For more than a year, the state House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection was told that, based on the study presented by the Hawaii State Energy Office (HSEO), we could expect to enjoy up to $1.2 billion in benefits if the state embraced liquefied natural gas. As a retired state senator , I can understand Committee Chair Nicole Lowen’s anger when she learned — as all of Hawaii did through recent headlines — that the study failed to withstand peer-review. The $1.2 billion just goes “poof” when the most significant spread sheet error — the exclusion of the cost of LNG — was corrected, said Matthias Fripp, the director of Global Research and former University of Hawaii engineering professor. ...read more read less