 We are so happy. This is Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, given Monday at noon. One of our important energy shows, and Jennifer Ponder, who is one of the PUC commissioners, joins us here in the studio. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Jay. It's so great to be here. Thanks for having me back. I was afraid that maybe I burned my bridge last time. No, no, no. Never, never, never. No matter what. And Marco, Marco joins us by phone from Hilo from Provision Solar. Hi, Marco. Say hi. Say hi, Marco. And I can't tell you that, you know, Mondays can kind of be a challenging day after a weekend. But to be with two of my favorite energy friends on this Monday just brightens my day and lifts my chakra level to unknown heights. So thank you so much. Yeah, I see it the same way. It's kind of a continuation of the weekend. Absolutely. It makes it ease right in. We're doing a good job, guys. Thank you so much for that. So since, you know, Jenny is here and she's a public official and everything, we thought we'd sort of turn the show over to her. And the first thing you should do, Jenny Potter, is to introduce your guests today. Yes. Excellent. See what you can do about that. Absolutely. I think that you, this might be tricky because you're seated on my right side. I'm not sure. I think the camera might have you on my left, but to my right is Mr. J. Fidel, who is an energy expert extraordinaire. Most of the time he's asking me questions and I think he should be answering them. He's definitely done a lot for our community in terms of encouraging people and educating people to get more involved in topics around energy. And very much an expert and grateful to be seated next to him. And on the phone we have Marco Mangelsdorf, who's actually a member of my tribe. We've agreed. We've become fast friends and not only in the energy space where he provides great guidance in terms of a lot of things that have happened throughout history in Hawaii. Not that long of a history, Marco, but every recent history. And then also just as a friend who's come into my life at a time where I've needed him very, very, very much. And he's been a very strong proponent of encouraging me and to pursue my dreams here as commissioner. And I'm very grateful for that. So thank you to you both. Oh, and by the way, he is owner of Provision Solar. Very important to me. I encourage that. Okay, Marco, you want to rebuttal? No rebuttal neither. No rebuttal there. I feel deeply touched and grateful for your incredibly kind and affectionate words. So thank you, Jenny, very much. Thank you. And thanks for me too, Jenny. Yes, my pleasure. Thank you. So what would you like to have us discuss today? Well, we've had an interesting beginning of the year. I think that the PUC has accomplished quite a bit as an organization. I think in the first three months we've put out more critical orders than we had in the previous year. We've handled a lot of rape cases, but we handled a lot of that purchase power agreements for renewable energy, which is going to significantly increase our needs to get to the 100% renewable portfolio goal, which is great. And we've also worked on the grid modernization. We've been working diligently on performance-based regulation. But at the same time, we've been working down these alleys and down this path. There's been a parallel path at the legislature that's taken on some of the issues in terms of how we can get to 100% renewable, how we're going to do that with, you know, whether we're looking at incentives, whether we're looking at appliance standards or codes. And then we have, you know, the Cajico companies that are also heavily involved in trying to meet these goals and their initiatives. We have local and county governments that get involved. For example, MECO recently and MEDB, we were just talking about, really was a champion for electric vehicles and trying to get the current infrastructure that we have for electric vehicle chargers, that public infrastructure in place and viable and continuing on took a very active role there. So there's all these players that are playing in this space. And, you know, they're not necessarily all playing together. We might be in the same endless sandbox, but my question I think I'd pose to both of you is, who's the leader? Who should be the leader? Who is currently the leader in this space? And really getting us over the next 10 years, 15 years, maybe even to 2045, who should be taking the bull by the horns and getting us across some of these more intermediate steps and then finally to the long haul? And might that role change? Might it be a different entity? So, Jay, you want to tackle that first? Yeah, and this may be the longest talk show we have ever had. This talk show may go to 2045. I don't think it's clear. And that's not a good thing because there should be somebody we can all expect will, you know, say, follow me boys and girls. And right now it's hard to answer the question. The fact that you pose the question, we all pose the question, means it's not settled and it should be settled. I'm not even sure who can settle the question. You know what I mean? That's a great point. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the big players are the legislature, but the legislature is in two resolutions this year. They've done four or five resolutions and I'm not sure resolutions actually take you very far. They need to do, you know, affirmative bills is what they need. Bills maybe that haven't been passed over three years or four years of trying. I don't fully understand that. Maybe Marco does. I think the Office of the Energy Office is in fragmentation right now. It's not clear where they're going, what they're doing, their authority, their funding, their staff. So that's, they're not an easy candidate on this. Right. Right. The PUC is quasi-judicial and yes, you can make, you know, indices and commentaries on your decisions that will give leadership. Your primary purpose is quasi-judicial. That's right. Answering questions that are put before you. That's right. And usually somebody else has the idea for the docket. That's right. And then I guess there's the utility or utilities and by default they come up with stuff. You know, it's based on their interest, of course. But they do come up with stuff and they want to move ahead and they're responsive to the goals and targets and all that. So you've got to give them credit for that. Well, let me think. The counties, the counties as in Maui and MEDB doing stuff, you know, like filling the gap and hoping that what they do will somehow, you know, catch fire in other places. But there's no, and the governor is really not, doesn't see himself as the leader of energy. Mixed comments, but he's not really taking it forward. I don't, I don't, who else? Who did I miss, Marco? What do you think? Well, I think it's an incredibly juicy and difficult to answer question, Jenny. I think the system in which we live does not lend itself to some type of kind of all-powerful energy czar or czarina, man or woman. You know, if we lived in a more authoritarian dictatorship type of country, that might be possible. But that, of course, is typically not, not our nature, not our system here. So my responsibility is, I think, essentially we have collective leadership. We have champions from various, various sectors, including the private sector, which I've been a part of for quite a while, the solar industry. We have champions in the non-profit sphere. We have folks, you know, from Ulupono initiative. We have folks from, from Blue Planet, Hank Rogers and his group. For Lucky, we'll have one or more champions in the legislature. If we're lucky, we'll have a chief executive, Governor E. Gay, who is, is pushing the ball forward. If we're lucky, we'll have individual actors within Hawaiian Electric and KIUC, who are pro renewable energy, cost-effective renewable energy, electrifying transportation and so forth. So I think we're, we're destined to continue to have a collective leadership and, and can only hope that there's enough common ground, enough common goals and strategies that we're moving in the right direction. And I think, you know, the fact that we've got you there on the commission, Jenny, and our friend Dr. Jay Griffin and Leo Assoucione, that, you know, I've been in the sphere in Hawaii for decades and I'm not even buttering up for anything when I tell you. I've never been so hopeful and confident that our current commission and the staff, which I know works their, their collective okoles off, is, is, we've never, we've never had a better commission in terms of, you guys really get it, in my opinion, that is the changing regulatory environment, changing utility environment, changing energy environment. And it's critical they have regulators like you three who really do get it. So I really do feel it's collective leadership and I feel pretty good about this collective leadership. That said, if you look at this past legislative session, I don't feel particularly good about what was not accomplished there. So I think I'll, I'll stop talking for now. Okay, I'd like to rebuttal. May I? Please. Yeah. First of all, I want to go further on the PUC because the PUC does have the legislative power, this authority to come up with ideas. You don't have to treat everything as quasi-judicial, you know, decision-making. You can actually open a docket yourself, you can call the parties in, you can bring in a mediator, arbitrator, a master, a special master to decide things. You can actually talk to people if you want. And you do. And so let, you know, this leadership there and you can actually, you can actually do more of that, I think, within your statutory authority. And maybe you are doing more of that. I sense that you are because you're fresh and you're, you know, you're, you're innovative. And that's the natural tendency with fresh and innovative people to speak up. So, you know, I really think you are a bigger, better hope than you've ever been. And so I echo Marco on that, but I also say that the way it works, this room, plenty of room for the PUC to step into more of a leadership position on this. But the other thing is I want to disagree with something. May I, Marco? Is it okay? How dare you, but go ahead. Sorry, I'm going to go ahead. What is this collective leadership? It sounds like an oxymoron to me. Either you have a leader or a group, but, you know, collective what? And then you wonder about that because this is the land of consensus. And consensus is not our destiny, it's our doom. We can't live on consensus. We have to have somebody take a chance, take a risk. And I remember a speech that David Bissell gave one time in one of our energy programs that he said, I want you to know that we have a whole concept about taking risk. We know that risk is built into dealing with new technology, new energy technology. Yes. And we are willing to appraise the risk, analyze the risk and take the risk. That's how you move ahead. That's awesome. Absolutely. And he does, he does do that. Yes. So anyway, I worry with collective, quote, collective leadership, that you have the phenomenon of the nail getting hammered down or the crab being pulled back in the bucket. And, you know, it's, Mark, you'll have to agree with me. It's second best. Consensus model, collective leadership is second best. You agree? Yes. And I don't think it's feasible to envision some type of one or two individuals who would have the cloud, the authority, the ability to, as I mentioned earlier, to be kind of the energy czar to move things in a more bigger, bolder, faster fashion. I'm not trying to stay grounded in reality. And I'm trying to spend it somewhat positively, Jay, but I don't disagree with your assessment that collective leadership has, I don't believe that it's oxymoronic, but at the same time there are inherent weaknesses when you talk about a collective trying to get something done in a fast fashion. You are so good, Marko. Jenny, what would you add, if anything, to any of that? So, you know, the PUC, well, Jay's and I specifically, and Caroline Chaun and Chris Yonker from the Energy Office were asked to join a comprehensive electricity planning task force with Nehruka Nassio, which is the National Association of Regulators and then there's also the State Energy Office. So there was only 16 states that were asked to participate in this effort and we were put into cohorts, which means different states were kind of grouped together and we're in there and we're like, what are we doing with North Carolina, you know? What are we doing? And I went and I asked that, I said, Danielle, what are we doing with North Carolina? And she said, all of you have stood up to your utilities and that's what made you guys a cohort. And I was thinking, so the rest of the PUCs hadn't stood up to their utilities, which doesn't mean that we're like bad utility and we're, you know, but where we're saying, no, we expect you to share in some of the risk or we want to see, we put a contingency on cost recovery here or, you know, I guess there's a lot of rubber stamping out there but since even that point, I've been asked to speak on so many conferences about regulation, innovation and regulation. So there is something that's happening here at the PUC. We are innovating and we know that to a large degree but I think a lot of where I see, you know, what are responsibilities and one of the things that, so I study public policy and my master's program and I worked for not-for-profits and one thing they told us is the objective of a not-for-profit is to work yourself out of a job. It's your job to, if you are looking for literacy, you know, and that's your whole initiative, then everybody can read and then finally you close your doors, you know, hunger has ended and you've done your job as a not-for-profit. In public policy, that's very much the same thing and as a regulator, if you put on that hat and you think along the same lines, you say, what does it look like if I work myself out of a job? That means that my job is created because we have monopolies. We don't have competitive marketplaces. We have, you know, market drivers that get dampened because there's this monopolistic power that kind of keeps things all in control and the role of the regulator is to say, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we need some other actors to come in and what we saw happen in mid-2015, 2013 is we saw this rising up of solar, right, people making decisions, purchasing power, this disruptive technology that not even the commission was in a position to say, it was like behind the power curve of like, we need a tariff. We have to be able to control interconnection. Like what's happening, you know, and the utility didn't know what to do either, but it wasn't, that in its own way was disrupting the monopoly and it was creating an opportunity in the market for us to evolve as a state. So I think as we move forward in our role as in the leadership capacity that we have as the PUC, our job is to enable market competition. Our job is to allow for disruptive technologies to come in and help solve some of these problems and get us to 100% renewable. And so as a regulator and as we look at these dockets moving through our, you know, our whole procedure, not just performance-based regulation, but even as we look into the stage two renewable procurement process, which is the RFP in front of us right now, how is it that we can accommodate market competition in that competitive bidding process to a level that perhaps it isn't already set up to be? And so really, we have a leadership role. It's not the only one, but certainly, you can see how in the past these types of market transformations have occurred organically. How can the PUC help set, you know, kind of, I guess that the, I keep thinking of like a garden, right? How can we get the soil ready so that when we plant the seeds and say, yeah, make the garden grow, right? So that's why I... Wow, Jenny, wow, wow, wow, I'm blown away. Marco, you must be blown away too. He's probably heard that before. I need a minute to recover. So let's take a break for one minute and come back, and then we can regroup on these and other issues with Jenny Potter. We'll be right back. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, aloha. Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to ThinkTechHawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. I told you we'd come back and we did. Jennifer Potter, PUC commissioner, and we have Marco Mangostorf on the phone. And Marco, I want to offer you the opportunity to react to what Jenny was saying. I know you needed a minute to think about it. It's really interesting to what you shared, Jenny, in terms of grouping these various commissions in terms of coming up with specific cohorts and the notion that this particular commission as established with you and Jay and now Leo is being, you guys are being noticed for being more challenging of the utility company here. And the utility company here, of course, is Hawaiian Electric, HIKO HAKOMIKO, and then KIUC. And it shows to me that there is a more proactive, more exacting set of concerns and desires on the part of our current PUC in terms of wanting to see Hawaiian Electric move faster, deeper into the energy transformation away from fossil-based fuels to cost-effective renewables. And there's a lot that we could discuss in terms of what Hawaiian Electric has been doing, what they haven't been doing well, what they need to do better. And I happen to believe that Dave Bissell, a good friend of mine as well, you know, Dave took KIUC since he became CEO and made it much more aggressive and more risk-acceptant. Traditionally, utility companies are risk-averse to the extreme sometimes, especially when you have a company like Hawaiian Electric, which has been around for a very, very long time, going back to the days of King Kauakawa in the late 1800s, that Hawaiian Electric companies, I think, are much more towards the risk-averse side as opposed to risk-acceptant. There are cultural reasons, there are ingrained bureaucratic reasons and historical traditions of why that company has been difficult to move faster, further, deeper. So I think it's an interesting recognition on the part of national individuals and authorities that this commission is doing something that's laudatory, that's notable, that deserves recognition because, you know, and I've been, my company used to be part of Hawaiian Electric long ago, so I have both kind of an institutional insider for a time and also an outsider perspective, and I do happen to believe that there are areas of which Hawaiian Electric needs to go faster, further, deeper, and it goes against their grain at times to go faster, further, deeper. So whatever entities, whatever individuals we can push that company harder, I think, is to the public benefit. So I will leave it at that for now. Well, let me suggest a question that Jenny might ask us. I mean, in her own way, in her own concept of it. So here we are, all things being equal. We're probably going to have, you called it, collective leadership for a while. That's not going to change, probably. And, you know, we're going to have all things being equal, but I would say the PUC is actually dynamic these days. That's not going to be equal. That's going to be changing and, you know, taking on more, I think. But assuming all things are roughly equal, what needs to happen in this collective leadership process, in this landscape of government and industry and academia to move the needle ahead, in a way so that we will really reach the goal. In a general sense, that would be my question, my suggestion of a question you could ask us. I think that's an excellent question. Would you like to take a crack at that, Jenny? I'd appreciate it. Well, I would start with saying it needs constant attention. It can't be something you put on the shelf. Complacency is not permitted. And we know it's connected with climate change there. There can be no rest until we, well, ever, but especially until we deal some way with climate change. Absolutely. You do not see any affirmative steps being taken on climate change. This is very troubling because it's so closely related to energy. Energy is really part of it. Absolutely. So we have to take affirmative steps. That means we have to think about it all the time. We have to be thinking at every level and every aspect of government, industry, and the public to do stuff. Okay, so organizations like ThinkTech should be working to keep it aware top of mind for everyone in the landscape. And with that, you know, I think we can move ahead. We can never forget. We always have to sort of remind people how important it is that they have to get involved. You know, it's like this movie I saw recently called Prosecuting Evil. It's a story of a Nuremberg prosecutor who would meet with his family every evening at dinner and when they all came home, they would be at the table together and he would ask them the same question every day. The question was, what have you done to improve the world today? Love it. Every day to his kids and his family in general. Okay, so the same thing could go here with clean energy. Right. When they come home and you're sitting at the dinner table, you could ask them, what have you done today to advance the needle on clean energy today? Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that idea. That's great. I mean, for those of us that live and breathe this stuff and this is where our passion is, that's an excellent question. You know, I really, I'm doing the job that I've always dreamed of because I am truly working on an issue that matters to me and that is climate change and the work that I do translates to reducing greenhouse gases, weaning us off of fossil fuels and it's amazing to be able to say that. And I wake up every day and give thanks because it's just an incredible feeling to be part of this entity that literally can impact where we're going here. This is so important. You're totally infectious, Jenny. Good, good. And piggybacking on what you just said, I read a report that was put out by the, for the Paris Climate Agreement, it was the international scientist, sorry, I'm forgetting the name, that said 75 to 80% of all of the electricity generated would need to be moved to renewable sources and the cost by in the next 15 years in order to avert climate and the sea level rise that we're talking about and the cost would be $2.4 trillion a year. And that's in 15 years. And you think about what we're doing and the pace that we're moving at here in Hawaii, it's like, we're not moving fast enough but we can't move any faster. And so it's just, it's like being stuck in molasses because you know the sense of urgency and we feel it, but we're, you know, we're just not able to pick up the pace, you know. Yeah, stuck in the headlights but with our eyes closed. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Absolutely. So, okay, Marco, now you know the subject. Go for it. Oh boy, we're dead to that. Maybe I'll shift from collective leadership to collective action. I love it. There we go. But I mean, there has to be action from the leadership, right? And we have various stakeholders who are trying to move the, you know, the rock of Sisyphus up the hill, you know, so we eventually get to the top of the hill and we're able to do what needs to be done to accomplish the things that need to be done. So I don't think that it's going to be some type of revolutionary, dramatic overthrow of the current regime, that there's going to be continued incremental changes. I mean, one of the things that, of course, we're keeping an eye on is the public benefits performance or public benefits rate making that is going to fundamentally change, I believe, the nature of Hawaiian Electric, hopefully for the better. You know, we all hope it's going to be for the better. So there are a number of things in play in terms of the way the structure is that we have now is going to be changing on some significant levels. And we can't judge progress based on things changing dramatically overnight, but just continuing to move forward, hopefully in a more accelerated fashion. And I continue to be hopeful that that is possible, that fundamentally we do want more or less the same thing and that the collective action from the collective leadership leads to collective goodwill and we're collectivizing with not to the point of becoming socialist authoritarian all that China or Soviet Union, but I digress. I want to take up on Jenny's point about the money because this goes both locally and it goes nationally. You can't do projects like this without government money and the amount of money you need is enormous in the trillions. Trillions. And what we're doing now is peanuts where we're not really doing anything significant. So it's a whole new mindset. We've got to get into a mindset not only paying attention, not only working on collective action, leadership, whatever. We have to learn to spend some money. We have to raise the money. We have to spend some money. That's right. And there's all this tension in the legislature about, oh, we have to raise the money here. We'll pay a little thing there. It's peanuts. We have to save ourselves. Clean energy is part of saving ourselves. Exactly. It is. You get to close, Jenny. I do. Excellent. I guess I want to make one thing clear, too. In this process that we're going through, in this transformation with the PUC, with all the stakeholders here in Hawaii, we absolutely have to work together. And that means the success of HECO is absolutely critical to us getting to our goal. So we need them to remain a viable, healthy utility that serves the people at the lowest cost with the cleanest resources. That means, though, that in order to get to where we're going, we are going to have to have a market transformation. Things are going to have to change, in particular if we can accelerate. And so working with people, one of the things that's so profound is pulling the counties in and being able to have their input in the processes like the performance-based regulation. And what does that mean at the local level for each of our islands? And how do we start actually incorporating all of these different stakeholders into a process? And it may not be integrated grid planning. It may be performance-based regulation. But we do have some vessels. We have some mechanisms that can move us forward. And I'm optimistic. But I still just keep working really hard because it's not an easy... We're not out of the woods yet. But I would like to say thank you so much, Jay. And thank you, Marco, for having me again on this. And it was a pleasure to hear your thoughts on these issues. I wish I would have yielded the microphone a little bit more to get some of the brain dump and absorb some of that brain power. This was your show, Jay. Thank you, Jenny Potter. Thank you, Marco Mangelsdorf. Great discussion. We have to do it again. Promise me, Marco. So much juicy stuff to talk about, my friends, in so little time. So we will never get tired of the three of us. At least I, speaking for myself, will never get tired of the three of us getting together. So we really do hope we can make this at least a semi-regular occurrence because we have, if I may be so, ecotistical, we have important, juicy, provocative things to talk about that are worth talking about. So thank you so much to the two of you. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you so much. You'll come back, Jenny, right? The three of us again. Anytime, anytime. You bet. Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you. Aloha.