void of fossil fuels by 2045. This was a very ambitious undertaking that was signed into law not that many years ago, but we’re well underway with electrification of vehicles, solar power, hydro power, wind power, you name it. We are afforded the opportunity to innovate, given the fact that we’re an island state, to actually be a beta site for some of this stuff, because we have great sun, wind, ocean, agriculture… It’s a perfect environment for renewables. “Healthcare is another sector we excel in. We have amazing longevity in our residents, but it also means we have an aging population, so our future movements in the health space will need to reflect that. We also service the greater Pacific through our Shriners Children’s Hospital; people fly here from other islands in Oceania for treatment. We are committed to furthering food sustainability and renewable agriculture. We’re really focused on climate change issues, and rightfully so – 98% of our food is imported, so we need to become more food secure. Now, we are still going to be dependent on imports to some HONOLULU COUNTY , HAWA I I