 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. OK, we're back real live. It's a four o'clock rock, a little bit after four, but that's OK. You know, it's good enough. Here on Think Tech, and of course, this is our flagship energy show, Hawaii the State of Clean Energy, having a lot to do with the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And if you guys did not know, I'm going to tell you now that we're having our Clean Energy Celebration and Program, really important program about transportation, about clean energy and transportation, on what? August 28th. August 28th. August 28th. Yes. August 28th. It's this month. Coming up, yeah, it's coming up in like three weeks. Yeah. It's coming up this soon. And where is it exactly, Maria? At the YWCA on Richard Street. I knew you'd say that. Yeah. It's all day. Yes, it is. How do you sign up, exactly? You go to the website. Yeah, which is HawaiiEnergyPolicy.Hawaii.edu. Yes, sir. OK. The gallery is saying, yes, the gallery, including Sharon Moriwaki, our principal co-host. And that voice was Maria Tome. She's our co-host for this part of the show anyway. This month, anyway, for sure. And PS, she's going to do a show on transportation, starting in a week or two? Yeah, October. October. Very excited. September and October. September and October. I appreciate that. Pinch hitting. Pinch hitting for Tim. Every other week, yes. Cappicella. Yeah. OK, so today's show is about the Sustainable Transportation Coalition. We're going to find out all about that from Shem Waller, of Blue Planet Foundation. Hi, Shem. Jay, how's it going? Nice, yeah. And we have a little movie in advance from Lily Koo, who sits to my left. Hi, Lily. Hi. Hi, Jay. All yours, Lily. Let's see the movie. Tell us about it. Well, this is about military sector. The military, Ho'ohana, is actually a very important part of the island's community. So Hawaii Energy is really glad to be able to help support the energy side, energy needs, especially on the efficiency side. So you can take a look at this small video. It's about the world-class wastewater plant at Scoville Barracks. Because all things are related to energy, right? Yes. And Hawaii Energy is looking for efficiency everywhere. Yes, everywhere. Good for you guys. I'm glad that with my job, it takes me to everywhere, including the most interesting part of the facility. Yeah, you're a happy camper, aren't you? Yes. OK, so let's play the movie now, and then we'll have commentary from our group later. Let's take a look. Watch this. Nassau did the plush fertile lands of central Oahu's Lillibul Plain, resting critically important facility to the United States Army's 24-7 operations in the area. This is the Scoville Barracks waste water treatment plant at Wheeler Army Airfield. This plant is an A-plus. This is actually the most complicated and highest quality plant. It's not the largest plant. But 100% of our effluent is reused. It's reused on food crops. We save millions of gallons a day of water from being pumped up from our aquifers, fresh potable water. And we take water that would typically be dumped into the ocean. We clean that water to the highest quality standards. We use that on food crops, which reduces the amount of water we draw from the aquifers. After being contracted by the US Army in 2004, Aqua Engineers has undertaken the task of installing numerous upgrades to the wastewater treatment system. In teaming up with Aqua Engineers, Hawaii Energy helped fund an energy study to identify energy savings opportunities. Based on that study, Aqua Engineers moved forward on the recommendations. Hawaii Energy provided financial incentives to replace older model motors with updated energy efficiency ones, and removed obsolete transformers that have since made room for much needed workspace for on-site scientists and researchers. In all, the wastewater treatment system has realized an energy savings of close to 1 million kilowatt hours, equivalent to an annual savings of $158,000. Without the energy savings, without the support of Hawaii Energy, we wouldn't have been able to pay for those. To pay for the extra effort required, the extra engineering that it takes to go the extra mile. OK, we're back. We're live. And that was a very interesting movie. It was so vivid, you could almost smell it. And the smell, as Marvin said, was, oh boy, special. And you were there. That was you. Yes, yes. Tell us about it. Well, I think wastewater is one of the plans that you can do a lot of different things on it, because it has all different components. And with Hawaii Energy's help, we have given them 140,000 worth of rebays and for them to save almost a million KWH, and with annual savings of a quarter of a million dollars. So not just on the wastewater side, they have all different types of technology that is going on in the military sector. And it's a very unique sector, because it actually has the housing, warehouse, business, small business, and offices. So it has all different type of energy signatures. So we also help the military side to go ahead and conduct energy studies. And also, recently, they have higher performance contractors to find out all the energy conservation measures. And they are already planning to do 97 buildings on their lighting retrofits, all the low hanging fruits. On the barracks side, they are installing the occupancy base air conditioning energy management system so that the soldiers can live in comfort and also safe energy at the same time. And also, there are building envelope putting, installations, and a lot of simple stuff like putting aerators and things like that. So they are very busy, and Hawaii Energy is really glad to be able to give them some more money. Yeah, oh, that's great. Well, because we can learn a lot from them. They can learn about us, too. But they have the deep pocket to do some of this research and testing. And we should be there with them, that you are good for you. And I sense there's another movie coming here soon about the military, am I right? Yes, yes, definitely. And the interesting part is that the military makes up 16% of the overall electricity load here on Oahu. So more so, they would like to save money along the way since you're there using so much electricity, and they might as well save something at the same time in order to re-invest back in there. Sure, you want to stay close with them. Good, glad you did that. Glad you did the movie. Looking for the next one, hopefully in the next week or two, you'll be back, right? Yes, definitely. OK, thank you, Lily Koo of Hawaii Energy. You know, energy and water are related, and water and life are related. We have to make sure we preserve our water supply and be efficient about it. Good for you guys. We can take a short break. This is Hawaii the State of Clean Energy. We have Shem Lawler of Blue Planet Foundation. We have Maria Tomei, our co-host. And we're going to say farewell to Lily Koo and introduce our next co-host, which is Sharon Moriwaki, right after this break. You'll see. We'll be back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on thinktechhawaii.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and O'Lello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Living in this crazy world, so far up in the country. Freedom, is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At Dive Heart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. Dive Heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Dive Heart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Dive Heart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in there. OK, I told you. I told you we'd be back. And yes, we are back. We shall return. We have returned. This is Sharon Moriwaki. She's a co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. She's a co-host of our show. Wow. And she's the one putting together that big program on August 28th, which is what day of the week exactly? Monday. Monday, OK. And where is it exactly? It will be at the Y, YWCA. OK, and what does HawaiiEnergyPolicy.Hawaii.edu have to do with it? That's where you register. That's where you see the program. Shem's going to be on the program. Marie's going to be on the program. You're going to be on the program. Oh boy. In far and out. Yes, are you? It's good nature, good cheer, good information, good thoughts, good conclusions, good recommendations for action in the state of Hawaii. OK, so today we're going to talk about what is the sustainable transportation coalition of Hawaii. It seems like an easy question, but it's not. Let's let Shem go first. What is it? So it is, I've actually known a stitch. Stable transportation coalition of Hawaii, Stitch. We are a, it is a program that is administered by Blue Planet Foundation. So Blue Planet Foundation staff actually administer the program, but it really is a coalition of stakeholders that are interested in advancing clean transportation in Hawaii. The coalition is one of about 90 to 100 coalitions nationally that are part of the US Department of Energy's cities program. Stitch formerly was known as Honolulu Clean Cities and was kind of administered through a partnership between the City and County of Honolulu and the State Energy Office prior to 2014 when Blue Planet Foundation took over the program. So you are the sole operators of the coalition. Correct. You're running it. That we run it. There is an advisory board of directors that's made up of some of the stakeholders that takes votes on strategic direction and on policy questions. But as far as the day-to-day programming stuff, it is Blue Planet Foundation staff. OK, let's get personal. Who's in the coalition? So as I mentioned, it used to be called Honolulu Clean Cities. And we went through about a year and a half process of rebranding it for a couple of reasons. The first one was we had been operating statewide for a number of years. And so the Honolulu name didn't really fit anymore. And the other thing was a lot of people got confused about what we did because Clean Cities didn't really shout out transportation. So we wanted to find a name that told people what we actually do. There's nothing to find transportation as much as the word transportation. Right, exactly. Can quote me on this. So but because of that rebranding process, we really kind of put building the coalition in the back burner for a couple of years. And so just last month, actually in June, we launched our campaign for 2017 actually to get official stakeholders to sign. Right now, we have gotten HART, Uluppono Initiative, Bike Share Hawaii slash BIKI, BMW of Hawaii, Cutter, Ford, Chevy. And we were in talks with a number, also Lyft. And we were in talks with Uber. What happened to Uber? Uber, they didn't reach out to us yet. They didn't have other people. So these take meetings. And so we've had a number of meetings with probably about 30 different organizations about joining the coalition. We expect over the next two, three months to have about 40 to 50. What does a coalition member have to do? So essentially what joining the coalition means, we stitch has an adopted vision. And our vision is a future Hawaii where essentially the automobile plays a much lesser role. But there's more transportation alternatives that are better quality. And that all the vehicles that do remain on the road are run by non-fossil fuel energy sources. So essentially what we're asking of stakeholders is if you agree with that general vision and you want to be part of helping to make that happen, join the coalition. But coalition stakeholders are not committing to any firm deadlines or benchmarks or necessarily agreeing with any, every policy or program that's stitched. How about contributions? Are they agreeing to any defined contributions? So we do have three different stakeholder levels. We have supporter, advocate, and champion. So anybody can join as a supporter for no fee, but we do have four non-public agencies. This is members now. But that's members of the coalition. So that's what we're talking about. Right, but there is a fee for the advocate and champion levels, yes. Okay, big fee. It's not a big fee. It's not a big fee. So it depends on what you are. So if you're a for-profit business, it's I think $250 for advocate, $1,000 for champion level. That's pretty reasonable. It's pretty reasonable. Is that an annual? Is that an annual? It is annual, but you don't get kicked out of the coalition if you, after 12 months, you just go back to supporter. That's good. Yeah, so, but it could be a talk fest. What is it beyond a talk fest? So I think what you're asking is what do we actually do, right? So we work on three fronts, policy advocacy, education and outreach, and then we look for opportunities to actually implement programs or activities that would actually implement clean transportation. So on the advocacy side, we do a lot of legislative stuff, both through the Blue Planet side and through the Stitch side. Education and outreach, we do, we've been having a number of electric vehicle rider events. I think we've done close to 12 or 15 over the last 18 months. What kind of events? Electric vehicle ride and ride. So we coordinate a number of car dealerships to bring EV models to a specific location. We get insurance for the venue. We do outreach and get people to come and actually test drive the vehicles. Oh, okay. So it's a test drive. Everybody meets and say, you know what, I was thinking for a minute about these old Model T kind of organizations that drive halfway across the country and they would take their family with them and stop here and stop there and everybody would talk about their vehicles online. Right. That would be cool to do that. I want to tell you about the venue coming up. So our big event on September 17th, it's a Sunday morning, we're doing our second annual electric island drive. So we're getting, yeah, we're getting, last year we had about 55 vehicles participate and we had about 100 people. The vehicles meet at specified locations around town and then drive through Honolulu, through Waikiki and then terminate at KCC. Last year we had a little celebration just for the participants. This year we're doing much bigger. We expect about 200 vehicles to actually participate in the drive itself and then we're having an EV fair at KCC after the event and we're expecting 2,000 to 3,000 people from the public to come. We're going to have dealerships there with electric vehicles. We're going to have food trucks. We're going to have live music. And people can actually drive the cars. Not out the event because of how crowded we expect the parking lot to be. But we do do drive-drive events quite frequently. We're doing one on September 9th on the big island. We're going to do one on October 4th at UH Manoa. So we send those events out to our newsletter list and our social media followers regularly. Sounds like you're in launch mode. We are in launch mode. Launching into these various events. Absolutely right down, yeah. I hope you'll mention them when you appear on August 28th. August 28th? And we will have the Tesla models there and possibly, possibly, the Marai, the hydrogen vehicles. So it'll be part of your event as well, moving forward. Well, the events are obviously they're intended to raise interest by electric vehicles, make people more comfortable. That's where others may be in their community, their peer group who are willing to do electric vehicles. So looking at the mission itself, as you defined it a minute ago, I guess it's primarily around putting electric vehicles instead of fossil vehicles on the highway. Because that's what I wanted you to disagree with me. So I wanted you to disagree. And sure enough, you should agree. So what else is there? There are a lot of people that they look at clean transportation in their mind. When they visualize that, they picture just EVs. There are really three pathways to reducing our energy footprint in transportation. The first one is reducing travel demand. I think to some extent. That's like efficiency. Exactly, it is. I think to some extent, the amount of travel that people have to do kind of shows the amount of dysfunction in our land use. If you have to go a lot of places and very far, that shows we didn't do a very good job of putting people close to services. We didn't build complete communities. So a lot of that is land use. The second thing, reducing travel is number one. Second thing is the travel that is done, let's move it to the most efficient mode of transportation. So by far, walking and biking are the most energy efficient. So we want to build communities where walking and biking is safe and enjoyable, even pleasurable. And then thirdly, we want to make sure that the energy used for the vehicles that are on the road comes from clean sources. So we are really kind of focused on all three of those. We want people to take transit more. We want to convert our transit vehicles to electric, electricity. We want to encourage people to walk and bike as much as possible. We want to encourage modes of transportation that actually facilitate a car-free or car lifestyle, like bike share, like car sharing, like even the Uber and Lyft services. Because even if you don't have a car, occasionally you do need an automobile to run errands or go grocery shopping, right? But then we really need a higher quality transit system that can kind of support all of that, including the walking and biking. We have a transit system on Oahu that's been at capacity since 1983, really. So we really need a major upgrade there. And then obviously there's a lot of work to be done on the electric vehicle side, and even hydrogen vehicles and biofuels and those things. So we have our hands in a lot of pots, and we push where there's opportunity or there's events and where there's funding. That's the most ambitious plan I ever heard of. You're talking about remaking our entire society. Well, society remakes itself regularly. So we want to make sure we get in the way and we kind of funnel the next iteration of change into the right pathway. Why? Well, you know about five or six years ago, the Energy Policy Forum did a survey and about 50% of the people said that they would not travel with public transportation. No way, nothing you could do. And we just did a survey and we're seeing that that needle has moved, that more people are willing to ride the bus, public transportation, as well as other modes. So it is shifting, you know? Right, it is. But I think even if we have more people that are willing, we don't have any spare capacity in the bus. And that's the fundamental problem. Well, a comment, just a digressionary comment is that when Blue Planet first started doing its foundation things, we're talking about showing people that it would be better to put a different kind of bulb into efficiency at home. And so the basic steps of moving to public awareness about clean energy, but this is well further than that. This is real serious now. It involves more than just the use of energy. It involves everything. I think of all the things you're talking about and that would be a better place to live. Forget about energy, it's about life, it's everything. Or Maria had some burning cross-examination. Well, you said anybody on our list will get information about the ride and drives and other events. So how did they get on your list? You can go to Bergen and find us on Facebook and Twitter and at Stitch Hawaii. Our website is www.stchawaii.org. Somebody had already taken Stitch.org, so we had to get that one. OK, STC, and then you spill out Hawaii. Right. And I think going along with Jay's comment about how working on efficiency in your own home was kind of where Blue Planet got a lot of attention in the beginning. And now you're taking on the bigger question of how we build our cities. There is a lot of connection and communication and planning and visioning that's going to go on there. So we had mentioned the Hawaii Clean Energy Day on August 28th. And go to that website and look at the list of speakers. And it's not just the speakers, because the folks who are contributing their ideas and participating in the discussions are the ones who are going to build this. Need everybody. The screw you know. Well, I feel that Sharon is about to ask you a question. I'll just make a wild guess as to what this might be. Because Sharon likes to ask this question. So you're talking about a very ambitious plan, right? And what are the challenges that they should be able to do? Do you think there might have any challenges? And how are you going to really deal with the challenges? Because we've been talking about this for so long, many, many years. And now we've got a little bit of traction. But what are the challenges to getting this? Well, there is a lot. The analogy I like to use is a hose. If you have a hose that's really thrown in a pile in a garage, there may be 10 or 15 different kinks in that hose. And so it's kind of a process of identifying what those kinks are and finding out the solutions to unkink those hoses. So for example, with electric vehicles, for example, there's an education component. A lot of people don't know about electric vehicles. There's the technological advancement of the technology, the reduction in the cost of the batteries. That's moving in the right direction. There's some work to be done with the dealerships. In fact, one of the things we're working on right now is we're creating a STIT-certified EV Expert program, or we're doing EV Experts. We've heard a lot of consumers that have gone into dealerships and they've had salespeople that didn't know anything about the EVs and actually actively diverted them away from them. There's a fundamental need for a lot more public charging and for the kind of charging that it's going to be well utilized. And that's just EV. So every segment of clean transportation has its own kinks, bicycles, transit. And it's a process of identifying those, looking for opportunities, whether it's legislatively or working with dealerships through an education program. There's a lot of challenges, and we kind of tackle them as we are able to. Well, yes, you and your staff of 200 or so, wasn't it? Move right out with this program. But what are your initial steps? Even a multifaceted program has to start with moving your left foot forward. So what's the left foot forward here? So for the last couple of years, our primary legislative goal has been to get 100% clean ground transportation target in place legislatively. We got real close this last year. I've made it to the second or third lap to final day and conference committee before dying. We don't necessarily think we need to mandate. What we need is kind of a large target that helps people kind of envision the world that we're going towards, and then it makes it easier to identify some of the barriers and specific policies that can help implement it. If people don't realize that by 2045 or 2050, all the cars will be EVs, then it's really hard to get, for example, condominiums to think about, oh, actually, we need to install charging. So that's why we think that high level vision is really important for helping to get implementing policies enacted. So that was kind of our primary focus the last few years. It'll be, again, this next legislative session. But we also have a lot of implementing things. And one major thing that we've been working on, we just completed a big EVSC compliance study. EVSC is the charging infrastructure. So as you may know, there's a state law that all parking lots with over 100 public parking stalls are required to have at least one charging station. So we have a really good database of all the charging stations statewide, but we didn't know where the parking situation. So we spent about six months gathering all the data on all the parking structures throughout the state. What's your fine? We found compliance is low. 24% statewide. But considering that there's never been any monitoring, that's not too bad. We also found that the kind of charging we're getting is maybe not the most useful. We're getting a lot of locations with one or two charging stations. And so in the neighborhood, you might have 10 or 15, but they're all in small denominations. So if you're a, particularly in Honolulu, it's creating this whole group of charger chasers that are constantly driving around trying to find a place to charge. Whereas if they were all in one place, it would be a lot easier to find charge. How about the guys that pull into the charging station and leave the car there all day? Well, luckily, we're seeing a little bit less of that. There is kind of a self-policing that goes on. But it is a problem. I think even a bigger problem, fundamentally, is that a lot of the charging that we do have is free. And it may sound kind of interesting to say that's a problem. But actually what it's doing is if it's free, even those people who can charge at home, if it's open, they're going to take it. So the people who maybe can't charge at home, who live in apartments or condominiums where they can't charge, who really need the public charging to be able to feel comfortable owning an EV, are being kind of squeezed out. OK, last question from me, then these guys will take over for you. But from time to time, I think about getting an electric car. Right. And right now, I'm still driving my old Toyota fossil car truck, which is very efficient. A truck. Very, very efficient. I love it very much. It's sort of a technological miracle. What are you going to do to make me buy an electric car? And by the way, I'm not particularly overcome by the existing credits, including the rebate that Peter Rossek told us about last week, the one from Nissan. What are you going to do to change my mind? And I am just not me. I am another half a million me's who really should be changing our mind. Well, it's a good question you ask. We found the number one biggest thing that you can do to get somebody to want to purchase an EV is get them in an EV. Once you drive it, and you feel the acceleration and the smoothness and the quietness, it actually is a much better car. And there is like a barrier of inexperience that once you cross that threshold, it changes. So the best incentive is to approximate, get close to it, expose people, let them drive it, let them drive with somebody who has one. What about cost? We're going to wrap it up now. It's cost two, right? We've got to get the cost down. I guess the first thing I'd like to ask is Maria. Well, first thing is Sharon, can you summarize this discussion? That's your duty as the co-host of the program. I think it's wonderful that stitches around, that they're starting to bring people together, because it's an all front. So if we are looking at 100% ground transportation, I know you're trying to get the legislation through. But if you start bringing the people together, that they begin the groundswell, I think it's easier to then pass legislation for the 100%. So thank you for pulling that together, Sharon. You're my man. Keep up the good work and meet the challenges. Maria, you're the progenitor for this program for the month of August for transportation. Can you put this in perspective for us about other programs we have had or will have about transportation? Well, I think that Shem made a really good point about how broad the issue is. It's everything from your land use planning and your transportation systems to your vehicles and your fuel choices. And the individuals who have to make those choices. By the way, Jay's got a truck. Anybody need to move anywhere? Sorry, you said what would it take? You don't think I can request? Yeah. You get lots of requests. You might change. Just kidding. Yeah. So it's excellent to have that broader view as well as specific tasks in each of those areas to accomplish this goal. So I think it's a great start. And we've got a lot to do, but we've also come a long way. Even with the Honolulu Clean Cities, I guess you were getting folks thought you were a cleaning company or something like that, right? So to be sustainable transportation coalition of Hawaii, I think that's moving in the right direction. Moving in the right direction. Oh, moving forward. Oh, and next week, we're going to have Gary Andreshek with IBI, which he's calling it Intelligence, Buildings, and Infrastructure. And they are looking at rail, but rail looking at it in terms of it being a transportation mode, but also looking at communities and smart growth and how do you bring communities together so it's a better plan so you don't have to drive. And Gary was a very good speaker at the salvage the rail program in the state capitol auditorium two weeks ago. OK, well, Shem, I really appreciate what you're doing. It's very ambitious. And it's not going to end right away. You're going to think of new things, didn't you? Take at least 12 months to wrap yourself. It's going to evolve. It's going to be dynamic. It's going to change. You're going to grow. You're going to see. You're going to comport with the changes in the city. It'd be really interesting to watch because it involves so many disciplines coming together. And that means I hope you come back and talk to us about it. We'd like to be your partner in discussing this and rolling it out. We think it's really important. Right. Yeah. Get that man's number. We got it. We are. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Maria. Aloha. Aloha, you guys. Thank you.