 Welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm your host today, Mitch Ewan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and that's a program under the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, HNEI. I'm very pleased to welcome our guest, Mark Glick, who's the new chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And Mark, welcome to the show. I'm Mitch, great to be here. Yeah, great to have you and we're gonna be talking today about the Policy Forum's 2022 legislative day brief, which is gonna be held on January the 28th, and this year, like in about a week and a half or two weeks. And it's gonna be also, we're talking about plugging the energy infrastructure depth, so that's part of what it's all about. Just a little blurb on the forum, if I may, throughout its history, the forum has constantly strived to remain relevant. And at the front edge of Hawaii's energy policy space, and we've adjusted its programs to support Hawaii's evolving energy situation in all its many facets. HNEI has really recently taken over the overall management of the forum and has a new leadership team with new ideas and new initiatives going forward to from 2022 and beyond, including broader membership, more outreach and analytics-based policy development. So we're gonna be talking story with Mark about the forum's first major project, the 2022 legislative brief being held on the 28th of January. But before we get to that, let's have a look at all of the different funds available to Hawaii. So Mark, we have a set of slides from Nazio who are gonna let you talk about those slides and what that information is all about. The bottom line is there's one heck of a lot of money out there at the federal level that could come to Hawaii to help us out. And I don't wanna steal your thunder, so over to you. Yeah, no, thank you. You know, the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is really an astounding piece of legislation because it's so comprehensive, but it can be misleading, I think, because essentially it takes a lot of formula funds for standing up the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy. So it basically carries on surface transportation and other activities that normally get funded. In fact, many years ago before gridlock in Congress, these were done in a comprehensive fashion. Recently, they've just been pushed down the road a little bit with continuing resolutions. This bill basically gives them a big boost. So a lot of the funding is through these normal pathways. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but there's some other pathways, the state energy program in particular that's typically administered through the Department of Energy and it goes to state energy offices. I'm gonna talk about in the slide that you see here is actually the national funding coming through, and this is from the National Association of State Energy Officials, NASIO, which we've worked very closely with for a number of years. The state energy program has $500 million that will go through a formula scenario to each of the energy offices. In addition to its typical annual state energy program appropriations, this will require a letter from each governor of the states to basically say these funds will help us carry out a required energy security plan. And there's a lot of discussion about what will be in those letters. And so NASIO in fact has asked that there be a standard letter for all of the states that will cover these issues because it could very well be that this could be a long extended process if each of the 50 states has to come up with their own language and try to figure out what they're gonna say to compel their governors to flow this money in the right direction. So that's $500 million, there'd be $3.5 billion for what's called a weatherization assistance program. In Hawaii, that's typically managed by the Office of Community Services in the Department of Labor. So, I think it will be really kind of fascinating to see whether or not the governor's letter will also sort of ask that to go in that direction or be another place. There's also, I'll skip over LIHEAP, which doesn't apply too much. It has to do with typically heating programs of which the tropical settings like Hawaii don't really have to deal with that much. $150 million into something that hadn't been used very much since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act back in 2009, something called the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. Historically, that was a big funding source. We used it when I was energy administrator for a significant amount of funding. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 million came through the state energy office and the total funding of 550 million, 28% of that will go to the state energy office via formula. I think that's where you get the $150 million figure. And then $100 million for energy efficiency, Revolving Loan Fund Capitalization Grant Program, and that's for commercial residential buildings. And that'll go through a formula to the state energy offices. If you go down a little bit lower into this high priority potential or competitive funding for state energy offices, you'll see $40 million for energy order training grant program. Energy order is extremely important to particularly when you're looking at building retrofits to be able to come up with baseline information so that you can talk about what improvements can be made in those buildings, building energy codes. Now that's really directed towards new buildings, having a little bit more stringent standards so they're more efficient. That'll be a competitive program. The states are eligible and it's not clear, frankly, in that competitive sort of grant, how DOE is going to configure that. I might point out that in all of these programs or these funding opportunities, none of this hasn't been determined in terms of, obviously the formula will flow through states in normal ways that the formulas normally get sent through, but on the other type of funding competitive, these will be competitive solicitations and the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation and the two primary agencies they'll be flowing these funds through to the states. There's a lot of work to be done over the next number of months. And the way this bill was passed had very little guidance to these agencies on how those programs should be configured. So they have to come up with that almost from ground up. So that's a laborious process. And I think that's one reason why the Energy Policy Forum is getting so involved in this to help make sure that we don't lose any opportunities. Absolutely. And I understand that the Department of Energy has like 180 days to write the plan and it's been all hands on deck. They've canceled a lot of their normal outreach programs so they can get all the people organized to write this monster plan. So it's a big deal. Yeah, I mean, so far, none of us has seen many details on the implementation. And yeah, clearly the agency is overworked to say the least in coming up with how to procure these multiple uses that grants for charging and fueling infrastructure, grants for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy improvements, wholesale, public school facilities and so on. So there's enormous number of opportunities. We intend to lay those out at the briefing, legislative briefing and have experts in many of these fields talk about what they see as the key priorities or gaps that need to be filled that we might be able to fill with this particular type of funding. Right. So do you think we can go now to the agenda for the legislative brief? Let's pull up those slides, Michael. There you go. Next slide. There you go. So Mark, what I've done is I've laid out the agenda for the legislative brief. And so if you would mind the two of us and I'll go through this and highlight the points who the speakers are and what we hope to get out of it to give people an idea of what we're gonna be talking about and why they should dial in and listen, particularly since there's money in them on our hills. Right. Yeah, and well, we'll kick it off. First and foremost, as you mentioned, why Natural Energy Institute has recently taken over the Hawaii Policy Forum. I think Rick Roscholo, the director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, will talk a little bit about it, very briefly touch upon that in his opening remarks and essentially how we're going to be configured to identify the gaps in Hawaii's energy transition to be able to use analysis and white papers to be able to explore what those difficult issues are and then basically have a dialogue among the key stakeholders to try to fill those gaps. He'll talk specifically about some of the pending needs, some of the research that we've done it recently at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute to deal with some pending issues on renewable generation and gaps in some of the most important resources, not only from a base load generation, but also how are we dealing with the very variable renewable generation with storage and other techniques and how far can we go? What are some of the gaps that we can fill with infrastructure funds? And then we will dive deeply, very quickly into the program and trying to look at and I think two fundamental blocks what these issues are. But first we're gonna have a special guest at this point, it's a mystery guest from either the Department of Energy or from a congressional office which will demystify as much as they'll be able to do in just a week from Monday what is known about the process to get these funds out from the federal government through primarily Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy to Hawaii. And the whole idea is to kind of open the door for us to be able to closely monitor that as it goes along and to be able to alert the appropriate parties about what the opportunities particularly in these competitive funding areas. So again, it doesn't get lost. So that'll be the initial discussion. I think we'll do that in about 15, 14 minutes. And then we'll have the state energy, the chief energy officer from the state energy office for the state of Hawaii, give some opening remarks. Obviously the state energy program funding would be flown through Scott Glenn's office. And so he is engaged in discussions right now with the Department of Energy and other key players like Hawaii Energy about how those funds will be used. So it'll be important for him to provide some opening remarks there. And then we'll go right into what we're calling urgent energy infrastructure needs. And so here we are. So we have some very good speakers and some interesting topics. And these are not history lessons. These are like to identify what are the gaps? Where do we need to put our priorities? So how about introducing the various topics that we're gonna be talking about, Mark? Sure, as we went along in trying to establish what we were going to do at HNEI in managing and coordinating the work of the energy policy forum moving forward, we decided to reach, recontact all of the key stakeholders, the members and basically set up interviews to discuss what their primary issues were. Everyone knows Dean Nishima, who is Nishina, who's the consumer advocate. And Dean had some very important points about the fairness that needs to take place throughout Hawaii's energy investments so that everyone has equal access to clean energy. And we thought it would be really ideal for him to talk about essentially what values need to be placed into these solicitations and what do we need to do to essentially ensure that all parts of our community can benefit fairly from these clean energy opportunities. So I expect to hear that from Dean he talked very eloquently about that when we visited with him, Brian Kahloa. Everyone knows he's been doing a really outstanding job leading Hawaii Energy. We've had really wonderful conversations along with the deputy there, Caroline Carl. And what we've learned is that in terms of there are some, in addition to, of course, all of the fundamental work to work with key energy users and create efficiency opportunities. And we work very closely with them on building retrofits and new innovations there. Brian has really focused a lot of energy on trying to fill the gaps through efficiency gains and what we're gonna deal with as we move closer to the shutdown of the AES coal plant. So that's a key infrastructure issue in terms of the generation picture in Oahu. So we expect him to deal with that and talk about any of the other issues that he's dealing with relative to working with the energy office on this funding. And of course, Colton Cheng, everyone knows his role as a senior vice president over planning and technology at Hawaiian Electric. And of course talking about what they see over their entire system. There are a significant amount of grid modernization opportunities with this funding as well as the generation issues that we're talking about. So I think he'll talk about that across the board. He'll probably also touch upon some important planning efforts that we will likely take on through committees at the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. One of them has to do with renewable energy zones essentially trying to identify working with the community the appropriate kinds of generation, measures and technologies that are acceptable in communities across the islands. That'll be a big deal as we reach higher rates of renewable penetration. And so I think you'll touch briefly upon that issue as well. So next we launch into resiliency, which is really important particularly when you talk about tsunamis and hurricanes and just like losing the grid itself if it goes down. So how about running through your list here? Start with David. So on these urgent infrastructure issues what we've decided to do is have split the session in two parts. The first part that I've just talked about and then essentially have a session on straight talk on resilience and how do we safeguard our energy infrastructure and dealing with a lot of things that are often put off? And so at the end of that discussion we're gonna bring all the people together to talk about the priorities and what really we need to make sure absolutely gets funded. On the resilience side you really can't have this discussion without having the Hawaii Energy Management Agency at the table. And the person that has been so keely involved in the reform of that agency and making it much more effective is David Lokas, the executive officer. I'm very excited that they're willing to do that. He and Luke Meyer are doing really outstanding job and really streamlining it and making sure that the priorities of the key elements are done and the training is also consistent with that. So I think he'll lay out very effectively his candid appraisal on what needs to be done. We'll have also Kevin Nishimura who's the vice president of operations for Hawaii Gas to talk about sustainable approaches that they're looking at and what investments are necessary to move forward on that. Clearly if you're able to have renewable gas more widely used that will fill some important gaps and that's been a difficult challenge. So, but in investment it could be a deciding factor on making that much more realistic and pervasive and Hawaii Gas would be the appropriate implementation arm to carry that out. Rick Pinkerton, we know particularly when we're talking about and he's the head of asset planning and strategy for one electric but it's something that isn't often talked about widely and that's what are the threats to our energy system and it's also involved cybersecurity. And so this is sort of gonna bring that issue to the fore and Rick is directly involved in dealing with those issues. Obviously the threats are pervasive. It's quite scary, frankly, how often from outside of Hawaii attempts are made to destroy or to sort of dismantle our energy infrastructure through cybersecurity means that again, isn't often widely talked about, but we wanted to make sure, particularly with this level of funding that's supposed to be dealing with resilience and cybersecurity that we don't miss an opportunity to help plug our system and make it safer. And finally, we will have Mark Want. Mark Want is the leader of resilience and energy assurance for the Hawaii State Energy Office. He's been doing that for years. People who have been working in this space know and respect Mark. He's really one of the outstanding public officials in this discipline and it's quite important. His role I think has been quite understated over the years but it's one of the most important things I think that the Energy Office does is to help all the energy stakeholders become better prepared especially for emergencies, natural disasters. He's always leading the teams that collect inventory information and make sure that we don't run out of key resources, energy resources during these times. When they happen, everyone expects it to happen flawlessly. Mark's one of those people that gets that done and I really value his opinions on what needs to be invested in. So it would be great to have him at the table talking about this along and he works very closely with David Lopez in terms of the future of planning on these issues. Yeah, resiliency begs a significant investment. Everybody puts off investing in resilience because it's all what's not here today. But like you say, when the storm hits or the grid goes down, then everybody wants it to work right away and you have to invest in it ahead of time. You can't just hope it's gonna be okay. Yeah, so go ahead. I was gonna say, when those discussions are finished, I'm going to, I'll moderate the joint panel and then we'll ask all the participants to participate in a moderated dialogue to identify the highest priorities. And then we'll ask the takeaway question on all of this will be what can the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum do to support the next steps to identify and communicate to all the appropriate energy stakeholders how to address these priorities through the opportunities provided by the bipartisan infrastructure funding. Through the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Yeah, so that the state is really coordinated in how we're gonna invest this money and make sure it's used in the best possible way. Yeah, I mean, you know, unfortunately, there is no coordinated function for this in the state of Hawaii and in most states. So we're kind of lucky that we have this vehicle and we'll take advantage of it. And at least the outreach that I've had so far is that, you know, all of the players that have previously been members of the forum are really appreciate this opportunity to, you know, have the forum kind of reinstated and to make this its first priority focus. Well, the next slide is titled Discussance which is a new word for me. I haven't heard that one before but it looks like we're gonna hear from our leadership in the legislature and also the PUC. So talk about our leadership here, Mark. Yeah, and, you know, Discussance, it's an academic term I'm now at the university. So, you know, I use stuff like that. But, you know, it's nothing more than, they have kind of a, in a briefing like this which, you know, has essentially, it's like a conference, like a symposium in a way. They have the ability to basically draw from anything that had been discussed before and to provide their own comments and opinions about it. Clearly, we're gonna be dealing with, this is a briefing for the legislature. So we're gonna have the chairs of the Energy Environment Committees in both the Senate and the House. First, we're gonna have Senator Glenn Wakai, the Senate Chair, Committee, Energy, Economic Development and Tourism to weigh in on what he sees as the priorities. You know, we're hoping that he will take this opportunity to talk about infrastructure needs, but he will talk about, again, what he sees overall and then hopefully we can apply infrastructure funds to help solve what it is that he identifies. Obviously, from an oversight standpoint, the Public Utilities Commission really is the, you know, most important agency in ensuring that we move forward, particularly in the electricity sector. And they're the ones that essentially are the quarterback in the sense of providing guidance in terms of solicitation for generation and obviously in overseeing the investments that utilities make on infrastructure for grid modernization and so on. So it'll be quite important to hear from Commissioner Potter what her sense of those priorities are. And so we wanted to definitely have the view of the commission there. Okay, let's have the fifth slide. So session two, making transportation is one of my favorite subjects, of course, critical infrastructure, EVs, hydrogen and other eco-friendly vehicles. So why don't you introduce Bradip Pant. Yeah, Bradip Pant is the Planning Program Administrator statewide for the Department of Transportation. So as I mentioned, you know, there's two key flow downs, the Federal Transportation Funds and the Reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Act, which goes to the State Transportation Department. So clearly the chief planner there is essential in terms of guiding what the priorities are. So he's gonna be able to talk about that. He'll talk about some of the key programs that are underway that these funds could really fit into, clean bus program and the way that the State Department of Transportation now is looking at life cycle pricing to be able to actually better target investments in a smart way. So I'm very excited about having him on the program. I think we're still waiting for confirmation from Roddy Sito, but when we spoke to him earlier, he was eagerly talking about the efforts that he's leading to look at hydrogen as a, you know, playing a key role in Hawaii Island's transportation program. And Akim Morso is doing a wonderful job in helping lead the electrification process for transportation at HECO and dealing with a very difficult job of trying to upgrade their transmission distribution and infrastructure to be able to handle, you know, these 60 amp chargers at homes. And of course, this whole fast charging network that needs to be implemented quite rapidly to be able to handle this new demand of electric vehicles. So very eager to see, you know, what the HECO strategy is to deal with this. Exactly. And then once again, at the end we'll have a dialogue on the priority gaps and needs. That's right. So we need to move on a little bit because we're out of time basically, but we're gonna take more time. Discussance once again, the perspective of our representative, Nicole Lohan, who's the House of Rep, representatives. Right. Well, Nicole has been an extremely important figure. She's done a great job over the last number of years in making some transformational measures on energy development in the state is not unafraid to speak plainly about what's needed. So it's not even in this key role to kind of wrap up the discussion, I think is very timely. Yeah, she's a real champion of transportation. Like you said, she's not afraid to speak her mind. No, I can't be grasp on the situation. Yeah, right. So in this last slide, I just thought it'd be good to put in a link to our Energy Policy Forum website. And this briefing is open to everybody, the general public, and you can get to it by going to the website and registering. And there's a link on our site where you can register for this event. And we'll capture your name and your contacts and you can dial in, we can take hundreds of people. So we welcome everybody to participate in this briefing and you can make your thoughts known by telling us what you think about it. We'd really love to have the feedback. It is open to everyone. Yeah, go ahead. It is open to everyone. And all you have to do is go to the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum website to get the link for registration, free registration, you'll be in. And it's something I don't really think you want to miss. That's great. So we're going to have to leave it there, Mark, because we're totally out of time. And so you've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on ThinkTek Hawaii, and today we've been talking story with the chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, Mark Glick, about the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum's 2022 legislative brief, which is only next week. Week from May. So thanks a lot, Mark, and thanks to our viewers for tuning in. And I'm Mitch Ewan. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha.