 To Stan Ingeman, I'm Think Tech Hawaii, and also I'm in here on election day 2020, so I'm wearing my patriotic shirt. And, man, this is kind of a nail biter, exciting election. That's for certain. I'm actually kind of curious to see how Hawaii's going to turn out because, you know, I wouldn't think that a Republican presidential candidate would stand much of a chance here. But I've actually seen a whole bunch of those Trump caravans with the trucks and the flags driving around Oahu, and I'm going, this might be a real interesting year in Hawaii. It'd be kind of a real scary thing for the Democrats if Trump actually won Hawaii. I think that would be more newsworthy than probably the rest of the election all by itself. Anyway, enough for the election. So today, my guest is Mr. Richard Ha from the Big Island, and I've known Richard for probably 10 years now. Went to visit his banana and tomato farm when he was still farming, and it was really an impressive operation. He's an accomplished businessman, and he worked. He likes to work renewable energy, clean energy, and sustainability issues on the Big Island. And he takes a very pragmatic approach by working with the neighborhoods, working with the community, and getting their input first. And I think on the Big Island that's critical to any kind of projects that go on. So he's on today. Welcome, Richard. And I really appreciate you joining me today. And why don't you just tell the folks a little bit about, you know, the kind of work that you've done on the Big Island. And I know you grew up there. They might even be interested in knowing a little bit of your background growing up on the Big Island. Oh, okay. My family is a Kamahile from lower Pula. And my grandma folks, Okinawan, and from Moka'i, they were farming over there. And my grandfather was a Korean man. I never met him. And he disappeared one day. You know, people don't know what happened to him. They just kind of worried that something bad happened. But I never knew him. So the Hawaiian side of the family, we were influenced a lot by, we had 40 acres of land down in Makua. And we lived at a different place, you know, outside of Hilo. But we would go and visit our great grandma and spend some time down there. And I actually learned, I was influenced a lot. My father used to tell stories, you know, about not no can can get 1000 reasons why no can I only looking for the one reason why can those kinds of things. It was just automatic. Yeah. So anyway, so what basically happened was this was about like when I was four years old, like my father used to tell stories. And it affected me all the way to to now I still can remember and I know exactly when I was influenced, you know, when they started telling stories. Anyway, so what what happened to me was the kind of stories he told was made you think in the future. And later on, it became kind of second nature that we would always think 10 years ahead. And then, you know, like in farming, think 10 years ahead, figure out where you needed to be and force the change necessary to get there. And what we found out over the years is that small little changes can get you there, you don't have to make one last desperate move at the last minute. So it worked all right for us, all through our business and stuff like that. Pretty much that's the my background yet as as a kid. And then I grew up. I wasn't very good in school. I flunked out of UH Manoa, got drafted. But it wasn't it wasn't a bad thing. You know, I mean, I got I went into the army, and I looked around or what can I do that make the best of the situation. So I volunteered to become an army officer. So I went to Vietnam, and then came back back in Vietnam. The unwritten rule was we all come back when nobody comes back. And then, you know, and you form a bond like that with all of the military people you work with. And then the other thing is, had I not been in the military, I would not have known, I would not have experienced what that life was like. And, you know, I really respect the military way of doing things in a full round, you know, and not only that, some people were relatively young, you know, I mean, in Vietnam, we're pretty young young people. But, you know, they handed you authority based on just like they didn't even look how old you were. Okay, that's your job. And they gave you the responsibility and you did it, you know, it was just that kind of thing. So that that's how I was influenced. Then I came back. And I grew up quite a bit, went back to school. And I wasn't very good at economics. I mean, I had no idea what economics was. And then math, algebra, I just barely passed first year algebra never went to calculus. I had no idea what that is. But I couldn't read. And probably was influenced by, you know, when we, when I was elementary school, there was a house right at the start. And underneath that house was boxes full of comic books. And I spent, oh, a lot of time reading. I probably learned more about reading from the comic books than anything. But anyway, so then then as as I, you know, started farming, same thing, you know, just looking into the future and stuff like that. But what really influenced me was was in 2007, you know, just before the great recession, we knew something was happening, you know, the prices of product plastic products, you know, all this kind of stuff that's made out of oil. The prices were going up. I didn't make the connection at first. And then, then when I finally did, I thought, holy smokes, I better go learn about this stuff. So I went to five people conferences starting in 2007. And from the first year I went there, I realized, holy smokes, you know, the first thing they said was the world had been using twice as much oil as it had been finding for the last 20 years. And I took a step back and said, okay, that's not a good thing. So as I, you know, learned, and then I started following the subject, it became really clear to me that this, this is really serious. And so it became a Kuliana coming back and talking about oil. And that's how come I'm doing what I do now. Yeah, you know, and a lot of people, I think under appreciate what we would call the wisdom of our Kupuna. And growing up the way you did, they had a very simple way of looking at certain things. But that doesn't mean it's unsophisticated. It was a simple way of measuring and making decisions. But it was very strong, very solid logic. And I think that today, most people don't really think enough about the future and planning for the future and looking for a path to the future. Because nowadays we make so many quick decisions that we miss the second, third order effect. But if you do the path that you described that your dad taught you, you see those things as you go along, because you start planning and then you say, Oh, but what if this happens? What if that happens? And you think those through before you make that decision. And I think that's actually missing in a lot of our society today. And as we start to look at sustainability in Hawaii, which I'm convinced, and I know you are too, that we need to do good planning, we need to do good designing and planning of our systems and our economics. I know you said you didn't do economics in school, but by virtue of the fact that you went to those conferences, the economics probably hit you like a two by four right between the eyes when it came to where your money goes and what you have to do. And I know we've talked a lot about the economics in Hawaii and how with all the energy sources that we have between geothermal and hydroelectric, I mean, you have your own hydroelectric electricity generator on your property, on your farm, things like that, that are underappreciated and could take Hawaii completely off the fossil fuel circuit. And that would have a huge economic impact for us. So let's use that as a good jumping off point. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to on the big island to really get us moving more towards clean energy? Because I'm convinced personally that the big island is the key to the state of Hawaii when it comes to building the future. When it comes to designing and building the future for the state, it's going to start on the big island. Yeah. So after the 2007, 2008 recession, that recession lasted five years. This one here is much greater. So we've got to be prepared not only for what happens after five years, but first of all, we got to get to this pandemic thing. And then at the same time, we got to deal with what the future holds, which is going to be tougher than five years. And the key is energy. Nothing happens without energy. I mean, energy is working. Yeah, exactly. This is real straightforward. So if you take a step back and then you start to think, okay, where can our energy come from? And we are so, so lucky with all the different sources that we have. So we can mix and match and stuff like that. And on top of that, we have geothermal, which can take you to scale. So my whole focus now is to try to be practical about where could we be in 10 years? And in 10 years, it's beyond that. You cannot imagine because it's so complex. But what you do know is that there's a bunch of people that are thinking, oh, these modes, okay? So the fossil fuels are declining. Then what? So if that is the case, then we got to protect ourselves. And when we're looking at energy, we're looking at jobs. And when we're looking at the pandemic, we're looking at health. So there's like a conflict between the two. But then it doesn't have to be. If we think about it really carefully and plan it, we can get through both at the same time. And we have to. Yeah. So, you know, on the big island, let's go through some of the renewable energy. We know we have solar. We know we have wind available. The very birth of ocean thermal is right down at Nelha in Kona. You have hydroelectric like you have on your farm. You know, it's like, I would say, even if you discounted the geothermal and just went with wind and solar and hydroelectric, I would say you could take care of the big island all by itself with just those three. But if you throw hydro, if you throw geothermal in there, I'd say you take care of the big island, no matter how big it gets, no matter how big the agriculture or industry gets, and you can take care of the rest of the state because there's so much energy in geothermal. And, you know, in talking about geothermal and then looking a little bit further, we have the possibility of manufacturing with geothermal because you can geothermal, you can use heat, yeah? Whereas the other sources, you don't have heat. So, there's just another option for redundancy, yeah? So, that's kind of what I'm looking at. And essentially what we like to do is go to hydrogen and lean toward hydrogen because we really don't know exactly what's going to happen. We know that it's probably, a lot of the world is moving in that direction. So, if we lean in that direction and kind of set ourselves up to be successful, and hopefully we can make ourselves a demonstration kind of place where folks that are in the hydrogen space would want to come here and see do experiments and stuff. And another thing that, and I agree with you, you know, the electric grid is really important. So, within, you know, 10 years, if we can pass on to future generations of really, really solid electricity grid with good sources, mix and match with different sources of energy. And if you got also hydrogen, which had a special rate where you could, every single house then could actually use hydrogen if they, whatever that technology happened to be at that time. So, it kind of puts future generations in a nice place. So, generally, if there's anything, any influence we can do in that direction, that's kind of how we're leaning. Okay. I tell you what, we're going to take a quick break here, Richard, and we'll be back in 60 seconds. And let's talk a little bit more about the PUC and hydrogen and some of the options that we have out there. I'd like to start that energy man, I think, take Hawaii, Dan Osterman here, and Richard Ha from the Big Island. So, Richard, when we finished up, we were talking about, a little bit about hydrogen, maybe wind and solar power. And we were looking at using hydrogen from some of the energy storage. And let's talk a little bit more about that. In the future, you know, if we have people that can be off the grid completely, maybe they have solar, maybe they have some wind, how do you think that would kind of work out into the mix? Well, you know, if people go off the grid, we know we need to use more, we have to be clean energy powered by 2045. So, if all the cars on the road right now went to electricity, we'd have to put a tremendous amount of money into upgrading the grid. Yeah, it's not just the chargers that saw that infrastructure has to grow as well. Right. Yeah, so if people, like you're saying, you know, so there's a lot of options, people can go off the grid and still be operating. Yeah, so like, you know, something I've thought about a bunch is, especially here on Oahu, because we're a lot more dense population-wise, but even on the Big Island, if you had a microgrid that was like Javi North Kohala area, where you kind of had a traditional grid, but using all renewable energy and houses that were far away from the electric lines, they would just be self-sustaining. They could be off the grid with solar and wind, and you could make enough electricity, even if you had an electric car to charge your vehicle with the right setup on an individual home. And then other communities like Waimea and Hilo and Kona and Kauu, they could have centralized grids that could survive on their own, on their own microgrids, so to speak, using hydrogen energy storage. But that hydrogen could be generated either for the community, or if your house happened to be off the grid completely for yourself. And that hydrogen can be used not just to store energy to turn back into electricity using a fuel cell, but you could also cook with it. You could also heat water with it. There's a lot of other uses. So, and on the microgrid side, if you happen to be making hydrogen for a community or for a microgrid, you're also making oxygen, medical grade oxygen for your hospital and for your welders. So, there's other pieces that feed into sustaining your community and your environment. Another thing that people don't think a lot about, but one of the best ways to move hydrogen when you want to ship it someplace is to make ammonia, because ammonia is NH3. It's three hydrogen atoms and nitrogen, and the air is like 75% nitrogen. So, you're pulling nitrogen from the air and hydrogen, and you make ammonia, and that's what you need for fertilizer. So, then that feeds into your sustainable agriculture. We're not importing ammonia. We're using ammonia for agriculture, and we're also using ammonia to ship hydrogen, like between big island and Oahu, if we need it over there. And then once it's on Oahu, it can be turned back into pure hydrogen, release the nitrogen, and now you can make electricity and do all those other things with hydrogen on Oahu. It's made on the big island with all the renewables that you have here. So, as a state, I just see this holistic way of synergizing on sustainable energy between the big island, Maui, even Kauai, and making energy that could be shared across the whole state without running undersea cables, without even putting up big wind turbines. I mean, they've even talked about putting ocean wind turbines out there, and I'm not so sure that's a great idea here in Hawaii. I know they use it a lot in the North Sea, and I know you've been to Iceland, so we could talk a little bit about Iceland and their geothermal, but the North Sea wind projects, people look at that and say, well, that'd be perfect for Hawaii, except who wants to look at wind turbines when you look out your hotel room window in Waikiki. And if you put them way out 10 miles out, then the water is so deep, it's too hard to run cables to bring that ashore. So, how do you do that? The water is so deep, how do you anchor those wind turbines? Because in the North Sea, they're actually anchored to the seabed because only a couple hundred fathoms deep, or here it's a couple thousand fathoms deep. So, you know, there's a lot we could be doing, and I just see the big island as the place where it can all happen. So, how do we convince a community on the big island that this is all a good idea, and give them that 10-year forward look and talk to them about what's real, what's practical, without being offensive culturally, and without creating fear, or doing those kind of things that seem to crop up a lot of times when you have big ideas, and at the end game, the local community says, no, not in my backyard. Yeah, so we, you're exactly right, we got a talk story with the community, and you know our group Sustainable Energy, Hawaii, we're a nonprofit, we're a lot of developers, anything like that. What we need to do is have this show, how should I say, bring the people together, so we can have a discussion, and they need to know that we are very interested, and it's shown by our history, very interested in the value we bring back to the community. So, we would rather see our community have benefit from whatever we do, instead of having a foreign company come in and suck all the money out of the economy. That's unacceptable, so that's the role we play, and it'll take some time, and you know, like for example, what we just did with Kyokawa Elementary School, as we were working with Kyokawa Elementary School, but mainly because we're working with the community, and then it starts to evolve and become more bigger and bigger, but everybody has buy-in, because everybody can see the benefit to, you know, so our thing is pretty simple, you know, but it's like I say, you know, we got a talk story, and I mentioned my background in Kamehile at Puna, because I'm from, and I, you know, that's really who I am here, but it's that kind of old values that you carry with you, and then, you know, people just talk story a little bit, they know immediately whether you are like that or not, yeah, so our group is all like that, yeah, we're all, so it's not very complex, and there's a lot of experts who know the subject really good, our thing is to bring the value back to the community, yeah. Well, you know, Richard, I know you've been to Iceland before, and I've been there several times with the military myself, and Iceland's a very unique place, and they're really, just for those that don't know, Iceland is pretty much 100% geothermal, they still run a lot of their vehicles on diesel or gasoline that they import, but there's really no reason for them to, they could easily run most of their vehicles off electricity as well from the geothermal, but you've been there before, and the people really like it, and plus they have to heat their houses, and geothermal is a really good job of that as well, but how do we get the people here to become comfortable and appreciate geothermal the way the Icelanders do it? Yeah, it's going to take a talking story, and that's really what it'll take, so that people understand what it is really, and what is at stake, what is at stake is really very serious. You know, I mean, if you go and look at how much debt we have because of our economic system, boy, it's really scary, so what we really need to do is utilize the old values about the environment, the land, and the respectful culture, and all this kind of stuff, we all got to depend on each other kind of things, so we're going to have this discussion because we have not been faced with this serious situation ever before, and yet if we kind of figure it out and kind of lean in the right direction, we can come out on top and take care of the energy as well as the pandemic at the same time, so I'm really optimistic, but it'll take groundwork, top story with people. So I know that folks like Hank Rogers has been to Iceland, you've been there, I've been there, I know several people from Hawaii that have been, I know my old tanker squadron, we used to love to go to Iceland, that's why for us it was like going to a part of the world that you'd never imagine in Hawaii, in fact we used to joke about there's a girl behind every tree in Iceland, and that's because there's no trees, you know, but it was a beautiful place, it's one of those places where it's got a different kind of beauty of its own, but they are a very hearty society, they live in a very harsh environment, and they have to get by with what they have themselves, and I think we kind of have a false sense of comfort here because we import everything, but there's an economic piece to that, an economic price to pay as you mentioned, and I really wish we could talk story enough to people so that they can understand that Hawaii's not that different from Iceland, we're a lot warmer, that's for sure, and the climate's a whole lot better, but we could be doing better for ourselves, better for our environment and better for our future if we weren't so dependent on bringing in outside energy, bringing in outside food, you know, look back to when your ancestors were, you know, their diet was so different on taro and fruits and vegetables that were grown locally, how much healthier the people were and stuff, and why are we putting up with fast food and all the other stuff when we could go and take a page from our history and go and live a little bit more sustainably and off the land than trying to have this false economy and take all the risks that you mentioned where we put ourselves in debt and we straddle ourselves with these kind of problems when we could be doing it, I'd say look 150, 200 years ago and say there's no reason why we can't feed ourselves, you know, the Hawaiians did it with the same population two, 300 years ago and they had a system for it and it worked and why can't we do it today with all of our technology and all that we know today, so I hope that you'll keep working on that, I know you will because I know you have a passion for it, but I hope that I can help, you know, keep working with you and as you come up with new ideas and new proposals and I know you've been working with the public utilities commission to try and, you know, make them aware of options that would give Hawaiians more choices in the future for sustainability. I just applaud your efforts doing that and the group that you have over there on the Big Island, the Sustainable Energy Coalition, you know, that group, you know, that's a great thing and I'm going to give you the last 30 seconds to just close us up here. Okay, first of all, our website is SustainableEnergyHawaii.org so you can go over there and see all the different things that we're doing. Yeah, you know, and I've been wondering, okay, you know, we're talking about energy and energy, the primary source of energy is food, right? Not oil, it's food, so okay, but we live in this world today. Could we say tax, maybe not tax or let's just use tax, all the energy providers, X amount, put them in a pot for maybe the Farm Bureau or somebody to benefit the farmers because as it is right now, you know, we only supply 10, 15% of the food we eat and the farmers are having such a hard time and it's tied to energy, you know, right now the energy prices move, but that's anyway to support. No, I hear you and it frustrates me that more local farmers can't make a living and struggle. I mean, I do a lot of shopping at Costco, I mean, I'll speak in truth, you know, here on the on the TV, but I tell you what, when I go there, I buy local papayas, you know, I buy as much local produce as I can, there's I know it's produced in Hawaii, pineapples, bananas, papayas and poi, they have, you know, they have good sized bags of poi that's really tasty, too. And I try and support the local farmers as much as I can because I think maybe even instead of taxing, we just need to have that political will or economic will to support our own small businesses and our farmers. And I know that some of the grocery stores here like Foodland and stuff do a great job of promoting local produce. A lot of our restaurants promote local produce. I know a lot of our hotels promote it, but and I really, I agree with you, you know, for human beings, especially it's food is our energy. And there's no reason why we should be seeming big ships from the mainland. And they're probably getting their food from South America in the off season and stuff. Why, why don't we just do it here? We could do everything here. The big island has almost every climate that there is on the planet. So I don't see why we couldn't grow pretty much anything that we wanted on the big island if we wanted to. Okay, Richard, well, I tell you what, it's half hours blasted by here and I appreciate your time and I appreciate the work that you're doing on the big island. I try and keep touch with you every couple of weeks and keep it up. You're doing a great job over there. And if I can help, or if any of the folks at Blue Planet Research can help, please let us know. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. Okay, Richard. Take care. And until next week, send the energy man signing off. Don't forget to go vote. Aloha.