In an interview with the Big Island News Channel (See 12:01 of video below) on July 24, Gov. candidate Mufi Hannemann said “I’m proud of that on Oahu, I take 600,000 tons of stuff that is going to the landfill and I convert it into energy to power 40,000 homes.”

Well, clearly the former mayor himself doesn’t do the work personally. We’ll cut him some slack on that one. But does the trash to energy system do what he says and was he as mayor responsible for making that happen, as he seems to imply?

To verify Hannemann’s statement, Civil Beat spoke with Rodney Smith, the business manager for H-Power. Honolulu’s Project of Waste Energy Recovery (H-Power) works with the city to burn trash and sell the power it produces to Hawaiian Electric Co.

“(During) period ’09 to ’10, we did 602,971 tons,” Smith said, referring to how much waste H-Power converted into energy over the past year. “So right around 602 to 603,000 tons.”

So far, so good, Mr. Hannemann.

Smith went on to say that H-Power estimated that with that waste, the company was able to provide power to “somewhere around 40,000 homes” each day on Oahu.

Again, the former mayor was essentially spot-on with his figures.

But the story didn’t end there.

Smith emphasized that H-Power has been converting waste to energy for two decades on Oahu. During that period, it has always worked at capacity, taking in approximately 600,000 tons of waste and powering 40,000 homes a day with it.

“In fact for the 20 years we’ve been operating, we’ve done a little over – about 603,000 tons – for the 20 years on average,” Smith said.

Meaning, that if anyone should feel “proud” of the energy conversion, perhaps it should be former Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi, who was in office when H-Power started on the island in 1990.

Hannemann went on to say in his interview that, “I just put forward a third boiler where we’re going to be able to take another 300,000 tons to get another 20,000 homes and that’s another form of renewable energy.”

On this point, Hannemann can rightly take credit.

“We’re putting an addition on for another 50 percent increase that will take us up to 850 to 900,000 tons a year once the third boiler is fully online,” Smith said.

The boiler is expected to be installed by early 2012 and will cost approximately $302 million. It would add another 300,000 tons of waste capacity for H-Power and in turn, power an additional 20,000 homes, as Hannemann said.