 This is hosted by Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Mac Lentchard. I'll be the host here today along with Colin and Austin. They're here with the law school here in Manoa. And we have Aki Marseau here, who's with HIKO as the director of the electrification of transportation. I'm going to let Austin take over to give a little introduction about Aki. Thank you, Mac. So just a little introduction to Aki Marseau. She received her BA from Haverford College in growth and structure of cities, then went on to receive her master's of regional planning degree from Cornell University. After graduation, worked at Parsons Brinkerhoff and supported the heart transportation environmental planning team with planning analysis. Aki then worked for the city and county of Honolulu as the land use and sustainability manager, where she again worked with planning for the Honolulu Rail, among other responsibilities. Prior to her current position, Aki Marseau was the managing director of policy and community at Elemental Accelerator. And now Aki is the director of electrification of transportation for HIKO and serves on the city and county of Honolulu Planning Commission. And then a little background about us by Colin. Thank you, Austin. So Austin, Mac and I are law students at the William S. Richardson School of Law here in Manoa. And we're all currently working together on a project for Professor Richard Wallgrove's Clean Energy Law and Policy course, regarding the electrification electrification of the transportation sector here in Hawaii. We are all very excited to have the opportunity to interview Ms. Marseau, someone who has extensive experience in the field here in Hawaii. And we want to give a big thanks to ThinkTech Hawaii for bringing us all together. We're hoping that this interview will help inform the public about ongoing issues in Hawaii related to clean energy and specifically related to electrifying the transportation sector. All right, I think with that, we can kind of start diving into the main questions. Aki again, big thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate it. The first question we have is, do you mind just telling us about the role of the director of electrification of transportation, kind of what your duties are, and a little bit of the history background that role is with HIKO? Sure. Thank you. And thanks so much for inviting me to the show. This is my first time on ThinkTech Hawaii. So really, really excited to be here. It sounds like you're in a pretty exciting and informative class as well by Professor Walzgrove. So happy to share a little bit more about the director of electrification of transportation, position at Hawaiian Electric. It's a little bit of a mouthful. So in some future state, I'd like to change the title to something that rolls off the tongue a little bit better. That specific role has only been around for a few years. So I'm essentially the third person to have this role. It was previously held by actually the dean of the engineering school at University of Hawaii at Manoa, Professor Brennan Morioka. And then we had an interim director position and then I joined. And it kind of grew from this opportunity that the utility sector was seeing. And I think that the community and nationally and globally, we were seeing that there's this huge market opportunity and huge kind of commercial opportunity to provide services for electric vehicles. And so that can be, you know, class one vehicles like sedans and SUVs, and it can also be, you know, trucks and even public buses or tour buses and that type of thing. And so we're seeing this huge emergence of these new vehicle types that use electricity as their fuel source. And initially this was kind of a program that was incubated within the company. And once there was kind of enough traction, it spun out of that incubation state stage and joined the overall department, which is what I'm part of, which is called business development and strategic planning. And so that's where the electrification of transportation group or about eight people now, that's where we all sit. And I can share a little bit about, you know, some of the programs that we're running and that's helpful or if you have other questions. I can dive into that as well. No, that'd be great to hear about some of the programs would be awesome. Yeah, yeah. So right now, we have one primary program and that is our public charging network. And so what we found was that one of the biggest barriers to people purchasing and using electric vehicles was that there was this concept of range anxiety. And so they were worried that they would drive a car. And then, you know, after maybe going from downtown Honolulu to Holly Eva, they would be worried that they wouldn't be able to charge their car and they would run out of juice. And so we found that one solution to that is essentially developing something called a public charging network, which is essentially fast chargers that can charge your car within 15 to 20 minutes strategically located throughout the state to ensure that there was enough reliability and certainty for those who are driving to be able to get to where they need to go. So that's one of the programs that we're running and we have about we have permission to develop 25 fast chargers are super chargers. I don't know what you want to call them, but these are these are the DC fast chargers or level two chargers that can essentially charge your car within 15 to 20 minutes. And so we we operate those across our five island service territory. Another kind of, I guess, lever that we have or program that we can offer is rate rate structure specific rates specifically for electric vehicle charging. And the benefit of having specific rates is. I think as, as many of you know, right now we're producing and we're planning to continue to produce a lot of energy in the middle of the day through our renewable energy projects like solar and wind, and those types of programs. So we're trying to operationally increase the integration of renewable energy into our grid and one way to do that is by offering charging opportunities that are financially and I guess feasible and market driven in the middle of the day and so we try and lower the cost of charging in the middle of day. And obviously, I think this goes without saying we're trying to make a competitive with the price of gasoline to because that's really important from the consumers perspective to make sure that it's not only operationally cheaper but also cheaper to charge or fuel your car. So I'm going to jump in if that's okay. Thank you, Rocky. Thank you for sharing that what are what are some maybe next steps that he goes seeking out in this electrification of transportation. Thank you for asking that question so a few years ago we developed a document called the electrification of transportation roadmap, and it was this very kind of higher level document but it really showed you know that there is a position for the utility to be based and there's a number of different initiatives that we can focus on. Since then we've really tried to focus on these these two initiatives so the DC fast charging program and the rate design, but one of the biggest programs that I'm probably most excited about is called a rate or make ready program. And essentially, when you're thinking about putting in infrastructure for charging, there's kind of three things that one needs to think about so the purchase of the vehicle which is obvious, the purchase of the charging station. So the thing that's charging the vehicle. And then there's all the infrastructure needed to support the charging station and make sure there's enough power supply and all those things. And so it's slightly different than say, you know, buying a standard, you know, gasoline vehicle in the sense that you also need to develop the infrastructure to service it and to charge it. And so the make ready program allows the utility and we specialize in, you know, utility infrastructure development so it allows the utility to provide all of that infrastructure for our customers up until the charging stations and then the customer themselves. So they have the opportunity to choose whatever charging station really serves their needs and serves their vehicle and that type of thing and so we're in the process of filing one proposal to the public utilities commission for our what we're calling a commercial make ready program. And that includes different customer segments so multi unit dwellings, workplace charging, any kind of commercial customer that has leads of vehicles, and that type of thing. And then we also have already filed a make ready program specifically for buses and you shared a little bit about my background and in transit and urban planning and so I'm really excited about that bus make ready program because I think that's a huge opportunity for the community to have an electric bus fleet. And so if we can help support accelerate that process. That's what we're hoping to do. I actually I there's one other thing that I would add that I'm really excited about as well which is. So all of these programs right now they're in the form of a pilot. And part of the reason for piloting these programs is because we're in a field in which the technology and the processes and the opportunities are changing quite quite rapidly so it's a growing and evolving field. So we don't want to get stuck in a certain process and, and devote, you know, a massive amount of capital to something that is going to change and perhaps be updated anyway in a few few years or so. And so what we're trying to do is pilot learn from the pilots and then scale. One of the opportunities that we had earlier this year is to propose something called an innovation pilot framework. And that's something that the Commission is currently reviewing, and it would allow us as the utility to pilot things a lot quicker. So right now it's a pretty extensive regulatory process, you know, and it's pretty similar whether it's like a hundred million project or a $5 million project, you know, it's the same process more or less. And we're finding that that might not make a lot of sense moving forward for especially in these sectors that are rapidly evolving. And it's very rare. I think in the normal everyday world, where you hear something from a customer and they say, you know, I'm really interested in this thing. And then you say, Okay, I hear you, I'll get back to you in three years with a proposal. And so this will allow us to actually respond a lot quicker to what we're hearing from our customers and kind of be a little bit more nimble and and and evolve faster. So I'm very excited about that one as well. Austin, I think we have a question. I know we've already talked a little bit about some of the steps that he goes taken as far as the charging stations have gone. But are there any other further steps any you're talking about scaling down the road or there any other kind of issues or problems or things you can kind of provide on that. Yeah, so right now, we have the opportunity actually we have the opportunity to install 29 charging stations and we installed about 20 plus or minus we have a few in the pipeline right now so hoping to get a few in by the end of the year. I really like to make that a permanent program so we can really build out what we call the backbone of charging. And that would allow us to just make it easy to find charging when you need to find it and also operationally what we're hoping for is that it's something that we can, you know, it needs to be as reliable as as a gas station essentially right. So we want to make sure that they're not broken down that their service really well that they're very reliable and user friendly people know where they are that type of thing and we found we did an analysis. There's a tool called the backbone tool, which looked at, you know, where are projections of electric vehicle usage are, and how much charging infrastructure is needed to really service that quantity of vehicles or that quantity of usage and charging needs. I find that there's actually a seven x we need seven times the amount of charging in in the public universe. That's not including what we call the private universe which is you know people who have charging at home or in their condominium and that's a good thing. So I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there and and there's actually some, you know, opportunity for everyone to really play a role. We certainly do not have enough available right now and I think there's, there's certainly enough, you know, demand needed to build out more more infrastructure, both on the level to and fast charger scale. And then, I mean we're even seeing things like a need for charging hubs, for example. And so, instead of right now we just have like one or you know max to DC fast chargers available. What we're seeing is, you know, some of our partners at Tesla and electrify America, they're deploying the Volkswagen settlement funds. They're actually looking at charging hubs to see you know where can we provide clusters of charging. So there is that reliability and there's not that, you know, you don't go to a charging station there's not a queue of people, just like waiting to charge. I think something that we can certainly do as well on the bus operation perspective, there might be an opportunity to do something that's called on route trials, charging, which is basically instead of having the charging available just at the bus depots, providing it in places that are essentially in the middle of a route, if they're like, if they have a layover spot or something like that. And that would allow bus operators to charge essentially midstream if they need to so they don't have to complete the route in order to get back to the charging hub. And so as you can see there's a lot of kind of operational needs that need to be thought about when also developing this infrastructure and we require systems in which we get feedback from our customers and from the entities that are really interested in, you know, just deploying this type of infrastructure and and making this transition. You briefly just mentioned about how, you know, you were involved working with Tesla, some kind of partnerships there. But I kind of want to touch upon some of the nonprofit aspects of this. I know you briefly touch upon how you were with elemental accelerator, which is an accelerator program for nonprofits, and specifically with kind of clean energy ideas. So what kind of role does nonprofits have and how do they work with your note your role and with Hawaiian Electric here. Elemental accelerator is a nonprofit itself, and it actually is an accelerator for startups, which are for profit so I just wanted to clarify there. But I, you know, even what we what we saw at what I what I saw when I was at elemental accelerator is that a lot of these challenges. There's a technical aspect for for sure, but they're really system challenges. And so in order to change or evolves or create systems change. There's a number of different levers that one can press on I guess. And so, you know, if you were to, and you shared a little bit about my, my background I've been essentially chipping away at the same problem my entire career which is how might we create a more livable community. How might we create a community that has a, you know, the carbon is transportation system. How might we create a better transportation network so we can really live work and play. And those are the things I mean I just think about that all the time, I think it comes from being an urban planner and kind of being trained in that that that subject. So, so the utility plays one role and I think I talked about that there's infrastructure and charging. And then also great design. And so there those are kind of three lovers that the utility can play in transitioning or transportation sector to a more carbon free model. And then there's a number of different things that nonprofits can do. We at Hawaiian Electric work really closely with a number of different players on the for profit and the nonprofit side. And one organization that we help co develop is called Drive Electric Hawaii. And that's really consortium or coalition of different players in government in the nonprofit sector. And in the for profit sector as well, that are really committed to transitioning our transportation sector to an electrified version. So, a member of the sustainable transportation coalition of Hawaii which is a program that Blue Planet Foundation a local nonprofit runs, and that's part of a nationwide group called the US Clean Cities Coalition and so they're looking at the entire kind of clean transportation network at large and information sharing across these regions. And then recently in developing our make ready programs and our commercial rates and, and those types of things, sharing our backbone tool. We've been, you know, COVID makes it difficult to do community engagement because we're so dispersed, but actually I guess one of the silver linings is that we can do remote community engagement and actually get rid of that kind of geographic divide some of us and makes it harder to engage. And so we, we recently led a series of webinars called drive electric dialogues. And we showcase the number of our partners from University of Hawaii, the city and County of Honolulu, you know, Tesla Electrify America, a number of different folks, and we're really trying to express that this is going to take everyone to leave. And we're all going to need to work together in order to do this and there's, there's really enough, and there's more than enough work to go around. And so that's one way in which we're really trying to kind of coordinate and work together with our, you know, nonprofit partners for profit partners and that type of thing. Thank you for that, Ms. Marceau. As somebody who drives an electric car and doesn't always plan out his driving, I've been very grateful for the, for he goes push and the private sector's push for widespread charging infrastructure. So the next question we want to ask you is, whether or not you know of initiatives or ideas in, in other states that you believe would be beneficial here in Hawaii and that are also feasible here in Hawaii. Yeah, there, I mean, there's a lot going on. So one of the things that you'll see in other states, especially, I mean, New York State, and in California, they've really, I mean, they're really all in on transitioning their, their transportation to work to an electrified version, I guess. And so I, I'd love to, I mean, just kind of at a broader level I'd love to see and I'd love to kind of develop more, more I guess buy in that okay this is the future of transportation. This is the direction that everything is going and we're past like the incubation stage we're really trying to commercialize these efforts now. And so I've been, I've been really impressed by how kind of supportive those regions have been in and how committed they've been in moving this forward. And I think, you know, I on a more like micro level, there's a number of different programs that I find interesting and so if we can, if we can get to a place where we can do more innovative pilots relatively quickly, you know, some of the initiatives that I'm looking at and that I'm interested in are, you know, there's, there's something called subscription pricing. And so it's a, for a residential customer and saying instead of saying, okay, this is, this is your utility bill, this is the rate that you're on. This would say, okay, this is the utility bill, this is the rate that you're on. If you buy an electric vehicle, you know, you can pay an extra, let's just say I'm just throwing out numbers like $30. And that'll essentially be, you know, the additional cost, similar to a cell phone plan, you know, up to a certain kilowatt hour amount. And so that's something that to me it's interesting because it's really easy for the customer to understand you don't need to become an expert in like rate design to understand what that means for you. And it's also a way to really engage with our residential customers because, you know, that's where a lot of people are charging. So that's something that I'm seeing kind of pilots happening throughout the country and I'm really interested in learning more. Another area that I'm interested in learning more is there's a number of different customers, or sorry, utilities that are looking at fleet advisory services and I think that's definitely a role that we can play because, you know, we are meeting with our fleet customers quite regularly and and sometimes there's a little bit of paralysis where it feels like, Oh, gosh, I need to convert my fleet right now, you know, and actually this is something that we at Hawaiian Electric have done which is we've set a fleet electrification goal of 100% clean fleets by 2035 for our class one vehicles which is our trans and SUVs and like trucks. And the way that we've done that is we've mapped out okay, when are we retiring vehicles organically and at what point do we need to replace these so we've essentially mapped out and planned for what that fleet replacement cycle looks like and I think that's something that we can help other customers do as well I mean I think there's a lot of entities that can help help with that. Very interesting. The next question is how is he go engaging with the with public stakeholders in the community in he goes decision making process when you're talking about all these initiatives and pilot projects. And how is he go incorporating the public feedback in the push for this electrification of transportation sector. Yeah, that's a that's a great question I think my most, you know, current example is really those drive electric dialogues and so we're trying to to the best of our ability make those as interactive as possible and also bring in the folks that are are really doing the heavy lifting to so for example at our last drive electric dialogue we had the city and county of Honolulu office of climate change peak and you know they talked about their field electrification plans and programs and they're doing an enormous amount of really excellent work. Thinking about their their transition process. Similarly, we worked with Hawaii energy and they have a rebate program for EV Chargers so level two and DC fast chargers and we're, you know, trying to showcase the work that they're doing and then but also kind of line up all of these players to the public at charge and really, you know, show that show who the different players are what we're doing and really try and see how we can be additive to the process, not necessarily always duplicative or, you know, hopefully not, you know, having negative value to what's going on. I think, you know, personally within our program, we're trying to make everything that we do as transparent as possible so all the videos that we webinars that we have we post online, we usually send out feedback form, you know, to get solicit input. And the way I see it is these customers are really trying to advance and serve our customers in the community so it behooves us actually get feedback from them in order to make it better and really our programs can can be as only as good as a feedback that we get. So, so I'm, I'm always interested in, in creating processes that allow for and harvest those ideas from the community I mean that that would make that makes our program so much better from the get go. Thank you for that. And I think that we just have just about a minute left so anything anybody else wants to ask before we wrap up. Actually did have one question, Aki if you could. What's a, what do you think is a great way to spread this knowledge that you were just touching up on, I guess to the masses of Hawaii is, you know, getting this knowledge out there so that everyone is familiar with UVs. I know this sounds really kind of like low hanging fruit, but I think word of mouth is really helpful. People tend to do what their friends are doing and what their neighbors are doing. And so if you drive an electric car, then maybe your mom is more likely to drive an electric car your friends are more likely to do it and I think, you know, they've they've done, you know, so many studies around behavioral change change and that type of thing and it's always kind of that that recommendation or, you know, that that personal connection that allows people to kind of start to make that transition so I think really talking about the decisions that you've made how how great it is to own an electric car would be would be great I mean for me one of the things that I did is I actually bought my car used and I found that that was that's not talked about very often. And there's actually a really great, you know, kind of gently use market for electric vehicles that's much much less expensive than you know buying a car new. And it's a 2018 I mean it feels like a new car my last car was a 2007 Nissan Versa so it feels like a massive upgrade. And, and I think that is something that you know for for parents, if they're thinking about you know what their kids could be driving, why not get them an electric vehicle or why not have them pitch in for an electric vehicle. And just operationally and I think environmentally and and in every way it is a it's a great choice and I think just the more we talk about it the better. Well okay thank you so much again for coming I think we're all out of time but you know we greatly appreciate it and I hope our viewers have took away from you know a lot of this information and some really great stuff. So thank you so much for joining me in matters with think Tech of why really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.