Nā Pua Makani Wind Farm: The Shifting Winds of Renewable Development in Hawaiʻi

In 2015, Hawaiʻi set the most ambitious renewable energy portfolio goal in the nation by vowing to reach 100% renewable energy by 2045. Since then, many renewable energy development projects in Hawaiʻi have been met with strong community opposition, including the Nā Pua Makani wind farm (NPM) in Kahuku. The aim of this project is to analyze the process timeline of NPM to identify factors in the development process that contributed to organized protest, and to offer recommendations for improving the process. In order to get a full picture of the events throughout the Nā Pua Makani project’s timeline, my research involved analysis of documents from the Public Utilities Commission and interviews with the stakeholders including residents of the impacted communities, legal representatives, and representatives from the final developer. Throughout my research, I found that poor community engagement was a key component of the conflict surrounding NPM. Subsequently, I use a development framework outlined in the United Nations’ Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) Manual to identify how NPM fell short in their community engagement process, and recommend that the Hawaiian Electric Company include language within their request for proposals requiring a signed consent agreement between the developer and host community. Additionally, I review how NPM has changed the renewable development landscape in Hawaiʻi to date, and explore development options alternative to utility-scale projects that may have less impact on environmental justice communities

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

International audienceAmong the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

International audienceAmong the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM