 Okay, it's Monday. My goodness, Monday noon and we're back with Energy 808, the cutting edge with Marco Mangelstorff, who joins us by phone from Hilo, Hawaii, from, wow, from, what's the name of your company, Marco? Provision Solar. They checked it was Provision Solar. Provision Solar in Hilo, Hawaii. I've been there. I've seen it as a large arrangement there. So, Marco, can we talk about these protests that are sort of anti-energy protests and where they come from and what they mean, what they signify, and where they're going to go and the effect they have? You know, it seemed to start out this year at TMT. There have been no protests at PGV yet, but I expect there will be. And then it sort of spread into Oahu where there were two wind installations, both of which had been approved and permitted. And in fact, they were being built. And when the trucks were on the road, you know, they go midnight and carry the sections of the wind turbines so they don't get in the way of traffic. And there were protests, there have been protests on both of them on these wind facilities in Oahu. And I can't help but think that there's a connection between the protests on TMT and the protests on the wind facilities, although, you know, it's hard to find a common denominator except that people like to protest. Do you have any thoughts about this? Do I have any thoughts? Yeah, I certainly do. And I'm trying to decide how to proceed. I think I'm going to take kind of the broader view on the subject and the bird's eye view or the above the wind turbines view and then kind of roll down a little bit further. And to me, Jay, it really begs the question, who's paying for lunch? And what I mean by that is kind of a play on the phrase, you know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In this case, I'm thinking there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy sources, that even though, comparatively speaking, renewable energy, principally in the form of, let's say, solar and wind is more better, more benign than some type of hydrocarbon based power generation. So, again, generally speaking, I think there's quite a consensus among many, many people that renewable energy are better than fossil fuel energy. So that said, a choice to, or the choice to install a wind farm in the north shore of Oahu with wind towers that will be the highest ever in the state. I mean, 500 plus feet when you look at the total span of these three bladed wind turbines. I mean, these are, these are big hobbies. And there, as anybody's been watching and reading the news over the past few weeks, there's been no shortage of arrests of people protesting the wind farm, as well as an act of rather serious malicious, not even mischief, but, but, felonious assault on a, on a helco power pole. And that was somebody took a chainsaw to and caused it to, to effectively collapse, which, you know, you're talking potential for not only serious injury, but death when you're dealing with big power poles. So, unfortunately, whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's the proposal to burn biomass, the power plant up at Pepe Keohar on this island, whether it's drilling down into Metta and Pele, as, as had been the case for over 25 years up until the eruption of last year, that there is no cost free choice and that there will likely continue to be a constituency from small medium to large. Well, that will find a reason to protest vigorously and risk arrest and risk more than arrest to stop a given project. And in my concern, you know, without really looking at the specific merit for lack thereof for any particular project, again, whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's biomass, whether it's geothermal, is when we go down the path of saying no, no to wind or no to biomass, no to acres and acres of solar that are going to bother someone in terms of their view playing from their condo and why Kaloa, we effectively pay ourselves into a corner more and more as a state when we are still, as we've talked about before, my friend, we are still so incredibly dependent on this, the state's economy on imported oil to the tune of last I looked 83%. So I'm kind of a broken CD in this respect, but I'm still struck by the fact that decades worth of efforts, notable efforts and valuable efforts and legitimate efforts to become more energy independent, more energy resilient, haven't, hasn't moved the needle nearly far enough. And I think there's widespread agreement on that. And yet what, what do we do when the Robert is the road, so to speak, when AES wants to put in a another multi megawatt wind farm in North Shore of Wahoo? And clearly there are a lot of people who just don't want that. So it really just kind of paints us into a corner, you know, the proverbial, you're painting the floor of a particular room and you're not going about it strategically and you end up in a corner because you don't want to walk across the wet paint that you just put down. So with that, I will quiet down and look forward to your response. Oh, I've a response is more like an agreement. I'm so concerned about this, because these are obviously progressive maneuvers. And, you know, good for the powers that be that they gave them permits. And although it took a long time, think about how much you have to do to get a permit for a wind farm. You know, you have to get control of the land, negotiate a lease. You have to put in for, you know, I don't know, zoning issues and you have to get financing to find somebody who will actually build it. You have to get a permit from whatever the authority is in Oahu that's the problem of planning and permitting. There's so many things that checklist is a mile long. And you go through all this and you get, you know, get approval, you get a lease, you get a permit, you've done, you know, years of bureaucratic bureaucratic effort. And then there's somebody out in the street opposing you. Now what's interesting about it is that the people out in the street, just as in the case of TMT, had the opportunity to raise the same objections when the permitting process was going on, but they either didn't or they lost the argument. And so, you know, you have a whole thing about the rule of law, about respecting the rule of law. It's an alternative system to just ignore the rule of law, ignore the permit, ignore the process that the capital concentration had to go through to get the permit and get the project underway. And then you ignore all of that. And you're unsympathetic to it. You don't care about it. You don't care about their goals either, you know, to deal with climate change or to make money, either one. And you have your alternative system, which is protest. Protest and do, you know, violence to telephone poles and the like. Sabotage. So when you say to yourself, what's wrong with this picture? Don't people understand how important this is? Don't they understand that we're spending six, seven billion dollars for fossil fuel that we won't have to spend if we build these, you know, clean energy facilities here in the state, that the money, you know, your money will go to the clean energy facilities. It won't go out of state for fossil fuel. Furthermore, you know, we won't be on the wrong side of the tracks as far as climate change is concerned. Although, you know, there is a legitimate argument that we're so small, so tiny that it doesn't have that much effect. I think we have to do our part. We have to be conscious aware, to be connected to the global global thinking on this. And, you know, and finally, you know, our kids, our kids learning about this in school. I was telling you before we started Marco that there was a piece on NPR this morning about how, you know, like less than 50% of the kids in the state can swim. Can't swim. Most kids can't swim in a state that's surrounded by water in a state where it's all of its history and culture is defined by water. Most kids can't swim. I find that extraordinary. And I would like to do a show about it. I also, I also told you about a trip that ThinkTech took to Lanai at the time the cable, you know, the cable from Lanai to Oahu was was in play and all these arguments going on. We went to the school there. And I guess we attended a class, took pictures of a lecture, a talk by one of the people from, you know, I guess it was from the cable, the ones who wanted to build Murdoch's company wanted to build the cable. And so the question he put rhetorically to this class was, how, how big in diameter do you think the cable is? Silence crickets on one young student stood up and he said, I know is six feet in diameter. Okay, well, he didn't know anything. And that school is this is junior high school, maybe high school, that school had not taught him anything about an issue that was in play in Lanai to the exclusion of most other issues for a couple of years. He didn't know anything about it. So our schools doing a job. Are they teaching about energy? Are they teaching kids about climate change? Are they teaching kids, you know, about solar cells and the grid? They teaching kids about wind, they teaching kids about geothermal or the kids coming up in the state, not knowing as much about energy as they do about swimming. You know, I think there's a failure here and it's likely to continue. And I think what we see in this in this ongoing and in fact, this viral protest that we see running from the Big Island now to a Wahoo on cable, I'm sorry on on on wind is, you know, it's an example of people not really knowing what the deal is. And I don't know where we start, you know, it sounds like we haven't had good educational leadership for a long time. And people are just off in the wrong direction as a huge detriment to progress in energy. So I guess, I guess it's clear we have a problem. And the question is, how do we deal with this? Because it's going to happen again, Marco. You know, I give kudos to the HPD people who effectively moved in and stopped the protests on the North Shore. But I don't think the matter is over. I think it will happen again. And I think that, you know, the electric company, and for that matter, the BUC, and for that matter, you know, people who support efforts dealing with climate change, and want to see clean energy, they're all frustrated by this. Why in the world, would you have a grassroots movement against the obviously better choice? And how do we deal with that, Marco, you got some ideas. If I made you governor, what would you do? I'd rather be energies are with unlimited power to to issue edicts from from my perch. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, what will it take? What will it take for us to do what we targeted to do? What will it take for us to do what we talk about all the time? We just barely don't have the action to back it up. To me, it's kind of more tangible and more challenging when you kind of strip away the the more generic nature of your question, Jay, and look specifically, let me let me look at the Big Island as a case in point. Okay, in 2017, the Big Island produced somewhere around 57% of the end of the electricity consumed on this island 57%, probably even more because I think rooftop solar is likely undercounted by by utility company. But let's just say 57%. That's what they reported to the BUC. That was the total out of the total electricity generated and consumed on our island in 2017. Close to 60% was renewable. Okay, last year in 2018, that dropped to 43, 43. Something was rounded up to 44. Obviously, 57 is higher than 44. And my prediction is that that's going to be a comparable figure this year, in terms of somewhere around the mid 40s for Helco, because PGV will not go back online by the end of the year, if it ever goes back online, it'll definitely will not go back online within the next two months. So we have gone in the wrong direction, right, in terms of energy independence on this island. And what do we do? What can we do to reverse that? Well, one of the ways we can reverse it is, if you want to count the combustion of biomass as renewable energy, which a lot of people do, we have the case in point of who know up the coast and set the queue, right, roughly 20 plus megawatt. And here, the developers of who know up by their accounting, Jay, some more over $200 million to date. Okay, and they have gone through processes with negotiating a part purchase agreement with Helco. They were able to achieve regulatory approval back several years ago, only to have a lawsuit in the white Supreme Court, essentially overturn that particular PUC agreement in 2017, and remanded it back to the Commission. In order for the Commission to look at greenhouse gases and the effect on environmental quality on the emissions that would come from these stacks, they're at who know it. So here you have to pick up on a point you made a little while ago, you have people who played by the rules who spent a lot of money playing by the rules, who got regulatory approval by the rules. And yet, the work of Henry Curtis and Life of the Land, who successfully brought a lawsuit in the white Supreme Court overturned that by a five to nothing vote overturned that decision by the Commission back in 2017. So here we have the Commission will be chewing is chewing on this and they will issue a decision. I'm going to say probably first half of next year, thumbs up or thumbs down. Will that power plant go back online? And in my case, since I think 2005, after they stopped burning coal, prior to that gas. So, you know, if I made you energies are energies are for the big island, say, what would you do? You believe the burning biomass at with a power purchase agreement for 30 years, 22 cents a kilowatt hour is a good move to make to reduce the state's dependence or this island's dependence on important fossil fuels power power plant. You don't need to make me energies are just make me a lawyer who's sitting in his office. And somebody from Wall Street calls, and says, you know, we're really interested in energy because this is why I keep saying that it's way ahead, you know, it's going to reach its target 2040 2045 of 100% clean energy and all that. So we were thinking of investing $200 million in clean energy in Hawaii. What do you say, Jay? What do you think my advice would be? I say, I would tell him be careful. Because, you know, you think you're doing all that you need to do. Then there's always a surprise. And there was a surprise on super ferry. It was surprised on ho hoonua. And gee was there, certainly a surprise on on on on the 30 minutes. Let's go. So who who would make an investment like that? You know, our, our history and our brand, and our reputation is littered with projects that had surprises and were killed. And if I were a lawyer, or if I were a Wall Street investor, I would say let's go somewhere else, because it's moving faster somewhere else, government understands the need for lackrity. People are better educated about the benefits of clean energy and and how to deal with climate change or the need to deal with climate change. Hawaii has lost its way, I would say, and I would say that within attorney client privilege and everything. But, you know, if I were being responsible and responsive to the question of the capital concentration, and asked me that question, I would not necessarily encourage them to come here. And I think that kind of conversation is taking place. I think that kind of conversation is taking place on Wall Street. We have no way of knowing how many projects we've lost, how many investment dollars have not come here because of the things we've done. One thing after another, and every time it happens, you know, there's a huge effect in terms of future investment. And when they saw down a telephone pole, they're sending a message all through Wall Street, about how you know, we got sabotage going on here. Maybe you should maybe you should go somewhere else where that doesn't happen. And, you know, to me, the most important thing about Hohenua, or the super ferry, or what was a 30 meter telescope is if the state makes promises and assurances, and if the investor goes through the process and gets permits, we don't want to surprise him. We don't want to turn him on his head, have the coins dropped out of his pockets. That's not the right approach to offshore investment. Think Tech had a program about this a few years ago, and it was really a powerful discussion. Because we don't respect offshore investment. We treat it either as a scam, which is, which is, you know, not not right, not a right approach. Or we treat it as, you know, if they're from the mainland, they must be right. Sacred cows, they must be right. And therefore, we buy into it. And everybody makes a mistake. We have to manage offshore investment. And we haven't we haven't really done that. And I would add that, you know, here we are, we've rejected, thanks to the governor, we've rejected LNG. So we haven't done anything for LNG or with LNG. While the whole country, in fact, the whole world is moving ahead on LNG is a cheaper, you know, cleaner solution as a bridge fuel on the way to clean energy. So what's happened, as you said, is we really haven't made that much progress on clean energy, lots of aspirations, no bridge arrangements like LNG. And I, you know, where are we going on this? Do we really believe what we say as questionable? Well, I'm going to put you again to the test, my friend. And if you were a member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, would you be in favor of allowing Huho Nua to to come online when all is said and done and to burn trees, whether they're from the Hamakua Coast or whether they're from thousands of miles away? Is that a, is that in the public interest, change in the public interest to have a power plant along the Hamakua Coast that is burning biomass? Is that more better than the alternatives? My answer is, is other factors in play? And we call me, you know, business oriented. But if those investors have gone this far, then I would let them do it. Maybe negative aspects to it. We have to move, we have to keep going. It was there was another project came up the name right now in the big island in Pahala. It was that was that was smashed a few years ago. And those guys lost a ton of money. They were local investors too. So you know, we have to move ahead. So if I were in the lead here, if I were leading at the government governance level or at the energy office level, I would say, let's move it. Let's move it. Let's get going. Let's not get tied up in process all day. None of these projects has a useful life anyway. The burning trees on this island is a reasonable trade off in order to avoid burning something else. That's what I'm, that's my takeaway in what you're saying. Yes. Because the useful life of that project is not that long. And we just have to sort of work our way to clean energy. But we have to keep working. We can't let it go and we can't keep on relying on fossil fuel. So yeah, I think I think the most important thing is to keep going and show political will that we want to get there. You know, all these decisions and all these surprises actually hold us up. And we're sort of fascinated with the process. But what happens is we haven't made nearly the progress that we'd hoped to make. I've been following this for 10, 15 years. And I haven't seen the progress we were talking about at the beginning in the middle years. I haven't seen that progress. We have all these targets and goals, but we're not really making enough progress. Is combusting trees clean energy? Well, I guess you can say it's, it's tree fuel, but it is not fossil fuel like oil. If you disagree with me, then say so. I do. I do. And I've, you know, I've given this a lot of thoughts and learning anything in terms of new power generation, I've come to a place of having a very hard time where at the least in our neck of the woods, whether this island or in this state. And yet I also question, for example, this island has a serious solid waste problem in terms of landfill and Hilo is not far away from being filled up, right? So if it fills up here, that means it has to go somewhere and somewhere is on the west, the west side of the island where there's a land fillet has more room. And obviously, people haven't come up with a way of magic magically levitating waste from here point A to point B with no energy being used, right? So we're talking about fossil fuels used to have trucks going on six, seven day a week calls to move waste from the east side of the island to the west side. So in that regard, I asked myself, what would I think about some type of waste to energy plant here, which has been talked about from time to time over the years for this island. And it's being talked about again, in fact, so again, waste, waste to energy. If the, you know, as a purest, we'd all like to be more pure, or at least I'd like to be more purest and less purest, but at the same time, when you look from the perspective of, well, we're going to burn waste to energy here on this island and put obviously greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But that in return will will reduce the amount of fossil fuel used to transport waste from the east side of the island to the west side of the island. I guess kind of my takeaway here is one, one should probably should be more of a practical purist than a purest purist. And that's something that I will endeavor to do. And again, to go back to the point I made the beginning of the show is, you know, we can't keep on saying no, to do to these ways of it's not the ultimate good, it's not it's not the there's no such thing as an ideal solution when it comes to energy, there are always going to be trade off and always cause that don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I've seen that before. But you know, one thing that strikes me is that the utility goes out with these RFPs and it says, why don't you make a proposal? All you guys across the country, cross the world, why don't you find some money find hundreds of millions and come and make a proposal and we'll take any proposal that gives us arguably other than fossil fuel. And I don't know exactly what the definition is, but the definition of the RFP is approved, the RFP is approved by the PUC. And one of the reasons that the definition is broad, is because it's hard to get people anywhere in the world to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, especially with our reputation, or surprises. So you go out wide, and then you let them come in. And then you, you know, you have this competition among them. And then you pick one you like, and you go to the PUC and you say, is this one okay? And the PUC says, it's okay. So you know, the problem is that that whole process is is daunted by the fact that you got to get people to cut to spend the money to invest. So you try to make it broad enough. And you give them plenty of rope. They can come in and and do their thing and respond to the RFP and then go ahead and invest the money and and build and build the facility. If we made a very tight definition and said only win only so or nothing else, then I expect to be less money coming in. And the whole thing is to entice capital, come to Hawaii, we've done a really good job on on not enticing capital, come to Hawaii. And I think we're getting better at that. So whatever the system is, we've got to make it clear to respective investors that this is a safe haven for their money. What do you think about that? I think from the geography, right, and I think from the solar perspective, that it has been a safe haven. And we have in fact an RFP request for proposal deadline this week, or according to Helco, Hiko Miko, for as many as 900 megawatts across their five service territories. And that that's a lot. That's a lot of capacity. And the deadline is this week. And then they're expected to announce the winners sometime May of next year. So, you know, we're, we definitely have some good stuff going on. In terms of over the next two, three, four, five years, there's going to be substantial amount of solar plus storage deployment. It's kind of what do we do? What do we do in the interim? And the key, one of the keys to figure out key conundrums is one needs a certain amount of spinning reserve or generation that is combustion based with a turbine that goes around and around generator goes around around in order to make up for times when the sun doesn't shine enough for the batteries aren't fully enough charged. So this as we get higher and higher in terms of renewable penetration, which everybody's forecasting we will, what's the minimum amount of combustion generation that we will need to have a resilient grid because everybody wants resiliency and grid is going to stay on. So it, you know, more into the great new frontier, as far as these laboratories that are the islands in our state, and it's easy to kind of get frustrated about lack of progress. But at the same time, we're going where a few utilities and few states have gone before. And I never ascribe to others, even though I may disagree with them that, you know, they're motivated by some type of malicious or negative that takes us back to the beginning that takes us back to where we started the show. I can't disagree with you your answer and with the analysis you make. But I do want to say that it's gratuitous to have violence and to protest after project has been approved, right down to dotting the eyes and crossing the T's, and then go out in the street and protest that. I don't want to put a characterization on it, but it is not good. And if there's one thing that would scare me in Wall Street, it would be that kind of thing, a refusal to accept the rule of law. So that is probably as damaging as anything else we can identify. And I hope they stop. I really do. Contrast, you know, Jay, that the HPD there on Oahu has been quite active in arresting people by the dozens when necessary. And here, this is month four now, since the the road to the mountain monarchy access road has been closed down. And I mean, I drove over the saddle road a couple weeks ago, I hadn't been up there in months. And there's a veritable tent community up there. I mean, you got people who are parked on not just parked on, but, you know, camping there in the lava fields and have been there for months. So maybe the big guy can learn some stuff from Oahu from HPD. Anyway, we got to go, Marco. I so look forward to our next discussion. There's so there's so much more to cover. Marco Mangostore, Provision Solar and Hilo. Thank you so much here on Energy 808, Aloha. Thanks so much, Jay.