May the Fourth Be with You!
Once a year, “Star Wars” fans enjoy a lisp-inspired pun to celebrate their favorite film franchise. May 4th is the internationally celebrated Star Wars Day, a comedic reference to the series’ “May the Force be with you” tagline coinciding with the fourth day in May.
And this year, Blue Planet Alliance will be similarly celebrating in May, for the fourth cohort of our Fellowship Program. And like the good guys in “Star Wars,” we’re gathering forces from around the universe (well, at least this planet) to fight for the future of humanity.
Twice a year, the Blue Planet Alliance Fellowship Program brings representatives from up to 10 islands around the world to Hawaii for a rigorous week-long workshop and interactive lecture series, offering insights on how each of them could transition to 100% renewable energy.
Blue Planet Alliance founder Henk Rogers led the movement that eventually saw Hawaii become the first U.S. state to legally mandate such a transition. Translation: Hawaii must, by law, utilize 100% renewable energy for electricity by 2045.
The BPA Fellowship Program features talks and interactive sessions with the very experts who led the landmark legislation that became Hawaiian law, from former Governor David Ige, who signed the bill into law in 2015; Hawaiian State Senator Chris Lee, who authored the bill; Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority Executive Director Gwen Yamamoto Lau, whose office is navigating new ways for all consumers to implement renewable solutions, such as roof-top solar; HEI utility President and CEO Scott Seu; and more than 20 other speakers.
We eventually want to have every country transition to 100% renewable energy, and end the use of the carbon-based fuels that threaten to turn our planet into the Death Star (that’s another “Star Wars” reference, folks!). But we’re starting with islands, because they’re the most vulnerable to — and the least responsible for — the negative impacts of climate change.
We’ve already had 28 islands matriculate through the program in our first three cohorts, and now our fourth cohort later this month (May 17 to 23) will include nine more islands: the Bahamas, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, Kiribati, the Maldives, Niue, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Samoa.
With another 10 islands slated to join us in October for our fifth cohort — and 20 more in two cohorts in 2026 — we’re on track to help nearly 70 islands make such a transition to 100% renewable energy. We ask each invited island to be represented by four sectors: someone from the legislature, the government energy-regulatory office, the utility, and the community, so that overall this is both a top-down and a bottom-up cooperative approach. Imagine the power that this coalition of nearly 70 islands can wield in diplomatic channels? Enough to strike back at the Empire!
