 Good afternoon. Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii on a sunny Monday, October 24th, 2022. I hope that everybody here likes grubbing in the soil because that's exactly what we'll be talking about. Monique Schaefer, who I'll introduce momentarily, and I belong to the Hawaii State Energy Office, and our Kuliana is 100% clean energy. That's the goal we started out articulating. Incidentally, we were the first state in the nation to articulate that goal. And then it became more and more and more sophisticated. And lately, the buzzword is decarbonization. Get that gosh darn carbon or some of it out of the atmosphere. And into other places like the soil because the CO2 carbon dioxide is serving as a blanket in our atmosphere and trapping the heat. And that's what global warming is all about. So how in the world do we extract or get carbon out of the atmosphere into the soil? That's what we're all about today. And before I bring on the star of the show, please be introduced to Ms. Monique Schaefer of the Energy Office. She is rapidly becoming Ms. Carbon of the Energy Office. She's already done quite a bit of work in the field, and this is going to expand her horizons. So welcome, Monique. Thank you for co-hosting with me. And now we bring on the grand star, Dr. Susan Crow of University of Hawaii, specialist in, it's not geophysics, it's geochemistry. And she has written a whole lot about improving the quality of soil. And that also includes bringing more nutrients and more carbon into the soil. We've got so much to talk about. Please, we're honored to have you, Dr. Crow. Please take it away. Thank you so much, Howard. And good to see you and meet you, Monique. I really appreciate the opportunity to come and share the carbon side of the story that comes from biology, biogeochemistry. Don't forget the biology. I'm so happy to join Natural and Working Lands and Energy in the carbon conversation because to achieve decarbonization, it's all hands on deck and we need every component to be there. Dr. first question, I forgot to mention, you are the recipient of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And is that grant for teeny little Hawaii $40 million? Well, 40 is a lot of millions. And yes, we were just announced as having received a USDA NRCS, Natural Resources Conservation Service grant for up to $40 million. Now, we actually propose $70 million. That's how much interest there is for here. And even in our teeny tiny state that we had a proposal go in. So we're in kind of a holding pattern here, waiting for that negotiation phase, but we're thrilled at the investment coming to Hawaii to study, make the investment infrastructure markets specific to climate smart agriculture here in the islands. From there, yeah, what is climate smart? So climate smart agriculture is the focus of that grant. And so I'll just sort of use that as a way to kind of launch into this discussion here today. And what is climate smart anyway, really? Often the words describing agriculture thrown around that maybe people have heard are sustainable regenerative conservation, organic and climate smart is just one of those options. They all have overlapping principles and practices and improving soil health as an outcome is one commonality across all of them. And so big picture players like Google even have recognized a regenerative agriculture play where adaptable, scalable agriculture, and it emphasizes improvement for everyone along a continuum of practices. And that's something that's really resonates here in Hawaii. And our University of Hawaii soil health research group also has been thinking along the same lines and developed parameters for our systems and soils here in Hawaii designed to assist managers to improve across the continuum of soils and ecosystems here in our islands. And so it's really consistent that soil health sort of is a central component. Often when I when I launch into a soil health discussion, even when I've been asked to talk about carbon and climate, I'm asked why are we bringing up soil health when we're discussing carbon and climate. And that is because of the connection, as you mentioned through nutrients and organic matter and carbon. And so the health of soil comes from biological, chemical and physical properties that support diverse soil processes that are critical to productive and resilient sustainable landscapes. Soil organic matter is central to soil health and carbon comprises about half of soil organic matter. And so, as you already mentioned, Howard, carbon is the currency of climate change. And so that's the connection. And for Hawaii, climate readiness is tied to both mitigation and adaptation. And so soil health, in my opinion, is central to the conversation. So soil carbon is part of that broader discussion. Because soil carbon is a heterogeneous mixture of soil organic matter and minerals. So people don't always know soil is comprised of organic matter, which contains carbon and also minerals. And it's in a continuous state of turnover. So we need some of the carbon to turn over very quickly so that it releases nutrients. And sometimes that's tied more to the adaptation side of climate. Whereas the more mineral dominated component of soil tends to cling on to carbon for a very long period of time. And so that stabilizes carbon against loss. And so often we think of that as the mitigation component. So in our lab, we can actually take whole soil and we fractionate it physically into multiple carbon pools. And then you can make measurements that give you some indication of how long that carbon may stay. So fast carbon may stay for a couple of years. We have intermediate amounts of carbon that may stay for 100, 130 years. And then that slow carbon pool may stay for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And this is why soil carbon is so important. So to get back to the climate change mitigation component, thinking about not just soil, but the whole ecosystem and all ecosystems, which are inclusive of all of the greenery that you can see above ground, but all of the stuff that you can't see below ground, soil carbon capture. So using our natural systems to capture that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and get it below ground for long periods of time is the critical component. And so it depends not only on the amount of carbon, but how long those carbon inputs remain below ground. So that timeframe is really critical. When I talk to the policy crowd often this issue of how long does carbon stay below ground, or permanence is something that comes up a lot. And so that aspect of time is something that's very important, fast versus slow, and also the vulnerability of that carbon that goes below ground to losses. And this is something that people see in fires, right above ground, okay, but something like fire also affects the below ground, but maybe not as much. Because as you can see fires come through and may devastate the above ground. Within days, a fire will go through take out all of the above ground biomass, but because the roots and everything below ground remain intact. It can support a very rapid regeneration of those losses above ground. And so investing in trees sometimes can be thought of like volatile stocks. They come, they go, they're vulnerable. Cryptocurrency is another example, and the soil is your municipal bond, like kind of slow and steady has ups and downs, but is there for you in the long term. Photosynthesis is that biochemical reaction that fixes carbon from the atmosphere. It can be shunted below ground into that root system and out into the soil where it binds with minerals. And soil contains more carbon than the atmosphere and plant biomass combined. And so that is why I focus on the potential for soil carbon to be a critical component in climate readiness and decarbonization in Hawaii. To detangle this challenge a little bit more, colleague and I, Carla Sierra at Moxplank in Germany, have started using Hawaii and Sweden as a good example of how two very, very different ecosystems can track sort of changes in the amount and transit time of carbon through not only the above ground system, but the soil system, the fast and slow pools represented by two boxes sometimes, and then the arrows between them. And by doing this side by side comparison of what people know to be very different, right, tropical perennial grasses in biofuel, forage or feedstock here in Hawaii versus boreal, cold and temperate in Sweden, very, very different. And so if you think about one unit of carbon coming into those very different systems and moving through on a 20 year time period, we actually found that about the same amount of carbon sequestration occurs. When you don't think just about one unit of carbon, but we have higher productivity here in Hawaii. And so over longer periods of time based on actual productivity, you can see that Hawaii's system sequestered more carbon about twice as much on a 20 year time frame. So very different systems. Okay, but carbon sequestration is just an amount of carbon over time. It's not actually directly comparable to warming. So how do you make that connection between carbon sequestration in soil and systems in actual warming? And that's the trick. And so the cool thing is that you can think about how our natural systems and our agronomic systems can interact with the climate system, not only in an ecosystem sense, but also in a complex food and energy sense, because now you can compare one unit of emission and the warming it causes to a unit of sequestration and the warming benefit therein. We can stop here and take questions if you want. We have a couple more bigger pictures, but I know Monique is dying to jump in. So why don't you guys go ahead and we can go. Yeah, super fascinating. Thank you Dr. Crow. So as you know right now, the state inventory, it indicates that the ag, the forestry and land use sectors are right now in net sync for carbon dioxide. Is there a chance that this sector could switch and become a source in the future? And if so, you know, how do we preserve that sync moving forward? Yeah, there's been a lot of conversation and kind of dire warning about the forest within that sector, right? Currently being a sync and potentially becoming a source. And that's because of the vulnerability that they're facing to wildfires in other places more than year deforestation and also the warming of itself as the climate warms, decomposition increases. And so that can ultimately, you know, increase those fluxes to the point where you're losing more carbon than you're actually fixing and stabilizing through photosynthesis. And so there is a, there is that risk, right? And a big one here is also invasive species. So that just contributes to sort of the degradation of that carbon cycle in a healthy undisturbed system, unaffected system that will remain a sync. Now our agricultural lands in particular with an intensive land use history are already considered through that inventory analysis sources. But currently we have very, very little intensive agriculture on a large scale because of the collapse of plantation style agriculture. And so one of the areas where we have a lot of potential benefit is in altering the trajectory of those ecosystems. We know there are ways that we as humans can make decisions to care for the land to make sure that they not only stop becoming sources, but can can become sinks over time. That's awesome. It's so great to hear. Thank you. Thanks. And so if we want to continue on, Howard, unless you have a question as well, we can continue. Yeah. So the issue that I talk a lot about here in Hawaii is stop, stop warming and preserve the environment for future generations. And that really centers a lot of the conversations with the energy office and with policy makers. And so that absolute global warming potential of CO2 is much larger for emissions than sequestration. Emissions reduction remains paramount. We never want to distract from reducing emissions as far as we possibly can. But where this sector can come in and nature based solutions and natural working lands can fill the gap is where we run out of those low hanging fruits within the energy and transportation sectors. There will always be remnant, non-renewable, unavoidable, non-renewable emissions. And so what we can do is help prioritize actions on our landscape that actually do have a climate benefit that are close to or on par on a per unit basis of emissions. And that's how we can start with this new computation of the climate benefit of sequestration in the same units as the warming from emissions. Now we can start working through some of our options to figure out some of those lowest hanging fruits for highest impact. And so one unit of carbon emission was about an order of magnitude greater in those example soil systems just to kind of give it a platform. But we can think about how to choose climate actions within the sector that gets it up to approximately the same order of magnitude. And Hawaii has some really, really key characteristics that allow us to sort of set the bar equal within an energy or food system to think about what actions we can take where we actually get a warming benefit on par with emissions avoidance. And that's how we're assessing our really, really high impact projects. And so we have high productivity as we talked through in the last example. We have deep soils that can store carbon for very long amounts of time. We have large areas of degraded soils that are available in that post intensive agricultural period, right? So that's a low hanging fruit because we can target those currently, you know, non active non productive lands that have been degraded in the recent past. We also have volcanic ash soils, which has an extraordinarily high capacity to store carbon and keep it there for very long periods of time. And so we have a lot of interest as well as evidenced by that 70 million dollar proposal we just put in with 50 plus producers coming to the table across all of the natural and working lands, agricultural sectors, forest, ranching, agroforestry and food production, who said we're ready to implement management strategies that will maximize our climate benefit. And so what we can do is target projects that protect and restore high carbon ecosystems, incentivize agricultural practices that provide direct warming mitigation and avoid emissions. And so by this computational structure allows us to make that calculation together, right? Now not just warming benefit from direct sequestration and GHG emissions avoidance, but also within that like imports of fossil based fertilizer, importing food. Okay. And also a key thing is diverting waste streams. Anytime you can take some aspect of our circular economy that would go into a landfill and trap it and stabilize it or convert it into a soil amendment such as compost or biochar that would then go back into our agricultural landscapes. That's where we're going to have maximized climate benefits as a result of what we invest in here in Hawaii. And so when I talk to people about what those critical component of climate solutions portfolio might be, it's really across these areas, providing quantifiable warming mitigation and co-benefits to the environment. So back to soil health. Carbon that comes along with building climate smart agriculture will also build health and resilience into landscapes through building health into our soils. And so a key component of sustainable food and energy systems is a component of restoration of these biocultural landscapes. And any given initiative put forward is only one component of a larger integrated approach. And that's where hooking up with you folks in the energy office and talking about decarbonization in conversations like that is so critical. The main thing we want to do is tear down barriers for people implementing these climate smart agricultural practices in the context of much broader decarbonization conversations because it's going to take an entire portfolio to achieve decarbonization. Wow, you've just given us a whole semester's worth of work here in 20 minutes, Dr. I know Monique is bursting with questions, but let me ask some more down to earth type questions. You apparently have 50 partners in this endeavor in Little Old Hawaii. You're located 50 people or 50 organizations to earn farmers, ranchers, whatever. Yeah, we actually have more than 50. I mean the list is amazing. What the 50 was was just at the proposal phase, which was a very rapid phase. These are 50 plus farmers, ranchers, producers, so not the producer organizations, not the universities that pitched in, not the agencies, just the producers who came together and pulled like a fully developed budget and project that they are ready to implement within the first year. Now we know that we didn't reach everybody who has interest, right? So we actually built into our proposal a second phase where we reach more people. We know there are more people out there, and so we built that into the proposal. But just at the proposal stage over 50, isn't that incredible in Little Hawaii? That is truly incredible. Can you just briefly list the type of who are these 50 plus entities out there? They're just in groups. Yeah, so we took the approach for this proposal very different than other places. We took the approach of doing this for the good of Hawaii to achieve Hawaii at the state levels of decarbonization and climate goals. And so we wanted to build a diverse portfolio of projects. And so we very actively sought people across the agricultural sector to find very broadly as inclusive of forest projects. So we have foresters who are interested in large-scale coa reforestation. We have ranchers who are some of whom are already doing great work and who have neighbors and partners who are interested in implementing some of the same practices that they've seen are ranching stewards. So those are diversified forage, improved forage, fencing projects to keep out those invasive species and keep in, keep out the animals that they don't want, keep in the animals they do want. Silver pasture, we also have agroforestry. We have all kinds of crop production across the board, all of the things that we can grow here in Hawaii. People don't even realize how many people are growing things, how many people want to grow a diversity of crops. And so there's a whole list of food producers who signed on for big and small projects alike. Well, and as you point out, this is going to result in more local food production, which equals more jobs and maybe not the best paying jobs in the world, but these people are doing what they love doing, plus that will result in fresher produce for us, the fresher, the better, the higher the nutrient content. And question, something we are looking at is, I think it's called solar farming, where you put up solar panels, say eight or 10 feet above the ground, and then you free on agricultural land, and then the crops that don't need much sun at all are growing under that. Have you looked into that at all? I thought about it and really it goes to that principle of anything that compounds all of these climate benefits. And I love that one because it crosses directly the energy and food production sectors. And so that's just another area as a perfect example of how this computational structure can actually put your emissions avoidance together in the same computational structure. And so you, as the carbon sequestration food production, so you layer on all of those added climate benefits to a full view of what a warming mitigation you're actually achieving within that, within that production system. And final question, then I'll turn it over to Monique. It sounds like little old Hawaii is a Petri dish for this type of research. So as you are progressing, you are publishing in national and international journals. Yes, yeah, that's the idea. So instead of a Petri dish, I like to think of it as a model system as like a perfect example of how we can implement these practices, use this computational structure, and people are watching right all across the world to see how you can better account for carbon and better compute the warming benefits you actually achieve. And I think Hawaii is in a great position to be an exemplar of alternative ways to do it that have meaningful benefits to the climate system. Wow. And finally, it sounds like this is also exciting that it may convince young people to stay in Hawaii and do good work instead of toodling off to Las Vegas. Well, there's a lot of training opportunities in this, right? And these can't, they don't have to be low paying jobs, right? So there's a tech side to this, it's data rich that we have the need for people to make the measurements and to reach out to the community. And so there's a lot of opportunity for diversified workforce and high tech training to feed into these market systems and verification of climate benefits. And that's all part of this big grant is to make sure that these actions can be sustained beyond the life of the project. And through our young people and educational pathways and building up these tech driven sectors that can help people really regain that relationship to the land, to the earth here in Hawaii and benefit all of us is is definitely a big picture goal of the project. Yeah, sounds like it's going to lend itself to tours. Yeah, young people, all stripes, too, when the time is ready. But we have just a couple of minutes. And Monique is just about to explode with more questions. Thanks, Howard. Yeah, so if you're open to it, you talk market. And one of the big questions I always have is how do we make it sustainable from an economic perspective? I would love to get some of your thoughts on sort of carbon credit and offset market, what are the benefits? What are the concerns? And is there a way to do it? Do it meaningfully there in Hawaii? Yeah, that is that is an area, you know, of great conversation and debate. And so, you know, for me, what I would like to see is the formation of some form of local market, you know, entering into a market offset market certainly financially benefits the holder of those resources. Because this is a resource, right? The carbon is not a commodity per se in our grants, but carbon as a commodity is what you can then trade into a market. And so I know that there's a desire for that. And so if somebody wants to enter into that financial transaction, then that's good, right? And we need a buyer. And my preference would be that that buyer would be available locally. And right now there's no form of Hawaii based carbon market. And so to me, if we want to keep our carbon and all the benefits that climate benefits that are quantifiable and come along with that for us to use here in Hawaii towards our decarbonization goals, then there has to be a local market so that people have access to that financial benefit that comes via a market. If we sell Hawaii's carbon resources to polluters off island, then you can't double dip on accounting for that climate value when it comes time for us here in Hawaii to start thinking about whether we've achieved decarbonization. And so that's where my brain kind of goes. And I don't have a solution, but definitely an area of active conversation. Well, if I know Monique, she's going to follow up on this. I hope she does. And we don't have, haven't been given a time warning, but my clock on the wall says we're just about to wrap up Monique. Any short, sweet, simple question to bring us on our way? Oh, the pressure's on. I think I'm done with short, simple, sweet questions. It's a very complex topic. And I think it deserves a lot more attention. So thank you, Dr. Crow. Yeah, thank you for telling me the complexity. Yeah. Well, I have on my calendar, Dr, about a year from now, going to re invite you because by then so much will have occurred. This is just just incredible. And you may be able to bring some of your co-conspirators on board also to describe what they are doing. This is exciting stuff, Dr. And on that very cheery note, we must bid fond of you to Code Green Think Tech, Hawaii, October 24, 2022. Thank you, audience. This will be archived. If you have questions, please feed them in and we'll see you in two weeks. Aloha.