Last Friday night — after Mother Nature pulled the plug on O'ahu's power — Karen Young's refrigerator kept humming and her lights stayed on. Not because she fired up a gas-powered generator, but because the solar photovoltaic system on her Wai'anae home quietly switched over to sun power stored in batteries. Her home power system is more than just convenience — it's a small piece to Hawai'i's future energy system, one powered by clean sources with the ability to store energy.

Today, by relying on a power system from the past century, Hawai'i is being left in the dark. We have every opportunity and reason in 2009 to aggressively move toward an energy system powered by clean, distributed sources with a smart grid and energy storage. This model, similar to how the Internet works today, would protect us not only from nature's tantrums, but from inevitable oil price spikes and disruptions.

What do we need to do to make Hawai'i's clean-energy future a reality? Here are Blue Planet's five 2009 New Year's resolutions for Hawai'i.

1. Put smart energy policies in place. Governor Lingle's administration has done much of the legwork with the Hawai'i Clean Energy Initiative to develop smart policies to move Hawai'i away from fossil fuels. It's now up to the Legislature and the Public Utilities Commission to make them happen. The Legislature has the opportunity to vastly strengthen Hawai'i's renewable energy requirement, increase the energy efficiency statewide, and encourage investment in Hawai'i's clean-energy-powered transportation infrastructure (such as electric vehicles). In addition, the Public Utilities Commission is currently deliberating two initiatives that would make it easier for clean energy to plug into the grid and divorce Hawaiian Electric's profits from the amount of oil that they burn. The commission will also be considering a policy to enable easy on-bill financing of residential solar and efficient appliances, removing the biggest barrier to their adoption: up-front cost. Getting these policies right is critical.

2. Enact a clean-energy investment fund. Building a smart grid, energy storage, and clean-energy infrastructure isn't cheap. But investing now would pay future dividends to every resident and business in the state. We should wisely tap the source of our problem — imported oil — to fund clean-energy programs. Do you remember when the price of oil increased from $41 per barrel to $43? Of course not; it's nearly inconsequential. Tacking on a $2 surcharge on each barrel of oil entering the state would yield a $100 million annual investment fund to help put the critical pieces of our clean-energy future in place.

3. Float bonds for radical energy-efficiency and clean-energy investment. We are in a recession. Injecting money into the economy to create jobs and spur growth makes sense. But let's be smart about it. A large bond measure — say $250 million — to directly fund energy efficiency investments (like high-efficiency lights and air conditioning retrofits) and clean-energy projects (PV on schools with energy storage) makes good sense. By providing long-term energy savings and payback it would be the economic stimulus that keeps on stimulating well after the economy recovers.

4. Develop clean tech workforce training. We won't be able to put solar on roofs and smart grid infrastructure in place without skilled green workers to get the jobs done. Training programs to provide skills for these specialized jobs is needed today to meet the growing demand in the future. For example, the average age of the NASA systems engineers who oversaw the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission was 26, meaning they were only 18 years old when President John F. Kennedy announced his moon challenge in 1961. Tomorrow's clean-energy economy is in the hands of today's students. Let's prepare them.

5. All of us committing to shrink our energy footprint. Although the price of oil and gasoline has plummeted from the summer's high and a certain anesthesia that has settled in, we must stay focused on Hawai'i's energy independence. Lower energy prices today are simply providing some breathing room for us to take actions to prepare for the inevitable: skyrocketing petroleum prices. Let's not squander this opportunity. Replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, putting in a solar water heater, swapping out an old, inefficient fridge, driving less — all go a long way to keeping oil in the ground and money in your pocket. And although the cost of oil is down, its cost to the environment hasn't changed one bit. Each of us doing our part really makes a world of difference.

Hawai'i does not need to suffer high energy prices and paralyzing blackouts. By demonstrating how clean energy can operate on a smart grid with energy storage, Hawai'i will offer the world a new model for power, one with benefits far greater than simply keeping the lights on during a storm.

Jeffrey Mikulina is executive director of The Blue Planet Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to Hawai'i's energy independence and the end of carbon-based fuels. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.