MEET KELLY

Kelly King is a candidate for the South Maui district seat of the Maui County Council, where she has been a leader in sustainability and an engaged resident since becoming a mother in 1985. She has lived on Maui for over 40 years and with her husband Bob has two children, both born and raised on Maui (graduates of Maui High School and UH Mānoa), and two grandchildren. A long-time advocate for resilient, thriving communities, her priorities include a diversified circular economy, local renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, food security, affordable housing, social equity, emergency preparedness, environmental protection, and managed shoreline retreat.

In 2020, King was recruited to join the board of ICLEI-USA - Local Governments for Sustainability, and she was subsequently appointed to the Local Government Advisory Committee to the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2021, King was one of just a few U.S. ICLEI board members invited to participate as an official ICLEI delegate to the United Nationsʻ Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. The next year, she attended COP27 in Egypt. King served as an elected member of the Hawaiʻi State Board of Education, representing Maui County from 1994-1998.
​
Outside of her community work, King is Vice President of Pacific Biodiesel, a pioneering renewable energy company she co-founded with her husband Robert King in 1995. The first commercial biodiesel company in the U.S., Pacific Biodiesel has since built 13 biodiesel plants in the U.S. and Japan and its community-based biodiesel model has become a standard for the sustainable renewable fuel industry. The company remains the only commercial producer of liquid biofuel in Hawaiʻi and is expanding its production through regenerative agriculture, producing both food and fuel locally.
 
Among her many accomplishments, King received the 2018 Maui Sierra Club Onipaʻa Award, was named to the Biofuels Digest international list of Top 100 People in the Advanced Bioeconomy 2017, and earned the 2005 BlueSky Award from United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Shenzhen, China.
​
Learn more about Kellyʻs accomplishments here.