 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. We're back! We're live, 4 o'clock, here on Wednesday. This is Think Tech Hawaii, and more specifically, this is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm Jay Fidel. I live here. And my co-host and co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum is Sharon Moriwaki, sitting immediately to my left, shot of Sharon. Oh, nice. Christmas outfit. And our co-chair, our kibitzer, our color commentator, is Ken Rogers. He's a retired Canadian businessman and has a different perspective than what we'd like to share. And finally, our special guest calling in from the island of Kauai is Ben Sullivan. He's the Energy and Sustainability Coordinator for Kauai County. Welcome to the show, Ben. Hi, Ben. Always good to have you. It's been years and years now. We're all getting old together, except Sharon. So, Sharon, what about this thing on January 10th? It's really important. Ben's going to be featured as the other counties, but the real thrust of the whole legislative briefing this year for the Energy Policy Forum is on sustainability and resilience. You know, we're hearing all about climate change, the accord, all kinds of things going on. Our whole planet, as well as Hawaii, being most vulnerable in the middle of the Pacific, we're focusing in on sustainability, on resilience, and being ready and making plans for that. So this year, we've broadened our scope and we're co-sponsoring the legislative briefing with Leo, Sunshine, the Director of the Office of Planning. So our real thrust is let's plan well and long-term for Hawaii's future. And we hope everybody will come. It's on January 10th at the State Capitol Auditorium from 1 to 4 p.m. I wanted to distinguish something. You know, we had the EUC conference. I didn't see you there. Ben, last Thursday in Waikiki. And see, it was playing a representation from Hawaii. Matter of fact, Jan Tenruggenkate came, and he sort of represented KIUC there in a discussion of alternative utility models. But, you know, one of the most important aspects of the program was the discussion of planning. And, you know, I think we have to go further. I think this program on January 10th will go further. It's how important planning is, it's how you do planning, and probably most important of all is how you implement plans rather than put them on a dusty shelf. So that's really a big part of the program on the legislative briefing. We're hoping to really hold in on long-range plan, but planning for results and really seeing where we go with that, especially since there's so much in front of us. The challenges are here today. Very important. Okay, so let's talk about our case in chief, so to speak. Let's talk about the title of the show is What's on the Horizon for Kauai County in 2018. Let me preface that by saying that Kauai County is really heroic these days. It's done a really fabulous job with KIUC. It's moving ahead in so many ways. It's so crisp. I know that, you know, everybody agrees on everything, but the fact is you've achieved the kind of nirvana in having the public agree with what KIUC does. And this was covered, how KIUC gets along, you know, with the county. This is really remarkable and you are, you know, cutting important turf that way as a model laboratory for the rest of us. So it's very important what you do. We have to watch what you do because I know we can learn. We already have learned. Everybody has learned from what happens in Kauai. You know, and I think it must be the water. I've always said that it must be the water in Kauai. But tell us what happened in 2017, Ben. What's it been like? I mean, you've had a number of things that we have become aware of. One is we covered the energy conference there. Two is you have not only Tesla, but the AES project and solar storage. And we read that you're doing pumped hydro. You have a project of pumped hydro. So energy is really going somewhere. And for that matter, solar sustainability. Tell us how 2017 went forward. And don't forget the multimodal transportation. They were first with their tiger grant. Fair enough. Okay, Ben? All right. Okay, so we're going for a pretty broad reach here. So, you know, 2017 was a great year. You know, I think you guys named a couple of the great projects that KAC has been working on. And, you know, my marching orders from Mayor Carvalho are really straightforward. You know, he feels that KAC is doing excellent work is in touch with the community and is going in the right direction. So our job is really a supportive role. And it's not hard to do because they are they know what they're doing. They're executing and they're moving us toward an agreed goal. So, you know, when you talk about AES and when you talk about pumped storage hydro, you know, there's not a huge lift there for the county. It's our job in government and local government is to make sure that the community is informed and that they have the resources they need to execute on these projects that really have, you know, great end results for everybody. Pivoting to, you know, work inside the county. And I think you guys are well aware of the work we, you know, our planning and public works people have been doing with regards to multimodal transportation. And so we've been talking for years about but also acting on projects that include the Lihui Town Corps revitalization project that involves the Tiger Grant from the federal government. And that's really about getting people the infrastructure they need to allow them to shift modes from single occupancy vehicle to, you know, being more frequent bus riders and walkers and bikers and, you know, that's a big part of our overarching strategy. I think you guys talked about having the state office of planning involved at your event on January 10th, which I think is great, because it's all about integration. I'm going to take a breath and let you guys react because I know when we're on the phone there's this risk of just going on forever. Not to worry, Ben. We'll interrupt you. We control the phone line, you know. So one thing I wanted to say was I love multimodal transportation. And this may be hard for you to believe, but I used to be a bike racer in my early days. Sharon wasn't born yet. And I rode bike a lot on Kauai. And Kauai was a little special in that regard because it had no shoulders. So Kauai for a bike rider was a pretty dangerous business. And I wonder if your multimodal initiative includes broadening the roads, putting in shoulders, putting in bike lanes where I would feel a little more comfortable riding around. So, yes, so that is all in process and there's a lot of it already on the ground. Jay, have you ridden on the multi-use path on the east side before? Not yet. Okay, so something you guys all have to do next time you come is hit the Kapaa town and ride on the path. I'm not even sure how many continuous miles it is now, but I'm going to guess it's around seven or eight, maybe more. And I'll probably get in trouble from those who work on it day to day because of the number of continuous miles that are available for people to ride on the east side. The transformation there has been interesting because initially it was seen as a recreational path. But as it grows and grows and it will continue to and the plans are in place to do so. It's obvious that it becomes a transportation amenity as it can get you from one town to the next or across town, sometimes faster than you can do when you're stuck in traffic. Sure. So, yeah, I mean, you know, we tend to think of the neighbor islands as quiet, remote, no cars, no traffic. And yet, when you go to the neighbor islands, sometimes you find really tough traffic. And I wonder what your traffic situation is in Kauai. We have really tough traffic, Jay. I think we're on the same boat as a lot of folks around the state. I want to caveat this because, you know, I think it's always important to kind of state where you have expertise and where you don't. We have some really smart transportation planners both at the county and state level on Kauai and I am not one of them. So allow me to just generalize and say, you know, we, Kapa in particular has had some really significant traffic problems and, you know, we're focused on working with the state to figure out how to solve those. But I think the story that's being told around the state and everyone's familiar with it at this point is that, you know, the federal government no longer has the money to just hit the add capacity button for highway problems. And so we're in this place where we have to look for new and different solutions than we've had for the past 30, 40, 50 years to traffic problems. It's a big challenge, but we're doing everything we can. And that, I think, involves in some large part, mode shift that involves the man management of traffic. You know, it involves a lot of different things. So I just want to pivot a little bit to 2018. What of where you are or what you've been doing this year, not only in transportation, but in clean energy and other projects? Do you see going forward in 2018 and whether you have the money to do it, whether you have the resources to do it? And if not, what are your priorities? Good question, Sharon. You know, we're just entering our budget process for FY19. So that kind of remains to be seen as far as what council determines is the right direction. But I know that mayor has put a big emphasis on energy planning and on climate action planning. And so if you guys recall back in June, our illustrious president, Donald Trump, made the determination that it was appropriate for the US or it was likely for the US to pull out of the Paris Agreement. And in response to that, all four mayors around the state got together and said, no, we don't agree with that action and we support climate action planning. We support getting much more serious at the local level about tracking all the good work we're doing and making sure that we're going to be able to deliver on the commitments that our government made for Paris and take responsibility for our greenhouse gas emissions. So what specifically does that mean for Kauai? So what specifically does that mean? That means we look, you know, we are digging deep and we are collaborating with the other three counties and we're determining exactly what the result of all these actions are. So, you know, we just had a short discussion about our multimodal planning. Everybody knows what KAC is doing and other things. But really what it means is, what does that all add up to and how does it compare the need to reduce greenhouse gases across the state? And, you know, more specifically here on Kauai. What kind of actions might come out of that? Well, certainly, you know, we've already got a lot going on in mode shift. But as we dive into climate action planning more, we may find that we want to, you know, there's a need to accelerate electrification of vehicles, for example. So, you know, as you guys probably know, there's, you know, that's an area where we've done some work and Mary has put some EVs in our fleet and we've, you know, we've learned through that process but we're not necessarily the leader around the state. You know, Maui has made some tremendous progress while who actually has quite a high number of EVs. So, for us, within the climate action planning process, it might be something where we say, hey, we need to, you know, we need to make some more robust policies and move that forward in EVs. I'm not going to say what those are right now because, you know, it's always important to make these, to give those decisions to the policymakers, but there's certainly levers that we can pull and things we can do working together. Well, you know, we're at a point where we're almost going to take a break but I wanted to get some reaction, if you will, from our color commentator, Ken Rogers, who comes at this with a fresh approach. Ken, what do you think of Ben? What do you think of Sharon? Sharon's gorgeous and it's great to sit here, you know, but I'm worried about all the American publicity about, you know, better keep my hands above the table type of thing. What about energy? I had an interesting question that had concerned me about the hydro in Kauai because British Columbia, Canada, where I come from, has experimented with what they called run-of-the-river hydro and the government at the time, this is just a few years ago, was a conservative, nothing like the Tea Party conservative, but for Canada it was conservative, and so they let industry bid for these run-of-the-river projects and so they would be a great example for Kauai to study to see some of those projects were terrific and some illustrate exactly what not to do, where you have such gorgeous landscape that if you need places to store the water and then how to pipe it from a high elevation to where you're going to generate power and it was how you do that can, you know, really destroy the landscape for quite a while or it can not change it very much at all and just blend in very quickly and I think it's that blend in quickly experience that is useful to see somebody else that's screwed it up or done it right. Ken, you got any reaction or a comment on that? No, Ben. They're just going right into the deep end with water issues. Got it. Well, I know that KAUC has had the hydro, yeah? KAC has done some really careful planning and they're moving forward with pump storage hydro, what they envision is they envision large solar farms that would during the day pump water uphill and then obviously they would have the ability to release that water at night time when they needed the energy and really do some good balancing in terms of their daily load curve. So certainly, you know, Ken is very right in terms of the sensitivity of those projects and the, you know, the potential for mistakes. I know that KAC is taking this very slowly and they're engaging all the stakeholders and they're making sure they understand. I think one of the other variables that's a little different here, first of all, the scale is much smaller, which I think you can imagine. But then second of all, a lot of these projects are actually run-of-ditch. So in some cases they're run-of-river, but in a lot of cases they're run-of-ditch. So you have an existing irrigation ditch and what you're doing is you're putting that water in a pipe and you're capturing the energy that way. Okay, we're going to take a short break. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about the special sauce in Kauai that makes it so special. We're going to try to examine Ben as we always do about what is really happening to make it such a fabulous place for energy and sustainability. We'll be right back. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Think Tech Kauai at Hibachi Talk. Hello! What do you want to talk about? Oh, yeah. Bingo, we're back. We're back. I was Sharon Moriwaki, co-chair and co-host of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and Think Tech and Ben Sullivan, Energy and Sustainability Coordinator of the County of Kauai. I'm Ken Rogers, Color Coordinator. I'm sorry. Color commentator. Are you a color coordinator? He's a retired Canadian businessman who comes and gives us. Okay, we are talking about what's on the horizon for our Kauai County in 2018, how things have gone, and now we talk about how things are going to go. So, you know, it's clear. I mean, at first, we may have just been dazzled by Kauai, but then after a while, we figure out that we're dazzled on a long-term basis. We keep being dazzled, Ben, and we've got to know why that is. What is happening over there? Is it some kind of moon phase thing? What is it? I've had a conversation before, and you know that I will say, you know, first off, that America Valley's leadership is just a tremendous asset and has been for almost 10 years on the island. And then, you know, you have such a strong community. People are willing to stand up and to really engage each other on these tough issues. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. You know, sometimes we have community meetings where we're just not making progress, but we keep grinding away, and of late, we've been successful. And I think you build on the momentum of success. And so you see an example like KUC, and I think that has kind of spilled over, and you see an example of the collaborative work that's happening in the transportation sector and engaging people at the level of the schools, at the level of the health, the public health agencies. You know, really across the community, and people are starting to see and understand the benefits that we can bring. So no special sauce that's in the water. I think in the people, and I think, you know, I think some excel, so, you know, there's always a glow that you guys see from afar that maybe is just an illusion. You know, it's hard work. And honestly, I've been witness to some of the great things happening over on Oahu recently, and I'm thrilled to see it. So the admiration is mutual. Well, let me say that Sharon and I serendipitously were at this meeting of what is it, polarization in the community, run by Peter Adler at the University of... Public Policy Center and Public Policy Center. Public Policy Center. That's right, it was your organization. And the question of the day was, how do we make these community meetings work? The same question that you're really talking about, and it's still, you know, a magical question because we don't know exactly, it's a social psychology, public psychology kind of question to get people who are on opposite sides of the fence, not to argue so much, but to seek a common solution to come in with good faith. And a lot of it has to do, and this is my take on the discussion of that conference, a lot of it has to do with the leadership, call it a facilitator, moderator, coordinator, person who attends the conference on behalf of whatever agency it is, whoever is set to meeting up, to kind of bring people together and not, you know, not let them go off the path. The other thing that Ben mentioned is that it's also the implementation, that the trust develops when you see results and seeing that the decision maker will take the input and do what was suggested or at least have explanations for why it can't be done or how it can be done. Yeah, that was central in the discussion and I think you probably have achieved that through, you know, this alternative arrangement of the voting for the directors of KIUC and the connection between those directors and county council and county government is where somehow there has emanated over the past ten years of Bernard Carvalho's administration a trust, a trust in the government and the government trusts the people and when you have that kind of, you know, that kind of exchange of trust, all of a sudden things change and people, you know, sort of believe in an altruistic common good and I think if I had to guess, and I'm not there, I'm not there every day, but if I had to guess that would be part of your success right there. Comment? Absolutely a big part of it, you know. I think bringing people together under the idea that, hey, we've got to solve this, we've got to do it together, let's find common ground. These are all, you know, themes that we're familiar with. I would be thrilled to hear some of the other outcomes that you guys took out of that meeting because it's never easy. I want to show up for these public meetings and everyone just says, hey, all right, great project, let's go forward. You know, it's just that we do have a stronger foundation within some of the conversations to move forward on and so that's been, you know, hard fought and earned and it's great to see but it's also something that has to be up kept and maintained and hopefully we can do so going forward. Yeah, it's difficult, it's fragile, it's a fragile piece if you will, a fragile trust to achieve it, it's a lot easier to lose it any day. So Ben, so Ben, what are some of the challenges that are more fragile that you're working on and need to work on so that we can hear how we can support your efforts statewide as well as, you know, through the forum and other organizations because you have succeeded in doing quite a few projects and what kinds of things do you have on the burner so to speak? So, you know, I'm excited because the collaboration with the other counties is really ramping up and I think that, you know, all the other counties with City and County of Honolulu as the anchor are really working much more closely together. I think that's something you guys are kind of commenting on and perhaps even featuring on on June, or I'm sorry, January 10th. You guys probably know me and I get excited about data so, you know, we've been having this conversation about data collaborative and how to open up more data. I don't want to bore your listeners too much with that because data without visuals is kind of an empty joke, but it's a really important piece of the puzzle to get shared data so that we all have a common understanding of what's actually happening and what trends are continuing or, you know, either going in the right or the wrong direction. Well, I think the public wants to see that for accountability purposes, yeah, so that we say, we do what we say we're going to do to see the results of that. On collaboration among the counties, we learned from Fred Riddell, your counterpart in Maui, or at least energy counterpart in Maui, that there's some scheduled meeting of all the, I guess, county representatives here in Oahu in the next few weeks. We're going to talk about what the counties are doing. It's a great collaboration. Do you want to comment on that? That might be referring to something we did actually last week. That's the one, yeah, that's the one. So we had a climate action planning workshop and there was about, you know, it was a small enough group that we could build that trust over a short amount of time and interact really intensively. There's only about 35 people, but we had people from all four counties, we had people from transportation, we had people from the state energy office, from Elemental Accelerator, from, you know, U-Hero, a number of other groups that were Hawaii Energy, Ryan Kealoha and his team, and we really had some good conversations and there were some great takeaways from that meeting about what comes next. One of the things that I would highlight really quickly is that we also included folks that we haven't always in the past, which is to say, here we are in energy discussion and we're including people doing adaptation planning. So that was a really interesting twist and I think it was a fruitful way to orchestrate a day and a half workshop because it helped us understand the other side of the coin, if you will, climate change. Yeah, that's the thread that seems to be going forward now. We've got to connect energy with climate change. We've got to connect sustainability, resilience and all that with climate change which is kind of a mind bend in many ways because the two don't, you know, inherently touch and we've got to make them touch. We've got to make one affect the other. Very important. So, you know, I'd like to ask you a two-part question here at almost the end of our show and that is what should we be looking for in Kauai's moves in 2018 that we can learn from? What is happening do you think that creates a lesson for Oahu and for that matter the other islands to learn from going forward? My second part of that question is, what is happening on Oahu and the other islands that you are watching, that you could learn from? What is the exchange here? Can you identify, you know, how do you see those threads coming together in 2018? So, love to learn from and participate in the great work that the city and county is doing in terms of electrifying buses and so that's something we're paying very close attention to and we see a really strong collaboration between the that entity and Hawaiian Electric in terms of trying to bring electric buses to market there on Oahu. So that's very exciting. One of the things we hope to do in 2018 better is involve youth more and get more into the schools with these conversations because I think Jay candidly, these problems are bigger than any of us and we need to very deliberately be prepared to hand off the torch of these challenges to the next generation and I mean that very literally. I don't mean in the standpoint of the metaphor of involving youth and kind of giving them a pat on the back and saying this is what you're going to be up against. I mean these are the real challenges we don't have answers for and we need you guys to start getting into position so that we can hand this off in a very effective way you know kind of relay race style so we don't miss a beat as these things move forward. That's great that's absolutely right too I totally agree well Ken Rogers it's time for some color coordination here or commentatorism if you will. Well I was going to ask a technical question have you considered instead of simply electrification of things the use of hydrogen you know the hydrogen technology has progressed a lot and the difficulty with assuming everything will work on electrification is somehow you got to be able to produce the electricity and clearly you know you're going at great lengths to produce additional electricity but over the long haul you know it's really hard to get enough electricity without using hydrocarbons. Let me expand that for a minute Ben also you know I mean I've always felt that uniform rates around the state I know it's harder if you have two utilities or maybe more but uniform rates and uniformity is a good thing because it makes us share and I've always felt that cable or some way to transmit electricity from one island to another is very valuable to achieve that and to ride a little bit on the coattails of that question does hydrogen get in the planning here as a way to move energy in tanks right from one island to another has anybody been considering that in Kauai? No we have not been considering it on Kauai. I'm aware that Kauai island has done some work I'm sure you guys have talked to individuals who are working there and I'm aware that there's been some work done on Oahu but we just have not turned that corner on Kauai and it's really just a matter of there's only so many things we can take on and so many things we can try to gain enough to understand well and hydrogen just has not been one of those for us. I think the beauty of the four county ecosystem is that everybody takes a different lead and we learn from each other. Again I mentioned you know Miley County being a leader in electrification of vehicles I think Kauai is probably one of the leaders in hydrogen right and they've done some work there yes yes and here we are we you know we're a leader in the electricity sector with our co-op and with you know stored solar energy and perhaps going forward with pump storage so everybody has their thing if you will and I hope to learn more and more about hydrogen as we go forward but it's not something that's in our quiver at this point though what a lovely conversation Sharon was it's great discussion Ben you're terrific you know you're a great guest we have to have you on all the time so Sharon why don't you summarize the value here and say farewell to Ben and our listeners I think that but Ben and Kauai bring to us is is really the kinds of integration working together the hard work that comes from you know but but the results that come from working together that's it's really a long process and that they have been at the wheel longer than the most and they have a lot to share so I really appreciate Ben starting us off really way back about three years ago on on climate change and seeing how important it is for us to consider that so we've come a long way in just a couple of years now it's front and center so I want to thank Ben Kauai County for its continued work and your leadership there and we hope to hear more from you Ben and that the months and days to come thank you what would you add to that Ken how much of what Sharon said do you agree with I agree with everything Sharon says but you know I was wondering how you're going to handle the climate change deniers in Washington you know whether you've hired well there's a challenging question Ben we're going to leave that question for a later show because we're out of time thank you Ken thank you Sharon thank you Ben great discussion thank you so much Happy Holidays Aloha for Christmas