The Tiny Oilseed That Could Help Power Hawai‘i’s Energy Future

Nothing seems particularly remarkable about camelina, a small, wispy plant that flowers in meadows across North America and Europe. Yet it’s full of surprises.

When cultivated, camelina acts as a fast-growing cover crop that can be rotated with crops such as onions and watermelons. The plant’s rows of tiny, hard seeds are packed with oil, which has been used in lamps and kitchens for millennia. After the oilseeds are extracted from their pods and crushed, what’s left behind is a protein-rich seed cake for feeding livestock.

In recent years, another novel use has emerged: Camelina oil works as a feedstock, or raw material, for creating biofuels – a potential pathway to more energy independence and resiliency in Hawai‘i.

The oil can be processed into biodiesel to power electrical plants, renewable naphtha for gas companies and – maybe most surprising of all – sustainable aviation fuel for long-haul flights. And camelina-based biofuel has another unexpected advantage: It can be added directly into the fuel tanks of planes and vehicles, with no modifications required.

In September 2024, the first North American flight using camelina-based fuel – Delta 2732 –  traveled from Minneapolis to New York City, a milestone in the push to turn this low-carbon energy source into a viable alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel.

In Hawai‘i, the work of creating a camelina-to-fuel ecosystem is being led by the Par Hawaii refinery, the private land-management company Pono Pacific, and leaders of the newly merged Hawaiian and Alaska airlines. These large companies are joined by a growing coalition of farmers, ranchers and others.

“Biofuels have to be part of the mix here,” says Eric Wright, president of Par Hawaii. “They have to be part of the airlines decarbonizing, and they’re part of HECO’s integrated grid plans for getting to zero percent carbon. … This is really our best chance to have those fuels locally produced.”

At left, camelina plants have reached the flowering stage at Mahi Pono farm on Maui, where crop trials are underway. The plants’ oilseeds can be turned into renewable feedstocks. | Photo courtesy: Pono Pacific. At right, Eric Wright, president of Par Hawaii, in front of storage tanks for renewable feedstocks, which will be turned into biofuels when the plant’s $90-million hydrotreater conversion is completed. | Photo: Jeff Sanner.

The First Big Step

Work to add renewables and to decarbonize buildings, transportation and industries has steadily advanced since 2015, when Hawai‘i passed legislation that calls for all of its electricity to come from renewable energy by 2045. That was followed in 2018 by a first-in-the-nation bill that aims to reach 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.

Nearly 20% of Hawai‘i’s electricity now comes from solar power, for instance, much of it generated from rooftop panels. And by late 2024, the state had more than 34,000 registered electric vehicles, a 23% increase from the year before, according to the Hawaii EV Association.

Despite concrete steps to move away from fossil fuels, petroleum continues to dominate Hawai‘i’s energy mix. Petroleum accounts for about 80% of the energy consumed in the state, the highest percentage in the country, according to recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Hawai‘i’s transportation sector uses almost two-thirds of all petroleum consumed, with jet fuel accounting for nearly half of the petroleum products used in the state.

In 2022, a major step toward weaning the state off petroleum occurred. Crude-oil refinery Par Hawaii committed $90 million to convert a distillate hydrotreater at its Kapolei facility into a renewable hydrotreater that produces biofuels. The blessing ceremony for the renewable unit took place in late November, with a finish date anticipated in fall 2025.

This giant processing unit – a maze of undulating metal pipes and tanks encased in a web of scaffolding and stairs – will take organic feedstock, such as camelina oil, and alter it using hydrogen and a catalyst at high temperature and pressure. What comes out has a hydrocarbon makeup similar to petroleum products, making it an efficient “drop-in” fuel.

When the renewable hydrotreater is running, Wright says the unit will produce 60 million gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel for airplanes; renewable diesel for ships, cars, trucks and power generation; and renewable naphtha, which can be blended with regular gasoline or used to produce synthetic natural gas.

When the least carbon-intensive practices are used – such as growing camelina feedstocks on Kaua‘i, refining them in Kapolei and pumping the fuel into planes at the Honolulu airport – products such as sustainable aviation fuel reduce greenhouse gases by up to 80% compared to petroleum-based jet fuel, according to global trade group International Air Transport Association.

Two huge, green storage tanks for renewable feedstocks have been added to Par’s facility, ready for the transition. The company plans to import cooking oils and fats as feedstocks while local camelina production launches and expands enough to offset imports.

The 60 million gallons of locally produced biofuels will add to the growing U.S. supply. At the start of 2024, refineries were producing 24 billion gallons of biofuel per year – a 7% jump from 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Much of the increase comes from growth in renewable diesel and naphtha production, along with a new push to produce sustainable aviation fuel.

All told, biofuels will make up about 5% of overall production at Par’s refinery, says Wright; for context, the facility can currently process about 94,000 barrels of imported crude oil a day. In the future, more areas of the plant might be converted to produce biofuels, he says.

Liquid biofuel has a distinct advantage over solar and wind power in that it’s a “firm” energy source that stabilizes the electric grid when the sun is obscured or the wind stops blowing, says Wright. As he describes it, a gallon jug of renewable diesel fuel can produce 20 times more energy than what’s stored in a similarly sized lithium-ion battery.

“The electric grid really needs firm renewable fuel that you can put in a tank and store, and it’s there when you need it,” says Wright.

In Honoka‘a on Hawai‘i Island, the Hamakua Energy power plant runs on both imported fossil fuels and renewable fuel supplied by Pacific Biodiesel, which processes discarded cooking oils at its Kea‘au refinery and produces about 6 million gallons of biodiesel annually.

By the end of 2030, Hamakua Energy plans to shift to 100% renewable fuels and create a “closed-loop system in Hawai‘i,” says Marcelino Susas, VP of strategy and business development at Pacific Current, a subsidiary of plant owner Hawaiian Electric.

Like Wright, Susas says biofuels make the grid more stable while also buffering the state from fluctuating crude-oil prices. “I think if you’re self-sufficient, you’re not so exposed to the shocks that you have with imported fuels, as we’ve seen in the last few years,” he says.

Crop Trials Show Promise 

At Pono Pacific’s Downtown Honolulu headquarters, a vial of thick, golden liquid sits on Chris Bennett’s desk. The bottom of the glass container is lined with bits of organic debris, the refuse left behind after crushing camelina seeds with a store-bought press. While the oil is just a sample, it could go straight to Par for processing when the new unit is ready.

Bennett is the VP of sustainable energy solutions at Pono Pacific, which works with conservation managers and landowners to improve their farming operations, protect ecosystems and watersheds, and manage conservation lands, among other services.

Since joining Pono Pacific in 2023, after practicing as an environmental lawyer, Bennett has been in charge of the camelina project, including working with landowners and overseeing crop trials.

With the help of researchers at the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center in Waipahu, Pono Pacific is testing dozens of varieties of non-GMO camelina at different elevations and conditions, mostly at the state’s largest farms: Mahi Pono, a 41,000-acre farm and ranch in Central Maui, and Aloun Farms, which has about 3,000 acres in ‘Ewa and Central O‘ahu and operations in Kaumakani on Kaua‘i.

So far, Bennett says the results are promising. On the mainland, camelina, known as a short-season crop that needs little water, has an average seed-to-harvest cycle of 80 to 100 days. In local crop trials, it’s 60 to 75 days.

“In Hawai‘i, you have the potential to do two or three rotations of camelina a year, instead of just one,” says Bennett.

Initial trials are generating between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds of oilseed per acre. The baseline yield needed to be economically feasible is 1,200 pounds per acre, says Bennett, with some test yields far exceeding that.

But there’s still lots of work to be done, says Kyle Studer, who, as the row crop operations manager at Mahi Pono, is in charge of about 1,000 acres, as well as the farm’s camelina trials.

The first trial in July using generic camelina seeds was disappointing, says Studer, as high levels of sunlight and heat caused the plants to flower too soon, stunting the oilseeds’ growth. The next round will be planted in cooler conditions, in December, and will use more selective varieties of seeds.

A former independent farmer in Hawai‘i and on the mainland, Studer says his “naturally skeptical” outlook helps him prepare for everything that could possibly go wrong. He sees a long road ahead before the team can pinpoint the most productive seed varieties, soils, climate, fertilizer and weed-management program to make camelina profitable, but he’s hopeful it can work.

Among the most enthusiastic camelina champions, says Bennett, are ranchers who struggle with the high cost of feeding their animals. Cattle owners generally rely on grass foraging, supplemented with hay that’s shipped in from the mainland, he says. The organic material left behind when the camelina seeds are extracted makes hearty animal feed.

He says camelina is also superior to the cover crops typically used by Hawai‘i farmers, such as sunn hemp, oats and barley. Rather than having to “plant it, grow it and mow it off,” Bennett says camelina is “a cover crop that you can make money off.”

For now, he says large operations with contiguous tracts of land would be best able to rapidly ramp up camelina production, and to reap its benefits. And these large farms often have marginal lands that could be productive again.

“They want to put the acreage back in use and they’re searching for the next big thing you can scale,” says Bennett. “If you can bring fallow land back on, and camelina is the driver for that, it’s also opening up that acreage for food production.”

For small farmers, he’s looking at “aggregation models” to give them access to harvesting equipment and crushing facilities for their camelina crops.

“Our plan, with Pono Pacific, is to demonstrate that this can be done,” says Par’s Wright. “If we can show that to farmers and tell them that we’ll buy all the oil they can produce, we think it can really blossom from there. … This could be an innovative way to kick-start the agricultural economy in Hawai‘i.”

Camelina, a cover crop, is harvested once the plant has dried. The tiny seeds extracted from the pods, bottom right, are made up of about 40% oil. The oil will be processed into biofuels at Par Hawaii and used to power vehicles, utilities and airplanes. | Photo courtesy: Pono Pacific.

From Seed to Skies 

Alaska Airlines says it has spent years on decarbonization efforts, including fine-tuning operations to use less fuel, updating its fleet with fuel-efficient planes, investing in new technologies, introducing a carbon-offset program and developing supply chains for sustainable aviation fuel.

At the moment, Ryan Spies, managing director of sustainability at the newly merged airlines’ Seattle headquarters, says sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is “a nascent industry” that accounts for less than 1% of the fuel used by airlines globally. Alaska is approaching the 1% mark, he says.

Though still a small factor, Spies views SAF as an increasingly important component in the aviation industry’s decarbonization efforts “for a long time, and maybe in perpetuity.”

As a drop-in fuel that’s blended with conventional jet fuel, “we don’t have to change out planes. We don’t have to change the infrastructure at the airports. It’s a jet fuel at the end of the day, so it’s safe, it’s reliable and it performs over long distances,” says Spies.

The airline industry as a whole has been clamoring for more sustainable aviation fuel, with the International Air Transport Association pledging to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. So far, demand for SAF far exceeds supply.

“Right now, it’s just not available in the quantities that we need or at the speed that we need,” says Spies.

But production is rapidly rising. In 2021, the federal departments of Energy, Transportation and Agriculture released a “SAF grand challenge,” with incentives to encourage companies to produce more fuel. Since then, SAF production and imports have grown from 5 million gallons in 2021 to 52 million gallons through the first six months of 2024.

The intergovernmental coalition says that, based on announced projects, between 2.6 billion and 4.9 billion gallons per year of SAF is projected to be produced domestically by 2030, which meets the SAF challenge’s near-term goal.

Wright says that when the conversion of its hydrotreater is complete, Par expects to produce enough sustainable aviation fuel to replace up to 25% of Hawaiian Airlines’ fuel demand to and from the Islands. Par has worked closely with Hawaiian for years to launch its SAF production.

For context, Montana Renewables in Great Falls produces 30 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel a year, making it the largest SAF producer domestically. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the only other SAF producer at the start of 2024 was the World Energy plant in Paramount, California.

Par’s expected SAF production will rival the Montana facility. But it faces a significant hurdle: The cost of producing sustainable aviation fuel, as well as other renewable fuels, is more expensive than petroleum products.

“We look at SAF as all-hands-on-deck because of the cost,” says Spies. “And any one individual airline, or even combined airline like us, can’t do it alone.”

To bridge the cost gap and help boost supply, which will eventually lead to lower costs, a reliable mechanism is being rolled out in states from Montana to Illinois to Nebraska: tax incentives.

Chris Bennett of Pono Pacific, right, oversees crop trials around the state to locate the most productive varieties of camelina for Hawai‘i’s climate, soil and other growing conditions. | Photo: Jeff Sanner. Once production ramps up, Par Hawaii expects to produce enough sustainable aviation fuel to replace up to 25% of Hawaiian Airlines’ fuel demand to and from the islands. | Photos courtesy: Hawaiian Airlines.

Incentivizing Biofuel Production 

When Par’s new hydrotreater begins producing renewable jet fuel, diesel and naphtha, the three products will cost an additional $2 to $4 per gallon over conventional fuels, says Wright.

“That’s a significant cost difference, and you want to make those fuels competitive so the customer doesn’t have to pay a big premium to switch to low-carbon fuels.”

Federal incentives vary from $1 per gallon in income-tax credits for renewable diesel to about $1.75 per gallon for producing high-quality aviation fuel that reduces greenhouse gases by at least 50%. That lowers the overall cost, says Wright, and “gets you about halfway there.”

What’s missing are robust state incentives needed to make up the remaining cost difference. At the moment, Hawai‘i has a tax credit for renewable-fuel production, capped at $20 million a year, that’s run through the Hawai‘i State Energy Office.

But “it’s very minimal and it’s not fully utilized,” says Nahelani Parsons, executive director of the Hawai‘i Renewable Fuels Coalition, which formed in 2023 to advocate for more significant incentives. Founding members Par, Hawaiian Airlines and Pono Pacific are joined by a growing list of others, including the Hawai‘i Farm Bureau, Kuilima Farm and Haleakalā Ranch.

The group’s first proposal in the 2024 legislative session failed, but it plans to return in 2025 with a revised bill that increases the cap in tiered stages instead of all at once, as originally proposed. In the bill’s current draft stage, the cap would increase immediately to $30 million in tax credits in 2025, rising each year until it hits $80 million annually in 2029, says Parsons. The draft proposal would also add per-gallon credits for locally grown feedstocks and fuel production, especially sustainable aviation fuel.

“The key is, if you look at other states, you have to have an economic incentive for the renewable fuels to stay here and be used here, which we have an incredible demand for. The airlines will use every last drop,” says Parsons.

The tax credit would be shared among companies buying the renewable fuels, such as Hawaiian and Alaska airlines, Hawaiian Electric, Hawai‘i Gas, and the Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative, says Parsons.

“Even though we’re asking the state for funds … there’s very few other areas where the private sector has already put in $90 million,” says Parsons. “The state couldn’t do it at all if there were no local partnerships to convert to renewable. … The refinery is already there. The airlines are already there. The farmers are saying, let’s grow it. Everyone’s on board. We just need the state to be on board too.”

Wright hopes to sell the biofuels in Hawai‘i, but says tax credits are needed to make the economics work. Without them, Par plans to ship the fuel by company vessel to a sister refinery in Tacoma, Washington, and sell it to West Coast markets using their incentives. Washington, for instance, offers a substantial tax credit – up to $2 per gallon – for sustainable aviation fuel.

“We’d much rather keep it here at home,” says Wright. “Our business is to supply Hawai‘i’s fuel needs, and so we want to sell SAF to the airlines here, and renewable diesel and naphtha to our utilities.”

Nathan Hokama, a communications specialist who works with Par and the Hawai‘i Renewable Fuels Coalition, says he hopes lawmakers will step up and treat clean energy as a top priority. “It’s one thing to say we’re going to get off fossil fuels by 2045,” he says, “but to really make it happen takes a lot of cooperation, political will and a shared vision of where we want to go.”

Will Federal Subsidies Last? 

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act triggered a wave of growth in the clean-energy sector. Nationally, $126 billion in investments have been announced, spurred largely by tax credits.

Nearly 60% of those clean-energy projects, representing 85% of the investments, are in Republican congressional districts, according to the nonpartisan environmental group E2. These investments and jobs won’t easily be unraveled.

Among the federal tax credits are incentives for renewable fuels, which helped launch the ongoing nationwide effort to produce more sustainable aviation fuel and contributed to the spike in renewable diesel. While federal credits for clean-fuel production are currently set to expire in 2027, there’s optimism they will be extended.

Spies, from Alaska Airlines, points to “a collective, bipartisan effort among fuel producers, oil majors, airlines and customers” to extend the credits, which would provide stability for major projects. “If you build a big production facility, you want certainty, and two years is not enough,” he says.

At Par, Wright says he’s not overly concerned that incentives for renewable fuels will change. “Incentives have survived several changes of administration and changes in control of Congress, so I think they’re pretty durable.”

If federal assistance does falter, Spies says he expects states to fill the gap. “While the federal government may be more hostile to climate action, you will see states step up and impose standards, challenges, investments and incentives to keep the ball moving,” he says.

At Pacific Current, Susas says his past experience with solar power makes him hopeful that prices for biofuels will fall as production scales up, but that incentives are crucial during the transition period. He hopes they stay in place.

“I was in the solar industry a long time ago when the cost was through the roof,” he explains. “When the U.S. Department of  Energy came out with their SunShot program [in 2011], no one thought you could get there. It was aspirational. But if you get the volume up, you get the cost down, and I imagine the same thing happens on the renewable-fuel side.”

“A Circular Economy”

The possibility of producing homegrown biofuels in the Islands has been researched for years. But never, until now, have the major private-sector players aligned to make it happen at a larger scale.

Susas sees it clearly from a newcomer’s perspective, having only moved to Hawai‘i two years ago for his position at Pacific Current. He says the state is uniquely positioned to become “the first ecosystem that’s going to go 100% renewables.”

It’s a small state, with fewer major companies than many other places, and everyone is moving in the same direction, he says. Like Hawai‘i’s solar buildup that he says is studied and modeled by energy companies on the mainland, “I see the same thing with our push to 100% renewables.”

Biofuels can play a critical role in renewable energy, including decarbonizing the transportation sector, stabilizing the energy grid, expanding the economy and boosting agriculture, advocates say, and when all the stages in the seed-to-fuel cycle come together, the benefits could be far-reaching.

“Our goal is to support a circular economy,” says Parsons from the Hawai‘i Renewable Fuels Coalition. “We are growing our feedstocks, which go to the refinery for processing and come out as renewable fuel. The fuel goes out to aviation as well as energy for utilities, for power generation and other outlets. And everyone gets to benefit from a much more sustainable world.”