Governor David Ige approved the HB623 bill, which is the first of its kind in the US.
Ige said, "Making the transition to renewable, indigenous resources for power generation will allow us to keep more of that money at home, thereby improving our economy, environment and energy security."
The governor also signed in to law a bill to create a community-based renewable energy programme. The bill will allow residents and businesses, unable to install their own renewable energy generator on their building, to buy electricity from a renewable energy facility.
According to the Hawaiian governor's website, the archipelago is the "most oil dependent state " in the US.
“uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç Intelligence, the data division of “uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç, shows Hawaii has 206MW of wind capacity installed.
In March, Danish-owned developer Alpha Wind Energy submitted a proposal to construct two off the coast of Hawaii. If they get the go-ahead, each will each be made up of 51 floating 8MW turbines.
The foundations would be based on Principal Power's WindFloat semi-submersible foundations. A turbine supplier is yet to be selected.
Hawaii has experimented with electricity storage in a bid to reduce its dependence on oil. However, the First Wind 30MW Kahuku project famously suffered three fires within a year of opening.
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