 Hi, I'm Jay Fardale, this is ThinkTech Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, and we have Marco Mangelsdorf from Provision Solar and Hilo joining us as co-hosts of this program, and Leo Ascension, he's the newest commissioner of the PUC, and we want to meet him. Hi Marco, hi Leo. Hi, doing good. Hey guys. Hey guys. So let's begin with introductions, I think that's fair. Marco, you are the introduction man here on Cutting Edge. Can you give us a really nice introduction for Leo? Leo, you're going to like this. I'll do my best, Jay. First of all, Leo, thank you so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate that very much, and this rounds out our talking to the three commissioners, starting with Jenny and then Jay and now Leo. So it's great that we get all three of them, and they all bring their great perspective and deep depth and commitment to trying to get things right in terms of regulatory matters. So thank you so much Leo for joining us today, much, much appreciated. So Leo was approved by the, confirmed by the Senate, the state Senate back in June for a full term, which would take him if he continues on valiantly for six years, would take him until June 30th, 2026, he would be the longest, or has the most years ahead of him, so to speak, as commissioner. Prior to coming to the PUC, he held a planning program administrator position with the state office of planning, also known as the OT. He also served as planning program manager of the Hawaii Coastal Zone Management Program 2011-2013. 29 years, very impressive, 29 years of extensive experience in planning, policy analysis and management throughout Hawaii and the Pacific region. He is a homegrown fellow from what I can tell in terms of his education, a MBA degree from Hawaii Pacific University as well as a master's in urban and regional planning, MBA in policy. Well, policy of course is my degree as well from University of Hawaii at Tanoa. So it's great to have you on board Leo and thank you again so very much for joining J&I today, real pleasure. Pleasure is on mine. Leo, do you want to rebut any of that? Maybe I want to add that during that period that I was at the office of planning, I did serve as its director for about five and a half years throughout. A little bit at the end of the Abercrombie administration and Governor Yige was kind enough to keep me on as the OP director until the end of his first term. Yeah, please forgive my omission in reading that, Leo. So Leo, you're the newest member of the PUC but why would you want to do this? You know, I'll give you the reason. I think at this stage in my career, right, I'm a public servant, I'm a true civil public servant, I serve at the whim of the governor, went through that first term where he supported planning and there are things that I wanted to do in the planning stream, to better planning in Hawaii as far as state government. I feel I did that up to a certain point four years and then he asked what else did I want to do in the second term and I said well I want to, you know, certainly I'll serve wherever you want me to serve. I will do what you want me to do. You know my, you know my background, you know my my experience, the ability for me to do work and to lead and, right, I basically asked to be the DBED director, right, and it comes down and understand that process and then he, right, chose Mike McCartney to lead DBED, then he kind of turned around and out of left field, right, he said why don't you go to the PUC and he needed to refine, find a replacement for Randy Iwasi who retired, right, early in his, in his fifth year of the sixth year term. I will be honest, I had to think about it, I was like, you know, YB at the PUC, governor talked to me about it, I thought about it and said yeah I might be willing and you know I harkened back to 30 years ago when I was getting my, just finished my BA and I was walking around the UH campus and I stopped at a window in then what was Porties Hall which is Saunders Hall now, right, and in the mirror, in the window there was this sign that said do you care about Hawaii, right, and I said yeah I do, went in and doused the urban and regional planning department and that has been kind of held inside of me, like what I do is because I care about Hawaii, so this was another opportunity in my long span of planning and professional experience where I could care about Hawaii, and that really kind of rooted why, why I went to the PUC, I think I could be of service there based on my experience, I have a little bit of utility background but moreover it's more the big picture I think that I can bring. Yeah, on that note I wanted to ask you, where do you feel the PUC fits, you know, in the state, in the firmament of state government and the firmament of energy development and for that matter economic development in the state, how central is it, what role does it play? Well certainly it's the regulatory, right, that's the primary focus of this kind and making sure, right, that consumers are treated fairly, right, or when you take a look at our major utilities they're all monopolies, so there's a certain, right, they do it on a franchise basis, they have certain commitments that we want them to fulfill and one of that is protecting the consumer and so that's, you know, part and parcel of our work in all of the utilities that we regulate and certainly now, you know, I think there's a blending of we're not just regulatory, right, the world has evolved where we're dealing with environmental issues, we're dealing with economic development issues, right, we deal with a whole other, you know, kind of the gamut if you will, of issues that might impact and not just, you know, approving a part purchase agreement or, right, approving rates on rate cases, right, we have to look at the factors of how does this impact the environment? How does that impact economic development? So I think it's evolved but I think, right, you know, I try to state, try to intrude to what is the primary mission, right, because I know having been in the executive branch there's a lot of other departments that are supposed to be doing, right, the economic development and environmental issues and things like that and to me it's how does that information as a state, right, we're going to be coordinated, how does that get to the commission? You know, one thing is you've been there during the most unpredictable time we've ever had. I mean, I know that nothing is completely predictable and surely Hawaii is not completely predictable, but you know, this has really been a tremendous discombobulation for the state. I mean, if you look at the legislature, oh, completely discombobulated and look what the, you know, the governor is spending his time on COVID all day, health department upside down over it. What about the PUC? I mean, this is, is this what you bargained for, Leo? Because it isn't what anybody expected. I think, you know, it's erotic because Jay asked that question of Jenny and I like almost every week when we talk about it. You know, I'm also a creature of habit, right, I would love to be in the office right now. We have been working from home since March with very minimal people in the office as well. And we're trying to get back to the normalcy of getting back into the office, but I think, you know, the commission has kind of rolled with the punches on this one. Right, we have all of our staff working from home, doing what they need to do from home. If they need to get out, like, you know, some of our investigators, they also, right, take a look at what's the conditions out there before even going out, right? And so right now, they've kind of suspended right there their efforts to go and do some of the investigation stuff that they need to do, which, yeah, creates a backlog in work, but then you just have to deal with it. I think, you know, we've got to the point where we are basically working at home, where it's electronic, every staff member can do their work at home. I think there's some limits, right? We can't access everything that we could access if we're in the office, but we're making do. And I say that we, you know, as for me and probably the rest of our staff, right, they have rolled with the budget. Still a lot of stuff, a lot more stuff, like we have probably our first hearings, right? Formal hearings coming up, right? This is going to be the first time we're doing it all online. I was going to ask you about that. You're going to do it online, huh? Wow. Do it online. We've had, you know, we've viewed other agencies, how they've done it, the land use commission, the tax, the council revenues, right? So there's lessons learned in all of those on how to do it. So we've kind of taken the best and tried to work with the resources we got. So we're going to, you know, forge ahead and do it online. We wish we could do it in the comfort of our hearing room, but, you know, circumstances prevail that you can't get to that. And the work goes on, right? We're not going to delay stuff. So you've had six months to see how it works and to, you know, find the boundaries and so forth, find the issues. And I wonder, you know, have you developed a kind of vision here about where energy is going? And I would add where energy is going now in the time of COVID, the time of an economy that's kind of stuck around COVID. Where is energy, especially renewable energy going? What is your thought about that, Leo? Yeah, actually, I've been at the commission more than a year, right? That interim year where I was appointed to replace RANDID and now, right, kind of reappointed for the full term. So in that time, you know, looked at it, I mean, I was, you know, when I was at the office of planning, we were looking at the future of renewable energy, right? Where is it going? And dealing with issues like how does it impact land use, right? Or agricultural lands and things like that. So a little bit different focus, but, you know, I've always believed, right, we kind of set that goal. One of the things that when I was at the office of planning, we're trying to figure out, how do we get to that goal? Like really, how do we get to that goal? What's the vision? Is it, right? All windmills or all solar or whatnot, right? What's the mix? We haven't quite gotten there yet. But, you know, coming to the commission, right, those issues kind of follow me there. And it's for the commission to consider as well. But then, I think, you know, to me, the future is, right, we have a goal. And it's 100% renewable energy by 2045, right? 100% RPS goal. I've known for a long time, it's going to get tougher as you get to the last mile, right? And in this stage of COVID, I think, you know, yes, you know, like, you know, the financing world has, right, kind of been, you know, overturned and topsy-turvy and all of that. But I think the focus is still there, right? The focus is the goal. So now it's how do we advance, right, projects that are ongoing, and also those in the pipeline, right? So you've seen, right, the RFP for, right, renewable resources up to 900 megawatts statewide, right? The biggest one. I think, right, we keep pushing Hawaii Electric, like, hey, you know, stay on track, right? Even though you got COVID, you know, we hope to see those power purchase agreements, right, for review, right, in a timely manner, right? And, right, there's incentives behind that for the company, but that's one of our ways, right? And we know, right, some of that is to come online 2022, 2024, right? So you've got to start, this project's got to go now. And it also has an economic development debt on it, right? Because we looked at the governor's order and, right, construction development wasn't curtailed, right? It wasn't put on the side. It's like, keep going, right? Because we knew we had to keep something in the economy going. So, right, in a way, that's one of our, how we saw it on the energy side is these projects got to keep going. These proposals got to keep getting developed and trying the best we can to meet that goal. Yeah. And the other side of that, of course, is that development of these projects develops work, develops the economy, develops a workforce. It maintains the, you know, the specialties, the expertise. So it has all kinds of positive effects to keep on going. Yeah. And I think, right, we're very aware of the challenges that each of those components bring, right, like construction, right? They got to operate within this new paradigm that are reacting or recovering from a pandemic, right? So I think, right, we're very aware of that. And we know there might be delays here and there, right? But the more that we can just push and push and push to get these projects online and going, I think that's a benefit, right? That's very helpful. A win-win, I think. Yeah. And that's one of those things the state can do to help us reopen hopefully as soon as possible. Marco, what have you got? So, I mean, what you guys have on your buffet table right now, Leo is pretty stunning. I mean, from energy, transportation, telecom and water, I think I've got all four of them. Maybe I'm leaving one or the other ones out, but I think I got all four of them. So out of all this, this morgues board of dockets, which ones do you consider to be kind of the most critical, the most challenging to get right to the best of your and our collective ability, what really kind of, which dockets without, and I know fully, you know, you can't really get too much into substance of each docket as the pending, but which dockets really, if not keep you up at night, have you chewing on, oh boy, this is a real challenge? I think for me, right, Jenny and Jay come from the energy realm, that's their background. Myself, I'm more of the generalist, so I think I kind of take up the other items, but I think all of them, right, I think to me, all of them have their criticalness, if you will, about really getting things resolved, especially in this day and age of the pandemic. Certainly energy, we have some stuff that are pending, that we need to figure out how we're going to rule on some of these projects, rule on some of our purchase agreements. We're going back to, if we want to have more projects online, how do we get, come to resolution of those particular dockets to move forward? Obviously, in transportation, we have our sole inner island carrier, water carrier, that we need to resolve. That kind of keeps me up at night because, one, they're the only ones that are linking the islands other than air, air cargo, but then from what we regulate, they're the only ones. What do we do, and not only for the immediate, but the long term as well. We don't want to solve it, like say, just for this year, and then next year we're back in the same discussion about that. Some of the private water and sewer system guys, that are under our jurisdiction or under our regulation, they, a lot of them haven't changed their rates in years, and now COVID happens. We're asking them actively to keep us informed, because the last thing we want is you go out of business and a community suddenly doesn't have water or wastewater, and also our gas sector. What's going to happen with Hawaii gas? What's in their future? Same thing with Hawaii telecoms. We have all of these issues. Some of them are moving at some pace because, and COVID has kind of delayed that pace, if you will, but I think all of them, we try to keep tabs on all of them and make sure there's some resolution, because to me, I think we need to get to some point, yes, COVID's going to be around for a while. There's no doubt, even when we get the vaccine, and I don't like to use new normal, I like to use the next normal. That's good. What does the next normal look like? And that's what we're supposed to be operating under, having that kind of foresight to say, yeah, okay, we're gonna have a vaccine, but things are not going back to normal. So what does that look like? And these companies and utilities have to operate in that environment, right? Two, three, five, 10 years from now. Jay, if I could follow up with a more kind of specific question as well. So one of the open dockets right now is, of course, the Honua Ola aka Honua docket. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe today is the last day that the Commission is accepting commentary or input on the Honua's request a couple of weeks ago to reconsider your decision not too long ago. So I know, again, there's very limited you can say in substance, but can you give us some idea more or less when you expect the Commission to respond to Honua's request for a reconsideration of that decision in terms of time as we look into the weeks ahead? Yeah, I can't, I can't give you a timetable right now, Marco and Jay. I think, right, certainly right, the responses from the parties and also public input, right, today is the day. I mean, every day I've been getting emails upon emails. The latest things that have been filed are motions from the different parties to respond to the to the other parties responses. So we need to deal with that issue as well. But certainly, right, the first things first is will the Commission reconsider its decisions? That's the first, the first thing to kind of first hurdle, right? And then the next hurdle is do we have that hearing, right? And what is that hearing lot? So I think there's some steps that need to be done first. But, you know, timetable, I can't, I mean, if we, if we take in everything that we've had to review, that's like, you know, over a thousand pages of public testimony plus, right, pleadings from the parties. Some of them are terrific, right? They're like couple pages, but some of them do get into it. So we're going to have to take a look at those things and then render that decision. Time with I think is the best I can tell you right now. Well, you know, this all goes to how, you know, you were saying that the PUC has evolved over your observation of it. And indeed, one of the, one of the things since we got into renewables, and this is not the only state agency that has seen this evolution, is that everybody, everybody has an opinion on what you should do. And when you, when you open the floodgates and say, well, I will, we'll take comments by a certain day, comes in from left, right, and center from top and bottom. And some people want to tell you everything about how they feel. And sometimes very passionate. And I don't envy you that, Leo. I think it would be nice if he's okay, all right. We're just going to look at the meat of this. And then we're going to, we're going to respond by saying yes or no. End of decision, yes or no. Unfortunately, you can't do that. And so it means more work, more time, and frankly, more distraction. I don't know how you feel about this, but that's my reaction. Any thoughts on it? No, I think it's human nature to be emotional about projects, right, even from a commissioner standpoint, and reading some of the public comments that come in, right? You know, a lot of it is trying to weed through that and see if there is something there that, right, that possibly could be an idea towards resolution. Sometimes that's, right, someone just mentions it, and they might be mentioning it in passing, but could be worth looking into whether or not it's kind. I mean, and that's where, right, a lot of in this business, right, whether or not other parties picked that up too, right? So, right, if say the consumer advocate goes, yeah, that's a great idea, right? It's in public comments, but then did anybody take a look at that, right? It could be something for us to take a look at. So, I think, you know, that's the tough thing about being a decision maker, right? Right? If this were old school style, right, emotions are taken out from day one, right? You just look at the facts, nothing but the facts. Thank you, ma'am. Here's the decision, right? But it's been, right, right? That's what's the commission, but also party, right? Parties have been getting very sophisticated, right? And how they make the arguments and whether or not you got to, right? I wouldn't want to say that we got to fact-check everything, but you got to make sure that we take a look at it. Is it, is it everything left that we take a, took a look at? And that's where we are. Yeah, that's where we are in our democracy. And I suppose it's good to have a democracy like this. It's just tumultuous, that's all. Yes, correct. I'll agree with that. So, Marco, you want to, you want to sort of try to bring this all together here at the end of our time? Oh, so many more questions, Jay. So many more juicy topics we could go into. So, yeah, I mean, I wish we had an hour or two, because there's nothing, no shortage of stuff we could, we could talk about. Yeah, it'd be great if we could maybe do a session with Jay, Jenny and Leo, and the two of us, of course, you and I, Jay, and maybe, maybe, you know, you could do it for an hour, because half hour would just go by two down quickly with such charming, wonderful, intelligent people, right? So, we're doing that, we're doing that, you know, we have the webinar, we have the Zoom webinar, which allows us to have a larger panel, and we're doing what we call super shows. So, yes, the answer, Leo, you can take this back. The answer is we can do that, and we'd like to do that. Yeah. Well, I'll just select that we care that we're not, you know, meeting, we're all three commissioners are present. Sunshine, yeah, yeah. Well, the sunshine you both prevented me this morning is, well, last piece for the rest of the day. So, thank you, Leo. Thank you, Jay, as always, and more interesting stuff, and I'm confident and also comforted in a way that people like Leo, and Jay, and Jenny, and Carolyn, and my friends, Dave Parsons and Dave Matisse here, and all the other staff members who I don't know their names, but, you know, it's, I won't say it's a thankless job, but it's just a tough, it's a challenge, like so much in these days, and I really do appreciate all that you guys do, and I may not agree with everything, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect you, but yeah, I know you guys are all diligent and thoughtful and very conscious folks who are trying to do the absolute best you can, and I really do appreciate that, so thank you again, Leo. Leo, I really appreciate your answers, and the word thoughtful also occurs to me. You've been responsive and thoughtful in this discussion, and I really appreciate that, and I'm sure Marco has already said he appreciates that. So I hope we can get you back. I hope we can get to know you even better. It's been great getting to know you today. Yep, certainly. If there's an opportunity to return and get into, you know, other questions that you folks may have or might come up with in the interim, be glad to do it. Thank you. Leo Asuncion, the newest PUC commissioner joining us here on ThinkTech, and thank you, Marco. It's been a great discussion. Aloha to you both. Thank you. Aloha. Bye-bye.