 Hey, Aloha, and welcome to Stand Energy Man on another beautiful low-up Friday in Honolulu, Hawaii. Thanks for joining us here on Think Tech Hawaii. And if you haven't noticed, being that it's 24-7 politics on all the news networks now, no matter what, it is kind of political season. We have an election coming up, and we've had several state reps and senators on the show over the last couple of weeks. And we'll probably have a few more on as we move into later part of this year. But I only ask one thing of all of them that come on, and that's that we talk about energy, because that's what the focus of the show is. So today we have with us a young lady. She's probably 25, 26 years old, who is running for office this year. But she's also been a very serious member of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum for several, several, several years, probably a charter member, I'm not sure. And she's been a driving force in working with legislators and working with the governor's office to try and help clean energy policies and laws come into being in the state of Hawaii. So Sharon, thanks for being with us. Thank you for asking me, Stan. And Sharon will walk you on the show today, and it's great having you on board. And in fact, I told the folks when I came in the studio, you have more time sitting in one of these schools than I do, because you do energy Wednesday with jail. Away, the state of clean energy. That's right. So that's how I got my start in the big, big world here of think tech. But thanks for joining us. And, you know, in general, what I put out there for the topic is, you know, we have a lot of very conscientious people in Hawaii, culturally and energy-wise and environmentally speaking. And we have a lot of initiatives that year after year come up to the legislature and some of them make it through, some of them struggle and don't make it through. But some even end up in law, and then nothing happens. So that's kind of what I'd like to center our discussion on today and talk a little bit about what your views are for upcoming things, what you'd like to see, and maybe how we could go back and some of the laws are already in the books and figure how we can really get some traction on those things. So I'll let you start railing here. Okay. Let me go back first and then go forward. Talk about the history of the energy policy forum. I think it was in 2002 when it was, energy wasn't even a blip on the screen. And we put together white papers and a blue ribbon committee. And this was, HECO had 138, KW, you know, was to be on White Healer Ridge and the community protested. And they stepped back and thanks to Robbie Amke said, you know, let's put some money at the university and see what they can do in bringing together white papers by experts and also go forward. And along the way, what our focus has been is collaboration, research or data-driven policy, and it's been at the university for, I don't know, 15, going on 16 years. And that's when all of us start to bring in different sectors of the community. When I look to the future, I see that that should be the foundational piece of bringing people together. We brought experts together, you know, like Iran with the hydrogen and H-CAT transportation, DOT. We've got state, federal, county, as well as a community. And people care about Hawaii and care about having a much more vibrant economy and sustainable future. And that's where clean energy comes in. So for me, going into the future, why it hasn't worked, it's been piecemeal. We don't have a long-range plan. I think the legislative briefing this year, we do one every year, was on long-range planning. It was looking to the Office of Planning that's been sort of sideline, but bringing them front and center because sustainability takes everybody, energy takes and everybody. And we've been kind of going narrow views. It's my kuleana, it's yours, instead of it's ours. And I think that's what's needed for the future. We have now a really good network of people and organizations, and it's all about people. Why are we doing this? It's to make energy much more equitable, to make it much more available, to make it much more cost-effective for people so that they can run their businesses, they can live a quality life. So what the missing piece to me is, and I hope to do that, I'm not going to get political, but in my campaign, is that the disconnect I see, especially now that I'm walking the streets, not so literally, I'm talking to my neighbors, I'm talking to my neighbors. And what I see is such a disconnect between the struggles of people in terms of affordable housing, in terms of the cost of energy, in terms of cost of everything, and what we're doing here, the policy level. We've been working the policy level. So what I think the next phase is, is that people have to vote, people have to see what their legislators are doing. If they're not doing the right thing by them, then they should go talk to their legislators and like everybody else, when you're an employee, which we are, you know, we're all employees, but the legislators are employees of the people, that you go talk to them and say, hey, what are you doing about this? And when we miss that link, but that link has been growing. And that's what I think the future is, a long-range plan. We need to look at how do we fund this with the people's money for the people's benefit. Yeah, I've been trying to float the notion of a definition of sustainability that I heard a couple of years ago in Texas by Robert Kennedy Jr., who is the son of Robert Kennedy and he's an environmental lawyer. His definition of sustainability is that you have to take the economic cost, complete cradle to grave, beginning to end of everything that you put into play. And that includes where are you getting your raw materials, to what are you going to do at the end of life with the system, to how does it really impact everybody along the way. And that's really, that's an economic definition of it, but it fits right into your strategic plan model. If you're not looking strategically long-term and strategic is flexible, in other words, technology changes within the realm of a strategic plan, which is fairly long range, but it gives you the time to get input and get a really good solid, hey, how does this affect you? How does this affect you? If it's great for business, but it's lousy for the man on the street, it's not going to work. If it's great for the man on the street, but it pollutes the stream, it's not going to work. If it's great for the cultural Hawaiian and it's not good for the economy, it's not good. So how do we get that group of folks together, that policy forum tends to bring everyone together and build that strategic plan? So that's really important. And in the military, which is my background, we have three levels of planning, tactical, operational, strategic. Tactical is like this week, this month, what have I got to do to take care of business? Operational is like this month to this year, you know, what kind of things I have to look up down the road, six months or eight months. And strategic is a year and beyond, out to 20, 25 years, as far as you can look and just get as much as you can or guess as best you can about technology or what things may influence you and try and always keep that strategic piece in the radar and start asking questions about what would impact it. So I think you're right on with that comment. It's right there. Can you tell, you mentioned that talking to your employer, your employees, the legislature, you know, a lot of people hesitate to do that. A lot of people I think hold back, they think, well, I'm just Joe Schmo in Kailua, and, you know, I don't want to bother Chris Lee or I don't want to bother whoever. Talk about that a little bit. I think it's maybe—and that's how I see government is to serve the people. And, you know, way back when, when I was in government, that's sort of where you went to get what you need to do is go back to the people and say, what do you need? Because if you're serving whomever and not your special interests or like well connected, you're not really serving and doing your job to serve the people. So the way that I look at this is that people, everybody should think that it's not about the money, it's about we the people. I have a vote. Another person next to me has a vote. You have a vote. All those votes are so important. And the money is just to put yourself on TV to let people know how great I am rather than, what are you doing? What are you doing for we the people? And that's why people should feel that I serve you if I'm the elected official, not you come to me at the legislature. Its legislators should all be out in the community finding out what do their constituents want. And that's what representative democracy is all about. And we're losing that. We're losing the people afraid to talk to their legislator. They should bring their concerns, find ways that we could make it work for the majority because it's the representative part of government. The majority should be able to benefit, not just a few. And when you have a lot of people like we do with the energy policy form, when you had all of the different 30, 45 different organizations represent, the legislature says, oh, wow, that means something. You've talked this over and you're coming up with a plan. You're coming up with legislation that will help everybody, or at least the most. And that's where I think we need to go with with the people going to their legislators. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the things that the policy form has brought up in the past and maybe it's still kind of rattling around in the legislature. Things that maybe you worked on in the past two or three years that just seem to get stuck here and there that were you felt were important and the policy members felt were important enough to bring to the legislature. Well, you know, front and foremost is the barrel tax, what we call the barrel tax. It's the form was involved when Representative Morita was at the Helm and the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee. And what it was, it is called the energy security and food security. So the whole purpose was we're a vulnerable state. We need to find ways in which we can be sustainable by ourselves with, you know, not like Puerto Rico. I mean, we should be able to sustain ourselves. So it was initially monies were put aside to collect in a special fund for oil spills or things like that, you know, catastrophes that happen that we can easily and, you know, quickly respond to with this fund. But it's also with energy, renewable energy, we're able to expand that notion to say, if we were into renewables and not so much on fossil fuel, we wouldn't be so dependent outside sources. We would be growing our own and agriculture because we bring in with the ships the food that we eat. So if we grew our own and we supported the farmers growing our own, we would be sustainable for our future for not only ourselves, but future generations. So that's how I view the barrel tax, which is based on a percentage of every dollar and five cents of your your petroleum products sold by distributors that the dollar and five cents is supposed to go for. So so so every barrel of oil that comes into Hawaii, that's going to be processed for gasoline or petroleum products, they call it. So so but I know some of the things that are exempt from that are like aviation fuel and things like that. But for stuff that's converted into gasoline or propane or whatever is being produced based on that barrel of oil, other than the refiner's end use, right? Everything else is in that barrel. So and it's a dollar and five cents per barrel, right? And we use many millions of barrels a year. So that's that's a pretty good chunk of change. But you know, do you know where that money goes specifically? Well, so so for for energy, you know, for energy security and they call it energy systems where it's supposed to be paying for like technology or research or just testing that the whole amount, including the ag portion of it is about 45 cents of the dollar and five cents. So 60 cents of that goes to the general fund and we don't know what happens to that. Right. So I think that's one of the things that that we've been pushing for with the energy policy form a long time is all of that money, because it's collected for the purpose of sustaining ourselves energy wise and and and for ag, the farmers, ag food security. Food security. Yeah. So that that whole amount should be in the special fund for that purpose. And that would be sustainable into the future and not, you know, when we want to do it. And so it becomes very piecemeal right now, how we're using the fund. So yeah, I would like to see that whole amount. And you know, the state law on special funds is that you collect the money for a special purpose. And this is for food and energy security. And the money should be used for the purposes which you collected. Exactly. Not for, you know, retirement fund, not for employee. On the federal level, they call it a purpose statute violation if you don't do it. Yeah. And so we don't have any penalties for not doing that. So I mean, but that's, that is the purpose. And that should be the main focus because we talk about ourselves now being, you know, the first in the nation, 100% renewable. And now it's, you know, an aspirational goal and transportation. How do you do that? You need funding for it. Yeah. And we're not using the funds appropriated for that, that purpose. Okay. Well, I tell you what, we're going to take a quick break here and come back with Sharon and talk some more a little bit about the barrel tax and some of the other laws that are either pending around the books that maybe we need to be paying more attention to. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all of your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii in Uniform. Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. I'm Jay Fiedel, Think Tech. Think Tech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco and Me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays, every two weeks on Think Tech. Aloha. Hey, welcome back to Stand Energy Man with Stan Osserman, your faithful state civil servant on his lunch hour, by the way. That's always on my lunch hour. That's what we like in our civil servants. I'm doing this for free. I'm working for the people. Anyway, Sharon Moriwaki to talk about laws that are on the books and laws that maybe should be on the books, and maybe why there's such a disconnect there and how we can get things tracking right. So we were talking about the barrel tax, and we're talking about that roughly 60-ish percent that ends up going back into the general fund. And I know that's a hard nut to crack. There's a lot of bills that are out there. There's unfunded liability that's really looming big over the legislature and the governor every year. That's a tough one to crack. I mean, when you talk about solving problems, if it was easy, it wouldn't be a big deal. We wouldn't even be looking at it. But these are tough things to solve. So what are some of the other things, besides barrel tax, that the policy forums kind of looked at as being fairly high priority, and we'd like to see moving forward? Well, I think we've kept on talking about this need for continuity, looking to the future, having a plan. So there are the renewal of the portfolio standard, both for energy as well as energy efficiency. It's the energy efficiency portfolio standard. Now, the last session, I believe, or the session before, they moved that into 100% ground transportation. Right, the transportation piece was pulled in. So all of these are nice aspirations. Some of them are standard, some of them are aspirational, especially transportation, because the PUC does not oversee being able to electricity. I see two things on the transportation side. Number one, the PUC does not have that much control of the taxi cabs and trucks, maybe. But also, if you're going to sell vehicles, you have manufacturers that are outside, we don't manufacture vehicles here, and they control the volume and what comes in here. And then the consumer, the individual citizen, drives the demand for those vehicles. So you can't really legislate that. You can't tell an outside company, hey, we need more of this, doesn't mean they're going to build it. They have to see a reasonable return on their investment and things like that. So that was a tough one to craft properly, and you're right. I think we should have some things that are hard. There's a hard goal, like the 100% by 2045 on the grid. But we need to also be realistic about, if we're going to set other goals, make sure that we can control all the variables going into that. Right, and not penalize employers who are here, businesses that are here. And so it's really a balancing, and that's where it takes everybody working together and saying, hey, I can do this or I can't, or this is a time frame, I can do it. And it has to be well thought out, not just, oh, it's going to be, oh, yep, let's just put it up there because it sounds good. And it shouldn't be campaign slogans. It really should be hit the ground, do what's necessary, do the hard work, and make sure that this is really preparing for ourselves and our future. Well, I didn't prepare you on this one, so if you don't have anything set up, it's okay. But one time, the Energy Policy Forum invited me to do a talk on past legislation that has kind of languished, and mine was hydrogen. And I pointed out that back in 2006-ish, we had a hydrogen economy bill that was passed, signed into law, and started directing that the Big Island and the state overall, but kind of focused on the Big Island, started moving toward the hydrogen economy. And that push went for maybe a year, and then fell completely flat. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know you thought a little bit about it, but we didn't talk about it before the shows. I don't want to put you on the spot. Well, you know, I think it's like everything else. You've got to be vigilant. You've got to see who is your champion, and you've got to keep supporting the champion. Even legislators, I know in the past, you know, we're supporting something, and a legislator would say, you know, if I don't have anybody coming and testifying and saying this is really important, you know, I'll pass it through, but you know, what is the support for this? So it really is, some of these bills and what's enacted now into law. It took many, many years, and it's not giving up, and it's important. We need to pursue it. So as with hydrogen, I know you have a task for us, and the bill went through, but it languishes in the administration. Well, then the support should go to the administration. It's not all laws. Laws are on the books, but the implementation of laws are on the other side of the executive side. So the same kind of push that you give in legislations to legislators, you have to give to the directors and the governor and say, hey, this is what was passed. This is important. We've got to pursue this. And I think we sometimes forget. I know the policy form has always on bills that we have been pursuing. If it passes, we make sure we write to the governor. We make sure that we say, hey, you've got to sign this bill. And then it's not only presiding the bill and having enacted into law. You've got to go check on that department that's the administering agency and say, what are you doing about this? Exactly, because those aren't elected officials. They're part of the executive branch, but they're not elected. And if they're not following suit, you go to their boss, which is a governor. So it does take continuous vigilance and not say, oh, it passed. How come nothing's happening? It's our responsibility to make sure it happens. And there's another part to that, too. And that's the economic part, because you can pass great legislation and never fund it. And so if it doesn't get into the budget, if the legislature doesn't have it as a line item in the budget or the governor doesn't pass it as part of the budget, it also doesn't move forward. So you have to equally put your pressure on your legislators and the governor to keep those important things in the budget so they actually get funded. And one other thing is I look at where I would fund things if I were a legislator is the importance of, as we were talking, strategic but also long-range planning, because if, in fact, we have a state plan, it's pretty broad. It's mother and apple pie, but when you come down to it, if it's in there, like sustainability now is a priority that came out of something I worked on with the Hawaii 2050 sustainability plan, it's now there is a priority. So if energy is there, you go back to that. That's the guide. That's the future. Okay, we want clean energy. This is hooked to that. And so you need to fund this so that we actually execute on our priorities. So it is important to then hook it back to whether it's a state plan or something in law. And that's why laws are important because it says this is important. So if this is important, you should be funding something to do it. And that's where the disconnect also happens the funding doesn't follow to do it, nor does accountability follow to say, did you do it? I gave you money, did you do it? You know, so I think that's where, I think the alignment of goals and objectives as well as actions are really, really important. Could you talk a little bit about the role between the city and the counties or the counties and the state in these kind of efforts? For example, the city runs all the public transportation rail, buses, all that stuff, handymans. So they have a big role in public transportation, which is part of that big transportation sector and what they're doing and rolling out cleaning vehicles and clean fleets. Is what's the play between the city and the state or the county and the state that you see could be improved, maybe. Okay, I can talk about what should be what's the problem, sorry, how we get there. What should be is that when you look at the whole ball of wax, it's government, there's state and there's counties. And the two should meld together because counties have certain response, as you said, with transportation, it's public transportation, it's the roads, but the state is broader and it has transportation and making sure that transportation is provided for its people. And so each of the counties have their roles to play and the state has zoning rules, it has statutes on those kind of big picture things. So the counties and the state need to work hand and glove because they're both government. People don't know whether you're city or state or federal, they just know my roles don't, the drains are bad or infrastructure is falling apart. So part of that is it's the administrative side of government that needs to look, because laws are on the books. I mean, it's just the implementation. So you've got to keep the state and the city working together and making sure they work together and call them on it if they're not because it's all for a thing. Is there any forum, formal forum where the governor and the mayors sit down and do that strategic planning that you're talking about? I wish they would. That's one of the things that should happen. I know if you look at, say, in the states, in California for example, they even have regions planning together. Right. So it should happen because it's so complex and our resources are so limited that why should we keep wasting resources by duplicating our efforts and why not work together? I think one move toward that is this whole sustainability because it covers everything and you could use it as a nice foundational piece of, we look at all things. It's not just, oh, this is my slice and that's all I'm working on. It really is a much more macro view of how the community runs, how our state runs and we have limited resources. Who's doing what and how do we connect? So it's not telling each other what to do, but it's really what is the best thing to do with our resources because we serve the same people. We serve the same population. We've got about 30 seconds left and I want to leave it to you to wrap things up and give us your final words on energy in Hawaii. Okay. I think energy is one of the really important resources that we have and we have so much, whether it's improving the grid, looking at hydrogen and other resources. Geosanimal, wind, solar. And also storage. So how do we capture that energy and store it so that we can use it for the benefit of everybody? And it really is looking at some of the kinds of things going with community, solar, where everybody can share in the benefits of that. And we really need to think long term and get your legislators and vote and get your legislators to really help you to make sure that there's long range planning so that we're not doing piecemeal. We're not wasting our taxpayer money. We're doing something that's for the benefit not only for us but for the future and for our future generations to make Hawaii still the best place in the world to live. Good job, Sharon. So thank you very much, Sharon, and thanks to you for joining us. And remember, it came right from Sharon Morawaki. Get out and vote because if you don't vote then you ain't helping. After you vote, go talk to your legislators. If you have things that are important that need to be funded, that haven't been funded, talk to the governor and your legislators and make your voice known because it really does make a difference. Not only at the local level, I found that to be true also at the congressional level for our congressional delegation as well. They want to hear from you. They need to hear from you. And they don't want to hear complaints. They want to hear solutions. They want to hear where you want to go, not why you don't like where we are. So do your best to be positive, have a solution-oriented direction as you go approach them and make sure you let yourself be known in front of those folks. They'd appreciate it. So thanks to everybody here in the studio, Robert and Cindy and Sharon Morawaki for being my guest today. And we'll see you next week on Stan Landry.