 Aloha, I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. I represent the Pune and Cahoo Districts on the Big Island. And I'm your host at the Ruderman Round Table, a think tech program we do every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. My guest today is Henry Curtis. Thank you for being with us, Henry. Thank you. Henry Curtis has been with Life of the Land since 1994 and has been Executive Director of Life of the Land since 1995. He's affiliated with many community organizations and has represented Life of the Land before the PUC in over 40 regulatory proceedings, as well as on other occasions before the Bureau of Land and Natural Resources, the Honolulu Zoning Board, and Appeals Court. This year, he received the Church of the Crossroads Martin Luther King, Jr. Lifetime Peacemaker Award for Social Justice Activism. And I didn't even read half of the stuff that he's done. Thank you so much for being with us, Henry. Thank you, and that award actually sounds scary because it sounds like my lifetime is done and just getting started. I'm glad you clarified that. The rumors of your demise were exaggerated. So we hope to talk today both about good government and also about the exciting developments in our electrical utility environment here in Hawaii. Let's start with good government. Do we need reforms in our government or is everything fine the way it is? I think that everything is not fine the way it is, but legislating it is very difficult because you've got all these people with money who want things done and they want to figure out ways of getting money into political hands in order to get things done. And with so much money available, the more you try to regulate it through reporting requirements, the more they figure out ways to get around it. For example, do I give the money to your daughter's foundation to support her efforts and then let you know that I've slid the money that way? There are so many different ways around it. So perhaps the solution is what's done with toxic emissions, which is it's more serious to fail to report than it is to pollute. That is, if you pollute, there's a penalty, but there's a much bigger penalty if you don't report your pollution. So you could do the same thing with campaign finance reform. You say, yes, we don't want you to bribe politicians, but there's a really stiff penalty if you don't tell the public that you've attempted to bribe a politician or give money to get your thing passed, if you know what I mean. So why hasn't reforms aimed at fixing this problem? Why haven't those reforms worked so far? Well, one of the issues is that it's really hard to get politicians who are favoring the status quo to support changing the system to give competitors a leg up to replace them. So it would be easier for the state legislators to impose restrictions on county legislators, but very difficult to get them to do anything for state legislators. One way around that would be to force, would be candidates running for office to sign pledges such as I will pledge to get this following bill through the legislature, and if I don't, I'll give $1,000 to every voter in my district. Then you might actually, if you get enough of them committing that before they get in, then you might actually get some reforms out at the other end. You might be able to hold them to their campaign balances, you're saying? And that's interesting what you said about state government. I mean, for example, things like term limits and the sunshine laws have been enacted by state legislature to apply to everybody, but the state legislature. Yes. And there are so many ways around things. Even at the county levels, there are way too many ways around. So you just have to really put the penalty in for not reporting. Another thing is at conference committee at the end of the year, there's an enormous amount of horse trading going on to get one person's bill through or another person's bill through. Conference committee would be very easy to say, anybody submitting testimony during the conference committee has to file it publicly before they hand it to the legislator and has to put a note, the first paragraph that says, I could have submitted this during the session and chose not to, or I didn't because the legislature changed the bill in conference committee. And therefore, you get real time analysis of what's going on. Years ago, my partner suggested that conference committees have microphones, and it's careful what you wish for because a couple of years later, they got microphones, just nobody used them. Conference committee is a funny part of the legislative process. I think it's the part where it's hardest for the public to see what's going on, if not impossible, to see what's really going on at that time. And more and more, it appears that the stuff before conference committee is just performant and getting ready to bring things to horse trading days. And so in fact, when you have non-hearings in some committees or three-minute time rules or two-minute time rules, it's all like, let's get this through the public part so we can begin trading. And we have to move away from that. So what can be done to fix the problem? Well, one way of saying is if what you're doing, if a neutral party looked at what you were doing and said that based on all your connections, all your trading, all your money, all your whatever, that it appears that you're trying to influence legislation and you don't report it, then you pay a very stiff penalty. And your second or third penalty you may face, jail time. That would correct the issue. To talking about severe penalties for failing to report, let's say campaign donations. Yeah, anything that a corporation or a union or a nonprofit would do to affect the outcome, even if it doesn't fit into how we currently term lobby? I had introduced a bill this year along those lines saying lobbyists and corporations cannot make contributions during session. So that at least while we're considering their proposals and their bills at least during that time, I think that's a relatively small step. You think something like that would be helpful or would just move the contributions to other times of the year? It would be very helpful because right now we have a system where I'll take an example in Florida because we just faced with NextEra trying to buy our local utility. There the attorney general announced to NextEra, I'm investigating your company and then received a multi-thousand dollar donation and then said, I'm not investigating your company. So that is an example of something that might be hard to discover because there the attorney general is elected. But here it was threatening to do something in exchange for getting money for something she wanted. So if you're in office and your office is part time as our legislature is, then you should not be fundraising during session. All right, great. So tell me, is social media useful in trying to affect some of these changes? Social media has really radicalized the world, I think. 10 years ago, when you brought a tape recorder and a camera into rooms, people were like, what are you doing? Why are you here? What's up? And it was funny, it was in the New York Times yesterday saying the whole world of blogs and Twitters and TV and newspapers, it's all sort of getting intermingled, that people are crossing currents. It's just how you get a message out. And the danger is not being first, but being the first with the accurate story. There's too much of just trying to be first in something and then a lot of misinformation comes out. So there's an ethics that needs to occur also. But I think social media is really the wave of the future. And I knew a lot of people who would read the newspaper and say, well, heck, every editorial I don't agree with. So why am I paying to prop up a newspaper that is not supporting what I believe in? So I know a lot of people who left watching the newspapers and now suddenly newspapers are giving you what happened yesterday. And well, you're lucky because I'm the bigger one than we get what happened two days ago. Our newspaper is recently sold to the Honolulu branch of it. It's honestly two or three days later, even a local news company. So yeah, you're right. You're more likely to hear about it in a timely manner on social media. So tell me, you have a speaking of blogs. You have a blog. It's called Mililani. Ililani Media. The best way of remembering is Mililani minus the M. So it's Ililani Media. It means like when swept rain or it's a sunny day and it starts raining. I see. And how long have you been doing that blog for? On and off for about 10 years. I became serious about two and a half years ago when I interviewed a PUC commissioner and I sought to get it out into the mainstream. And I found that interviews were not really something accepted by other media to publish in community voices. So in September of 2013, I started writing my blog on a virtual daily basis. I see. And I've read it sometimes. It's very informative. I really appreciate what you write about. Do you find a lot of people engaged with you in terms of comments and feedback? Do you think you have a lot of readers? I find it's the people who don't make comments online that you discover it. For example, when Lifeland was involved in the next year of merger proceeding, next year would put out their daily list of what's happening in all the newspapers. And so they passed it out to all their executives and Elie Laune Media was one of the things that they put out. And I've talked to other people within the energy and environmental sector who read it. So it's obviously not a biggest blast if I was writing about Bianca or Trump. I would get probably more hits. But it fills a niche that was not being covered prior to it. And I would say in terms of, are you mostly focused on energy issues or is that just what? I would say technology. Technology, yeah. Military toxics I've covered, telecommunications, some on agriculture, but sort of more the nerdy science environmentalism. Primarily energy almost exclusively Hawaii. Okay. I do think it serves a niche and I think for me in terms of energy issues, it's the place to go. I mean to get the best independent perspective and certainly first. So you mentioned the next era proceeding. This is a very auspicious time to have you on our show because we had a really big news regarding the energy situation in Hawaii last week. Tell me about that. Who is next era? What just happened and what does that mean? Next era is a very, very large mainland company with 900 subsidiaries that operates Florida Power and Light and 900 other companies. And they looked at Hawaii and thought, wow, it would be great to take us over, take over the HECO companies, HECO, MECO and Helco. And eventually the Public Utilities Commission opened the largest proceeding they've ever had with 34 parties, over 100,000 pages of testimony over 50 witnesses, 22 days of hearings. So not quite as big as, say, Hawaii which had more hearings, but we had more parties and it was a really intense fight. And the PUC on Friday ruling on multiple issues, you can't pigeonhole it and say it's one issue. It dealt with rates, it dealt with costs, it dealt with benefits, it dealt with risks, it dealt with employment, it dealt with competition. But on the whole basis of it, Next Era has the financial muscle to take us over, but they don't have the public interest values that we have. They can't give us what we need to move forward. Now, were you surprised by the PUC's ruling? I found it extremely difficult to tea leaf the commission to figure out where they were going and what they were doing. Our role is to present information to them. They were very secretive about their deliberations. It's up to the commissioners to make the decision. I think they made the right decision, but it was very hard to guess how it was gonna come out. All right, well, we're gonna take a short break here. We'll be right back with Henry Curtis from Life of the Land. This is Senator Russell Ruderman at the Ruderman Roundtable on Think Tech, Hawaii. And we'll be right back. Thanks for joining us. You're watching Think Tech, Hawaii. Meeting people we may not otherwise have met, helping us understand and appreciate the good things about Hawaii. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha, Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at three in the afternoon. Do not tune in in the morning. My topic is energy efficiency. It sounds dry as heck, but it's not. We're paying $5 billion a year for imported oil. My job is to shave that, shave that, shave that down in homes and buildings, while delivering better comfort, better light, better air conditioning, better everything. So if you're interested in your future, you'd better tune in to me. Three o'clock every other Monday, Code Green, Aloha, and thank you very much. Aloha, this is State Senator Russell Ruderman back at the Ruderman Roundtable. Welcome back, we're here with Henry Curtis talking about good government issues and especially electricity issues with big news here in Hawaii as far as electric utilities go. So we were talking about next era and just the other day, four days ago, the PUC rejected what would have been the largest merger we've ever seen in Hawaii that would have a profound impact on our electric utilities. And I personally think, Life Land personally thinks that it was good that next era came here. They were like a catalyst. A catalyst is a chemical that is needed for a process but does not be, isn't changed because of the process. So they came, they got us all fired up. They got us all thinking about things. They got new players to come out. They got us to talk to each other. They got us to build coalitions and now they've left. So they may not have liked spending several tens of millions here and then paying 90 million on their way out, but it helped us. So we should thank them for that, right? We should appreciate next era. Yes. Thanks. So what does the decision mean? We're basically back to where we were before Hawaii Electric Industries owns our utility on three islands and has nothing changed or what happens next? What happens next is there were a lot of dockets of regulatory proceedings happening behind the scenes in other areas. Now they get to come into the forefront and we get to really look at how we move forward, what it is that we want our utilities to look like, whether we want to have co-ops or municipals, the business model, whether we want to have increased distributed solar or centralized solar, we get to really plan where we're going. And you say we, who's we? Are the people of Hawaii or electric industries? Who gets the plan? Anybody who wants to get involved has to file a motion to intervene before the Public Utilities Commission. They are the policymaker. The legislature writes the laws but then turns everything over to the Public Utilities Commission. They handle their things. They may occasionally ask the public what they feel, but it's really the people or organizations who file to intervene in proceedings that have an impact. The Public Utilities Commission allows individuals in, so you don't have to be an organization. You don't have to be an incorporated organization. You can be. So there's maybe a dozen, two dozen major players at the Public Utilities Commission, the state, the utilities, and a whole bunch of people who regularly intervene. Boy, no, I was the intervener at the PUC once. So I think it was 1989, the very first integrated resources. Planning docket. And I gotta give you credit. It's so much work, so much reading, so much writing, and so much attending meetings. And to be involved in multiple dockets, and I was on a very amateur level back then. I was just trying to be an environmental representative to this new idea. So what comes next? I think the two things that come next are first, the Hawaiian Electric plan for the future, the five-year, 20-year, 30-year plan for the future. And that obviously is gonna be developed in conjunction with all the other interveners. And it will have to be approved by the Public Utilities Commission. That's one thing. Now wait, is that a separate docket? Yes. That's a separate docket that will now go forward. It's been moving forward, but it will have a bigger role in the play. A second docket that has been moving forward is, how do you handle the vast number of rooftop solar systems we have? If you consider not the output of each system, but the number of systems, then 99% of all the power plants in this state are rooftop solar. So we have a far greater amount than any other state, and it's a question of how do you handle ever-increasing amounts? So we went through a two-phase docket, or regulatory proceeding. The first phase ended with the PUC saying, okay, we're ending that energy metering. We have to figure out how to change the grid to handle more. We're now in this second phase, which is a very complex and very ongoing effort where we're meeting on a regular basis to talk about how to advance. So how will this impact the Big Island, for example? Well, one of the things that I find very interesting that Hawaii has that not many states have is the utility does not have a geographic monopoly. That is to say, they can operate on the Big Island as helco, and anybody, whether it's Nelha, or whether it's Parker Ranch, or whether it's Hawaii Island Energy Co-op, can say, we have two ways of establishing ourselves. First, we can request permission to buy a section of the grid, and the utility can say, yeah, thank you, goodbye. The other is, you can set up your own system, and you can operate in their footprint. So that'd be using their power lines, or you'd have to have your own power lines? Parker Ranch analyzed it and said, if we had to build our own power lines, it would only add 6% to the cost, and it would still beat the helco price. So since the Big Island has a number of communities with long spaces between them, individual communities can create local power grids and can actually undercut the utility, increase reliability, and localize and democratize the issue. It takes one community to step forward and actually do it. We have plans, HIEC, Parker Ranch, Nelha, others are talking about it. Even Maui Community College was considering it one time. University of Hawaii at Minoa may consider it, but somebody has to step forward and say, okay, we're doing the first one. And interestingly enough, Camp Smith is the first one. Camp Smith in IAEA created a microgrid. So in case the utility grid goes down, the microgrid will survive. And it's an outer microgrid. So in case the outer microgrid fails, they have two inner microgrids that will survive. So it's a layered system, and that offers far more reliability than just having one system where if something goes wrong in Campbell Industrial Park, the entire island goes down. So you were talking about the great distances on the Big Island. Forgive me for focusing on the Big Island, but a little bit. Big Island has higher rates than the other islands. Is that because of those long distances involved, do you think? We have a large transmission network to maintain compared to the number of customers. Is that one of the reasons our rates are higher? I think there are a number of factors. One of them is the fact that the island is very spread out. Another is that each island has a very different mix of renewables. So it's very difficult, given that the prices jump up and down for each type of renewable, to say that one island has abnormally high relative to another island. I think it's safe to say that the Big Island is the best place to test microgrids and the best place to put them into communities and see how it's done. I believe that the feeling is that Pune probably already has some smaller pockets of people who are off the grid. And one way of looking at a microgrid is to say that if your house had a battery in it such that your house could stay lit if the grid goes down, then your house is a microgrid itself. So we need to really think about microgrids in a totally new way. Some microgrids will say we are the power and the grid will provide the backup in case we go down. Others say the grid was them and will provide the backup. Others say we have two systems and whichever is cheapest at the moment, we should go that way. So the whole microgrid concept is exploding. So in Pune, in particular, in a lot of the rural parts of the Big Island, we have a lot of people who basically are their own microgrid. As you say, we have our own solar power or other generating systems and they're not connected to the grid because in most cases, the grid simply doesn't come to their property. But then you also have the situation of people who are connected to the grid who are considering this sort of microgrid or having their own backup system. One example is if you look at the town of Pahoa, it's about a mile and a half long. It's about a mile wide if you consider it across the street to Haas, the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Sciences. If you look at island naturals, you look at Haas, you look at open space, you look at roof space, you see that that might be an ideal community to first test building a microgrid. You have a whole bunch of commercial customers who would love to say, if I can lower my electric bill, maybe I can offer a better deal for customers. Maybe we can economically improve the community. I like that idea. And I'm very impressed as an Oahu resident of your knowledge of the Big Island in Pune in particular. Thank you. And I did just see you heading over from the Big Island. We loved the Big Island. So Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative is a organization that was formed a year and a half, two years ago in the hopes that the next era merger would be rejected. And in the hopes that perhaps wine electric might be open to selling their Big Island electric grid. Is that a fair assessment? I mean, what do you think of that situation? I would think it is more likely that the utility would sell you their grid if they began losing customers around the islands from a bunch of different microgrids. And then they would be in the situation where their full grid would become either a stranded cost and they would lose it or they could sell it. So I think the microgrid has to come before Helco is going to consider giving it up. Microgrid would be necessary to get them to one. Yes. By the way, full disclosure, I am a board member of Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative. So we've been here talking with Henry Curtis of Life of the Land. Tell me, Henry, if someone wants to get involved in Life of the Land and or follow your blog, how can they find you and how can they get involved? The Life of Land is www.lifeoftheland.org. Lifeoftheland.org. Yes. How about your blog? Blog is I-L-I-L-A-N-I.media. Illilani.media. At.org. Illilani.media.org. Just put in Henry. Just put in Henry Curtis in a Google search. Henry Curtis blog is the best way to find it, okay. And do you have memberships in Life of the Land or is it not exactly that? No, we have supporters. Supporters, okay, so anyone could be a supporter. We were founded in February of 1970 by 15 women. So it's great. We've been around a long time and hopefully we'll be around for a long time. And thank you for the work that you do. As a legislator, you're one of the friendly faces we see in the hallways. Also one of the people I know that are working for, you know, the Pono Future for Hawai'is. Thank you so much. We're here with Henry Curtis. We're here at the Ruderman Roundtable on Think Tech, Hawaii, where you can join us every other Tuesday at two o'clock or follow us after the fact online at Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman saying aloha and mahala for joining us. Aloha, mahalo.