 This is Think Tech Hawai'i. The community matters here. Good afternoon, Howard Wigg. Cold, green, Think Tech Hawai'i. Do we have a worldwide all-encompassing look into the future for Hawai'i's energy scene today? My honored guest is Brandon Hayashi, CEO—no, Hawai'i Regional Business Development Manager for NG Energy, and I'm going to let Brandon explain the history of it. If you've never heard of NG, it's because it's a worldwide, but it's just recently come to Hawai'i, and fortunately it's under Brandon's umbrella to this day. So welcome, welcome, Brandon. Thank you. I wish I was the CEO. You will be. Very good. Oh, a little bit of background for those of you who know what TED talks are. I've known Brandon for many, many, many, many years, and when he would make presentations, he would make it to myself and my officemate, who's a long, long, long-time toastmaster, and we would just cringe listening to Brandon. We'd say, Brandon, Brandon, take toastmasters, no more oz and ums, and he'd say, yeah, yeah, I just don't have time, just don't have time. And the next thing I knew somehow, I'm googling Brandon, and he's maybe not TED Talk proper, but TEDx, which is the local version of TED Talk. So somewhere along the line, he just leapt into public speaking frame. So again, welcome, Brandon, and let's leap right in. We've got a whole lot of material to cover. What is NG, and how in the world did it get to Hawaii? Right. So technically, NG acquired upterra energy services, our company. And let me interrupt upterra in the energy field, if Hawaii energy field was a big, big player for a long time. Correct. With the largest contract we currently have right now is with the Department of Education, the State Department of Education. 265 public schools, that's pretty big. Right. And focused on renewables, efficiency, microgrades, and importantly, providing all of those return on investment opportunities to deliver societal return investment via standards-aligned curriculum education deliverables. So that's what we had done up to this point, along with other projects as well, through some in the commercial industrial area, not just the public sector. So we're not only going to cool what these schools, but we're going to integrate what you're doing into their curriculum. So the kids, it's a way of educating the kids. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we were upterra up until actually just two Mondays ago, January 22nd. Okay, no wonder. Yeah, very, very recent change. So we are technically NG Services US, Hawaii region. And what we do is pretty much what we've always done. It's focused on the energy conservation, onsite renewable generation, and pulling that all together through, as we make technological advancements through energy storage and so forth, tying that all together with the technology and importantly, the financing to make sure projects get off the paper into reality. Yeah, all of those components are inseparable from one another. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You need them all, right, to make a project actually become real. So basically, what happened getting to your original question on NG and how did it get here in Hawaii? So NG Global Corporation, and we'll get into some of the numbers in just a moment, but acquired us back in February of 2016. So it's been exactly two years. We just took on our parent company name NG last month, and there's been a lot of back-end support and thought and strategy as how we release it, which is why it didn't just become NG Services in March 2016. A lot of behind the scenes strategizing. Absolutely. I'm sure you know from your years of working with the state energy office how that back-end support and planning and strategy is absolutely important when it comes to execution, as little glitches or hiccups as possible. Yeah. So NG and we can get into some of the slides, if we will. Oh yeah, let's wrap up or bring up our first slide. Yeah, so there we go. So our first slide there basically shows you where we are if you look at the blue. It's a pretty decent chunk of the global presence. We're in 70 countries and this is data pulled from the 2016 year. So we actually have a little bit more than that number there as far as employees are concerned. We're somewhere hovering around just about 155,000 global employees. That encompasses well over 90% of the world's population right there. Oh, where we are as opposed to the population itself of employees. Yeah, so what I like to share about NG is that it's not just about having the physical presence of being in 70 countries and having so many global employees, but it's the ability, and this is why the back-end is so important when we talked about the rollout, is making sure we can communicate properly. As you imagine, a global company is going to choose a language which can communicate the most so that the most of their employees can understand. English is the language that NG chooses. Even though they are a French company based in Paris, our global headquarters is in Paris. English is the main language of which we share via email, calls, and so forth. It really allows, fortunately or unfortunately for monolingualist Americans or most Americans, the ability to really tap into the global knowledge and resources that NG has. Who can be picking up the phone on a call with Singapore, Australia, Belgium, obviously France, in the UK, other parts of the US, Latin America, Africa, and so on and so forth. You've got two tiny little entities, one called China, the other called India, up in there too. Yes, yeah, just these small little countries, right? Yeah, there's, as you would imagine, lots of opportunities, not just in those two countries that are really growing in population and thus to a certain extent as their middle class grows, there's other business opportunities, but it's really about looking in areas where some don't see normally or typically an opportunity. Isabel Cocher, our CEO, our global CEO, head of our NG group, actually just presented two weeks ago at Davos with the World Economic Forum, and oftentimes not just there and other places as well too, she talks about access to energy. It's not just the reliability and the security and the resiliency, which are important for no matter where you are from the developing to the developed world spectrum, but it's about the access, right? And sometimes it's not even just about cost, but also about the ability to just get the technology in hand in the first place. I'm sure lots of your other guests have been on here talking about the leapfrog effect. We oftentimes talk about the telecoms community as an example of what's happening in the energy sector. So let me guess, as you go into the less developed countries, where in some cases less than half of the population has access to electricity, you're not going to go through the whole, recreate the whole industrial revolution with the belching smokestacks and all the business. Correct. You're not going to go through any grinding, say, computer technology that was very inefficient 30 years ago. You're going to take the latest and the greatest and whom get right into those remote villages and so forth. Exactly. Exactly. There's a slide later on that we actually talk about how we look at the needs of the clients who are serving and how there is no one size fits all. And some of that does take place in rural areas of leapfrogging and not just areas, for example, in Africa, but even in our own backyard in the Pacific as well too, right? Because just like Hawaii, a lot of islands don't have interconnected islands. There is no backup to pull from another island. Yeah. And I've been to some of those islands. The electrical technology is right now quite thoroughly primitive. Chugging old diesel generator that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't work. Exactly. Imported liquid fossil fuels. Again, not unlike what we face here in the islands. So should we go to the next slide? Absolutely. Let's go ahead. So this is what I wanted to talk about as we look towards the future because it's important to talk about the present and where directionally we need to go. And NG made a dramatic change, a transformation, a revolution almost if you will, in December of 2015. The company used to be known as GDF Suez. And even that coming together was within the 2000s. So Suez being from the company that built the Suez Canal, GDF standing for Auguste France. So it's a utility going back to the 19th century in France itself. And the two came together to form the company GDF Suez, which in December 2015, as you may recall was COP21 held in Paris. That's when NG really unleashed or revealed, if you will, the NG name. And it's not just about a brand change name, but really about a strategy and how they're attaining these three Ds that you see on the scene. These are very intriguing Ds here. And I bet there's a fourth D, but why don't we go through them here? So decarbonization, decentralization and digitization. If you think about it really, it's a commonsensical approach when we're talking about where energy is going into the future. For a number of years, we've talked about the amalgamation or the coming together of the energy in the IT sector. So digitization I think is a very easy thing to understand. We're talking about real-time controls, sensors, monitoring, verifying and so forth. So you're able to make real changes in real time. And very often with very little energy in the communication. Right. But those things all make a big difference when you pull them all together. Right. The amalgamation of them. So decarbonization, you go into that a little bit. Sure. Decarbonization I think is probably where, for example, the Maui Energy Conference coming up in just a little over six or so weeks is focusing on decarbonization as well too. It's really looking at the way in which we decarbonize our current ways in which we live our lives. It's not even just about our transportation or electrification systems, but how we look at our overall footprint. Which has to do with the way in which we do many things around the foods we choose, the drinks we drink, and the way we do many things. So this is a really holistic approach. Absolutely. If you listen to some of what Isabel Kosher talks about, again, our CEO from our NG Group at the global level, it is about encompassing the way in which we live. It isn't just about only traditionally looking at things from an energy perspective. So as an example, one of the initiatives we have both in this country, and I believe it started in the EU, is what's called Cities of Tomorrow. And it's really looking at cities as the focal point of how we make those changes. As you know, it's moved now past the 50th percentile, going more towards the 75th percentile is the number of total people in our global population of 7 billion plus who now live in the cities. Massive migration from the country to the city. And in that, you have challenges, but you have opportunities and obligations. And this Cities of the Tomorrow initiative is really about taking advantage of now where we have our most populous places. Again, not unlike the way in which you have your 100 resilient cities that are focused on city solutions. Again, in the age of our current administration, where our federal government has not signed on to the Paris Accord, our state, and our cities are now moving in that direction. Including Hawaii and including Honolulu. Absolutely. The four mayors have assigned that they will move forward with those obligations. And so what's happening is it's being put from the federal or national level, coming down to the local level. That's where I like. I like to share and I get very excited about NG. Because what we do here in the islands, I'm still here. I was born and raised here. Our office hasn't changed. What has changed is the additive factor of knowledge, experience, access to cheaper capital, and all those expertise that come to the table now that we're part of the NG family. Literally worldwide expertise. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it was decarbonization and what was the next? Decentralization. So again, from an energy perspective, someone like yourself who's been in the sector for years, these are non-nuke terms. But I think when we talk about it from a global perspective, those who aren't in the energy sector, these are things that I think hopefully become more a part of the regular lexicon. When people talk about energy, water, and other aspects of our utilities and way of life. So you're taking an approach whereby you're completely lowering your carbon footprint. Decentralizing or making it more onsite generation, consumption, mindfulness, and so forth. And then using technologies to enable all of this. That's the three D's. But a big part of that I kind of mentioned in the second one there is what I would or we're starting to talk about really our fourth D here is decreasing consumption. We can generate and control and decarbonize and offset. What we really need to do is take the first common sense step in reducing our wastefulness. Wow. That is very exciting. Unfortunately, we need to take a break back in a minute with Brendan Hayashi, almost CEO. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Good afternoon again. My honored guest today at Code Green, Brendan Hayashi, almost CEO of NG, a worldwide energy corporation. Don't give me in trouble now, Howard. Yes, yes. I've been seeing your future here. You're so articulate. You're so organized. Gotta be CEO one of these days. Thank you. At least American CEO. You're generous. You're generous. Yeah. Yeah. So we got so much material. Why don't you jump right in? Well, let's do the next slide here. Yeah. So the next slide you're going to be looking at is really just a brief on where our heritage comes from. If you're looking on the far right hand side, that light blue is really where we are today as NG Services US Hawaii region. But look towards the left of that. And that's really where we came from from the past 40 or so years. We were obviously most recently Optera Energy Services Hawaii and prior to that Chevron Energy Solutions. And then really before that, a lot of different companies being brought together to create the solutions that we provide to our customers throughout that timeframe. A lot of the work that we've done has really been focused on three main sectors. And mostly in the public sector, that is K to 12 education, universities and colleges and municipalities as in the buildings. Correct. Yes. Correct. Yeah. At the end of the day, the solutions are very similar, but how you arrive at them, whether it be through procurement or through different strategies, if you will, is where some of the differences are and some of the needs of the customers obviously K to 12 and universities are both educational institutions, but their needs are different from a number of hierarchical reasons. Yeah. For just one example, most school buildings tend to be very simple. They don't run all that many hours of the year. Many university buildings can be very complex and they run many more hours and some go 24 seven. Correct. Just an example. Absolutely. And even just logistics. There's 256 schools across six islands as opposed to 10 campuses on four islands. So just the cost of mobility as an example. There's just different factors there. Yeah. Yeah. So let's do the next slide. Yeah. So what do you see here? I kind of wanted to give you a sampling of our thought process here. And we talk a lot about the need for energy efficiency and it's imperative that we look at this. Hawaii Energy does a fantastic job, for example, about really getting to the thought process, changing the mindset and incentivizing financially how to change and take energy efficiency steps. We have a lot from the renewable energy community for years now. I mean, it was the fourth leg of our economy for a moment there. And hopefully it comes back to that, but it's not there today. But really it's about going beyond energy. So we use these terms energy effectiveness or beyond energy. And the thought process here is really about looking at what's needed by the customer and the human aspect of what's so important. We absolutely want to talk about sustainability with regards to the overall environment. We are in islands. We are witnessing and experiencing climate change in our own backyards, probably arguably more unpackfully than no one else other than perhaps Puerto Rico. Like the North Shore getting all washed out. There's that right next to the highway. There's like a 20-foot drop because of the heavy waves. Yep. My mom was a teacher at the DOE for 35-plus years and she would drive. We grew up in Kaneohe and she taught at Haula. She would take that drive every day for 20-some-odd years and then she later moved to Kailua. But even in that time you could see huge changes. And you know, when something happens to Kamehameha Highway, you kind of go all the way around the island. These little things are not little things. And certainly when you add them up, they are huge things. And so it's really about ensuring that the environmental ecological impact of the work that we do is conscious in front of mind, right? When we talk about climate change mitigation and certainly adaptation, although obviously we need to be pushing harder on the mitigation side because we're going to unfortunately blow through the two degrees centigrade, right, which we're previously aiming for. And really the next level when we talk about the other aspects, you know, it's again to reiterate around the human aspect of things is to remember that we're looking at the environment and we're looking at the costs and then from a dollar perspective and then the costs and the impacts and the benefits from a human perspective. We want to improve the quality of life. We want to prove the quality of indoor air because indoor air can be not so nice sometimes when you live in a central air conditioned environment. Absolutely. And you know, you and I, when we previously talked, this was after the TED Talk and it was actually talking about the impact of light on the brain. And so when we talk about air quality, we talk about light, you know, there are a number of factors in a given space with regards to learning outcomes and even productivity for adults such as you and I, not just our children. So there are a number of things in that area that we want to focus on with regards to human outcomes. There's a whole, it's not so brand new anymore, but the whole medical field of light and health now we with LEDs, we can modulate the light for morning light, noon light, evening light, go into care homes and people can be indoors, but they're experiencing outdoors through the light and there's best light to be stimulated by, best light to relax by, all of that stuff. Absolutely. And there's different ways in which we can use light such as UV light to clean the areas that we're in, right? We know this to be true in hospitals where they're doing a lot of testing around where there's bacteria and other viruses in the air and actually ensures that the healthcare workers are operating in a safe manner. Yeah, like Queen's Emergency has concealed UV lights in there because Lord knows what's coming through that door there. Especially when you have negative pressure in there, it's keeping it in there, right? Yes, yes, yes. Which is good, it's good. A little while ago you were mentioning the fact that the energy field as in employment had gone down a bit, it's going back up again now because we have storage, we were able to overcome a battery storage issue which had to do with permitting. Now I've talked to all the counties you can electronically permit, as long as you jump through certain hoops the first, then you can electronically permit your storage just like that. Yes, well you know since we're talking about the topic of storage, I mean it is really critical as we look at the energy paradigm going forward and it is about having that, again we talk about reliability but also the flexibility to generate it when we have the resource available and to use it when we actually need it. Yeah, because right now in the middle of the day we have so much PV out there that on a sunny day we're producing too much, a wine electric can't absorb it, but if we have all this storage, store it all up there during the peak of the day and then use it at night when we have our peak demand. Right, and NG is involved in a lot of that as we speak right now. So as you're aware, there's obviously going to be forthcoming, hopefully very soon, the RFP, the finance RFP for the large-scale utility RFP from HECO, the PUC has to approve the final version of the RFP and that's something that's going to be utilizing both the PV or other renewables generation along with the storage intelligently. Unlike what happened at KAUC with their projects. Yes, and we'd better jump to the next slide. We got so much to talk about here. This is a little bit of a busy diagram or busy slide there you have in front of you but important nonetheless and really what I hope to take away that people can immediately see from this is not just the title itself about energy can power progress but really showing how at the core of what we do energy is at that center point right when we talk about efficiency, renewable, storage and so forth. It's really about that that powers our 21st century lives and lifestyles that we have. Now to be clear for sure there are changes that we need to make in our lifestyles. We as Americans I think per capita from that mistake in our certainly the highest number one polluters in the world. There are changes that need to take place but there are ways again opportunities exist in those challenges and it says using the core which would previously one could argue was the problem right after the industrial revolution we became accustomed to this way where energy provided this convenience across our lives now it can become a part of the solution and it ties into all aspects when we talk about how we communicate, how we finance, how we build, how we engage, how we speak to one another about our lifestyles around energy, water and then some. And there's one component there, STEM education. How does STEM, let's say that science, technology, engineering, how is that going to fit into the picture here? You know so STEM some people look at STEM as just those four I would argue really what STEM or sometimes STEAM we have arts inside there after the E right sometimes what people would argue is it's just those individual components I would and certainly NG takes the perspective that it's more than that it really is the amalgamation of all that coming together and it's about challenging and educating children with real world solutions and via real world problems right so using an interdisciplinary approach to come out with a solution. And we were talking earlier about you're going into the public schools so you're not only going to have all these efficiency measures, reflective rules, LED lights but PV on the roof and what's going to be in the classrooms for the kids to see. So I know we talked a little bit about this last time but I don't want to bore your your listeners or viewers too much but basically what is going to happen and what has happened actually for the past three years our teachers we use the train the trainer model so we're training up our teachers who then obviously educate their students but we give them tools we have hands-on learning kits that they can borrow so each school has a tool library or library kit that they can borrow from that has all types of components that allow them in real terms to be able to engage with physically the components that are being put on their schools so they can go outside a lot of it is either flipping the script on the classroom where the outdoors becomes the classroom not just the four walls that they're normally within so they engage the environment the educational tools and they have in our data and what's been shown to us is real takeaways that last for a lifetime yeah yeah and of course that's where our future lies absolutely I have two kids in the system myself I mean that is where the future is and they've got to be a lot more aware than we were when we grew up because that's what got us into these problems so absolutely they're going to be the solution you know going back to these three plus one or the four d's right around decarbonization decentralization digitization and decreased consumption those are things you know I drill into my boys and this is what we do through our educational processes because it's not just a nice to have it's a must have because we live on islands but because of the way our world is going and going back to climate change and you know if we can cap it at only three and a half degrees Celsius I think we'll be lucky you know we're way past where we wanted to be or some of us wanted to be anyway and just to stick with schools for a minute we this talk about cool classrooms you're not only to make cool classrooms you're going to make healthy classrooms educational classrooms that is the goal that is and the energy use instead of going up with new ac is going to go down yeah we have actually a couple of schools that we've provided to the dui as models that can be replicated in numerous locations that do just that with the ac their overall consumption is actually less than when they didn't have the ac I wouldn't doubt it we I think we've got one slide left because we don't have much time left unfortunately no problem and actually this is really appropriate that we end on this so what you have here is really energy thought process on I wanted to pull an example of technology because we were talking a lot about processes thoughts policy and politics and really bring it down to the practical level and when we talk about our islands and we talk about our solutions even for our islands there is no one-size-fits-all but certainly when you hear and microgrid is becoming more and more of buzz term even outside of the energy sector and there is no one-size-fits-all in fact I think if you were to ask five people you might get six or seven definitions of what a microgrid is even though our federal government has one definition people still interpret and so this is an example of what we're looking at from our perspective when we're reaching out and engaging developing with clients is really looking at what are their needs are they going to be or do they intend to be grid connected or completely islanded in off grid are they a small kind of facility or a larger facility or is there somehow an opportunity to bundle them together for example the DOE has over 4,000 buildings in their 256 campuses so there's different ways in which we look at that and thus because the customer's needs are different so to obviously other solutions and one has to be looking at microgrids and many other solutions and technologies not necessarily always as a completely new case-by-case type of approach because I do believe there is room and there should be space for templates but there is no one-size-fits-all per se just for instance there are some really small rural elementary schools and then there are big big high schools like Farrington and Campbell and so forth very good very good example I would argue with our DOE you're absolutely correct especially the schools that the elementary schools that were built within a certain time frame and around the 1960s you can almost see by looking at it from a drone snapshot which schools were built when because there are certain models you have the office here then you have the spine going out like this right first second third fourth and then fifth sixth grade would be upstairs there's all kinds of templates I would argue especially for the elementary schools would be a perfect example but even when we talk about hotels resorts commercial buildings right there are obviously differences there but there's more similarities than there are differences so there's a lot of ways to make sure that anytime you can use a template or learn from past experiences you're obviously able to cut down on the cost which just makes it better for the customer and the lower the cost the more we're able to roll out because the private sector they've got to make a profit and you present a good package to them they'll say yep we'll do it and time matters time matters because companies want to flip their investments time matters because we can't wait because of climate change and time matters because it enables more profit and very timely that you should mention time because time is up code green brand and hashi thank you so so much we're just getting rolling I mean we'll you know we'll bring you back in about six months and you're going to have a whole new ballgame to talk about here appreciate how so code green howard wig back next time thank you very much