 Good afternoon. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's energy in America. I'm your host today, Carl Kampanya. I'm sitting in today for Mr. J. Fidel. Looking forward to having a good conversation today. The topic of our conversation is going to be the eventual ban on fossil fuel vehicles. For some of you that might sound far-reaching, but it may not be as far as you think. I think it's going to be a great conversation. We're going to learn as much as we can in this. This conversation is going to be helped along by Mr. Jeff Kissell. He is with the Energy Policy Research Company, and he's going to be bringing us through a series of slides, helping us understand what we're talking about and how we're moving forward in this progress. As we are looking at renewable energy, renewable energy sources, renewable energy uses, energy efficiency, and how we're proceeding. It's a large conversation that isn't just Hawaii. It isn't just the United States of America. It is global. We're going to learn a bit about that. Let me introduce to the show Mr. Jeff Kissell. Jeff, can you hear us? You're just fine. I'm coming to you from the freeway system of Metropolitan Los Angeles today. Unfortunately, I wish I were in Hawaii with you. Certainly, we look forward to you returning to Hawaii when you can. Thank you for joining us via the phone. Also, thank you for this conversation. I'm looking forward to learning what you've been working on and really what we can expect in the coming years. For starters, can you give us an intro before we get into some slides? Can you give us a bit of an intro into what this discussion is? I kicked it off a little bit, but if you can give us an intro before we jump into the slides. You know, the Energy Policy Research Foundation, we are a non-political, non-partisan organization that presents our findings to everyone. We aren't funded by any particular organization. We don't have a point of view that we're trying to get across. So what we do is we try and look at the topics of today as they relate to energy and as objectively as we can and help people understand what they need to understand so that they can make informed decisions. You know, I kind of like to equate what we do to evaluating whether or not you buy a Timex or a Rolex. You know, if you want a Timex for a few dollars, you can tell Timex just as well as you can with a piece of jewelry called a Rolex. Both are legitimate choices. As long as you know that one costs you are trying to do at the foundation. So you're talking about, in many ways in that regard, that sounds like a form versus function argument. Is that in line with the thinking of it? And if you're advocating a certain point of view for public policy, you need to be reciprocating that everybody go to an elect. You need to understand the consequences of being as a wonderful place for a place and a function. It's just got a cost. Absolutely. Within Hawaii, definitely. It's been a large part of the conversation for a while now, really going back to the 70s, but it's really taken really a greater form in policy and in our daily culture. And I know there's been a lot of topics of conversation that have evolved around energy, whether it's transportation, energy, or electricity. So what we're talking about here is the transportation side of it. And as we transition away from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles and other means, is that accurate? That's exactly right. And if you've got the cover page up from my slide I understand that some of our participants today are coming to us through podcasts. So we're going to do what we used to do in the old days here in Los Angeles and have a little color radio where we describe our slides to everybody. So if I seem to be dwelling on the description of the slide, it's for the benefit of listeners versus viewers. That's right. So okay. So at the moment, we were just a second ago, we were looking at a picture of you. Now we have a picture of both of us. So we want to go back to your first slide and then have you kick off. I'll do a quick description of the slide. And then you can kick off the slide and go from there. So we can get a picture back to the slide. Here we are. All right. So we've got, the first slide says the renewable economy, energy costs by the numbers, Hawaii's unique opportunity. And this has been put together by you, Mr. Jeff Kissel, Distinguished Fellow, Energy Policy Research Foundation, Washington, D.C. So that's the slide. The slide Carl describes my title, not my state. I can assure you. There you go. The picture, just to get the picture, is it's a picture of a beautiful beach of Hawaii with people playing on the beach and in the water. And it actually makes me want to run to the beach right now. So whether we do that. So please begin the conversation with your first slide and the renewable economy. The renewable economy, just like the physical economy, has parameters there. And you can describe it in terms of numbers and dollars and quality of life. It's not just a political concept. And you don't have to believe or not believe in global warming rising sea levels. You can look at the numbers and decide whether it makes sense because Hawaii is surrounded, obviously, by water. We can confine what we do, and we can collect data, and that data is good for drawing conclusions for places outside of Hawaii. Bear with me for a moment. We'll talk about the news of today. And we go to the next slide, and it's a picture of a shutdown fuel pump in Europe. And if you notice the sign on it says out of service. Yes, that's right. Well, it's because Britain and France are in the process of phasing out gasoline and diesel as transportation fuels for their surface fleets. Now, have they been able to... One big piece of that just to jump in here, one big piece, in order to make that happen, is significant infrastructure, right? You need the infrastructure in place for the electrical side, for hydrogen side, for the other options other than the petroleum oil, right? So how long of a process are we looking at with that? That's, to some people's view, a short process because the simple view is all you got to do is put the charger in your garage or in a public parking stall, and you have a renewable and compliant electric fleet. And I'll tell you later why that's not true, but before I do that, I want to go to the next slide, which helps us put in a common denominator. All right. I want to explain how energy is measured. And you see on that slide, there's a big red BTU with some arrows running around it, measure things in a common way. We measure currency in terms of dollars or pounds or euros. We measure weight in terms of ounces and pounds or kilograms. Well, we measure energy in terms of British thermal units. To the next slide, I actually tell people what a BTU is all about, one degree Fahrenheit. That's really quite important to know, because you can raise a pound of water, one degree Fahrenheit, by lighting some gasoline under it in sunlight. And you can measure vehicles across the pavement. To move a vehicle across the pavement, doesn't matter what drives the vehicle. So if we go to it, then people need to understand a worthwhile sacrifice, to this here and say, we're not saying we're just telling you what the cost is. Let's explore that a little bit more. We're going to have to go to our break in a minute or so, but let's explore a little bit more. So if I heard you correctly, in order to go with a Tesla, which is an electric vehicle, you're saying the actual BTU or the actual dollar amount related to the energy in order to move that vehicle is twice as much as it would be in a petroleum fuel car? Is that what I heard you say? Yes. If you're looking for the lowest cost, and I'm not suggesting that that's the right answer, the lowest cost way to move a single driver around the roads anywhere is in on Pacific or in terms of the fuel consumption, not the societal cost, the fuel cost. Okay. Okay. So when you consider both global warming, renewable energy, that's a whole different argument. And that's what I'd like to discuss with you after the break. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's not just global warming because that's something that's hard for people to quantify into their pocketbook. And if you're telling them that, well, in order to make the world safer, you have to pay twice as much for something, people aren't going to want to do that. So we need to find a different approach, it seems to me, to how we understand this. So I appreciate definitely this conversation so we can better understand different ways of thinking about this. And let me remind everyone again, this is an institute that is, it's a nonpartisan institute that is not looking for to establish an agenda or to advance an agenda. You are analyzing data that you are collecting and just letting us know what that data is telling us, correct? We don't care what the cost is, we want you out of the gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. And that's why this is a timely topic for discussion. Yeah, absolutely. So okay, we're going to take a quick break. So thank you again. Thank you all for joining us. And thank you, Jeff. This is Energy in America. So Think Tech Hawaii is Energy in America. I'm your host, Carl Campania. And today we're discussing the eventual ban on fossil fuel vehicles with Mr. Jeff Kissel of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. We'll be back in one minute. Thank you so much. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Ollello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Energy in America. Thank you again for joining us. Today's discussion is the eventual ban on fossil fuels or of fossil fuel vehicles. With our guest today on the phone, via the phone today, we welcome once again Mr. Jeff Kissel of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. We are learning about the transition, the challenges, and how to understand and how to get there from here when it comes to energy, when it comes to fossil fuel in our vehicles versus electric and other options. So once again, thank you for joining us, Jeff. What we were just discussing had to do with a firm, the unit of measure, and the cost of energy being utilized by an electric vehicle versus the fossil fuel vehicle. We also have your slide that we've been going through. So just as a summary, we want to be able to advance the conversation. Your foundation is a non-partisan foundation with regards to non-partisan and no agenda entity trying to just discover the data and report the data and then go with what the data tells us. And heading in the direction of fossil fuel, I guess the ban on fossil fuels, and trying to make sure that as an island state, we are observing a path that is more sustainable for the people of Hawaii. And that is the overall goal. So how do we achieve that and how do we use the data and how do we use science in order to achieve that? So that's sort of my summary of what we're discussing. And Jeff, again, welcome back and let's dig back into your slides. I know you've got a couple of slides you want to get through and then we've got a bit of a controversial conversation to get to, which I'm looking forward to. So let's get the next slide up and then we can have Jeff jump in. What we're looking at right here is the slide that says, in Hawaii, electric cars run on 80 percent oil. That's less than one third of the energy in each barrel of oil is converted to electricity to charge and operate electric vehicles. Their average miles of oil equivalent per passenger is less than half that of a Honda Civic. That's the slide that we have up. So Jeff, please help us understand, explain what you mean by this slide so we can better understand that from a day-to-day basis. Well, we're looking at a shiny new red Tesla. Yes. We see a lot of them here in Southern California because they get to ride in the high occupancy vehicle lane as opposed to out there with the rest of the crowd at half the speed. And what we need to understand is today in the United States, if you're driving a Volt or a Tesla or a Leaf or any electric powered vehicle, essentially, if you want to look at the averages, 90 percent of what you are using to power your vehicle is fossil fuel in orange, comes from mostly natural gas and coal. The only place where you're really driving a clean electric is a place like Washington State, where most of the power is coming from high coal. Okay. So explain that. So explain that. So why is it that 80 to 90 percent of what we're driving, of what we're using and even an electric vehicle is still fossil fuel based? Explain how we get to that number. Well, we charge our electric vehicles with electricity. We make our electricity from coal and natural gas in America. Ninety percent of the fuel in America is not renewable. It's fossil based. Okay. Unless you've got a massive solar collector on your home, you have to use power from the grid to charge your electric vehicle. And even if you use some power from your solar collector at home, you still are using some grid power. That's fossil fuel based. That's right. And here in Hawaii, a large percentage of our fossil fuel based electricity also comes from imported oil, not just coal and a very limited liquid natural gas, right? Why we have the best of times and the worst of times. We have the best renewable percentage in the country at almost 20 percent. And we're using the worst fuel imaginable to make our electricity boil and coal. Right. So we are, we are, we are making a dirtier, more polluting electricity than the rest of the rest of the United States. Exactly. And part of the point of that is as we look at, you know, we spent a lot of time here in Hawaii over the last several years, almost a decade now, trying to address electricity and putting solar panels on our roofs to reduce our electric bills and so forth, all along, knowing that we're only addressing about 30 percent of that barrel with this transportation fuels being the other 70 percent. And that includes everything from jet fuel down to gasoline for our vehicles. So now we're talking about how do we transition away from those fossil fuel vehicles here in Hawaii. So I'll give it back to you so you can jump back into your slides and we can go from there. Well, I mean, it's just a myth buster. You know, it's important to do that to set the context of this conversation. No matter what kind of renewable energy vehicle you are driving today, it is fueled in large part from fossil fuels. And if you go to the next slide, you see a picture of the car that I drive, which is a Toyota. Oh, sorry, I've got a slide out of order, but let's let's look at the next slide, which is the Toyota Mirai. That's the car I drive today. It's the same color as mine. It's blue for those of us on color radio. Yes, there you go. It's a big car. The hydrogen and the hydrogen that is in the fuel tank of this car actually made from natural gas. So if you're in a fuel cell vehicle, nearly every one of them methane based hydrogen. So you're almost at 100% fossil fuel. There are a few that that use renewables to make some hydrogen, but that's an extreme minority, less than 1%. All right, now this goes back to that infrastructure question of then we're going to have to get hydrogen pumps throughout the, you know, into the system, right? Into the networking. So they got them here. And so they got them here. And so in California, I have no problem finding hydrogen for this car, but it's all made from methane. Okay, what about Hawaii? Which is Hawaii, there's no sources of naturally occurring hydrogen in Hawaii. And it's a lot more cost effective to make electricity for the grid as a first choice than to make hydrogen for the vehicles. Right. So therefore we try to offset that in regard. Yeah. So what's the real way to save fossil fuel? The real way to save fossil fuel. And in terms of the math, I'm not suggesting that public policy is on the next slide is to put people in conveyances that use less resources per person, whether they are renewable or not. Okay, so this is an example of conveyances. Trucks use about just to move freight. Trucks use about one fourth of the fuel per ton that cars do. And get to rail, which uses one fourth of the fuel of trucks. And then I threw an inner barge up here because Hawaii has an inner island barge network. You're down by almost one fourth again. If you put it on a barge and drag it across the surface of the water. Right. And it's important. But we in Hawaii have an opportunity to get people out of their cars by focusing on the benefits, the economic as well as social benefits of rail, improving the environmental and fossil fuel impact by a factor of at least eight. Okay. So it's time to start supporting the benefits of rail and not denying them because of some perceived excess capital cost. Because the benefits of rail in terms of dollars, and I'm not discussing the social benefits are overwhelming. Right. I'll agree. I'll agree with that point. I'll agree with that point and say that I'm one of the proponents in the state for multimodal transportation. Make sure that we've got various different means to get people around, whether it's inter-island or intra-island, to making sure that we can have multiple ways of doing that. And competition is in a huge part of capitalism as well. And so that's a big part of the conversation also. So whether we're getting the train in, which we are getting the train in, but the challenge and the question for the train, and I know you know this, I think this is the controversial part, I believe, the challenge with the train is not what the overall economic value is. It's what today's cost is based on what they promised it would be and those overruns and how no one seems to care, as far as the government is concerned anyway, and that's what some people believe anyway, about what those cost overruns are. So if we thought it was going to be... Which is basically an irrelevant argument when you put it in the context of the fuel that it saves and the resources that it saves. Right. My next slide has a couple of bullet points on that topic, but the one point I want to get across is that the talk about truncating rails, stopping it because of the cost, is taking the absolute worst decision that the... From an economic standpoint that the society can take because it reduces the ridership. Put one extra person in the seat of a car and you double the miles per passenger of a car. Put 85 extra people in the seats of rail cars. Increase the miles per passenger of 85, but now I... Because we're running short on time, solving two problems at Watt Stadium. I was there when they built it with the... We have about 30 seconds to say no. ...and opportunity to rebuild the old Honolulu Stadium and make it a rail destination near the university. Right. Well, what's great about that is... I have to keep doing. Yeah. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Unfortunately, we are at the end. I have to cut you off there, but I agree with you completely. And that actually coincides with my show earlier today, where we were talking about really a new idea, a new vision for a low-cost stadium and utilizing it in that same way as a destination. So, okay. I apologize that we have to stop at this point. This is a fascinating conversation. We can learn so much more, but this is Think Tech Hawaii. This is Energy in America. And thank you very much to Mr. Jeff Kissell from the Energy Policy Research Foundation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to the staff and the crew for making this happen. Be a phone, and we will see you next time. Mahalo.