 Good afternoon, Howard Wiig, Cold Green Think Tech, Hawaii. Welcome to another scintillating program this time featuring none other than the honorable Dr. Victoria Keener, Senior Research Fellow for the East West Center and in her capacity today as the Chair of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission. We read more and more and more about the need for resilience. We've seen disasters in our Northwest, Canada, Siberia, our South, Central China. The list goes on and on and on. And I think a lot of us will agree the list is going to continue to go on and on and on. We unfortunately ain't seen nothing yet but there's a whole bunch of us working to ameliorate that situation. And front and center is Dr. Victoria Keener. Thanks so much, Dr. Forth, joining us today. So why don't you start by seeing something about the mission of the Climate Change Commission and the way you operate and then we'll get into specifics later. Sure, well, maybe I'll skip to slide four, which gives a little bit of information about what the Honolulu Climate Change Commission is and what we do and how long we've been around. So actually I'll correct you on one thing first. I am the outgoing Chair. So I served over the last year as Chair and the last month actually transitioned over to Dr. Chip Fletcher, who will be the Chair for this upcoming year. So... Let me interject. Chip Fletcher, one of the world's leading climatologists. You're very, very honored to have him on board with you. He is literally worldwide known. Yeah, he's definitely our go-to for sea level rise both in Hawaii and in the region, not just with the physical science, but also social impacts of climate change and sea level rise and looking at planning and policies as well. So he's a great resource on the commission and for the state and the region. But if we go back to slide four for a second about the commission. So the Climate Change Commission started in 2018 and it's actually voted on by City Charter. So we're in the City Charter and our charge is to gather the latest science and information on climate change impacts to Hawaii and to advise the Climate Change Sustainability and Resilience Office in the city, the mayor and the city council and the executive departments about the future climate scenarios as relevant to current and future planning and policy and the impacts that we could see across different sectors that are relevant to city planning. So there are five members. The State Energy Office and the Resilience Office were very, very, very closely. So we're deeply aligned there. So you're in good hands. Yeah, they're wonderful. And they're independent from the Climate Change Commission but at the same time they serve as kind of our key office for liaising with the city. So there are five members that are appointed for five year terms and we have expertise in different things. If you can go forward one slide. We have five members. So this is the previous iteration where I was the chair. My background is in hydroclimatology and kind of interdisciplinary applications of climate science into policy and management My vice chair was Dr. Rosie Alagado. She works at UH and she does a lot of ecosystem work and works with indigenous Hawaiian communities. McKenna Kauffman who was actually the previous chair for the last two years. Dr. McKenna Kauffman is at University of Hawaii in the Economics Department. She's a specialist in greenhouse gas and energy policies. As I said, Dr. Chip Fletcher is a new chair who's a sea level rise specialist and works very heavily in climate change education and conservation and community resilience. And finally Bettina Menert who's a green building design leader and works in construction and design in Hawaii. So we've also had quite a few outputs so far. So the kind of guidance that we've released has included a briefing just about climate change impacts in the state, sea level rise guidance, shoreline setback guidance kind of building on existing shoreline setback regulations. We put out a memo on a one water framework. So integrating all different types of fresh water across different departments into a single management framework. We put out climate change and financial risk guidance for the city. More recently, we've done a climate and social equity guidance document and one looking at the social costs of carbon. And the one we're working on still that has yet to be released is a guidance paper on climate change in the construction industry. Impressive. So what are some of the specific programs that you work with then? I'm looking in particular that encourage density and mixed use Yeah, so I can give a little bit of why don't I start with kind of how I see the commission what we've done over the last year and how it's being useful for the city and state. And then I can move into some of the products that have come out of the CCSR including the climate action plan and the resilience strategy and we can go into those from there. Absolutely. All right, so I'll start with kind of how I see the commission working. We're supposed to be a trusted and authoritative source of science-based climate information that's relevant to planning. And kind of in the academic lingo what you call a group that works across both academic science and so researchers, community members, decision makers what you call that is a boundary organization. And so if we go to slide two we actually see ourselves as a climate boundary organization in the Connolly the Climate Change Commission. And what that does is provide an interface between those three groups. So academic science to community to policy makers. So whether in basic science you would just stay mostly in that kind of publication and data role this you really work across both the impacts in the community work and getting the right knowledge to inform different policies. Victoria, you're a boundary crossing organization. Right, yeah, that's kind of what the term has come to mean and it's kind of performative. So if you label yourself a boundary organization you can act as one. So other famous climate boundary organizations global ones you might know the IPCC of course the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So they work with creating scientific guidance translating that into impacts in different sectors and then creating guidance for policy makers as well. So that's on a global scale. And I really see the Honolulu Climate Change Commission as taking that down to the local level. So instead of working on global projections of climate in different sectors we're really looking at the local level. And the two major roles that I think that the boundary organization in this case serves is being supportive of policy makers and planners and being critical of different policy debates with the science-based providing science-based information to that. So that's just kind of a little bit of background on how I see us. But one of the things that the CCSR put out in 2019 was the Ola Oahu resilience strategy. So if we go ahead to ever slide that is seven we can go over the four areas that came out and this was an extremely inclusive progress process that interacted with thousands of people over the course of a year to inform this both community members, planners, leaders, academics, people all across different parts of society on the island. So they came out with four resilient strategies for the island. And the four were long-term affordability for island residents, resilience in the face of natural disasters, climate change adaptation and mitigation and leveraging the leadership of communities that we already have. So a lot of this was within each of these four categories I think about 44 actions that came out of this were identified in terms of increasing the long-term resilience, short-term and long-term resilience of Ola Oahu. And so these strategies have been identified and really where we need to go next is how to improve them. The next thing that came out if you go to slide eight very recently was the one climate, one Oahu climate action plan. And this is a five-year plan going from 2020 to 25. It starts to really identify if you will where the rubber meets the road in these strategies that it's going to take to reduce green house gases, meet our energy goals and our emissions reductions from both at the city and the state level. And they identified nine major actions that you can see here on the right of this slide. So some of those are encouraging density and mix land use strategically enabling multiple modes of transportation, encouraging mode shift through parking efficiency, electrifying the city fleet, reducing energy demand by increasing efficiency, maximizing efficiency and renewables through city operations, expanding renewable energies, promoting waste prevention and maximizing waste resources efficiency. But really where we need to go next is how to make these happen. We've identified what needs to happen but the specific actions I think is where it gets really tricky. Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm with the Hawaii State Energy Office and our goals are very, very similar to this because we're deeply involved in transportation efficiencies also. So I'm hoping that rather than stepping on one another's toes at all, we really, really collaborate in our efforts. Yeah, and I think that's kind of a natural next step and exactly what the city wants to do and what we need is to get good partners in on each of these strategies as well to make, to kind of actualize them. So that they haven't laid out a roadmap of how to get these things done. What they've done is identify the goal and some strategies and what the city and the state now need is partnerships and both within government, academia, business, working together to really figure out how to cross those silos. Because as you know, it's not just Hawaii, it's really everywhere where silos, people get really locked into their own kind of sector and silo and they don't talk to different departments that could be really helpful in actualizing some of these things. And these are massive, massive undertakings. We need all the help, all the expertise we can possibly muster. Right. Yeah, so. Oh, go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. One item that intrigues me is because I don't think that the energy office sort of this yet is encourage both shift through parking efficiency. What is that? Yeah, so one of the things, and this was, I believe that it was, I'm gonna get all my bills wrong. I believe it was bill 20 that went through that really looked at how to optimize parking and the parking regulations that would go through for either developing new buildings or working on old buildings and the different types of parking regulations that developers and builders are required to include. So when they're looking at parking efficiency, is there a better way to use the land that's now being designated for only parking? Or is there a different, are there different rules on the difference, like putting electric vehicle charging infrastructure and what are the different types of efficiencies that could be improved upon? And I know that now I'm not up on this now, but there was something that just went through with some of the kind of an addition to bill 20, looking at some of those specific parking efficiency implementations in the city. I can find that for you later, but they're really starting to think about actualizing some of that. So that's actually going forward faster than maybe we had planned for, which is great. Sounds good, we, from the energy office standpoint, we worked very, very closely with the city last year on bill 25 rather than bill 20. And that was specifically to adopt the 2018 or 15 International Energy Conservation Code and the most controversial provision therein was to mandate EV-ready access for both residences and multifamily and commercial buildings. That's where when you're building a building, you plumb the lines so that you have a little plug available, say in the garage of your home. So when you're ready to put in your EV charger, all you have to do is unscrew this little plug and boom, there's your EV charger waiting for you. And that took a long time to pass and many, many compromises, but we did it. At this, I'm kind of interested if you wouldn't mind going into it, what were the biggest issues at the state level for doing that? You mean our prerogative or our incentive? Yeah. Number one, we're shooting for 100% clean electrical energy by the year 2045 and that is a combination of course of basically solar energy and wind energy coming increasing, increasing, increasing while energy use decreases, decreases, decreases until the two lines intersect and electric vehicles are something in the order of at least five or six times as efficient as our gas burning vehicles. And the goal is to get all of that electricity from renewable sources. So all you've got 100% clean ground transportation there. That's our thinking. Right. Yeah, maybe I'll go back to one other product that the Climate Change Commission, the Honolulu Climate Change Commission put out, I believe last December and that was our social equity guidance document. So really looking at how to achieve more equitable outcomes in climate adaptation. And I think it's kind of relevant to all of these discussions as we're looking for it. All of those, whatever nine areas identified in the climate action plan going forward. And if you could go to slide six. So this was, these guidance recommendations came out of months of work with different stakeholders in reviewing equity plans from cities, states and countries at different scales and seeing what would really work. And what we came up with were, so we took a pledge as a commission to try and increase equity considerations in climate adaptation. But the five recommendations were to really think about centering social equity and all adaptation and mitigation plans, identify our frontline communities that are going to be experiencing both climate stressors and shocks to integrate equity into the resilient strategy. And of course now the climate action plan and to find areas where that could be improved to collaborate with communities more, to share information and to focus on outreach to underserved communities both in the past and right now through it's expanding options of participation. And I think a lot of these are really relevant to the energy guidance policies and not just that but parking and EVs and going forward as well to consider what types of communities might have been left out of these conversations when we're looking at what might first seem like a very straightforward, a very straightforward positive goal for decreasing climate emissions. So yeah, maybe I'll leave that there and let you respond. Yeah, I'll go back to the lively discussions we had during for along bill 25. And that was the original proposal was to put EV ready stations in all multi-story residential structures and then people came forward and says, we need low cost housing or affordable housing and all you're doing here is increasing the cost of housing and I don't know if you've been in these specific debates but our estimate was that it would increase the cost of an individual living unit by about $800 and their estimate was all the way up to $10,000 with intermediate estimates in between. I don't know if you've been through that sort of debate but so finally we had to, this is ironic decrease the number of EV ready installations in affordable housing. So we're doing an inequitable choice in this case. So this is a type of, this is all new territory and this is a type of conundrum that we are coming up against all the time. Yeah, and I think it's clear that these are very complicated questions, right? But keeping that equity focus at the forefront will, when we're conceptualizing these problems I think can make the conversation go forward faster. So not only thinking about affordability but also thinking about access. So who has access to these resources in the first place? And when you look at, for example like the renewable energy project siting so solar farms or wind farms we've seen a lot of controversy about that on a WAHU as well. So some of the strategies that I think we need to embrace going forward or not just working with kind of the regular group of high-level stakeholders representing industry and academia and businesses but also bringing communities in from the start to really talk about what it is they want for their community whether that's more EV spaces whether that's a more equitable use of land or siting of renewable energy projects but just making that line of communication more open. Yeah, people in our office who are very heavily engaged in exactly those types of the issues somehow the community of Kahuku comes to mind especially. Yep. We were. Yeah, and one of our, excuse my cat meowing in the background, one of our one of our climate pledge things that we pledged to for equity in the commission was to hold our meetings in different places regularly. So people at different times of day different communities in different places around the island not just at Honolulu Halle in the middle of the day where different communities can't regularly show up and we see the same faces showing up again and again to our meetings. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to hold in-person meetings because of the pandemic for the last year and change but we are committed to when we are able to hold in-person meetings again starting to move around the island and working harder to engage in-person with different communities. Yeah, the city in general has been very, very, very good about that before the Bill 25 debates opened up in city hall or in the council rooms I think the city went out all over the island and had I don't know at least a dozen different meetings and a dozen different locations. So it's following in some really equitable footsteps there. Yeah, and it takes up so much time, you know but I think that that's looking forward on some of these really difficult implementation questions that we have looking at the climate action plan. Oh, and I didn't even mention that the city is now doing their climate adaptation plan not to be confused with the climate action plan. So action is more about mitigation of greenhouse gases those key strategies that we're looking at to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the city level across different departments and sectors but the adaptation plan is saying, okay well, some of these climate impacts are already baked in we are going to be experiencing them to larger extent for the most part as we go forward. So what do we need to do and how should we prioritize getting these adaptation projects done? And so that's being done by CCSR right now and they're starting to hold meetings or they've held a series of meetings already around the island all virtual but they're continuing to engage with people. And really, I think a lot of the question is how do you prioritize risk in these environments? So some of that is going to be making sure you're not just listening to the loudest voice who shows up to all those meetings. Again, that's a question of equity how do we balance exposure in different places versus access to resources versus historical impacts, frankly. Yeah, we at our level, we've just had a big debate about passing another building code which has to do with resilience and the proponent civil engineer said we've got to beef up new buildings to X strength to withstand a mega tsunami. And then other engineers came in and said that's a very nice idea, but it'll increase costs. So what do you do that? Yeah. Yeah, and again, I run into this over and over and over again. Yeah, and it's again weighing those financial and risks versus the impacts, right? Which we saw in Florida with the condo collapse very recently. So that was a risk that they had built into their plans to greater or lesser degree and had chosen not to act yet. And I think that that should be a real consideration for Oahu and the state going forward as well. Yeah, because we have like Southern Florida we have a high salt environment and that can corrode the heck out of the rebars that hold concrete structures together. That seems to have been the culprit in South Florida. And I remember somebody in a high rise here in Honolulu was leaning on a railing and suddenly the railing gave and down he went and the culprit again was corroded the rebars in the concrete. I think there are probably very few people who live in Hawaii who didn't read that news item with a little bit of alarm. So maybe it's good to start the conversation. But I see we're coming up on time. So would you mind if I talked about some kind of priorities for the next year that we've already identified in the commission? You've got about two minutes but actually we can move a little bit over. So please, please go ahead. Okay, let's go to slide nine. And these are priorities for the next year that we already talked about with the director of the CCSR office, Matt Goncer, as well as stakeholders and the commissioners representing people across different departments in the city. So there was a big emphasis on extreme heat actually, how we prepare for extreme heat and ways to shore up our existing infrastructure and who's going to be impacted by that. That's actually one of the most sure impacts of climate change that we can plan for. We know that rainfall might be a little more uncertain but we know it's getting hotter. And so we have to plan for that. And we already see kind of the urban heat island effect. CCSR did a really great study last year looking at the different temperatures all over the city and the island, seeing some big differences between areas with trees and green space versus just pavement. Also integrated stormwater management. So working across different departments to work on ways to manage stormwater across different departments who might be dealing with that. Implementation of the climate action plan like I already mentioned. So we have these nine priorities but how do we actually implement them? How do we provide guidance to actually implement them and meet those goals? There's also interest in looking at economic consequences of different climate change impacts because if we're honest, we can give lots of data and lots of projections but they go a lot, they're a harder pill to swallow when they have a dollar sign attached to them both in how much that costs and how much they'll cost to fix. And then finally, the adaptation strategy from CCSR. So doing community engagement with the city on meeting their adaptation strategies and helping them prioritize their needs. Yes. Wow. Nothing ambitious about that. Nothing whatsoever. So I give you hearty, hearty congratulations, Victoria. And we have come to a close. Thank you so much. It's been a great honor getting to know you and learning all about the commission's work. So until next time, this is Howard Wigg, Code Green, Sync Tech, Hawaii, Mahalo Nui Noa and see you next time.