 Hello, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, the Biofields in Hawaii series. I'm your guest host, Tyler Tsubogna. The usual host, Mr. Carl Campania, is away for the week, which means, of course, he is unable to be here. So for today, I get to be your host. And in today's show, I will continue discussing Biofield by showing where it fits into the broader picture of clean transportation. But before that, let me share with you a little more about me. So I grew up on the big island of Hawaii, where I spent most of my free time fishing and playing soccer, all kinds of fishing, from shore fishing to diving, and eventually started kayak fishing like five or six years ago, and it's been good. But I got my undergraduate degree in political science from Seattle University with a minor in public affairs, focused specifically on urban planning. I then proceeded immediately into a master's program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to get my master's in urban and regional planning, which I actually just recently graduated from in May, exciting. But within that program, my focus was actually on transportation and land use. During my studies, I also served as a Rise Clean Transportation Fellow for Kupu, which, by the way, was an incredible experience. So shout out to all the wonderful people at Rise and Kupu. Carl actually interviewed me on this show not too long ago about my Rise experience. But now I currently work for the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab as a planning technician focused specifically on energy projects. But stepping back a little, in case there's anyone out there wondering what the heck urban and regional planning is, don't worry. That's usually actually the first thing people ask me. And it's a good question too, because we actually spent a few weeks in classes dedicated to actually figuring out, oh, what is urban and regional planning? And it's pretty broad, it's a little ambiguous, and it's actually really recent compared to more traditional things like your sciences. But planning is, it's also really diverse. So it's new, very diverse, ranging from things like disaster management, land use and transportation, which is me, community development, environmental impacts. Planners sort of fall in the spaces around and between both engineers and architects. At its most basic, the job of a planner is to plan for the future. All of the big cities, towns, roads, buildings, sidewalks, storm drains, even small things like light posts, signs, all of that. All of that was planned, or at least should have been planned. However, the real value in what a planner does doesn't come from actually making the plan, but it comes from helping build consensus between all of the relevant stakeholders. So for a planner, it's less about getting people to understand why said thing is important or what you're building, but it's about giving everyone a chance to be a part of the learning process and sort of getting consensus on an idea, which really brings us nicely into the point of today, which is to hopefully encourage greater consensus on the need for clean transportation and biofuels. So with the state leading the nation in its goal of 100% clean energy by 2040, there's a general sort of agreement about the need for energy security in Hawaii. One of the major goals behind the desire is actually to move Hawaii away from its dependency on imported petroleum. However, that energy goal is only really concerned with electricity generation. It's a renewable portfolio standard, and it's not considering all the other sectors that rely on petroleum. But fortunately for the state, this trend has really been changing, providing significant opportunities around. So from June 21st to 23rd of this year, the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit, also known as Verge Hawaii 2016, was held here on Oahu. It was a three-day event focused on how to achieve that clean energy goal. And it was also one of the first instances where clean transportation was included as a significant topic in such a large energy conversation, which is a big deal if we're concerned with things like reducing our dependency on imported fossil fuels and everything that comes with it, including significant environmental and social concerns. The summits there included the first ever gathering of the full spectrum of fuel producers and users from state and federal agencies to academics, including the airlines and even the petroleum refineries, both of which have never been much of a voice in the clean transportation movement. From the clean transportation sections came a lot of talk about the need for a renewable transportation portfolio goal, similar to the clean energy goal, and a goal for each of the three different transportation sectors, specifically aviation, land, and marine. The top five drivers sort of pushing all of that need was actually in order, carbon reductions, climate change concerns, insulation to oil price shocks, the creation of an innovation economy, and helping to encourage more sustainable tourism. Those are sort of just the things we voted on during that. But by moving to clean transportation is believed that the state could help reduce its dependency on fossil fuels, bolster the economy, create high-end jobs, help revitalize the slowing agriculture industry, help with waste disposal, and make the entire transportation network much more efficient. And I know that's a really, like, lofty and big statement, which leaves a lot of questions. But we are going to hopefully get back to them when we come back after a quick break, when we are going to explore why clean transportation is important and where biofuels fits into that for Hawai'i. This is Think Tech Hawai'i's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Biofuels in Hawai'i Series. I'm your guest host, Tyler Subota, and I will see you after this break. Hello, this is Martin Despingh. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawai'i and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawai'i. You're watching Think Tech Hawai'i on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts six live talk shows from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday. And then streams earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawai'i from Think Tech. Hey, Standard Energy Man here. Make sure you tune in on my lunch hour every Friday from noon until 12.30 at least. Maybe I'll go a little long if you've got good stuff to share with you. But we'll talk about energy, all kinds of energy. My favorite is hydrogen and my other favorite is transportation and hydrogen. But we'll talk about all kinds of energy. Be with us every Friday at noon, Standard Energy Man. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on Think Tech Live Streaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawai'i's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Biofuels in Hawai'i series. I'm your guest host, Tyler Tsugota. In the last segment, I gave you a summary of clean transportation from Verge and said good things about clean transportation. But in this section, I would like to sort of explain more about the need for clean transportation beyond just the environmental aspect and how biofuels fits into that need. Now, this is not to say that the environmental reasons aren't sound or significant at all. The previous five motivations for why it was important came up the climate change and carbon emissions were the top. But if climate change goes as predicted, by 2060 we'll see a three-foot rise in sea level, which would mean a lot of Hawai'i's biggest income generators would be underwater. Places such as Waikiki, Downtown Honolulu, all of that would be essentially a swimming pool. And I mean, that's just one of the many concerns. But there are a lot of other environmental reasons, but I'm trying to avoid that because that's very popular and everyone can talk about it. So what I want to discuss are the other reasons why clean transportation is a necessity. It should really come, it's no surprise to all of you, our well-informed viewers out there, that the largest sector of Hawai'i's economy by far is tourism. As you can see from the image on the screen, these proportions are government, real estate, accommodations and food services, all of which can be a part of tourism. Now it's not very specific as to what exactly tourism is. There's a lot of disagreement as to what percentage of those things make up tourism. But as you can see in the little dollar sign image to the right, tourism makes up about 19.6% of the economy according to that study. While it is difficult to find sort of an analysis on how much of the economy is supported by tourism, the general consensus is that tourism is a very significant part of our economy today. So what does that mean, what does that have to do with clean transportation? Well, in order for that largest sector of our economy to actually get here and feed our economy, they have to get here by one means or another. In 2014 Hawai'i hosted more than 8 million visitors of those almost all came by air. As one of the most remote or isolated land masses in the world, things have to travel a long way before they get here. And all of these trips, no matter what the mode, pretty much require fuel. And from the image, it's mostly aviation for passengers, but while you might not come here from what, while people come here via aviation, everything people use and, I mean, everything we sort of use, consume in the islands comes here via marine sector. So the marine sector doesn't carry many passengers, but what the marine sector does carry is almost everything we use for daily life. Mattson containers come on big barges filled with almost, I mean, literally everything we use daily. More than 90% of Hawai'i's food is actually imported. I think the last I heard was 92%. Almost every commercial product available had to be brought in. And that's one of the reasons we hear and feel of the high cost of living in Hawai'i. I actually went to the grocery store and saw a gallon of milk. A normal gallon of 2% milk, 2% is normal for me. Not organic, not hormone free, none of that. And also not like local grown or anything. But it costs more than $10. Because on the continental U.S. you can get that same gallon of milk, if not all those other things, hormone free, all that, delivered to your doorstep for less than $5 a gallon. And this is an example of why we need to insulate ourselves from oil price shocks. Because everything that comes here, including the people, has to travel such a long distance which requires fuel and the high cost of transit is highly dependent on that cost so everything from the barges to the airlines see volatile costs associated with the price of crude oil excuse me, crude oil. And the impact of these price shocks can actually close businesses. So in 2008, when oil prices were peaking we actually lost Aloha and ATA airlines. The impact of which not only arguably raised the price for inter-island travel, but seriously hurt a lot of our friends and family who worked at Aloha. And even without a job, had to pay higher prices for average goods especially gasoline I think which was nearly $5 a gallon or probably over in some places all while looking for a job during that sort of economic downturn which was fostered in part by less visitor arrivals due to the high price ticket prices caused by high oil prices. So preventing that is some of what it means to be insulated from oil price shocks. And that is also why it is important that the move for clean energy also include a move for sustainable transportation because by doing so it will allow us to reduce our dependency on imported oil. When broken down by sectors that include military use, the largest consumer is actually commercial aviation at about 33% followed by ground transportation which is tied for second with electricity production 28% of petroleum usage. And combined the entire transportation sector uses about 69% of petroleum use. So while the clean energy goal is great, it is still only a small slice of the pie in terms of actual petroleum reductions. And I mean it is a really good goal but like everything else it also has consequences. In a report by the Hawaii refinery task force it outlined potential impacts of the clean energy goal on refineries including driving the refineries out of business which is the main concern with that. So the way refining in Hawaii works is that we import a lot of barrels of crude oil and it is then put through a process called fractional distillation which separates the crude oil into different parts used for different types of vehicles or things as different aspects of fuel. Hawaii has a very unique product demand in that it requires high amounts of jet fuel and residual fuels. The usual level of residual fuel production in the US is around 4% versus as you can see from the screen Hawaii produces 28% which is all basically goes into electricity generation. In Hawaii residual fuels are burned to generate power. However with the clean energy goal stricter mercury and air toxicity standards also known as mats by the EPA it poses significant challenges for the refineries to remain open. The mats requires that Heco boilers burn diesel fuel instead of the residual fuels they currently burn in order to meet that air standards. Now this is not only more costly because residuals are currently produced and they're cheaper but it also means that we need to find a place to actually buy their currently produced residual fuels which is a byproduct of producing the high amount of jet fuel that we produce. So that's and to do that it will most likely not be cost competitive because we actually have to ship it somewhere else which is we discussed earlier it's a long way and so on top of that you have the refinery facing that and the clean energy goal demand for fuel for electricity generation meaning that the refineries will not have much of a market for residual fuels and diesel for electricity generation. However while I'm not sure of the science behind it the residual fuels proportion will most likely remain high and that's because of our jet fuel production resulting in sort of this conundrum where we produce a lot of jet fuel which requires us to have a lot of residual fuels as a result but we can't actually figure out what to do with the actual residuals aside from sell it at a not very cost competitive price. So the feeling the pressure of this the Tesoro refinery actually closed in 2013 and is now reopened operated by par petroleum but the closure of the refineries poses a lot of problems from jobs to actually getting jet fuels and I mean other fuels for almost everything we do. And so that's where clean transportation can play a role. Clean transportation is vital to creating a sustainable way and while there are a variety of methods to achieving clean transportation including alternative fuels like hydrogen and electricity creating more of an efficient land use is also a possibility that's using designs that specifically focused on reducing transportation distances such as transit oriented development or the use of more public transit unfortunately these things are currently only available for the ground transportation sector. The reason biofuels are so important is because they can be used to alleviate petroleum dependency in all of the petroleum using sectors from electricity generation to all three different modes of transportation biofuels can also be completely locally grown and produced utilizing current assets such as the existing petroleum infrastructure which includes the refineries and it can keep them open. A fully local biofuel supply chain would help supply Hawaii with high-end jobs and significantly reduce the price shocks while eliminating our dependency on imported oil. Strengthen agricultural sector could also encourage even more agricultural production that includes food which would then help protect our agriculture lands from future development. So in summary in my opinion there's a significant need for us as a state to advance clean transportation as an actionable goal and it should be done utilizing the push for 100% clean energy due to Hawaii's remote location and dependency on imports including goods, foods and people the aviation and marine sectors are important considerations when discussing clean transportation and in order to target those sectors biofuels are the most viable petroleum replacement at the moment and biofuels also pose a significant opportunity not just to solve many of the challenges outlined but also to provide social and economic benefits to the state. Next week Mr. Carl Campania will return with his guest Mr. Wilkridge of Terviva a local biofuels feedstock producer so please tune in then and that will do it for today's show. I'd like to say Mahala to the Think Tech Hawaii staff and crew and to all of you for tuning in today.