 We are again another Wednesday and we're in Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm Mitch Ewen, your host, and our sponsor is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. So the forum is always looking for good policy to help move the goalposts forward for Hawaii's clean energy sector. I'm really delighted to have Ben Sullivan, the energy coordinator for the County of Kauai on the line. We're doing this long distance through the technical expertise of our technical staff, which is great. And we're going to talk about the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum Peer Exchange, which is a brand new initiative we've started this year. And this is actually the first of the peer exchanges led by Ben and he'll be reporting out and telling us all about what is a peer exchange anyway and what the results were from their first peer exchange. We're hoping that this is a new initiative that really helps to broaden the field of input to the forum and also output to the citizens of Hawaii so we can make informed good energy policy. So welcome Ben. And Ben, it's great to see you there on the beach submarine was just about ready to dive on me. The beach is for my Canadian buddies, I always have to get a plug in for Canada here, eat your heart out this getting to the cold time up there soon. So first of all, I have a first question for you, Ben. What is a peer exchange? What is that concept before we get into the results? I imagine a lot of your listeners are familiar, but from my perspective, a peer exchange is really something within a network organization that is member driven that allows members to get together on an ad hoc basis to talk about a particular issue that is emerging or of particular relevance to them and to try to work through how they might address that issue. So it could really be something very specific like some piece of legislation or a project or it could be more of a planning concept like it is in this case. But it's a day or two where you work intensely with your peers and you think about a given issue and you focus in on it and you try to deliver some results. And it's really a unique opportunity. So often we spend an hour on the phone here or 10 minutes, an hour in a meeting here, 10 minutes on the phone there and we're all so busy that we don't really get to dive deep on an issue. A peer exchange is that opportunity. So you go somewhere outside of your office, hopefully, where you're free of distractions and you get all the small group of folks that you really think can help you focus on the issue and you dive in. So is it done in person or is it a combination of people, say, going to Kauaii and all piling into a room and basically a brain storming exercise? How did this peer exchange, what are the mechanics of it? Well, sure, the mechanics of this peer exchange were it was actually set up on the shoulder of the Hawaii Congress of Planning officials and we did that deliberately so that all the folks that were coming over for the peer exchange could also take advantage of the fact that the Congress of Planning officials was happening the next two days in Maui. So we went to Kanapali and we got a space in a hotel and we spent the day in there and we started off with breakfast and we worked through some kind of baseline setting on the issue, which we'll talk about shortly, and got everyone familiar with each other. In this case, the peer exchange involved trying to create a closer collaboration between sustainability folks and those working on climate from the sustainability lens and their peers in planning departments as well as many other folks who are stakeholders in the transportation space. So, you kind of mentioned it, so what was specifically this peer exchange about that you can maybe add a little bit more to your explanation there? Sure, so there's a little bit of a wonk alert here with the language and I'm going to ask for your forgiveness as we start on that, but the concept is called the working at the nexus of the mitigation resilience and the nexus of mitigation resilience and equity. And so obviously there's a climate focus there and there's an idea of trying to figure out where there's overlap in projects and policy around those three ideas. I think probably a simpler way to describe it is to recognize that we have so much work to do when it comes to climate change that comes in several different buckets. One is that we have to be people first focused, so we have to respond to the immediate needs of our community and recognize that that's going to be the thing that's most important to drive projects forward. Two, we have to think about how we're going to address the impacts of climate change and three, we've got to do something about continuing to contribute to the problem, which I think is probably the area we're all most familiar with as energy policy folks. You know exception to that, right, Mitch? Right, exactly. So what were your results? I mean, give us some of the insights that you guys came up with. So the results were interesting. Like I said, there was a baseline setting and there's some uncomfortable conversations when you talk about equity because one of the components of equity is racial equity and it really requires us to reflect on our privilege in some cases. Here I am, I'm a white male and societal rules have given me advantage historically and given me privilege that I need to be aware of and recognize where there may be others in our community that don't get the same access to resources. We talked also about income equity and many other issues and kind of just laid those things out really plainly and said, hey, it's important to start with a recognition that people have different limitations imposed on them and that any kind of project to policy design should at least try to recognize those things. And then again, this idea of getting together as peers and practicing, you know, how do we reorient our typical project approach from one, you know, as energy sector folks where we're thinking specifically about, okay, what we want is for everyone in the state of Hawaii to drive an electric vehicle and so we are going to give tax credits to everyone who buys one and we're going to roll it out like this and here's how much money there is in total and our hope is to achieve X number of vehicles. That is certainly a useful approach for a universal goal, but the thing that it misses and the kind of things we focused on in the peer exchange is to say, hey, wait a minute, that's a great goal and universal goals are really important in the context of climate and other societal goals, but is there a way that we could start that process where instead of just kind of giving everyone equal access to the resources, we could really say, who could benefit most initially? And then over time, we can try to help everyone move in that direction but start with the folks who can benefit most and really ask what do they need? You know, do they need a tax credit? Do they need more information? Do they need access to charging? You know, what are the true barriers and then to construct the policy or the project from that framework, that perspective? So I'm kind of curious, how did you actually find people or participants that cover the various ranges of social equity and competing interests? How did you manage to do that? Because in the policy forum, we're all privileged, you know, we all have the great jobs and we do, you know, we're higher income people. So how did you actually attract the right kind of mix and people to make sure that we get the right inputs? So I'm not sure that we did a comprehensive job of that. You know, I think candidly what we did is we looked within the forum and we looked at our members and said, who can benefit from learning and working on this policy? And then we also brought in some experts from outside who are very familiar with this work and work across cities throughout the country. You know, one of the things that we all acknowledged in the peer exchange is that one of the critical components of this work is actually being on the ground and working in your community and finding out what the specific needs are of that given community, whether it be a neighborhood, a particular ethnic or racial group in your community or anyone else, someone, you know, people that are disadvantaged in one way or the other. And then in kind of asking directly, you know, what is it that we can do? You know, framing it from the context of this is what we're trying to achieve. What are some options and ways to move forward that would be most beneficial to a given community? So I definitely want to acknowledge what I think is your point, Mitch, and that, you know, this requires much more community engagement and this peer exchange was not intended to reflect that community engagement but more to talk about the process and how you would go about doing that. Okay. So we've seen some examples of our, you know, the legislature was trying to do good and they put in the GEMS program, which was to provide low income and people with the opportunity to have PV panels on their houses. But it's taken forever for them to actually walk this program out. And one of the big, my understanding, one of the big roadblocks or speed bumps is just like, hey, low income people don't have great credit and they may not qualify for it. So like, here we got these hundreds, you know, tens of millions of dollars sitting in the bank. We're paying interest on it. And for some reason we can't come up with some solution to allow the people that really need it to get it. So I don't know when the last time you spoke to Gwen Yamamoto-Lao was from Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority, but I spoke to Gwen a couple of months ago. And from my understanding, you're right, it took a long time and obviously she was not involved in the early days of that program. But again, from my understanding, that program is now up and running successfully and they are, you know, de-risking the projects fairly well. So I think it's, you know, I think it is, that's a great example of a solution to equity barriers and specifically to, you know, income equity barriers where people don't have access to capital because of credit or because of other reasons and you're allowed to, you know, you're in a position where you can finance through your bill and it's not attached to the property. So it solves a lot of problems, as you know. I mean, you know, as a renter, it's, you can't make a $20,000 or $30,000 investment on your roof, but through on-bill financing, you actually can. Okay. Well, that's great that we can do that. So what other kind of problems did you identify and any potential solutions out there? So we definitely talked about some other example challenges, which I think a lot of us are very familiar with but useful to reflect on, you know, certainly the solar tax credits, both at a local and a federal level, run into some of the same equity barriers, right? You need to have the money to start with in order to make that investment and then you get it back in the form of a tax credit. So what are ways to overcome that? But I would say more than anything, what we did is we had kind of a, we broke up into a couple different groups and we just were in small enough groups. There was about 20 plus people involved in the peer exchange. So with groups of 10 people worked through a process where we inverted our normal thinking in terms of starting with what I'll say mitigation, but really what I mean is starting with clean energy solutions and then also, and then thinking, okay, how can they also be resilient? How can they also be equitable? And then we started on the other end of the spectrum. So what does it mean to start with an equitable solution? You know, what do people need in the transportation space? So if our universal goal is again, try to electrify a large portion of the vehicle fleet in Hawaii, what do people need? And the conversation became one of, well, people certainly need access to charging and many cases those are renters, many cases those are people that live in multi-unit dwellings. So looking at incentives that address that, and certainly we've seen some conversation around that, but I'm not familiar with any policy that has successfully, that yet, you know, as yet successfully targeted that specific market and maybe we'll see something this session, we talked about, you know, the broader needs like some people just can't afford to own a car, playing, you know, straight up. So what does electrification mean to them? And maybe it means electrifying transit and giving, you know, as we roll out transit, maybe the first people to benefit from these clean comfortable buses are those who are starting from a disadvantaged place, whether it be a hydrogen bus or an electric, a battery electric bus, you know, either way, there are a lot, maybe a lot more enjoyable to drive and a lot more enjoyable to have in your community because they're quieter and they're less polluting. So put those in the communities that have historically been disadvantaged first. One other example that we talked about was kind of last mile solutions and certainly things like car sharing come up and, you know, working with car share companies so that they're not just plunking their cars down in the most lucrative markets because obviously any given local jurisdiction has some control over how that is managed and rolled out. So so leaning into those companies a little bit and saying, we want to make sure you you you provide an equitable service arrangement and make sure that those who could really benefit from these services the most have access and have the ability to use the system, whether that means, you know, I don't have a credit card, but there's some other system to access it or something else. So I thought there was a really a lot of good discussions about how to approach that it is just scratching the surface and it's like a change in practice for some of us, you know, some some people in the room certainly had more experience than others. I will say for me, this is I'm a novice, I'm learning and I'm trying to figure out how to how to move it forward, but very excited. OK, well, that's really great. Ben, we're going to have a little quick break. Give me a chance to figure out some other questions to ask you. And maybe you can think of other subjects you want to cover. So we'll be back in about a minute and Aloha, everybody. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch, host of Out and About. It's a show that we have every other Monday on Think Tech Live here. We explore a variety of topics that are really interesting. We have organizations, events and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. We've got some amazing guests on here, like all the shows at Think Tech. So if you want to catch up on stuff, tune into my show every other Monday and other shows here on Think Tech Live. It's a great place to learn about stuff, to be informed. And if you have some ideas, come on my show. Let's talk about it. See you later. Aloha. Hello, I'm Mufi Hanuman. I want to tell you about a great show that appears on Think Tech Hawaii. It's all about tourism. In fact, we call it Tourism 101, where we talk about the issues and challenges that face our number one industry throughout the state. We'll have some interesting guests, very informative dialogue and allow you an opportunity to maybe learn a little bit more about why this industry is so important for our state. It's been great for us in the past. We need it today, and especially going forward. That's Tourism 101 on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Well, here we are, the second half of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And I am very pleased to have Ben Sullivan, the energy coordinator for the County of Kauai on board. And he's just completed the first round of how many rounds of a peer exchange experiment initiated by Ben, actually, but as part of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. So Ben, during the break, I came up with a couple of questions just to keep us going here. So one is, what was your impression of the level of enthusiasm among the peers that you had out there in Kauai? So actually, we convened on Maui. Oh, OK. And I thought the enthusiasm was really good. I will tell you, as a part of my response, that we had two really amazing facilitators. So the folks who facilitated and led the discussion for us were Kristen Baja from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, and Lindsay X, who is the climate program manager from the city of Fort Collins. And so both of these people have been working actually across the country on this same concept with, I think, about a dozen cities nationwide. And they are the first to admit, this is something that the Urban Sustainability Directors Network is exploring as kind of a shift in practice to take a more people-centered, equity-based approach. And so there's a lot of learning happening in both directions. But they had some really great insights. And in terms of enthusiasm, I think it always starts with who's in the front of the room. And they were both incredibly enthusiastic. Kristen Baja in particular was there to provide the keynote for HCPO on Friday as well. And so we took advantage of her presence in the state. And she really did a great job. That said, it's always a challenge, I think, for it to ask busy professionals to spend a full day in the room. And so to be candid, I think there are some people who are kind of like, what is it? What is it we're talking about? It's a little harder for me to figure out how to get into this, because it's not as cut and dry and step A, B, C, D as a lot of the other things that we often work on in this space. So how do you think we're going to be able to keep that level of enthusiasm up? I mean, it's always great having a big meeting. And everybody's all pumped up. And then everybody goes away to their day job. And the enthusiasm quickly ends. So how can we keep this alive? What's the concept behind that? That's a great question. So as you know, Mitch, Sheryl and we has done a tremendous job with ATPF in really thinking about how we communicate as a network and how we can strengthen our organization through some tools. And so one of the tools that her and her team have put a lot of work into is this online web platform that really allows more peer sharing. That's a work in progress, and we'll see if that helps. I think the concept of the peer exchange is also to build relationships. So we're not just getting in the room and wonking out on a policy and then leaving. We're actually spending a little social time and we're connecting on an issue that we're passionate about. Certainly that's something the forum has done in the past. So nothing new there, but also an important part of the fabric of any network. And then I think recognizing that we're not alone in doing this. If you follow the state climate commission and the work that Anu Hiddle is facilitating and organizing with that body, there is a lot of conversations about equity and putting equity in the front of our processes. And certainly I think that follows a trend nationwide. So it's an important conversation. Certainly there are lots of examples of where we haven't done that. And we touched on a few earlier, but there are many more. And the question becomes, what are the examples of successes that we can really begin to find ourselves in a place to leverage? One of the most exciting things for me is I think about putting people first and putting equity first, which maybe I hope I'm sort of like a fool in having that not have been obvious all along. But I think you can relate to the idea that as an energy sector professional, so often we're thinking about the widget or the universal goal that we can sometimes forget that. And so getting in that mindset and then just really drilling down and asking more questions of our community, what is it that's your barrier? Do you need chargers? Do you even have an interest in electric vehicles? I mean, EVs are a great example where there is certainly, to some extent, a stigma because you've got this wonderful company in Tesla that came out with $90,000 cars that everybody wanted to buy. And that's not exactly a solution that is open to everyone in Hawaii. I'm kidding. Right? But we had some interesting conversations about the used EV market and whether that was an opportunity to try to actually open up that. And is there a way that state and county could participate and do exactly that so that more affordable and reliable vehicles were available to residents of Hawaii as a deliberate strategy? A lot of other great conversations. But I can't say enough. And your point is really well taken. It's always going to be a challenging thing to do. And I don't think any one person can promise that we're going to continue to hammer, but we can do our best. So how do we expand the scope? Like, OK, this is an experiment. You had like 20 people involved in this. And you've got some initial results look good. But part of the concept when you first came up with this was to expand this network and almost like have it go viral and bring other people in. I mean, there's lots of people obviously who are not part of the policy forum. They don't necessarily have the passwords and all that kind of stuff. How do we actually get out to the general public and push these ideas out there and get their feedback? So there's a lot. I think there were several questions there. So let me try to back up. Sorry. How do we expand the forum? So that's an ongoing question for Sherilyn in the steering committee. And I guess my input on that would be to say I think that it's always going to be necessary to kind of define forum membership around the broad housing of energy, but really to say what are the opportunities for us to interface more directly with folks in other sectors? So we all know that the housing sector is a really critical sector in Hawaii and that housing is just a paramount issue for anyone dealing with policy beyond just the energy sector. So all our legislators, all our councils are thinking about housing and affordability. So what's the overlap? And the overlaps are obvious, but can we actually get in the room with folks who are working on housing and say, hey, we want to be a resource. We want to help. What is needed? So there's an example of how to do that. And not to necessarily say you're now members of the forum, but to say let's build stronger bridges between housing and energy. Same thing as you know has been happening with the transportation sector. And that's been certainly challenging, but illuminating as well where there's the Department of Transportation has been much more involved in the forum, a bunch of other planners, whether they be from MPOs or from the federal government, or just people working in bike and ped and transit have really contributed a lot of their expertise, understanding that there's a huge overlap with renewable energy and with energy policy as it relates to ground transportation. So I think it's just it's about continuing to seek out those solutions. One of the things that came up was the possibility of really trying to frame a package of legislation around equitable electrification. So acknowledging that one of the primary policies that the state is driving in the counties are very much investing in is electrification of the vehicle fleets, but then, again, centering people first and centering on this conversation of equity. Which as you know, but I think is always important to make the distinction, equity is not equality. So we're not talking about everyone having an equal crack at things. We're actually talking about saying, correcting a historical disadvantage and giving maybe more resources to those who have been disadvantaged through no fault of their own over the course of time. So that's a fun conversation. I think a very fruitful conversation that could come out of a conversation about electrification. As you probably know, some of the reticence we've seen about major investments in electrification in the past have been about exactly that. Legislators and council members, I think from my perspective has said, we understand the big picture, but how do we spend resources on what at this time, at this point in time, appears to be a solution for those with means as opposed to those without. And so by responding with a package on equity, you're really trying at least to answer that question. Right. So were there any obvious policy issues that popped up out of this? I mean, I know you just covered it in your just conversation here, but is there any like a low hanging fruit? I'll call it that you discovered that it's so obvious. Why didn't we realize that we can put forward maybe even this legislative session? Well, certainly that was one that we just touched on. You're putting me on the spot here. So apologies for not just being really quick to nail something else. I think actually electrification of transit and public transit in particular is one that's already got some legs in the state and has a lot of potential through the VW settlement funds and certainly speaks to equity if we do it in the right way. So not only do we roll out electric buses, but where do we roll them out? Who gets them first is an important question and how do they benefit from that? Other conversations really had to do with not getting completely hung up on again, that universal goal, but kind of backing up a little bit and saying, what is the barrier for a given community and how do we overcome that? I mean, maybe the barrier is just informational or just cultural like right now, I think candidly we can say that EVs and this is not across the board, but EVs are more in the current paradigm kind of a white environmental thing, right? And so how do we try to help shift that where everyone in the community across a diverse group feels like, hey, this is actually a solution for me and that comes in different forms. A lot of that is figuring out how to introduce these things in a way that makes sense for people, but certainly not easy work. I see some overlap between your peer exchange group and the one that Riley Sato is leading on basically on public transit, public transportation. So there could be some really interesting overlaps there because he's come up with some very interesting legislation which passed last year, public-private partnerships with the counties and it allows private companies come in and buy all the vehicle fleets and the county pays a user fee but then you can focus those fleets, public transportation fleets like you said on the lower income neighborhoods where they really need this kind of transportation just to get to their job, you know, and they don't have to spend all their money on gasoline and car maintenance and all that other stuff and make the bus really a superior system. So it's their first choice, oh, I'm gonna take the bus. They only take their car or pickup truck if they're going to the beach on a Saturday and they're going to a particular, just the convenience factor, but they're not having to drive their vehicles every day of the week. Yes, yes. And actually you reminded me of one. So we all love the idea of truck share. So as you know, Mitch, so many of us in Hawaii kind of feel the pull of having a pickup truck but then when we reflect on that ownership, we realize that, you know, I only really need it once a month or once every two months, whether it's to go on a big surf trip or to go camping or to deal with a construction, a small renovation project at my house. So trying to figure out, can we stimulate the implementation of truck share and the tools are there? It's just a matter of kind of catching up and finding the market in the right place to do it. But that allows people to say, hey, yeah, maybe we could be a one car family. Maybe we could rely more on transit and then when we need a truck or when we need another vehicle, we just pick it up as a shared use vehicle or we rely on other resources, electric bikes or another one that the County of Kauai is very interested in as an example. Certainly, you know, as you know well, Oahu has had a smashing success with bike share and I'm not as familiar, but I do think that that program has really tried to pay attention to where they're plucking those stations down and right, right? So, and then I gotta wrap up. What about hiking? Yeah. We're gonna do that in another show. We've already burned through our whole half hour and I'm getting all sorts of flashing lights to wrap up. So man, thank you so much for coming on the show and it was really interesting and I'm really pleased to see the initial results of this are looking pretty good. So that's something we all talk about the next time we have a steering committee meeting or our general membership meeting. So thank you. And one last thing. One last one. Thanks to our sponsors. Sponsors, Hawaii Energy and Ulupono really stepped up to the plate and helped finance this thing, make it happen, really important to acknowledge them. Awesome. NH and EI. NH and EI, there you go. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. We're gone. Aloha. Thank you so much, Ben.