 Bingo, it's Marco and me and maybe Mina, but maybe not on Friday, on Friday, not Monday. So we're talking about energy. This is one of our most important shows. It's all about energy. And we have Marco on the line, Marco Mangelstorff from Provision Solar in Hilo, where they know, they know about energy in Hilo. We get a perspective from him that's fabulous. Welcome again to the show, Marco. Well, Jay Aloha, happy Friday, actually from the friendly aisle of Molokai here, where I'm here for this week doing some solar work and soaking in all those good Molokai vibes in response to the rather momentous election results of the past days. So my greetings to you, sir. Yeah, what do the people on Molokai think about Donald J. Trump? Well, I can't say I've gone and done any type of man-on-the-street interviews or polling, so I'll have to get back to you on that. Okay, get back to us on that. Well, you know, I guess the primary question that's in everybody's mind is the effect of Trump on whatever your favorite topic is. I mean, we have a show coming up, a Trump's effect on diplomatic relations around the world. We have had discussions about Trump's effect on sustainability and efforts to ameliorate climate change. I mean, everybody, through the lens of their particular specialty, is looking at how the world is going to change because of DJT. And of course, energy, which is a big initiative, which must involve federal action, which must involve national, you know, I'm not sure it's must, but which probably should involve federal governmental action. How is that going to change because of the election of DJT? A man who is not at all sure about climate change or, for that matter, fossil fuels. So are we going back to coal? Is that what you're saying, Marco? Well, let me take this approach, Jake, kind of from the top down. There's going to be, of course, a scramble over the course of the next couple of months to determine who the cabinet level positions will be. And one of the cabinet level positions will be who's in charge of the Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Energy. And that person will be able to kind of be the captain of the ship, so to speak, in terms of what the federal government under Mr. Trump's focus and priorities will be. And so what will those focus, prosci and priorities be? And there's going to be a lot of speculation and kind of trying to read the tea leaves from what you said in the past. And I think overall what appears to those of us who have been paying attention to what you said regarding energy and those who he associates with what their position is on energy issues is that I think it's likely that the push is going to be away from more and more development of renewable energies, which certainly took place under, has taken place under Barack Obama. And Hillary Clinton was valing as well to continue that, of not redouble the efforts towards renewable energy. And there will be a renewed focus under his administration on conventional energy sources. And some data here might be a good segue to look at some of the numbers. So looking at total energy, U.S. energy consumption by energy source in 2009, about seven years ago, the breakdowns in terms of the primary energy sources, there were five of them. The biggest one was petroleum at 37% of all U.S. energy consumption by source. 37% for oil, 25% natural gas, 21% coal, 9% nuclear, and then 8% renewable energy. So that was when essentially when Obama took office. Looking at 2015 by energy source, 2015, petroleum went down slightly from 37 to 36. Natural gas over that 63 went up from... You say one point down, that's all? Just one point down? Correct. That's not impressive at all. Not dramatic. Natural gas, however, went up, excuse me, from 25% in 2009 to 29%. 25 to 29% in the course of six years. Coal went down from 21% to 16%, or five points total. Nuclear stayed the same at nine, and then renewable energy went up from 8% in 2009 to 10% in 2015. So he certainly, Mr. Trump, stated on a number of occasions when he was talking to coal miners or people who were supportive of coal mining in places like Kentucky, West Virginia, and so forth, that he was going to bring back the coal industry. And to what extent he's able to do that I think is really highly doubtful in the sense that the reason coal has taken such a hit is because it's been outpriced by lower competitive sources of energy, principally petroleum, but especially natural gas. So, I mean, there are market forces that go beyond the ability of any chief executive, no matter how high an office they may have, to be able to simply, by the way of a magic wand, revivify an industry that has been overtaken by market forces in terms of cheaper energy sources displacing, in this case, coal. Yeah, and let me add one other factor is that you have to have certain infrastructure to burn coal. And as coal shrinks, and as other sources of energy come online, whoever the capital concentration is, they're putting less money into coal infrastructure. So even if he really meant it when he said it, even if he really means to follow through on that as a campaign promise to the people in the coal belt, and even if the market would price it out so it was still attractive, the fact is the infrastructure probably isn't ready for an increase in coal. So that promise, I wouldn't count on that promise at all. Yeah, I think you're right, Jay. I think there's probably more wiggle room in terms of kind of macro policy from Washington or from the White House when it comes to oil. You can look at the contortions that the Obama administration went through for years regarding the Keystone Pipeline, which eventually he nixed, right? But it's likely that that would be something that Mr. Trump would seek to reinstate in no full speed ahead in terms of being able to get the oil sands, tar oil sands from Canada and move them down south, you know, through the United States into a port in the Gulf of Mexico. So I think for important infrastructure projects like that, he's probably going to move forward and regarding fracking. I mean, I don't know if you know this kind of a sidebar, but if you look at what's been going on in Oklahoma over the past years, I mean, up until when fracking was not happening much in Oklahoma, which is a long-time oil-producing state, with the fracking, and it's not so much the fracking that has been causing all these earthquakes in Oklahoma. It's the injection of this slurry of wastewater and chemicals, which apparently has been demonstrably known now to be causing a definite increase in earthquakes, some of them more damaging than others. But it would appear that when it comes to supporting the petroleum industry, that having Mr. Trump in the White House is going to be tangibly better and across the board for the petroleum industry than having Mr. Obama in the office. So I think that's something that we're likely to see a tangible change. I don't recall Mr. Trump saying anything specifically regarding nuclear power, but he probably has, or I'm going to channel him and believe that he is in favor of more nuclear power, although that's a whole kind of different bailiwick in the sense of nuclear power plants can often take without exaggeration a decade or longer to go online. You mean as long as TMT then? I'm sorry? You mean as long as TMT. Yes, as long as TMT. And then regarding renewable energy, I mean over the years there has been certain opposition, typically on the right side of the political spectrum amongst Republicans, who believe essentially that wind and solar and other renewables have been unfairly and grossly subsidized by taxpayer money. And that therefore this is an industry that cannot survive with all these benefits, without all these incentives. And of course the reality is far different, which is, I mean if you look at the data which I have, it's just undeniable that if you look at over the past 50 or more years of government intervention into the energy sector, that the very large beneficiaries have been the traditional energy industries, whereas renewables have been on the bigger thy neighbor, sir may I please have some more in my porridge bowl. In other words, renewable energy has received a hell of a lot less than conventional fuel sources in terms of incentives and subsidies. But the worst case scenario for my business and for the solar, electric and renewable energy industry would be if a Republican, a convention in the White House and Republican Congress were to essentially go after the investment tax credit, the ITC, which was just a year or so ago renewed for another five years. I mean, and that can certainly be undone, just like top priority of Republicans, including Mr. Trump, is to do away with Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. So if they decide to go after the investment tax credit, which is a huge, huge incentive and benefit for the renewable energy industry, that would be nothing but really, really bad news. But I have to believe that there is enough support on the Democratic side of the aisle and perhaps enough among progressive Republicans that the ITC would not be at risk. I mean, we're just, what, all of three days away, right? Three days away from the results of Tuesday. But I think one thing is absolutely clear that this President-elect, who once he's in office, is going to take a very different course when it comes to energy issues, both domestic and international, compared to his predecessor and his predecessors. Yeah, it's not going to be enlightened. I think there are things where he made promises and made outrageous brash statements in the campaign where he's probably going to relent, just as a practical matter, because he's a practical man. But in the case of energy, I absolutely agree with you. He's got a number of reasons to change the policy, change the Obama policy about renewables. Let me identify some of the things that come to my mind. Number one is, you know, the terrible thing in American politics is you always have to follow the money. And the capital concentration for oil is huge. Therefore, you know, despite his, you know, rejection of the establishment, which I think is a short-term rejection, he'll be back to the establishment pretty quick. The establishment, with all the money and oil, will have huge influence on him. The renewable industry doesn't have as much money. They're not as large a capital concentration. They will not have a huge, and they need government help to function. So they will not have a huge influence on him. I'm not sure, I guess I would include in oil a natural gas. And I don't think he'd be real environmental about what's happening in Oklahoma and their 800 annual earthquakes, which have been covered a number of times on 60 minutes. So I don't think Oklahoma is going to get relief from him. And I think he's going, because of the capital involved, he's going to favor natural gas along with oil. We've already covered coal, so I think coal is problematic for him. The other thing I just want to add is that inherent in all of this is he doesn't really believe in climate change. I mean, he's an anti-liberal and anti-progressive. He doesn't believe in it. So he's going to be unencumbered philosophically in terms of supporting the old fossil fuel model. And I agree with you, we're going back there. And he has a lot of control. People don't realize, and I'll add this one last thought, people don't realize that when a president is elected, he has the power and the custom to appoint his own department heads in every department, as well as other officials like, well, the Attorney General. I guess he's the head of the Justice Department. And so what you have is a complete sweeping change. None of the old guys under Obama are going to be around. They're all gone. And so it's not just pronouncements from the White House. It's pronouncements from every single department. They're all going to be working on different lines, different policies, different approaches, different philosophies than we had over the eight years of Obama. And that's really scary. And furthermore, he's going to have his way with those appointments, because in a Republican Congress, they'll consent to everybody he finds. And he'll find some people that will be really objectionable to the liberal establishment. I might add, by the way, it's very interesting that the names that he's been throwing out to take these positions are the very same names he was criticizing in the campaign. I mean, names from Wall Street, names from capital concentrations. It's the old boys back again. Didn't he say he didn't like the old boys? They're coming back. And as a result, I think we're going to have old boys and they're going to be working for him, just at different musical chairs. I think what I read recently is that there are somewhere around 4,000 political appointee appointments that are kind of key positions across the federal bureaucracy, of which a couple hundred are subject to Senate confirmation. But you're absolutely right that so much of an incoming presidential administration is essentially a house cleaning of the old regime, and you've got various institutions, think tanks, corporate entities that you go to as your bench, essentially, to be able to fulfill all these positions. And, of course, one individual can't choose a couple hundred people that he or she may know personally. Necessarily, they've got to rely on advisors, the likes of Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey. Right, he was one of them, yes. Rudy Giuliani, good old Newt Gingrich and others. So it's going to be interesting to see who he taps into. And I think one of the things that's so striking to me, just to go a little bit macro-political, today, is the actual vote breakdown, which I've been pouring over based on these exit polls on 24,000 or so individuals who interviewed, so fairly large sample size, is that Mr. Trump didn't do all that much better, only a couple of percentage points better than Romney did in terms of the white vote. But he clearly dominated amongst older Americans, essentially age 40 and up and other various demographic groups. And even though from 2012 when 72% of the electorate was white to 70% being white in this last election this past Tuesday, so the minorities are on the march, essentially in terms of increasing the portion of their size of the electorate. But one of the, I guess, the big takeaways to me is that this is the white voters, which are still, of course, the dominant percentage, are reasserting or an attempt to reassert their voice, their dominance, after the perception that somehow they got thrown off the bus or thrown under the bus or thrown off the train, whatever metaphor you want to use in the past eight years, so where it's going to go, one can only guess, and then you contrast that, looking at our beautiful aloha state with the fact that the one Republican, the one so lonely Republican in the Hawaii State Senate, good old Sam Slum, he was defeated, so we have the only state Senate in the entire country that is completely controlled by one party, in this case all 25 state senators, Democrats, and then on the House side there are 51 members here in Hawaii, and they lost one seat, so there are now 45 Democrats on the House side and all of six Republicans. So, and of course, Hawaii voted overwhelmingly, as did California and to electrics in Oregon and Washington, we voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Rodham Clinton, so it's a real contrast between what the majority of the country voted for in the electoral college, and by the way, last I looked at a few hours ago, Jay, the popular vote is still coming in, it's 94 or so percent tabulated so far, but every time in the past several days the vote has been recalculated, Hillary has increased her lead in the popular vote, so now she is up by about 400,000 over Trump, and like I said over the past days that has actually been increasing, so it's just... I read that it was millions, I think it was, I saw recently that it was like she had 2 million more votes than he did in the popular vote. It's only about 400,000, it's not 2 million. Okay, well whatever it is, this puts into question the electoral college which has seemed archaic for a long time, but I don't see any prospect for that to get fixed and the Constitution to be changed on the electoral college anytime soon. Well consider this, Jay, I mean now we've had 2 votes amongst the past 5, 2 presidential elections amongst the past 5 presidential elections, 40% in other words, where the popular vote winner, in the first case I'll go in 2000, and now apparently Hillary Clinton, we have instances of the popular vote winner not being the electoral college vote winner, so how many more times do we have to go through this before there is some type of bona fide credible movement to change the electoral system when it comes to choosing chief executive? I don't know. It's not likely to happen in an administration which is Republican, which benefited by the electoral college. It's not likely to happen in an administration which is Republican both in the executive and the legislative branches. They're going to favor the electoral college because it did them a good turn. But let me add this one thing, you talk about the popular vote that favors Hillary Clinton, but the electoral, that's too bad because the electoral college stood in the way of the popular vote prevailing, but the electoral college did not stand in the way of all those seats that were given to Republicans in the Congress. So the electoral college argument only works on the presidential level. It doesn't work on Congress, and clearly the Republicans prevailed in Congress. Well, and that's due to the annual, or excuse me, the census that is mandated in the Constitution, if I'm not mistaken, to take place once every ten years, so once every ten years there's so-called redistricting, right, based on the movement of population from county to county or state to state, both diminishing and increasing. And ever since electoral districts have been carved up going back to the beginning of the Republic, politics has been involved, so you have essentially the creation of these incredible gerrymandered, so-called gerrymandered districts, which are really wacky when you look on them in a map, and they're designed to maximize the chances of the dominant power, power, dominant party and power in terms of maintaining the strength of their candidates and their positions. I wish I could say it happens in Hawaii, but we don't have any Republicans here, so it's not that way. It may happen in unusual, nice-looking races. Well, you know, I wanted to ask you in our remaining time, which isn't very much, I wanted to ask you how this all affects Hawaii, how it affects, for example, Provision Solar, how it affects the solar installer industry, how it affects our initiative to get clean energy by 100% by 2045. It sounds like this is going to stand in the way because the federal government always has a hand in energy, but what else is going to change here, and what can we do about it? Well, I mean, of course, it's the easy but completely unsatisfying answer that it's way too early to say, but I think to some degree we are isolated here in more ways than one, of course, not just geographically, but isolated to some degree from whatever sometimes takes place 5,000 plus miles away in Washington, D.C., or that beautiful capital of our great country. I mean, as far as moving towards the greater energy independence, I have a hard time seeing how a Republican administration could really affect that all that tangibly, unless, as I said earlier, they were to, the Republicans in the White House and in the Congress, were to be successful in removing one of the few really tangible incentives that we have here, which of course is the 30% federal investment tax credit. If that were to go away, that would be, you know, I don't want to talk too much of an apocalyptic sense, but that would really, really be bad news. But other than that, I mean, we have the economic imperative here and other reasons to develop our own indigenous energy sources, so that the state can be more energy secure, more food secure. And I just, I guess I'll, you know, I'm sitting here talking to you today. We're talking about these very weighty matters of both the head and the heart. Well, you know, it's a nice answer, you know, and I appreciate you willing to go out and answer it, but let me add this, that everything is connected to energy, everything. The economy, for example, connected to energy, and that's a sort of a reciprocal connection. The economy affects energy, energy affects the economy. It's a huge interdependence of various factors. And if this administration screws up the economy, for example, this one example, that's going to screw up energy. And the same thing I think goes on the environmental side, environmental issues, which I don't think Donald Trump is going to pay too much attention to environment. So all in all, I mean, your initial reaction was probably the best one. Sorry, Marko, it's too early to tell. Yeah, well, what I wanted to just kind of close with is that I was talking to you. I mean, I'm sitting here on this couch in this house that I'm renting here on Molokai, and I'm looking across the channel as the white caps are kicking up because the trades start usually about this time in the morning to Lanai, beautiful Lanai, the former pineapple island way back when in the distance there. So the wind is blowing, the trees and the leaves are rustling, and it's a very peaceful, wonderful place to be. And like so many parts of our wonderful state, and yet it is at the same time can be so discombobulating to say the least as we think about the more macro issues that are addressing that we're faced with both on a national level, on a global level, on a planetary level. So the risk-beating too cosmic on you, I'll take by my words, Your Honor. Okay, got it. So anyway, I want to add one last irony, and the irony was this week was special in the sense that the Chamber of Commerce of Germany out of Los Angeles arranged a group of energy industry and political officials and academic energy people to come over here from Germany and tell us their experience in clean energy. It was a very good conference. It was all day on Wednesday. We have footage of it, which will make into not one, but two OC-16 movies. And the huge irony is that these people are into clean energy and they are wondering whether the U.S. is actually going to be able to do anything in clean energy in the next administration. But it was a good conference anyway, even in the shadow of that election, which happened only the day before. Thank you, Marco. Been great to talk to you. I'll see you again soon. And I'm going to personally send you a free copy of Skype so we can have a more animated discussion. What do you think? Well, as long as I'm having a good hair day.