 Okay, you can set your clock. Let me a little late, couple of minutes, but you can set your clock on Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. with Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy, which is supported by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. That is Maria Tomei. She's a co-host, and she's a member of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum on the steering committee. We're going to talk about that in a little while. And our special guest from Hawaiian Electric is Ricky Hanma. He's the education and consumer affairs what director? Oh, one day, one day. Just one day, one day. Okay, he's involved in education and consumer affairs at Hawaii Electric. Thanks for coming down. I'm happy to be here. You're here for a reason, aren't you? I am. I'm here to promote our Hawaiian Electric Clean Energy Fair. It's October 6th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kahalamoa. October 6th is one Friday. Saturday. Okay, so take off Saturday, go to Kahalamoa and spend the day, and it's really the whole day, the whole bulk of the day. Like, what am I gonna see over there? You know, we have different activities, games, things kids can play, all about education on clean energy and emergency preparedness. We also have entertainment. We're gonna have musical performance from our Hula, our Nahoku Hano Hano award-winning duo, Kupoa. We have a Kiki Hula Halao. That'll be there for a presentation. That would be great. I can take pictures, eh? Sure. Bring my camera. Come on down. Yeah, you guys, when you go out like this, you know, to a public event like that, you really go serious. I know you do. I went to the Boy Scouts, the Ellison Onizuka Day function at the place about 60 days ago. Hawaiian Electric was there in Regalia. You guys, there's so many things going on. It was great. It was all good, too. Yeah. Is that what you work on all the time? You know, my department, I am a part of the Education and Consumer Affairs Department, so I do have the opportunity to be out in the public quite a bit. We do participate in as many events as possible, take advantage of different events that are already pre-run, and we participate with them, set up booths, help educate the public, and then we do throw our event just like our Clean Energy Fair. So what sort of education do you want at the end of the day? What's the takeaway? In other words, if I come, what do you want me to learn while I'm there? You know, the Clean Energy Fair is all about learning about our precious island resources, different renewable energy sources, and what you can do to conserve electricity. Okay. So it's all of the foregoing. It's a raising awareness. It's raising sort of a mindfulness of consciousness about energy. A lot of people, they walk in the room, they flip the switch. They don't think about, you know, how much you have to do to get the power to come through the switch. Exactly. Exactly. In Hawaii, we've been so reliant on fossil fuels, and we are, by 2025, gonna be converted to 100% renewable energy. Okay, I'm gonna be alive then. Well, 2045. Yeah. Oh yeah. 2045. Yeah. Right around the corner. So what would you add to that, Maria Tome? Well, so Energy Awareness Month is what they used to call it. I noticed now they're calling it Energy Action Month. I guess maybe awareness is not enough anymore. They want people to take action. There would be more than awareness, two things. Yeah. So I guess usually Hawaiian Electric has little guides to how to save energy in your home, how to save money, you know. So what are some of the top ways that you're hoping to exhibit or to explain to people about how they can save money in their homes? We do hand out a lot of different informational booklets on what you can do in your own home. We also focus on the youth, the future generation, on what they can do and power them to make energy conscious choices at home as well. Yeah. So I noticed that some other events you've had little contests. I guess they have that wheel, and then you answer the questions, and it's like, okay, you know, what kind of light bulbs do you have in your house? And people don't necessarily know, you know. That's been around forever, right? And then the water heating, you know. And what else, you know, and so to save energy, you know, we've gone through a really hot summer, right? So there are things that homeowners can do to keep the heat out of the house. You know, do you turn on the AC? Do you turn on fans? You know, people can... Every household is different. So they might have questions that that your experts there can answer. Definitely. Education helps you make the best, you know, educated decision and conscious decisions on what you can do. Yeah. Again, electricity is now a necessity in homes. Yeah. So just making the most conscious energy conservation, energy conscious decisions possible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the whole thing about education has been central in the clean energy initiative, even from back when. I mean, I remember all these programs. I remember one program that was put on about sustainability, but including clean energy in the priory, in the church next to the priory. And it was the Honolulu Theater for Youth. Oh, that one. Yeah. It was very good. It was a musical, actually. Yeah. Hank Rogers supported it. Blue Planet supported it. And what struck me is that they were singing songs. And I'm going to ask you more about the songs. In fact, at the end of the show, Ricky, we'd like you to sing some songs. Oh, I have my favorite song. How's your voice? So they were singing songs there in the church. And during the Theater for Youth, and these kids, they were like six, seven, eight years old, maybe. They came on buses from all over the island to watch this play. And it was really good. It was adapted to kids. So kids would be really interested in it. And they were. And at the end of the play, and this is the part that struck me, is they remembered the songs. So as they marched out of the auditorium back to their buses, these kids that were six, seven, eight years old were singing the songs they'd heard. Well, it didn't stop at the songs. They had all these messages about reused, recycled, and all that, right? And they were taking those messages home. So that's part of your education, you know, initiative to try to get, especially kids, you must be focused on kids, at least to some extent, to go home and teach their parents, right? Exactly. Working with Hawaii Theater for Youth, they actually did perform Shaka. Oh, and Electrical was a proud sponsor of that. And we do promote energy conservation through Makka, the Energy Conservation Owl. He was another project to work with Hawaii Theater for Youth through as well. So you try to, if you hit the kids, you know, they're going to remember they're going to pick it up right away. It's going to be, you know, embedded already in them as people as they grow up. And they're going to take it home and all of a sudden the family, the whole family will be more aware, more conscious. Exactly. And especially when you empower them at a young age, they make those decisions in the future. So that's what we're focusing on is making sure the youth of today can make those decisions as they grow older. Yeah. And I would also guess, Ricky, you must be part of this too, Maria, is that the level of awareness in this state is way higher than in other states. The level of awareness, we've worked on it for at least 10, 15 years now. At least. You know, at least, right. They must be thinking about this. They must be at least somewhat sophisticated. Can you tell me how sophisticated they are, these kids, these families right now today? It's come a long way. And I know with our educational programs, we are involved in a lot more of the DOE schools than we were previously. We have a lot more booklets, collateral things that they can request. We have a lot of different resources for them. And kids nowadays, they are involved in robotics, STEM programs are helping them come along at a rapid pace. We have children as low as fourth, fifth grade, creating robots and competing with intermediate high school students. So it is something that is evolving really rapidly. Yeah. So as you go, you know, it builds on itself, doesn't it? I mean, if you take somebody who always found the truth, take somebody who already has a baseline of knowledge, who knows at least some, already knows at least some of what you're saying, and then you give him more or her. Then you get, then you reinforce the existing knowledge and a level of confidence. And then you get a person who is more interested and committed, you know, to something like clean energy than you would have had, yeah. So you also mentioned another aspect of what you're helping to accomplish at your Clean Energy Day on October 6th. So energy emergency preparedness, those types of things I know with the recent hurricanes, we've had a lot of discussion of disasters, disaster preparedness, designing systems to withstand hurricanes. And so you're going to talk to folks about what they need to know to stay safe. Are you going to talk about if the pole falls over, don't touch it, stay 30 feet away? You know, because electricity is such a necessity now, emergency preparedness is just as important, making sure your family is prepared for extended outages that can come with natural disasters. Everything from cooking, food preparation, and even medical needs require electricity. So making the emergency preparations you can before emergency strikes is what our message is, always, be prepared. Okay, we're going to take a short break now, Ricky, but before we do, I just wondered if you could just, you know, you're going to have a halal there, and you're going to have a singing group. I wrote it down, but I can't read my hand writing. What was the name of the singing group? The Naho Kuhu Kuhu Hano Hano Award-winning group, Kupa Owa. Kupa Owa, yeah. And our halal for performing that day is halal puale o likole hua. Yeah, so are you going to get up on the stage with them? And if you are, could you just give us, we're going to go to a, we're going to go to a breakdown. So we like to have a little music as we go into the break. You know, if I memorized those Shakka songs, I would have performed that for you. Okay, let the record reflect. We're going into the break. We've got until October 6th to learn some of those. Yeah, watch this. No music. The truth is, I'm impressed. I haven't been asked such intelligent questions in a long time. Thanks. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday, Aloha. If you move here to change that. Okay, we're back. We're live. And here we are, Hawaii, the state of clean energy with Maria Tome, who is a member of the steering committee of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And she's co-host of this show. And she sets these shows up. And she's just great. I've been hitting temporarily. Okay, thank you. Let's talk about the energy policy forum. Okay. You know what Sharon Mori-Rocky ran for the Senate. She won the primary. A general is coming in November. And she was the, what, co-chair with Mike Hamlin for 15 years. And now we went out and had a search committee. And we found Sheryl Wee, who's a PhD economist from the Public Policy Center in the School for Social Sciences at UH. And she is now taking over. And things are going to be different. Yeah. And Maria and I are both part of this process of the reimagining of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. This is very exciting stuff. Want to talk about it? Yeah. So the, you know, when I first got involved in Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, I really appreciated that it was a place that welcomed a bunch of different views and was an opportunity for the folks who had been involved in energy to communicate with the folks who were newly arrived in, you know, completely informal setting. You know, they get together and they chat and they discuss the problems and, you know, the potential and you have enthusiasm and you have opposition. But it's respectful. It's civil dialogue. You know, this is what you have on your show. You know, it's those, I don't know what your catchphrase is regarding the civil dialogue part. But that's really what it is, you know, an opportunity. And then they made the effort to go out with the shows and the communications and Clean Energy Day. And in the beginning, they had a lot of reports. Now, in fact, I think in 2003 or thereabouts, one of the reports was about the Public Utilities Commission and, you know, how it compares to the other ones. And pretty much everybody on the forum agreed that the PUC needed more resources in order to regulate this increasingly complex utility space. And so that was, you know, something that is bearing fruit now with our, you know, new reorganized and re-empowered and reinvigorated Public Utilities Commission. So, you know, the, so the forum brings folks together to discuss, debate, and identify areas of common interest to move things forward, even if they are not necessarily in agreement on something. If they can live with it, then they can continue to discuss it. So that, I think that, I think that is one of the most important parts of this organization. And I think Sherilyn, who's the new head or whatever, whatever the proper title is, you know, I think it resonates with her that, that aspect of it, you know, because we have very, very interesting energy opportunities and challenges and getting all the pieces to work together in our energy futures. We're on a journey. Yes. And we've only really started. I mean, if you count the years, say, we've been operating for about, I'm making this up, but maybe 15 years now. It sounds about right. Yeah. And then we have another 30 to go before we reach 2045 or 2048, whatever. 2045. 2045, yeah. There's a long way to go. There's a lot to do. And certainly, we've seen a lot of changes in the past 15 years. We've seen a state that really didn't think much about this. It was a state that thinks a lot about it. Yeah. It was a state that didn't have much renewables to a state that has really a very admirable amount of renewables that has had great experiences that has sort of carved the future out of out of the past and the present and made and made a vision for itself. The state has made a vision for itself. It's central, isn't it, in public policy in general, right? Right. And the energy policy forum has been there. It has tried to educate people just like Ricky does. Yeah. It has tried to bring them together as a sort of a gathering place, reach consensus and in a nice way so that we don't get into too many arguments. Even if you can't reach consensus, at least you've discussed and understood what are the different viewpoints. What are the holdups? What are the concerns? Is it a near term concern or a longer term concern? Yeah. And then through creative disagreement, you can actually find ways through that. And so I think we'll be doing a lot more. I look forward to. Yeah. But we've already found certain things that work. We found the consensus model. We found the benefit of bringing people together and addressing policy issues. We found the benefit of a legislative briefing every January where we try to bring the legislation, legislators up to latest events and the thought that that will help them fashion legislation will be appropriate to meet the reality and the aspirations. We've talked to a lot of people in public office and we've had a lot of people in the industry come together to give advice to people in public office. We've been available to have this discussion with anyone who is involved. And there are roughly what 45 members of the forum right now from government. Something like that. From industry, from what else? Government, industry, the public, activists, community organizations, you name it. Yeah. And I think the consensus model is one of the things that is both enables folks to participate because they're not afraid that their name will be on something that they cannot stomach. But on the other hand, there's a lot of debate and disagreement on the details. So sometimes it seems that that is holding things up. And what I heard in the most recent discussions is maybe looking at a new model that allows that information to be shared more. Say, you know, we disagree because of X, you know, before if it was disagreement and just, well, it might not result in the forum taking a position. And so the idea is you have all these folks who are bringing their knowledge and their experience and their interest to bear. And they can share that. If we can find a way for them to share that, then it's much more valuable. So we'll see how that works. Now, like everything else, the vision is the first step. And then how you get it to work and how you put the pieces together and how you craft the language or the vehicle, whether it's presentations or meetings or reports. Maybe, you know, this is a UH project. So there's probably some research and surveys involved up to its eyeballs. There's HNEI, there's many departments involved in energy and changing our society to adapt our energy program to clean energy. But I wanted to mention this too, though, and it's what you were saying is that we need to get people to buy in. The consensus model is not just consensus among the 45 stakeholders who are members, so to speak, of the energy policy forum. It's a matter of getting everybody to understand what's happening and having them buy in. And I'm reminded, if I can take a minute to tell you, of what Neil Milner said in one of our programs in the Venture Capital Association years ago about rail. He's the problem with rail. As the government did rail before the people knew they wanted rail. And so you get a disconnect when that happens. You've got to get the people on board. That's not a pun. They get people on board before you actually go out and do it and spend the money. In fact, they should be on board, as you were saying, not only in the visioning, but also in the implementation of the plan. Well, there's a whole spectrum, right? You've got some folks who are looking at the future problems and saying, you know, it's going to take us 50 years to prepare for that situation. We have to start now. And those folks are, you know, looking at the vision thing and saying, yes, it's going to take that long. And then you've got the folks who react. They are very busy with other elements of their lives. And they say, well, if I don't need to do anything today, I'm not going to worry about it. And so you have this whole spectrum of, you know, the people. And so I think what the energy policy forum does, and especially if we do involve more of the discussion and make that a little more accessible, is to understand what are the near-term impacts? What are the near-term actions? What are the benefits and costs? And what are the long-term impacts? Because very often, you don't see both of those in presentations. You see, you see, okay, this is going to cost you this or this will benefit you this in the next six months. And then there's a whole other discussion that's talking about 50 years from now. But to be able to discuss the long-term as well as the near-term and the steps to get there, I think, is a very interesting discussion that brings in the whole spectrum of folks and their interests. And never, ever forget Repetitio Mater Studiorum, which is Latin, which means that repetition is the mother of study. So you're going to try to educate the legislature. You really have to go down there and educate them once every two years at the least, or more frequently if you can, because they forget. New generations of legislators come in who weren't at the last briefing. And the same thing with people in general. More people become aware. They weren't aware before. They need to know. And you have to sort of re-expose the public to these things. So it's always a matter of, and that's why it's good that Ricky and Hawaiian Electric are doing this every year where they're trying to teach people about energy and give them an education in energy. And so the forum has to do that too, because you cannot assume that what you taught them last year or the year before is going to stick. Not only that, things change. The interests and the emphasis change. When you're in the middle of hurricane season and you've got a bunch of named storms heading your way, all of a sudden you're paying attention to that in a way that you hadn't before. And likewise, any year that's calm, maybe it's not about emergency preparedness as much. And so when you're talking like the city and county with their resiliency program, they're looking at what do we need to do in the near term as well as what about the long term? Because this is going to be a challenge of our generation. And so I hope that the person that we had previously scheduled for today who couldn't make it can come back in a couple of weeks and we can have that conversation. Because it's an opportunity. I think very often folks have a tendency to complain about change. I don't want it to change because I like it the way it is. And if it's going to change, you say, well, I didn't want it to change and it did and I failed. The other way to look at that is to say, change is going to happen. And so success will be managing and working with that change in the best way possible. And then you try to prevent further change. And so there are two parts of it. How do you measure success? And so if you see it as a challenge that we are trying to prevent additional global warming and we are also trying to ensure that our cities and our state is prepared, you need to do both. And so if you can look at it as how do we measure success? And that's the energy policy forum gets into really interesting discussions on how do you measure success? What's our metric? It's a think tank. The metrics program is worth mentioning. Carl Friedman does that. And we have metrics on how well we've been doing in clean energy. Gee, for the past several years and it'll be more refined going forward. And you'll be able to see it in graphical form and tabular form on how well we're doing or not. And then we can use that to fashion legislation to appreciate our success or lack of it. Maybe to get more active in some areas or less active in other areas. What do they say on the Hokaleia? You've got to know where you are to know where you're going. So our navigation of this initiative has to be with due regard for where we are. If I could say something about navigation. Very often people say where's the energy plan? I want to see a plan for the next 20 years. Well, you don't know what technology is going to do in the next 20 years or the economy or the energy space, really. The energy planner is crystal ball. That's pretty opaque. But so maybe you don't have the plan. What it is is wayfinding. You know the signs. How do you read the signs of success? What do you need to do? How do you need to work together to go in the right direction and to take into account the swells and the wind and the storms and the resources you have? And I think it's more like a wayfinding thing rather than complaining. You don't have a plan. It's like what do we need? What expertise? What knowledge? What awareness? What working spirit of working together do you need for us to navigate this journey successfully? So that's what I see the energy policy. Very challenging but very important to the state. And I think this is central in the energy phenomenon, energy initiative for the state. And energy itself is central to the future of the state. Let's me forget. So the energy policy forum is actually very important in terms of public policy bringing people together, educating the community. And a big part of it is this, this think tech right here. I really appreciate people from the forum who come down here and try to educate people and let them know what the current affairs are. And they never know what you're going to ask them. That's okay. Keep them awake. Our job is to keep them awake for me. Okay. So what's what's happening? We've had a meeting of the steering committee that was very effective last week. Cheryl and we got, you know, the things started. And I thought it was a very good meeting. And then we have other meetings. We have meetings for visioning coming up soon or revisioning or reimagining as she calls it, what the forum can do, will do in the years to follow. And then following that, a meeting on, a strategic meeting on exactly what events, what steps will the forum take, what programs will the forum, you know, create in the next year or so. And I assume that that'll cover the legislative briefing in the middle of January just before the ledge opens. And it'll cover Clean Energy Day in the summertime because the forum has been doing that for at least 10 years. Yeah. Right on cue. Right on cue. Okay. So we're about out of time. I guess what I would ask you is to tell the people how they can stay in touch with the forum, what the forum can do for them, and what they can do for the forum, Maria. Oh, excellent. So the forum has a lot of information on its website. And the website is going to get revamped. So you can find a bunch of stuff there. It's not as easy as it will be once we get done, you know, trying to organize it and reprioritize the working groups and whatnot. But there is a lot of good background information there. Probably the most exciting part of it is the metrics piece because that is looking at trends. How are we doing, you know, what are you, what are you measuring to get to success? And so that's also a very important piece. As far as what mechanisms there are to communicate to the forum, I'm, I really don't, I really don't know what there might be on the website. We should have something. Yeah, we should have a way to engage. You know, we want to know how people feel. Yeah. We want them to know what we're doing and how we think they should, you know, up their game in terms of energy appreciation. Usually there, you know, and so the annual transformational energy awards piece. In June. Yeah. Usually, so when that comes around, we send out email, okay, so we send out email blasts to a whole bunch of folks and they can nominate people or actually programs that have been transformative in the energy space, whether it's a policy idea or something that's been installed, you know, that demonstrates something new and different and better, a better way of doing things or a better way of communicating. So that transformational energy awards is one of the ways we get folks to nominate. Right, and give recognition to the people who are central in the initiative. Yeah, so that's, that's very tangible way to appreciate some of the benefits that people in society are providing to each other and then publicizing those so that they can be copied. It's great fun to follow the forum. For one thing, you learn who's doing what in energy. And there are a lot of heroes out there in energy who are doing remarkable things. Yeah. It's not just the utility companies, it's all those guys. It's the regulators and the PUC. It's the guys who were starting, you know, new companies, startup companies in energy with smart ideas. There's so many people doing so many things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here we are, pledging ahead to 2045. That's an adventure. So to learn about the adventure is really learning a great story. The other thing is it affects us, all of us. It affects us in terms of the quality of our lives in these islands. It also affects us in the quality of our economy. It shapes us going forward. We can do it right or maybe not so right. So it's everybody's interest to know what's going on and maybe to say something about how they feel over energy development. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I only mentioned, just one other thing. And that is, you know, we were going to have another guest on the show today. We were trying hard to reach him. And that's our regular energy expert who appears on Energy 808, the cutting edge on Mondays, often with Mina Merida, former chair of the PUC. And he is right now studying energy as he always does wherever he travels in Southeast Asia. That's Marco Mangelsdorf. And when he gets back, hopefully soon, we'll debrief him on what he found in terms of clean energy and energy development in Southeast Asia. You know, you don't realize it's really worth taking a moment for this. You don't realize that Hawaii is not the only one interested. There are people around the world who watch us, who want to emulate us, and in some ways they may do it faster or maybe differently in some way where we can learn from them too. If we can take turns making the mistakes or learning the valuable lessons and also find the successes and emulate those, that's always good. It's a global community. It's a global initiative. But it really does take a lot of the face-to-face discussions because you don't write a report necessarily on failures unless your course Rocky Mountain Institute and you go after a hurricane and see what failed. But that's very important to discuss what worked and why, what didn't work and why. And so if you have a place to come and discuss it with folks, I think it's very helpful. So now that he's gone and discussed it with the folks in Asia that he was able to meet with, yeah, let's get him on the show. We want to be educated in every way about everything happening in the world about energy so we can learn and do it best. Yeah. Thank you so much, Berga. Thanks, Jay. I'll see you next week. Okay, thanks. All right. Oh, good.