 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome to Stand the Energy Man here on ThinkTek Hawaii for Community Matters. We had a busy week this week, actually a busy month of April, and I have no idea how we got this far in this year so quickly, but we really did. But some neat things have happened this week that I wanted to report on from here in the state of Hawaii. We had the High Tech Development Corporation, the parent corporation over what we do at HCAT, broke ground on a new facility out in Kakaako that is going to build their incubator, they're calling it a sandbox for a Hawaiian incubator, where they're going to take and make a space for innovators to come and occupy that have, as a maker space, meaning it has a place with tools and equipment where people can manufacture prototypes and things like that. It's going to have office space and facilities, copy machines, communications equipment, things like that for people to set up offices and rent small offices at a reduced price so they can get their business started without having to sink a lot into infrastructure and a lot of money into capital up front to build a building or get office space. They can kind of get their business off the ground and help new industries and new technologies in Hawaii get moving forward. So congratulations to Robbie Milton, the team at HDDC for getting that groundbreaking going. We were there, had some great remarks and it was a neat event, most of all the food was really good so thanks to Highway Inn for providing some great lunch for me and so that was a really good event and we got some word this week and I apologize, I actually wanted to show a video but we're hoping that maybe next week's even more appropriate because this weekend the Pelley Awards are going to be announced and that's the local advertising agencies that rate productions whether they're commercials or industrial films and things like that and it appears that one of the videos that we financed and had made for our organization is in line and apparently is going to hopefully win one of the awards in that presentation so I wanted to bring the video and showcase it to you but hey, we'll wait until next week and tell you whether they're one, two or three and we'll show that video then. But for now, this week's topic here at Standard Energy Man has to do with a lot of what we talked about or what we visited yesterday with the groundbreaking and that is how do we get government involved in clean energy and things like that, what's the right incentives, how do we get, are we asking too much of the legislature to give us massive amounts of money to kickstart hydrogen or wind power or solar, what's the right vehicles and how do we navigate that area, that political realm and so we have as our guest today Chris, I'm not going to do it Chris, I'll wait until your name comes up, but welcome, thanks for being on the show today and we appreciate that you've just kind of arrived back on Ireland and but you've had a pretty extensive career doing just what I talked about and that's navigating the ways of government, local and federal government on incentivizing clean energy and so tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got started in it and what got you back to Ireland. Well, as you mentioned, I was born here in Honolulu and I'm sure I was kicking and screaming and I was about a year and a half, two years old and they dragged me to Pennsylvania so I was raised in Pennsylvania. My father was actually in the energy business. We worked for, he came out, he got his training in the Navy and moved back to Pennsylvania where he grew up and started working at a coal-fired plant and later worked at a nuclear plant three mile island which most folks have heard of so we were there for the evacuation, voluntary evacuation. Exciting. Yes, it was very exciting and so when I got out of college, I was supposed to take a year off and go back to law school, well that was almost 30 years ago so I'm still taking my first year off. I don't think I'll ever make it back to law school at this point but you never know. But I started working and it was really just a job doing community organizing for environmental issues and that led me into political campaigns. So I spent several years crisscrossing the country running and working in various parts of political campaigns everywhere from the northeast to Chicago to Texas to the southeast of the United States and that then led to a job on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. I was lucky enough one of my former candidates needed a chief of staff. He called me, I finished the race I was doing in North Carolina, about a week later found myself running the operation there in Washington D.C. Being part of not just his office operation but he was in the Democratic leadership and he was an appropriator. He later became chair of an appropriation subcommittee. So kind of jumped right in at the highest levels and it was a blessing. I got to learn a lot, do a lot and work on a lot of issues, everything from military construction to child healthcare to religious liberty. And ended up with my boss actually being vetted by then Senator Obama as a possible vice presidential candidate. And after that I kind of figured I'd done everything I could possibly do in that office and that space and so I started looking around and kind of landed in the renewables sector with the American Wind Energy Association. I took a job as their top lobbyist so it was in effect the wind industry's top lobbyist for four and a half years. And enjoyed it greatly, it's a fantastic space, a lot of good folks. When we'd accomplished several goals including renewal of the production tax credit which is the main driver for wind and it's paired with the ITC which drives solar and some of the other renewables. We got that renewed a couple of times and it was sort of okay we've done this we're sort of on the track so I'll look for something new to do and due to some family issues and health issues I took a little more time off than I wanted to but in that timeframe I sort of moved into the startup arena a little bit. Washington DC has a very strong startup community and I was lucky enough to know some folks and get invited to events and eventually ended up working with a startup that was focused not on energy but on politics and while that did not turn into the next Google and I haven't been able to retire fully yet I learned a lot from it and I still enjoy that space and so I'm moving back into sort of pairing those two things renewables in the startup community because they bring the for me they bring that energy ahead in that drive of doing campaign work with a business aspect doing and doing something good for the world. Great and so you on the on the energy side you've kind of focused in the wind area primarily and the of course all the what it takes to do the incentive incentivizing so you lived in Texas for a while and I happened to know because I went to Earth Day Texas maybe three years ago that Texas has a pretty good proportion of their power generation is in a wind power yeah they've had days where they've gotten close to 100% on a daily basis for wind for wind generating all the atrocities in Texas and Texas you know everybody has the idea that Texas is all the way along natural gas and exactly what surprised me right frankly it was for a very long time and you know I spent a lot of time when I was working in the congressional office working with natural gas we had the the Marcella shale boom there right south of Dallas and you couldn't drive from Dallas to Austin and not see about a hundred new gas wells going on but what's what happened in West Texas where as oil sort of dropped a little bit they really started looking for new economic drivers and so it came at the right time as wind was coming back to this country and starting to grow West Texas had the perfect resource they needed not only electricity but they needed the jobs and so it started a little more on the local level in it on the state level and you've got a lot of mayors in West Texas they were very very active because it was an economic development issue that you know these these wind companies brought in jobs that were paying much better than anything else in those counties and maybe in several counties and some of them and so they brought in folks encouraged the growth and it is such a good source of energy and and as the price came down due to you know the growth of the industry you know anything grows you can bring the price down but also the incentives you know especially production tax credit at the federal level made the cost of wind energy comparable or not compatible but competitive with you know natural gas and with coal especially as we were phasing coal out even in Texas started a phase coal out several years ago you know we had a huge fight with Texas utilities or they wanted to put 11 power plants in Central Texas at one point and you know the community really pushed back against that and so as the wind industry grew there obviously they've just gotten more and more generation in place and it's led to more jobs now Iowa still I think has more manufacturing jobs for wind energy in the state making equipment right and it's you know that's a partly essentially local central location issue and it's a transportation issue you know what if you bring a wind turbine in from overseas and landed at the Port of Los Angeles it's cheaper than a wind blade turbine made in Iowa at that moment but once you factor in the transportation cost I think by the time they get to the deserts out in California the price is now equal and go by the time you get it out of California the US made turbine blades actually cheaper well let's let's go back a little bit and talk about because I don't really I don't normally think about this but at the local level what are the incentives that the cities and counties and municipalities bring to the table for a big industry like wind what are what are some of things a small a county can do some some of it's what any locality can do for any business you can help with taxes you can be a cheerleader which is a large part of it frankly is your you're out there advocating for a community to bring these jobs in right as help was on inciting I know you work with the military a lot on hydrogen but on when it comes to reels especially like wind where you've got a lot of military basis where you cite those terms is really important to the radar and so you have the local community involved it makes it much easier to deal with the base commanders who aren't necessarily opposed renewables but it's easier for them to say no to a wind project if it blocks the raiders the radar view then it is to actually spend the time working and setting it up correctly so so the local community has it like in anything else more reach the most folks getting credit for because those mayors and the city council most kind of commissioners then move that up the chain of the state legislators and to the congressman and the senators and they really push for policies that are going to help develop those industries and then when you get to the state level again a bigger scope state legislature to deal with maybe what are some of the more effective incentives at that level or things that seem to work well at the state level well you know I don't think the incentives change drastically from a local level to a national level I mean you're really tax policy and the ability to work with folks so waving taxes or percentage tax breaks and things like that little little tax breaks some percentage you can give them incentives to bring a business in you know I mean look how does get into bidding wars all the time for businesses now it hasn't reached that extent with renewable energy I don't believe but they can do little things to make it easier and being welcome and friendly you've got county a where you've got a number of mayors and county commissioners are actively going to these wind companies and saying hey we have great locations for all this you've got County B's not talking to them they're going to go to county a I'm going to interject here to bring in what I think is a really relevant point for the state of Hawaii and I'm not sure you're aware of this but the state of Hawaii comes in near the bottom of the list of business friendly states we come near the bottom of the list for states that are open to innovation and new technologies where we're basically on the low end of the scale for anything to do with business development and my experience as I've had in my own business early in my life working with businesses now working with companies are well established setting up the hydrogen stations the thing is the permitting and regulatory stuff is getting so cumbersome that that's actually an inhibitor so is there a role especially for city county state level to take away that burden I mean and how important is that from your perspective because you know you're coming into Hawaii with fresh eyes but I'm telling you I've I've been beaten up by people who say I just can't get out it's taking me a year and a half to two years to get my permitting scored away and that's totally unacceptable my my finances just won't even tolerate that they're not going to let me sit there and not pay bills for two years and have to wait for repay that right and that's the tough part with any startup business is getting through that you know I think it's called the valley of death most often but I think you know I skipped over obviously the most important state-level issue which is an RPS or RES or renewable portfolio standard or renewable electricity standard depending on where you are and there's 40 some states that have those now you know Hawaii which has the best and a hundred percent so that's the biggest hurdle at a state level if you get that it gives the incentive and a reason for all this to come in and move forward but the regulatory stuff is is drug is tremendously important and it's something that's often overlooked and it's it's you can have the best policy but of all the other regulations behind it especially of citing for instance and right and zoning block those projects are making them very difficult they go away right because companies are only gonna spend so much time and if you're looking to site a wind farm you're a couple million dollars into it and if you don't get zoning well you've lost out not only in that couple millions but you're gonna look at you're gonna take two three looks at that state again before you go back there because you're not gonna continually invest a million dollars two million dollars just to get shut down you want to develop those those facilities so where the local folks can help meaning local elected officials some state officials they can actually help with those regulatory folks you know most you know I look at Hawaii is pretty friendly to this development you've got some you know some incubators here that want to do a state is looking at doing some grants for alternative energy you know the RES is in place here so to me it looks like a friendly environment but I haven't had to site a wind farm here or anything so I don't I would I would agree with you our legislators our governor in particular are very supportive especially of clean energy innovations and we do have a like you mentioned a good renewable portfolio standard for renewable energy but what I've what I've discovered or seen is that we have elected officials and then we have in place bureaucracy and a lot of times it's not the elected officials that are that are putting the drag panel out it's below them and maybe an inability to affect those those bureaucratic processes and in a meaningful way they're starting to drag things down now and then that goes back to one of my core beliefs and I found this when I went to the wind energy folks that you know I'd worked on the cap on Capitol Hill more with fossil fuel folks than anything else to that point but I saw a lot of the wind companies who weren't very engaged in actual lobbying or grassroots work you know they'd send a sighting team out and then that was it but they wouldn't work with the local community at all that much so I think what's really important for energy companies to do is to actually develop those contacts work with the elected officials who then in return work with the regulatory officials and you know each day is a little different the federal government's a little different but you know for example we had when I went to wind energy there was a big controversy over sighting of wind turbine farms near military bases for you know both base with your security and radar and different communities dealt with it differently some worked with them and you know and the base commanders and the military staff would work with the companies to cite these things properly and it happens not only just to go and aside for a second but it doesn't happen just with wind companies or power companies if you're in a place you know why you may have this I don't know I know Virginia Beach has had this problem with new hotels there's a lot of military bases in the Tidewater Virginia area a lot of radar well if you put a hotel up too high or in the wrong place you're blocking a radar view out to sea and so the military at that point will get involved in the zoning and not do it and so what you have there are some elected officials who are willing to work and help bridge the gap and work with the companies on how to cite things and so with wind companies what we did is we talked to the DOD and it was you know happenstance be the person who was the under secretary at the time was somebody had worked with her a long time in Capitol Hill so having that initial conversation was very easy and the Obama administration was very favorable toward renewables now I don't know that that same attitude as their day given the administration but the principle is the same you've got to be able to work with the people who are in charge and you've got to actually make the outreach attempts that means companies have to sort of take two hats they've got to have a business hat and you've got to focus and develop your business but when you're in a heavily regulated industry like energy is you've got to be able to lobby and work on the policy so okay we're gonna take a quick break here and be back with Chris in a few minutes to get more into depth on what happens at the federal level and maybe some of the things that we can look forward to doing here in Hawaii at that level to increase our renewable energy portfolio and the speed of light that we're gonna get there hi everyone I'm Andrea Gabriele I'm the host for young talents making way here on think tech Hawaii we talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matters to tack matter to science to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests the students of our schools who are participating in science fair so young talents making way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on think tech Hawaii mahalo good afternoon my name is Howard wig I am the proud host of cold green a program on think tech Hawaii we show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday my guests are specialists both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket hey welcome back to stand energy man here on think tech Hawaii on my lunch hour as usual and I'm gonna be heading off to the big island right after the show today to just kind of kick back and let my hair grow yeah always let my hair grow but it just gets some relaxation because I've been stressing out at work and and everybody needs to decompress at some time but speaking of decompressing we got Chris here telling us how to decompress our government and let them free up some cash or at least get some incentives going for renewable energy and particularly in the state of Hawaii so I just finished telling him that our congressional delegation our legislature and our governor are really big supporters of clean energy our mayors are obviously big supporters of clean energy so we have a lot of support at the local and state level and even the congressional level but we still seem to have some hurdles to get through so he's gonna maybe help us navigate and and his point before we want to break to talk about what different industry incentives have to do with it in terms of getting companies to get out there and actually go talk to legislatures go talk to city council go talk to the congressional offices can make a big difference and be the intermediary between maybe DoD and a contractor trying to build a hotel or put in a wind turbine or a solar array or something so Chris why don't we continue on that being and and we can expand a little bit more on that okay well I think if you're a company organization looking to impact government policy I think the key thing is to organize and it sounds basic it's it's actually more detailed than it then it may seem to be but it's also easier than it seems to be you need folks who are willing to pick up the phone and call their elected officials and this is not in itself a difficult thing that people are often sort of intimidated by that and even though the entire reason for that office being there is to help their constituents and they want to hear from their constituents you know I've seen that I did this for I did that for 12 years I was a chief of staff in the Hill we wanted to hear from our constituents all the time we sent mail to them we did phone calls with them we did everything we could to hear from them all the time so when I encountered people that were scared to do it it was a you know a new concept to me but I was on the other side of the table for a long time so what you have to do is be willing to take that step and take a little take it on faith that they're actually going to want to talk to you and pick up the phone but you've got to kind of organize yourself before you do that right you can't just pick up the phone and say hey look I've got the greatest idea for energy since the invention of the water wheel you know I need you to find me ten million dollars to fund it yeah that's not going to work but if you've got a good idea you've got a company that's moving forward you can talk to you've got to get involved with the the organizations that are already doing this right the various associations when solar there's some bigger renewable groups and they can help direct you but you've got to be part of the team to do that because they can't do it all themselves they need individuals to help to they can't just hire one or two guys to send DC and do it so and then you've got to have your ducks in a row for what you want and so it's it's easier in some ways to push big policy because you're not asking for something directly for your company but if you want to change the the tax structure and you get a coalition together you can push for it you want a diverse coalition you want not just people from that industry if you can do it but find other folks that benefit from it you know with renewables it was always a pairing of the production tax credit and the investment tax credit because different industries in the renewable sector use those differently so we all came together and and created a coalition and we added a lot of folks that weren't normally thought of as part of that a lot of the tech companies the ghouls you know Walmart that were using renewable energy and then things like the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau because it impacts their constituencies as well and it allows those groups to reach members that they maybe wouldn't and what you want to do is when you've got a friendly delegation like Hawaii does you don't need to spend a lot of time convincing them but you need to help them help you by figuring out ways to get to other members of Congress and you know the state legislator here latest legislature here is sort of one almost one party there are very many Republicans so it doesn't quite work the same here but you've got to reach out to the other side and focus on how do we bring more people to this than just this coalition that we have and you've got to avoid falling into that trap of just talking to people who are already on your side right that is very easy to do right and it's you know it's easier to pull in somebody who's a big fan of renewables to come talk to you it's actually a better thing to reach out to that person who's on the margins and who maybe normally you wouldn't talk to but there's a reason to talk to them you know there's you know if you look at wind energy for example the vast majority of things I want to say 70% of the wind projects in the country are in Republican districts so you know the wind industry industry spent a lot of time reaching out to those Republicans because we needed them you know especially at the federal level where they're sort of in charge of all three branches government right now say that House Senate White House but so you've got to reach out across the aisle and pull in folks that normally maybe wouldn't agree with on any other issue on the planet other with energy right on the renewables on the wind energy whatever it is if you can get them on that that's all you need okay don't have to worry about their other policy positions and well what you've explained so far is kind of encouraging because it appears that we're kind of down that road now we we have I think bipartisan support for clean energy in Hawaii pretty confident of that even though like you say the Republican voice may be fairly small it's there to support it's it that's a easily supported bipartisan issue in the state you know my personal experience in my previous life in the National Guard we were unusual in the DOD sense that we were allowed to go talk to our congressman anytime we wanted and we did and I learned from my my leadership before me that that it was important to go talk to Congress not to be shy about it but to not waste their time to go in there with the very specific tight briefings that were not long and wordy and and got right to the point and what what was it going to do for the people of Hawaii what was it going to do for the US government what was it going to do you know to protect us or whatever and at the end what's to ask what are you asking this congressman or this this senator to do sir you're on the appropriations committee or sir you're ma'am you're you're on the ways and means committee or you know and we need you to do this to help us get this piece of legislation for or that and and I think we have some groups together that are that are starting to pull those strings really well in terms of tightening up their briefings and making good presentations and we're getting some headway there but I have to share a story with you when I first met the State Department of Transportation had the former one for Fujikami I met him the day he was met his Senate confirmation in the governor's office with the governor's chief of staff and I told him what we wanted to do and he said stand you need to get your consortium together and you need to do and he started explaining just what you said and I go you're looking at the consortium it's me and that was the problem it was only me it was not me with all the other stakeholders it could be and so we started trying to solve that and it seems to be moving forward well you know when you organize especially on a political issue they're striking numbers the more folks you have the better you are and the more you can reach and you know one of the things that people tend to overlook though is when they want to reach out to a member of Congress you've got to remember that members of Congress are elected to represent their district only right right so you know and I had to discuss this often when when CEOs it's nice that you're the CEO but you live in New York the guy in Kansas doesn't really care what you think so much I mean you've got industry there and jobs what I'd rather have is the person who does maintenance on the wind turbines of Kansas yeah I'm up fly him up to DC and that's how I talk to the senator and the same thing works in a state legislature so yeah well believe it or not we've kind of hit the end of our 30-minute block which I promised you would go buy in a flash and it did when I talked to you and it did so my name you know I can't spell your name I'm sorry and if I tried you just get mad at me but it's been a pleasure having you on Chris and it's a great working with your wife we met and talked to her she's working up in Manoa and I think she's going to be a great fit in that organization and look forward to meeting your dog someday we've got an old story I want to keep all your fingers it may not be that but thanks for being on the show today and giving us some insight really from a perspective that we don't normally get here and that's the big political perspective from lobbying side and everything else and we'll have to have you back on after you've gotten more more feelers out here in Hawaii and we'll we'll get you back on to talk more about how to move us forward so until next week Friday I'm standing around signing off here thanks to Cindy and Robert here in the studio for pulling it all together and keeping me on track