 Okay, Tam talks, EV and RE, that's the title of our episode today. It's Energy 808, The Cutting Edge. I'm Jerry Fidel, and this is Think Tech Hawaii. And the handsome young man on my, well, on the other screen is Tam Hunt. Hi Tam, welcome to the show, thanks for coming on. Hi Jerry, thanks for having me. So let's talk about EVs and RE. You're an energy policy attorney. It's very important that we're gonna handle on this because like so many other things in our world, the information is disparate. It comes in fragments. It's hard to connect the dots. It's hard to develop an informed opinion about where we are on the line, on the pathway to our goals. And for that matter, whether our goals are realistic and whether they are going to save us. Because if you draw a straight line without taking action, we go off the side. Humanity goes off the side. And right now it just seems to me, and I wanna start to show this way, is that to the extent that we hope to achieve independence from fossil fuel, we hope to make a contribution toward renewing the world, the planet. There are so many things that get in the way. There's so many things that jump to the top of the priority list all day and every day that you wonder whether, people are still thinking about renewable energy and whether they're doing anything about renewable energy. So you're somewhat optimistic. Tell us what is going on really in renewable energy, including electric vehicles. Yeah, well, thanks Jay for the introduction. And it's kind of an interesting spot to be in where I think we need to look at things like climate change and the environment. And it's kind of big picture issues that can seem overwhelming, is to pay attention and be informed. But don't get so full of despair that you get paralyzed. And that's actually, I think where a lot of us are at nowadays when it comes to climate change is kind of like, oh my God, the world's coming to an end. What do I do? And just kind of go into your shell and do nothing. What I'm saying, what I've been saying for over years now is look, we can in fact do things personally. We are doing a lot collectively on the green energy transition. And there are a lot of pieces of good news out there amid the doom and gloom. And here they talk mainly about the growth of electric vehicles and policy at the national local level on electric vehicles. So, I mean, some good news for sure to go along with the doom and gloom is that President Biden did recently announce he's gonna be signing an executive order calling for half of all vehicle sales to be electric vehicles or other zero emissions vehicles by 2030. And he made this announcement a few days ago, accompanied by a number of automakers who have also pledged to sell at least half of their vehicles by 2030 as electric vehicles. This is a massive shift in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, you had the Nissan Leaf and that was about it. That's about 90 miles of range. It's a great little car, but it's not for everyone. It's a pretty limited vehicle. We now have dozens of electric vehicles with 200 miles range of more, which are great cars. I don't wanna brag, but it's got a Tesla Model Y. It's an amazing car. I had a Chevy Bolt for a year. It's still having, it's also an amazing car. Not quite as amazing as the Model Y, but I like it a lot. And we're seeing more and more of these cars come out and getting cheaper and cheaper, longer and longer range. And so, rather than collapsing into a ball in the ground and despair, go buy an electric car, buy a hybrid car at the very least. Think of what you can do personally. Change your light bulbs out. Elect politicians who can actually be a force for positive change on the environment and climate change. So there's a lot can be done. So I really wanna kind of balance the momentum toward despair with the call to action, you know, both at the individual and the larger group level. Yeah, funny you should say that because we're making a movie about the relationship of climate change and COVID, the interaction, the convergence, if you will. And of course, COVID takes priority with its life and death right now. But one of the scientists who spoke was from Harvard. His name is Aaron Bernstein. And Bernstein, the words ring in my head. He said, no city, no state, no country, alone can solve climate change. It takes global effort, you know, by everyone. And that means every individual person, not necessarily cities and states and countries. So here we are in the United States and we certainly emit a lot of fossil fuels. But, you know, we're only one country and there are a lot of countries that are worried about waking up in the morning. So it's not high in the priority list. And it does require global effort. How do you reconcile that? Yeah, so I followed the international climate policy negotiations for literally 30 years. I gave up on the UN process years ago because I followed it for 20 years and nothing had happened. A few years ago, the Paris Accord was signed and it's better than nothing but barely. It basically is a set of voluntary experiments to reduce emissions. And this is better than nothing, but it really is mostly symbolic. And so when Trump advocated it, it wasn't really that big a deal. It was symbolic. Again, with when he advocated it as symbolic again, now that by the rejoining, it's also symbolic. But symbolism is better than nothing. And here's where I'm off to missing again. So we're actually, we are seeing market forces really kick in and achieve a lot of reductions and emissions through the very surprising growth of solar power, better energy efficiency. And then the last few years, a huge growth in electric vehicles. And so, you know, we are in fact seeing the green energy transition happen. And things begin slowly. You have this S-shaped curve where it's kind of the dog leg and then suddenly it goes parabolic and then it kind of curves back over when you get toward the top. So we have been for a while now at this bottom of the curve and it looks imperceptible for a long time. When you look at exponential growth trends and you actually see doublings every couple of years, you could actually then kind of see the future a little better as things get to that steep part of the curve. I wrote a book back in 2015 called Solar By Our Energy Future Is So Bright. And I was a bit of contrarian back then in terms of projecting really high rates of green energy growth. And history has proved me right. We're actually are seeing that really high rate of growth and we're gonna see faster and faster growth in the next decade. And so even though it's a complex message, don't get complacent, don't sit back and do nothing. We actually are seeing a lot of really positive trends on like I said, solar power, energy efficiency, wind power, electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles. And I'm actually optimistic by 2030, 2035, we're gonna see a predominantly green energy system in the US and probably around the world too. Well, I wouldn't argue about the US and is there's plenty of momentum going on and we have a president who cares about it. And it's probably in the infrastructure or one of the infrastructure bills which would be helpful as a way to get on our feet about this and a lot of people know about it. And I'm sure you can identify a number of your friends and associates who also have electric cars as I can and more all the time. And the automobile dealers are on board and so forth. But the United Nations hasn't done very much. COP hasn't done very much except platitudes I think. And can the United States, even if it realizes all these goals, all these local goals or national goals, can it solve the problem or do we need to have a global global? You know, is Vladimir Putin on board? Is Xi Jinping on board? Are these countries is trying as hard as we wish them to try? And who is overseeing them? Who is encouraging them, motivating incentivizing them? We really need them all to get on board. What's your answer? Yeah, well, Russia is certainly not leading the charge on this stuff. But they're also pretty small emitter as a nation. They're a small economy nowadays. China, of course, the biggest emitter, they really are the lynchpin here. The US was the biggest emitter for a long time. We're now second to China. China has sets and very ambitious goals to reduce emissions. I believe they set their peak emissions a year to be 2030. And they are seeing massive growth in renewables, but they're also seeing growth in coal power, as a lot of people know and are concerned about. And so it's certainly not a single, univocal message here when it comes to China. But I think the trends toward renewables are gonna swamp the trend toward coal power over time, because we're seeing coal power retirements in other nations like the US at a really rapid rate. So when you have viable alternatives, you can, in fact, see a lot faster improvement in shutting down the old fossil fuel plants if you have viable replacements in time to kind of meet that demand. So China is trying to kind of have its cake in it too by growing, but also even in charge of these emissions. So no one knows for sure where we're gonna see emissions go globally. But it's certainly not the case that China is a unitary bad actor. They actually are leading a lot of this stuff too. Well, we know they wanna see their economy do well. And they wanna compete against the United States. That's their big thing. And so if they had to choose between their economy and renewable energy, they would probably choose their economy. And that leads me to the question about whether the US is in the same place because COVID has taken a bit of our economy and that's not finished. And so what you have is an economy that's limping along but that's probably euphemistic. It's probably not as good as that. And it's, you know, every day you wonder about how the economy is doing. And so what's the interaction between the economy and the initiative for clean energy? Yeah, I mean, I think it's true that basically any nation would always choose economic growth over the environment if they really had to make that choice either or. Luckily it's not either or, right? We're actually not at a point where it's both good for your pocketbook and good for the environment to go green. And so we're now seeing kind of a new race toward who can be the leader on green tech and a big motivation and part of the speech that Biden gave a few days ago on is this new EV goal by 2030 to have at least half of car sales, be EVs is talking about maintaining the US competitive lead or regaining that lead on EV technology and becoming the main producer around the world. And you know, Tesla is in fact the main producer of EVs in the whole world. They are of course a US company. They're leading on many of these issues. And ironically Tesla was not actually at this meeting with Biden, but that was kind of a union issue and not a Tesla issue per se. So I think where we're seeing things really transition now is that solar power, wind power, EV technology have become big industries and you have to have those become big industries to have world changing impact. So we really are at a point where the old fossil fuel industries are starting to kind of get pushed back by new industries and it's been 23rd years to make this change happen but it is now arriving. Well, you know, one of the things that sticks in my brain is the fact that we give subsidies to the oil industry. Not nearly as generous in terms of renewables. And you're into policy, you're into the law for sure. And I wonder what you would recommend to Joe Biden, what you would recommend to Congress? That is assuming there still is a Congress. We're not sure that there is a Congress, but assuming that they would listen to your kind of policy, what would you suggest that they do to incentivize, to keep this thing rolling? In fact, to enhance clean energy as much as possible because we agree it's a race against time. What should the United States do? Because what the United States does is world leadership. It still is world leadership. If we get out and do stuff on climate change the world will notice. If we generate a lot of production on electric vehicles the world will buy those things or copy them and that'll have an effect. We are still a leader. So what do we need to do to preserve that leadership, to enhance that leadership, to push it forward and save the planet? Yeah, well, first I want to congratulate President Biden on what he did and asked you, which was this 50% by 2030 EV goal. That's a really great step. Now, it's symbolic only, it's an executive order but he's also set in place, set in motion a process for new standards for vehicles more generally through EPA and NHTSA. And those will basically kick in new cafes and as they're called in a couple of years once that process is resolved. At the same time, what Biden really needs to do and Congress needs to do is renew the various tax credits for electric vehicles and also renewables more generally. Those were in his big infrastructure package but that part was actually removed in the bipartisan compromise. And so we need to get those back in that bill before it's passed. Hopefully it's not too late for that. Yeah, that's important really. Too bad it was removed. It demonstrates that runway car again kind of approach about how to handle this issue. Yeah, as politics is partisan and they were stripped out it was about almost $400 billion in there in various tax credits. And I'm hoping that some version will get put back in the bill or passes a separate bill but we'll see. The third thing that Biden should do is pass a national renewable energy standard, an RES to set a basic floor for renewables in each state. Currently it's set state to state and I generally agree with state's rights and the ability to set your own goals at a state level. This issue becoming so important and with renewables becoming so cost effective and actually saving money for consumers is a very good case. They made that the federal government should set a floor now for achieving a certain level of renewables say one third or one half renewable energy by 2030 that kind of thing. So there's a longer list but I'll leave it at that for now. Yeah, well I hope we can find a way to do that. At the end it's, I hate to say this at the end it's political right now because everything is political right now. So one question that arises we're talking about electric vehicles. I'm happy to hear that Tesla is making so many of them and you sparked my interest in checking out the Y model. In any event, what about the charging stations? I would call that infrastructure for sure and Buddha judge should be out there trying to build charging stations, shouldn't he? But is there money? Is there legislation? Seems to me that Joe Biden may or may not be able to pull that off and we could accelerate that interesting term in this context. We can accelerate the development of EVs if we could put charging stations everywhere they could possibly be. Yeah, for sure. And so Biden's Build Back Better Plan does call for 500,000 new EV charges around the nation. And this was actually in place before Biden won office. So he's been saying this for quite some time now. He's of course been in office now for six months and he's had a tough road to hoe with the pandemic and the bare majority in Congress. So he hasn't actually put the money behind those goals yet. So I'd say it's a matter of rhetoric needing to be caught up with action. But of course it's very early days for his presidency. I'm not gonna judge too harsh against yet. I'm optimistic that Buttigieg and Biden are both trying to make this happen. And of course it's not just a matter of the feds. Actually we have state level, we have local level, we have private sector efforts already in place doing a lot. We're seeing a whole ton of charges that being put in place through those existing forces. A federal push would simply help us already going on by bringing in more congressional money and again setting that top down symbolic level of action which definitely does help. Yeah, well too bad, the states get fragmented. We've seen that in so many ways. They could be doing a lot because in truth this is a state issue. It's a state transportation issue. It doesn't have to be federal. And if both of them did it, that was terrific. That would be terrific. But it seems that, well, let me ask you this. Is this moving fast enough? Well that's the question, right? I mean, we don't know. I think we're moving pretty darn fast. It's taking a while to get here. But I think now we are here, we're gonna see things really unfold in the 2020s. We have basically a decade of EVs rolling out. I think we're gonna see it by 2030, probably frankly more than 50% of new car sales come from EVs. Just the market is heading that way. So significantly you're gonna have a whole new crop of pickup trucks, fully electric pickup trucks coming out. The Cybertruck from Tesla, the F-150 electric from Ford, the Rivian pickup truck, these are gonna be massive best sellers. And so we've already seen, for example, Tess's Model 3 sedan, and then their Model Ys across their SUV. Soon they're gonna have the Cybertruck, which is kind of a bit of a niche vehicle because it's so funny looking, but they've already got over a million pre-orders by far the most in history. And again, the F-150 and the Rivian are gonna be huge best sellers. So I'm optimistic in the next few years we're gonna see a real shift. And once you see the average dude in Texas bragging about the new F-150 electric, the game's won. That's when everyone's like, of course we're gonna be electric, why not? You're gonna have a second where it's gonna be a lot faster. You're gonna have four to miles of range for your vehicle. It'll be kind of the new default. I'm not holding my breath on Texas, I'm sorry. Or on its governor, by the way. So what's interesting is that we had another scientist in our movie who talked about how you had to change your life, like not eat so much meat, like not buy things that required a lot of energy to produce and orient your whole life experience. And what he said was that we need to do a complete makeover in terms of the social and business and consumption aspect of our society in order to beat this thing. It is not just EVs, for that matter it's not just energy. It's everything. We have to reorder, and I'm using his words, reorder our entire society. So where does this fit? Because there's a lot of waste, there's a lot of, what do you wanna call it, negative climate change phenomenon that have nothing to do with energy or transportation or generation of the lights in our homes. It's a lifestyle thing. Where does that fit? Yeah, well, I agree in general, we need to be cognizant of everything we do, but I'm wary of calling for things like a reordering because I think you gotta keep in mind the other half of the country who hear those kind of words and it raises their hackles. And I think to bring people along, we need to be aware that not everyone, things like we do. And I think we need to basically use the least coercive measures possible and lead with voluntary calls for voluntary change. It's a complex debate like all the things are, but in terms of like diet, for example, I've been vegan-ish now for a few years. And even we're using the term vegan sounds silly to a lot of people because it seems so extreme. Is that because of climate change or health? It's all the above. It's health environment and ethics for me. And so I'm vegan-ish because I've now experimented in many different ways over the years different diets and vegan-ish actually to me is sustainable. By vegan-ish, I mean, I'm mostly vegan but I allow myself meat and fish and eggs and dairy occasionally. And so I generally plants and starches and fruits but I have meats or fish maybe a couple of times a week. And this feels to me pretty sustainable and pretty healthy and it definitely is far less in terms of the emissions produced by the food that I eat personally than the average American diet which is pretty meat and fish heavy. So I think we all need to kind of look at this stuff think of what works for us what's actually sustainable for us because a lot of people kind of get into this space and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go cold turkey and become fully vegetarian or vegan do it for a week and then they're back for the regular diet because they can't do it sustainably. So you're really gonna kind of find things that work for you personally but are still helping with all issues and being part of the solution. One other sacred cow issue I'd like to ask you about is the comparison of the energy we use for our homes and for all the appliances we have and the computers, the machinery, you know we use a lot of it and it's generated at least in Hawaii largely by coal still, we're trying to get off that and other places is not necessarily renewable. But in the end, if we make it all renewable whatever expense that may involve whatever disruption to the economy that may involve whatever political issues that may involve that will be a lot better than going on coal or non-renewable sources. And it seems to me actually, Tam that that is more important than electric vehicles because the amount of energy that I use on my appliances every day in my home and my office and whatever I do these days, you know in the 21st century is far more than what I use driving. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, well, let's look at Hawaii in general. So coming from the national to the state level in Hawaii about one fourth of our admissions come from our cars. So it is not the single biggest item. It is a, I think it's a plurality where it's not the majority but it's still a very large chunk. So yes, our appliance use and our electricity use in general does comprise more emissions than what we drive. But of course in Hawaii, we've got small islands we live on, we don't drive as much as other places. So all that said in Hawaii we do have a mandate to actually achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2045. Personally, I think that's too far away. I think we can do better than that. And we actually are working on a bill right now, you know, my hat for think big which is the nonprofit app again last year looking at local policy. We're pushing for a bill at the county level to require that the county facilities themselves become fully renewable by 2030. And we're urging that to happen as a way to spur more rapid change at the state level. And so we're hoping that by 2035 or 2040 the entire state can achieve that 100% renewables goal. We are seeing a lot of larger scale solar. We've got wind power of course pretty abundant in some parts of the islands Hawaii Island where I live in particular. So we certainly can reach that goal in Hawaii but places like Oahu are more tricky because of course Oahu is much smaller as much larger population. So achieving 100% renewables in Oahu is a tougher road to hoe, but it is doable. Well, you know, a lot of it has to do with public opinion. And we talked about that a little bit before. And I think there's a certain amount of resistance or what do I call it, you know, we don't care complacency about this. They don't see it as important. Maybe they don't read those articles about the New York Times and the Washington Post warning us yet again that this is the highest threat facing humanity. But how do you get public opinion to push the legislature or whoever in the government is making such decisions to actually get on board and go faster? Because right now, you'll have to agree with me there's a fair amount of complacency here and on the mainland. And I would say it's got a significant element of politics in it that's carried over from the Trump administration. So, so query, how do you change that? Are you doing anything to change public opinion? Yes, I am personally. I mean, I write about this stuff quite a bit. And I said, I wrote a book about this stuff. I've been a nonprofit. I'm in the green energy policy space, which is more policy focused than public media messaging. But I do a lot of this stuff in different ways. And what I've seen again in the last 10 years is a massive shift toward people recognizing this is a real issue. And I think where we are now is that most people are gonna agree, yes, climate change is a real issue, but we're not at a point where most people are taking personal action or electing people based on their climate policy views. And so, you know, my friends and family have a very mixed record of buying hybrid cars or electric vehicles. We've got a bunch of friends who do have electric vehicles, but far from a majority. And I think at this point, you know, when we do buy a new car, we really need to be looking first and foremost at the, you know, non-emitting burdens. And that's just one thing we had to kind of think about and say, look, I'm not gonna buy that super outback, even though it's a cool car. I'm gonna, you know, a non-emitting car. You mentioned wind, you know, and wind is probably a good example of it's not complacency so much as opposition. Have a perfectly ordinary community. And at first, they might be on board about wind. Next time you look, they're not on board about wind. And they oppose, you know, bringing the sections of the wind turbines in, they stand in the street to obstruct. They have protests and the like and wind doesn't come in. It just doesn't come in. We don't have as much wind as we could have. And the other part of that is that, you know, we could have a state that's all wired up together. We could have a state where we pass generated power from one island to another, but it seems that that issue was radioactive and it's not gonna happen. And the reason it's not gonna happen is that there was all this, what do you wanna call it, protest. Maybe it's a NIMBY protest, but it's nevertheless protest. So, I mean, what we have is, and then, you know, geothermal is another example of a renewable, a dispatchable renewal, you know, renewable, a really good one in my opinion. And there are people who oppose it. And there are other examples too. But what I'm saying is that it's not so much complacency for some people in some projects, it's a downright opposition. They don't mind holding it up forever. And how do you change that? Yeah, it's a tough question. And I think in terms of things like wind power or geothermal, it really is a localized, sorry. It's a localized decision and a lot of people are gonna be in theory supportive but then in actuality less supportive. And I think how it changes is you simply have a discussion over time and people get more and more on board over time and you can't force it. You have these kind of break it along as best you can. No, that's a recipe for learning the hard way. So, you know, it strikes me, I'm scanning my own memory to think of a particular candidate who ran for office, who ran for office at any level on the stage, say a county government or state governor, the like. And they have a lot of platforms, but I'm not sure I can remember any one of them who stands out as a kind of candidate that you would vote for simply because he understood or she understood how important the issue is and how much we have to do to keep on the track. Wouldn't it be, do you expect, wouldn't it be great if somebody would stand up and say this is my primary issue? This is the primary, you know, threat and this is therefore my primary issue and I'm gonna carry this all the way. We don't have that, do we? We haven't had it yet, no, but I think you're right. I think probably time is right for that to happen. It's just simply, it's one of the many issues out there and certainly people are getting more and more concerned about it and politicians are making it more and more, you know, a higher item on their list. But yeah, I don't know when it was actually made at their primary issue yet so far, you're right. Strikes me, we have more and more indications as indicated in those articles and times in the post. More and more indications that our world is under attack, that there are huge threats to our quality of life and they're happening, they're happening now. And I like to think that people will see that. They'll see the fires, they'll see the water shortages and the floods and the environmental disruptions and degradation all over the world. And they'll say, ooh, we better get on this because as it gets worse than theoretically people should be more responsive. Everybody should be more responsive. Do you see that happening now or is it still a threat in the future? So I think Biden won partly because he did actually make climate change a real priority for him on his platform. And of course he was running against someone who was very antsy, climate change is the real issue, President Trump. So I think it definitely is changing and I think we're gonna see more of that as we see more and more of this kind of messaging come out and become more serious in people's minds. Hope so, when you see half of the Pacific Northwest burning, you say to yourself, hmm, and I think a press has a role in this. Don't you think, I mean, sometimes it troubles me that you have a wildfire that covers hundreds, thousands of acres. And nobody says this is climate change. And yet you and I know instantly, don't we? It's climate change, right? Well, that's the difference in this major report from the IPCC is that they're saying now, look, in the past, we've been unable to really kind of pin particular events on climate change. And they're saying now, given the attribution of science, we can actually say with more certainty, these kinds of events are unusual and gonna happen more frequently. And they basically, you can never say for sure, look, this is because of climate change in terms of this actual event, because of course, fire is happening before. There's climate change from humankind and our activities. But when you see them happening more and more frequency and more and more severity, that's when you can say, look, these things are basically a trivial and part of climate change. I'll tell you what, I think it's gonna really take, it's gonna raise public interest and public concern is in the food chain. If we find out that the supply lines are deteriorated, that certain kinds of foods are unavailable because of climate change, because of the degradation of the environments in which that food has grown, then we're gonna start thinking seriously. We see the price of whatever it is go up dramatically and we associate that with the environment. Then we're gonna get more concerned. That's what I think is gonna, you agree? Yeah. I think everything that happens is, in terms of fires and floods and more and more disasters that we can reasonably say are due at least in part to climate change, more and more people are like, well, okay, what are we gonna do about it? And that extends not to just making personal shifts, like I said, buying an electric vehicle or riding a bike more or eating less meat, but also to politicians who actually make these issues top of their list. That's why it has not happened today so far. Like I said, Biden did certainly camp in a climate change in a way that you didn't see in prior presidential cycles, but it was not his main issue. But he definitely, he made it a serious issue and he's now hopefully going through the implementation phase of his rhetoric from the campaign. Yeah. Well, it's gotta stay high on the list of priorities. It is the most threatening thing we have. Thank you very much, Dan, for coming on. You wanna make any closing pitch to the world here? What is, what, what would you leave them with today? Yeah. I guess I'll close with kind of this middle ground message that I'd like to really kind of emphasize. Don't become complacent, don't become full of despair, but take action personally and elect good politicians who are gonna take action on our behalf collectively. There's that middle ground between informed action and becoming is so full of despair that you can't do anything. Yeah. Good advice. Thank you very much. Sam Hunt, an environmental, energy lawyer and policy man and keep doing your work and we'll circle back and find out how these things are doing later. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you. Looking forward to it. Aloha.