 Okay. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel and this is our flagship energy program. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy every Wednesday at four. And we are together. Maria and I, and she's wearing a lei today because it's lei day. It's lei day. It's lei day. It's law day too. It is. I wonder why May 1st is such a big deal. Huh. Okay. There you go. Maybe it's energy day. Could be. Yeah. Well, it is now. It's energy hour. Okay. So, we're going to talk some more about the structure of the institutions and organizations that form the landscape in energy in Hawaii. Energy in the state, the clean energy in Hawaii. Yeah. So, today, let's talk about the energy office because that's been in the news lately and in the legislature. So, some remarkable things are happening or maybe not in the legislature. Yeah. So, there was a bill this session to change the energy office. Now, I should back up a little bit and say that the beginning of this conversation was a list that the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum had put together about who does what in the energy area. And we had gotten through page one out of four pages. We're working our way through it. There's plenty to go. And we had kind of talked about what the state energy office does. But this year, the legislature has changed somewhat where the energy office will be. So, the bill has had its third reading. So, it's pretty much through that part of the process. And since it was part of the budget, it seems that whatever they have in mind is going to take effect. So, at some point, I would love to hear from the architects of the bill what it is they have in mind. In general, it looks like... We lived in a democracy where transparency is important. Yeah. But you got to spend your time listening to the hearings. And I haven't honestly been to the hearings. So, there was openness and transparency, but I didn't attend to those. I just read. So, the part of the transparency I participated in was reading online. Okay. All right. The bill. So, it does maintain the energy office, but instead of being in D-bed, Department of Business Economic Development Tourism, as one of the divisions, it's being moved out to become a separate entity administratively attached to D-bed. And the head of the energy office would then be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate in a term, coterminous with the governor. So, it's an appointed position, essentially. It will be, as far as what that... Let's unpack that for a minute. Just that one item. We'll get to the budget issue later. But that one item, you know, when Neil Abercrombie first became governor, he actually approached the energy policy forum for advice on an idea that he had, which some people thought was not a good idea, which was to create an energy authority, a separate entity, separate government entity, sort of like the board authority in New York, or the airport authority, various states. And he was considering an energy authority. And the industry, and for that matter, I think everyone, at least in the energy policy forum, tells that that was not a good idea. And there were some who did, but mostly not. And they advised him with various opinions from various people that he really shouldn't do that. And he didn't do it. He listened. But there was never an energy authority created as a separate entity. And I might mention that that idea had actually come up. You know, every time somebody looks at the energy opportunities, energy challenges, and the complexity, they say, hey, there should be one agency that's tasked with this, and it should be, you know, at the cabinet level, you know, or something other than a division. So, that idea actually is fairly common. It's very interesting. You know, in the legal administration, I got to learn a lot about attached agencies, okay? DBED, I don't know about the other, you know, departments in the state, but DBED has attached agencies. Let me name them for you. There's not very many of them. One is the High Tech Development Corporation, now known as the Hawaii Tech Development Corporation. It's an operating entity. It has classes and programs. It gives grants out. It does mixers. Wetware Wednesday. You know, it does tech things. And it has, it had, you know, innovation centers and operating kind of entity. And it'll have the sandbox at AkoAko now next to the medical school. So, that's an operating entity. That's one. And it's always been, at least in my time, always been on a pretty thin budget with a small staff, smaller now, Robbie Melton left, you know, a few months ago. I'm not sure who's running it right now. It's future is not assured. The next one is the H-C-D-A that runs, that runs AkoAko. That's an attached agency attached to DBED, I think. And then there's a Kalei law. I think that's attached to H-C-D-A. That's part of H-C-D-A. There's, Nelha is an attached agency. Nelha is in AkoA and it has roughly 900 acres of, you know, tech park or agricultural type tech park out there. And that's also kind of an operating entity. It has real assets, real rent, real expenses. It has deep sea water, all this, it has a lot of people, a lot of things going on all the time. It's a major, you know, institution in AkoA, right next to the airport. That is the Strategic Development Corporation, the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation. I think that's been put into H-D-D-C by another bill, but I don't. Okay, all right. Well, it's okay to reorganize them because that was not very active and nobody ever granted it very much money. Carl Fuchs was running it. I think he still is technically. And did I miss any of them? I think there's another one somewhere. So these are attached agencies. They're technically, I guess you could say, they're state corporations which are attached to the underbelly of D-Bed. And they all have their individual executives. They have a board of directors. They have a board of directors. I served on some of those boards. They all have their own arrangements. On the other hand, they're all subject to the sunshine laws and the procurement code, ooh, the dreaded procurement code. HRS 103D? So they act a lot like government, you know. And the appointments of the executive usually made with the governor's involvement and then sort of ratified by the boards. So it's not that we have no experience with, you know, these rocked-down attached agencies. They have a certain culture about them. They've been functioning for a long time. They, they, we know how they work. Attorney General knows how they work. You know, it's got all kinds of policies and programs. So if they're, if the legislature and its infinite wisdom does create the energy office as a, as an attached agency to D-Bed, rather than an internal office division of D-Bed, there would be a certain culture, a certain experience factor that helps. Furthermore, it would, it would respond, I think, to the reasons, whatever they were at the time. I'm sure there are many reasons to create a separate independent, quote, independent authority in energy. And what I come away with, and I'm sure interested in your view of this, what I come away with is this probably a good idea. What do you think? Well, I certainly am glad that the energy office continues. Yeah, but there was a question about whether it would, eh? Yeah, yeah. So the first sense is relief and the second is, okay, well, that'll be different in some ways. And I'm very interested in hearing what they have in mind at the legislature and elsewhere as this, as this idea begins to grow into the reality, I guess. Yeah, so it seems that, you know, so they did some rearranging. They eliminated existing language and replaced it with other language. But to me at first, it seems that it will have similar functions. It's still going to be the entity that does a lot of the analysis and understands how the pieces work together and communicates that to the legislature and to private industry and the public and so forth. Well, we talked about this before, didn't we? I mean, and I think over the years, however it evolved, it was more like a data organization than it was a leadership organization. More like, you know, backroom record keeping and promulgation than actually finding new policy, creating implementations. They have definitely done a lot of the policy stuff, but it goes through the legislature and very often it's not obvious, you know, if a legislator introduces a bill and agencies comment on the bill, you may not be aware of, you know, how much effort was behind that because the original RPS was the energy office, a creature of the energy office, Hawaii Energy Strategy. Yeah, so there were a lot of policies developed within the energy office that then were enacted by the legislature and then carried out by whatever agencies were tasked with it. But there was one part of the bill that may indicate an increased focus on sustainability and carbon because they are tasked with doing a carbon B study. So that's one of the things that they are explicitly tasked with and given money to complete a report on carbon pricing. So, you know, so that seems to be at least one of the areas that they want additional focus. And they specifically mentioned vehicle, the electric vehicles, you know, the transportation side of things as well as working with projects. For example, if you task them with doing a study, I'm not too interested, I don't think that serves much of a purpose. If you task them with, you know, tracking and how many electric vehicles we have in the state, I'm not too interested, it's easy. If you task them with finding initiatives, recommend to the legislature on policy and implementation, on how we can increase the number of vehicles, then I'm interested. If you task them with determining and implementing a plan for charging stations, Hither and Yahn, then I'm interested. In other words, I would like to see some real delegation of authority to this organization, like an authority. And I think those were in there. But I would, as I said, I would love to hear from the folks who had the ideas about what they want implemented with this new structure to be able to kind of expand upon it. One more point I'd like to make and see if you agree, because I know you're big on climate change. We are all big on climate change. But I have felt over the past few years that climate change has got, it's got, you know, all mushed up with energy. And so we have an energy initiative, clean energy initiative. We have goals and targets. We have, you know, these grand plans to improve clean renewable energy sources and distribution in the state. Very important. But it's so easy to throw in climate change and say, Oh, you guys got to do climate. We have other organizations that do climate change. There's a number of organizations, commissions, state and federal. We have people who are paid well to do climate change. We have a lot of people at the university are doing climate change. Why throw climate change in the energy office? Why not let them do their namesake energy? What do you think? Well, actually, I think that one of the tasks that they have added was to help fund, to the extent possible, some climate change efforts. So it isn't their primary objective, but it is in there. And since energy is the sector that is emitting a vast majority of the CO2, it's inescapable that what you do in energy will have a climate change impact. So if you had an energy office and told them you don't have to worry about climate change, you could be working at cross purposes with the folks who are worried about climate. But what everything they do has an impact. If I give you a completely renewable state by 2040 or 2045, if I give you that, you know, that's about as much as we could possibly do, isn't it? You know, then you wouldn't have to worry too much about the carbon emissions because there wouldn't be any carbon emissions. Yeah, it's not that simple. I know it isn't that simple. And because it's not simple. But if you can give us that, Jay, I think we'd accept it. We're working on it. You and I, we're both working on it. And we're going to take one minute off to, you know, think about more about this subject. And then we're going to come back, we're going to talk about other initiatives and other issues that are pending in the legislature and not, you know, in the landscape around energy leadership in this state. Wow, stay tuned. We'll be right back. Hi, my name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with ThinkTech Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich and lighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay and aloha. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at three, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Okay. It's lay day, May day, law day, what have you day. And Maria Tomei is wearing a lay today to celebrate that day. And we're talking about what we've been talking about for the last several weeks. We're talking about the landscape of leadership and energy. And we agreed during the break that we really need to spend a little time on science and technology and who is leading the charge on those things here in Hawaii. Because after all, you know, there's a lot of technology being developed elsewhere. But we are supposed to be a leader. We're supposed to be at the cutting edge. We have these ambitious goals. And to reach them, we're going to need the best technology we can get. So how are we doing in terms of science and technology and energy, Maria? Well, I think that Hawaii is one of the most fun and interesting places to be applying a lot of the technologies. And very often when you're building new systems, you realize new ways to do things and synergies. And so you can actually develop, you know, develop some of these ideas. Now, I'm not sure how much of that needs to happen here and only here, because the strongest products and the most successful products are sometimes results of teams. And with the ability to work remotely, you can have the best minds working on these. And you also have to have good communicators as well. And so what we see being developed here sometimes gets taken another step elsewhere. And then eventually comes back to be applied here. Hopefully. Yeah, you know, it's it's a global system, right? So and the key role that we play, I think is two fold. One is we're applying and we're using the technologies that we and others have developed. And second is we are communicating about the successes and the failures and the improvements to others. And so if we can keep those lines of communication open, not only on the policy side, I know you're very interested on the policy side of developing good ideas and having leadership communicate that idea, those ideas and others to adopt them. But the same thing happens in tech, right? You have an exciting development, you have it demonstrated somewhere. If you have the ability to take that story out and then take back several years later, the next generation of that, that benefits everybody. So we're seeing a lot of the projects that are going to be going in in Hawaii, not just on the solar and the storage side, but also on how do you manage your energy system and on the energy efficiency side, because it all it all connects. If you have an unused room and it's got the lights and the air conditioning and everything else go, that's waste, right? So to the extent that you can control and reduce your waste, then you're improving the efficiency of everything. You can also do that on smaller scales. And a lot of the nanotechnologies are doing that as well. Some comments. Yes. You know, we had Dave Carl, he runs the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education at UH, a very successful research organization. Why is it important? Because it's here in these waters where he has a station of 100 miles, 100 kilometers north of Hawaii, where he can do research in the ocean. It's a special ocean and it's near Hawaii. So he has the environment to do the research. There are other organizations on the mainland and elsewhere that do marine biology and oceanography. But this is a really good place for it. So he has achieved and retained a leadership position nationally in this area. It's quite impressive. But part of it is because we are in an environment where we can do that. There are other good examples of the same thing where we are in the right environment to do the research we should do it. So if you take that same concept and you move it over to energy, we are here. We have been, I don't know how we are doing this very moment, but we have been a leader in renewable energy. We have all these systems going. Utility is on board. Utilities are on board. They're all interested in willing. Willing could take a chance to some extent. They're willing to adopt new technology. They look on the mainland. But reality is, wouldn't it be better if we were in the place where the energy is happening, in the place where people are talking about and committed to these targets? It reminds me actually, I'll stop in a minute. It reminds me actually of a program that ThinkTech did back in the day, maybe 10 years ago, of hotel software. And my fellow got up and he said, and I'll never forget, he said, I do not understand why the hotels in Hawaii go buy hotel software on the mainland. We have all the hotels. We're a destination resort. We have all these experienced people who day to day spend their lives with guests in rooms and all the symbols of hotel software. Why don't we develop the hotel software right here? It really touched me, but we haven't done that. So the same. Here we are in the middle of Energyville. We should develop it here. We have the people. We have the university. We have the people who can do the time. Look at HNEI. We could be doing all kinds of projects right here. We're the best ones. Let me add something else and I'll stop. What Dave Carl said and what many people say is you do better science when you collaborate and you refer to that. So you've got to collaborate. So the question is, do you collaborate by losing your people to the mainland when they do the science there? Or you do the science here and collaborate with people on the mainland, but you act as a principal investigator. You act as the leader of the science right here. And the collaboration happens. It must happen because you can't do science without collaboration anymore. You've got to have multiple disciplines and experts come in and talk to each other. But you can use communication technology to do exactly that, like what we do when we do our remote shows. So what I'm thinking is that it would be best, and it's achievable if we get our minds together, to have the leadership, the science leadership here, be the principal investigators, talk to people on the mainland and everywhere, and develop the technology that would serve our development of energy right here in Hawaii, without giving up, only always holding on to that leadership position. We can be the center of renewable energy right here. We're not really doing that now. We should be doing that in science. Yeah, definitely. In fact, it is happening, but the people who are working on it are extremely busy working and collaborating, so we don't hear about it unless we go look for it. Tell me about it. Tell me about those people. Who is doing what? Well, HNEI is one of the institutions you mentioned. And then the University of Hawaii, College of Engineering, and at the various disciplines. And even some of the folks in the private sector who are working with the researchers, excuse me, in the universities, and they write the papers that are so exciting to people who know about the topic. But how do you communicate those advances, which may be just a tiny bit of improvement in the output from a solar cell or in the efficiency of a process it's creating? So how do you communicate that to the public? They want to go buy something, or they want to see it installed somewhere. And so the distance from the research that's being done and the successes and what the public is interested in is quite large. So we don't really hear about it as much as you might... You don't really have to listen to our shows. Don't hear about it. Well, even our shows, you know, I mean... We have to bring those researchers in. And they come. IEEE has conferences here. I had the photovoltaic conference here a couple years ago and whatnot. But as I said, it's very esoteric. You know, we had the Energy Storage Conference on the Big Highland. It's extremely interesting if you're involved in those industries and you can be excited about the changes that are going to double the efficiency of whatever in five years. But... Well, you know, last year there was a program... How do we tell the story? Organized by HNEI and others, but I think it was a principal organizer with the Germans. I don't know if you went to that. It was to the east-west center. And they had a lot of Germans come. And the Germans are into energy. You know, for them it's harder because it's colder over there. The sun doesn't shine as much. But they came and they were really good and fun. They were very affable and willing to share all this. And they really liked our people and our people really liked them. It was a good move by HNEI to have this kind of collaborative connection. At the end of the day, they were trying to sell us their technology. And we were trying to sell them, I mean, to the extent we can, sell them our technology. Now, you know, there's lots of reasons for organizing a program like that. And you want that program to happen. But you also want, at the end of the day, that we should be leaders in this. You want them to come and get stuff from us rather than us, get stuff from them. Or a combination of those things with us at the lead. And I think we should do more of that because that's the kind of collaboration that can go a long ways. International is dealing with the best of the best. You know, it's learning not only what the solutions are but what the problems are because there can be multiple solutions to a given problem. I think we have, you know, tons of issues here, tons of things that need to be solved, tons of opportunities to make it better. I was waiting for you to say that word. Yeah, because we have a lot of challenges ahead of us. And we can solve them. Yes. And it's interesting if we can get the storyteller, not the ones who are making up stories, but the ones who can take the actual advancements and come and explain what people can be excited about. Because there's a lot of speculation. If you're saying, oh, can we get 200% renewable by whatever year, there's a lot of stuff that will happen, needs to happen, will happen. A lot of stuff that won't happen as well. So you can't really tell where it's going. But you can be involved and interested and follow along as the progress is made. Yeah. But you need someone to explain it to us. Yeah. And think about it all day long. Yeah. So if we can get some of those folks to come and explain what HNEI has been doing or what the College of Engineering has been doing, you know, I don't know if UH, OTED still does Office of Tech Transfer. I haven't heard. Yeah. But I think that's very relevant to our discussions about Hawaii's energy future, not just what are the plans and who's doing what, but also what could we envision happening? Yeah. Yeah. And who's doing it and celebrate them because very often they don't get celebrated. Yeah. They go home and if they try to explain it to their family and friends, their eyes are glazed over. So they just kind of work in their own little groups and make their progress by celebrating their successes. Absolutely. So I guess what I hear you saying is that we are going to get these people from HNEI, College of Engineering, wherever it is happening, wherever somebody could figure out a better inverter or better software for the grid to communicate with itself. These are huge possibilities and we can do it right here. We can do so much right here if we just have confidence in ourselves and see ourselves as the principal investigators on these solutions. So would you make some calls? If you'll make calls, I'll make calls. Okay. You got a deal. Let's do that. Thank you, Maria. Always nice to talk. Thank you. See you next time. Okay, thanks.