 We're going to check in today with Representative Nicole Bowen of the State House of Representatives, and she is the chair of the Energy and Environment Committee, which is very important, and she's an important spot. No stress, Nicole, and I'll just tell you that she's from Kailua District 7, which is all on the Kailua coast there, and she covers a lot of ground, there, including energy facilities. And she's on the Committee for Energy and also for Agriculture, and she has been on finance, grants, and aid, judiciary, Hawaiian Affairs, water, and land, and she's a really long, long-running representative in the House. She's been there for several terms, and that's important. This is her third year as appointee to the U.S. Department of Energy's Electricity Advisory Committee. She's serving as the co-chair of the Council on State Government, Western Region Committee on Energy and Environment. I guess that's enough, right? That's enough, Nicole. If I go through the whole thing, we'll be here all day. Thank you very much for coming on. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So let me just go through some of the questions that have come up. I guess the first one, everybody's interested in bills that have been introduced in the ledge about energy, either by your committee or otherwise in this session. Can you identify the ones that we should care about? I mean, I think the big focus this year is on the response to the Maui fires, and there are several bills relating to the response to the part the utility played in that, or the effect that it had on the electric utility that I think are definitely of interest that we should talk about. And then like past years, we've got bills relating to a variety of things, some topics that we see over and over, like the wheeling conversation. We have a number of bills relating to kind of trying to incentivize more hydrogen use. We've got, of course, the energy efficiency bills and looking at expanding electric vehicle infrastructure just to name a few. Yeah, right. Oh, well, that sounds like that's a pretty, that's a broad swath of bills. There's a lot of issues in there, which we just described. Let's talk about Maui for a minute, you know. We really haven't gotten over the tragedy, and part of that is the blame game. Part of that is to try to learn from it. So it doesn't repeat itself because climate change will repeat these problems either by way of fire or extreme weather or both. So can you talk about the bills dealing with Maui and how we're going to come out of the whole experience being better? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of open questions there. From what I've seen, at least through my committee, there's three main pushes. The first one is just to establish a statutory requirement for wildfire mitigation plans. So presumably this is something the utility would already be doing, but this just puts a backstop in law that ensures they have to and kind of lays out some bullets of what have to be covered and a process that involves the Public Utilities Commission as well as stakeholder input, which is really important. And this bill would mimic pretty similarly things that have been done in California and Oregon and other wildfire prone states. So that's one thing. The kind of push and pull on that as we move through session is, you know, how will it be paid for, right? Will it be rate based? Will there be other measures put in place to help pay for that? And also the question of liability. Some of the amendments, for example, that Hawaiian Electric wants for that bill would be to say that once the wildfire plans are approved by the Public Utilities Commission, then the liability is taken off the utility and it all goes, you know, onto the PUC. So those are an example of, you know, amendments I don't entirely agree with that we're going to keep having conversation about. The other another, you know, there's been the two other ones. One is to establish a kind of like a wildfire fund. And this is less directly related to my committee. I just have seen this bill because I sit on other committees it's gone to. And this mimics what the governors kind of already set up ad hoc, but it's a big fund that the utility and state and some private players might pay into. And this would be something that victims of the fire could, you know, get a settlement out of to try to head off some of the litigation and reduce the cost and expedite the process. So this would be for like property loss and things like that. And then the third one and probably the most impactful and one that everyone should be paying attention to and tension to is a bill that would authorize a process of securitization for the electric utility. So because right now their credit rating is so bad, they don't really have the ability to borrow money, which, you know, they need for ongoing improvements and also for implementing additional wildfire mitigation that people are going to be looking for in the wake of the fires. And so securitization to kind of boil it down to the simplest terms, which took me a while to figure out because it was being explained to me in ways that made it sound much more complicated than it really is. But in this case, it would basically just be putting a fee on every ratepayers bill that would be collateral for whatever bond they take out to borrow this money. And so this would impact people's bills, depending on the size of the bond. And that one I think is something we should all be watching closely. Yeah, OK. And, you know, in many ways, I think we're kind of tied up in dealing with the fire. But there's a lot of projects we need to do to get to get to our goals. And that that drum has to keep on beating. And I guess some of them or maybe all of them require legislation to facilitate the possibility and therefore, you know, the prospect of getting to our goals. Is there anything or are there any big projects that are happening now? And is it necessary? Do we have legislation that would facilitate them? I mean, the process, you mean like renewable energy projects or energy? Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that primarily that is handled through the RFP process in the commission. And I know that they've just come out of, you know, announcing RFP three and and I think, you know, the push has to continue to come either, you know, either and through legislation and through the executive branch to just try to keep these projects on track. I mean, what we've seen in the past is a lot of proposals for four new projects, but very few of them that are actually online, delivering energy to the grid right now. And, you know, we need to be able to rely on knowing those will actually be executed so that planning processes can take place, etc. So I think there's questions of just that oversight of trying to facilitate interconnection of having, you know, one debate that's come up with the legislature repeatedly. And again, this session is whether the Public Utilities Commission should be exercising the authority they have to establish a Hawaii Electricity Reliability Administrator, the here administrator. So that might be something that changes. It sounds like now the the new the current PUC is interested in actually moving ahead and doing that. So we'll see that. And maybe that will help with some of these reliability questions and keeping, you know, hopefully also keeping these new projects on track and having someone kind of keep an eye on the big picture and make sure that things are moving forward. Yeah, one thing I got in the paper was that we had, I guess it was rolling blackout Big Island because of, you know, domino kind of equipment failures and 8000 people didn't have power for a while. And of course, that's that's bad for them. It's bad for the utility. It's it's bad for it's a black eye for the state, actually. And and people, you know, folded into their decision about whether to stay here or leave when they when they go blackout because you really can't do anything when you have a blackout. Well, you know, your activities at home and in the office are stopped. And so clearly, what what can we do? What are we doing in order to prevent that in order to prevent that? Not only the Big Island where, you know, you have this domino problem, but maybe elsewhere in the state, maybe a Wahoo. How can we avoid these blackouts? Yeah, I mean, the Big Island ones, it's two separate cases. The Big Island blackouts, I mean, they've been repeated outages at Hamakua Energy Partners, you know, over the past year, even before that. And so I've, you know, I've personally called the PUC and said, hey, is anyone looking into this? And I mean, I'm assured that they are. But of course, we don't get to hear results of that. And yeah, it's it's I think that Kiko, Helko, all of these have a lot of aging infrastructure in the bulk of the power supply is still coming from, you know, from these fossil fuel power generators that are many of which are quite dated. And there's a lot of work that needs to be put in to bringing them up to date and, you know, transitioning some of them off the grid, bringing more renewables online, et cetera. But yeah, I do think there could be more oversight on that reliability piece, especially when you start seeing things happening repeatedly, like on the Big Island, with the repeated calls for conservation. Yeah, conservation, meaning when the utility tells you not to use power. Yes, that's always kind of third world when they do that. And then the situation on Oahu, which was, I guess, a couple of months ago here when when there were, you know, several days of rain. And, you know, that that outage was really due to, as I understand, an outage at the Y out power plant. And additionally, I think there was another generator offline at Campbell for repairs. And then because it had been cloudy, everyone was blaming, oh, not enough renewable energy and the fact that the battery, the new standalone battery storage facility, KES, not having been charged. But realistically, to me, that was more a failure of HECOS planning because the cloudy weather is somewhat predictable situation. And, you know, you've got to plan for a worst case scenario, not kind of hope for the best when you're in electric utility. And I think that they could have, you know, put the other generator back online and charge the KES batteries from the grid, even if that was charging with fossil fuel, not renewables, that would have at least kept the lights on. So seeing things like that happen and kind of understanding what's really going on and then hearing it get spun in the media to blame renewable energy, which is really a still a relatively small part of a Wahoo's grid that that can be frustrating. Well, you know, every day they call, I get up and I look out the window and I say, what a beautiful day, one day closer to the next storm. That's what I say to myself. And we are all one day closer to the next storm and it will come. It is coming. And when it comes, it'll be extreme, given, you know, the extreme quality of climate change increasingly. And so, you know, the question is, are we ready? Is there an issue? Is it being discussed? Are we ready for extreme weather or will we just go down? Yeah, I mean, I assume I would hope that, yes, it is being discussed. But there's definitely a lot of infrastructure upgrades, et cetera, that need to happen that take time and money that that we can be talked about, that we know that they're needed, but it doesn't mean they're being implemented. So I think that Hawaii, you know, in the event of a really big event is still somewhat vulnerable. I mean, you're never going to be 100 percent foolproof, right? But I think that, you know, looking more at micro grids, looking at, you know, being able to island parts of the grid so everything doesn't go down at once and things like that can really go a long way. And then, you know, hardening some of the infrastructure, which also helps, you know, in the event of something like a wildfire, but, you know, strengthening those kinds of infrastructure like poles that are above ground, et cetera, can help. And then under grounding where it's possible and not too costly. Things like that make sense. But are they all, is it all done? No, I mean, it's talked about, it's understood, but it's costly to implement and takes a lot of time. That's a moving target. I remember we had somebody from, I guess it was somebody from an organization in Washington that looks into energy sustainability on Efta Maria in Puerto Rico. And it was a very interesting discussion because there were two kinds of fasteners used for the solar. And they had large solar farms in Puerto Rico. And there was a farm where they held the fasteners held. And right across the way was another farm where the fasteners didn't hold and it was ripped up by the hurricane. And so it's a regulatory issue, of course, but it seems to me that you can make choices on this and be better off in the case of extreme weather as Puerto Rico, unfortunately, had too many fasteners that weren't fastened. That's just one thing. But the other thing is that you mentioned earlier is that the media was spinning it or spinning the blackout around renewable energy. But in fact, we have talked for 20 years about about a portfolio that's diversified. And we have talked about, you know, not only solar. Solar has emerged, but we talked about wind. We've talked about offshore wind. Talked about geothermal, which has sort of got a ceiling over it. Talked about hydrogen. We talked about an inter-island cable. We talked about algae for a while, biofuel. And there was an article in the paper about this partnership between the Army and Hawaiian Electric, where the Army would provide power to Hawaiian Electric, if necessary. But it was biofuel. And it's interesting that we have enough biofuel to do that. Talked about ocean energy. And I remember a big red ship in Kona off Kauai High with the letters OTEC painted on the red hull of this big ship. That was, I think, experimental. But it was a real possibility at the time. I could go on. There were other things that might be in the portfolio. But Nicole, it strikes me that over the past few years, we have migrated to, you know, the emerging dominant player of solar. Should there be more diversified resources, diversified renewables in the portfolio? What can we do? What are we doing? What's the discussion on that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's right. And yeah, we should we should want a more diversified portfolio, but it really comes down to cost. I mean, the reason that we see the growth of utility scale solar projects is because it's the best bang for the buck for ratepayers. And I mean, there's a tremendous pressure on Hawaiian Electric justifiably to keep rates down because we have the highest you know, electricity rates in the nation in Hawaii. And the cost of living is already incredibly high here. And it's challenging. So, you know, all these other options, a lot of them, ones that you mentioned are like not really at commercial scale. Some are just years long projects, like, you know, doing offshore wind, for example, I think it's under discussion, but it's not something that we would see online for, you know, another decade or so. Potentially things like geothermal, like we, you know, obviously have geothermal on the Big Island. You know, I introduced a bill this year that, you know, given the budget situation, probably won't get funded. But I think there's a lot more to be done to look at geothermal exploration. And that is a possibility because that's been a relatively affordable option. But, you know, a lot of it just comes down to cost. And I think that, you know, there's kind of that almost like a trope of people just like to say, well, the sun's not always going to be shining. So therefore, you know, renewable energy is not reliable, but it's still a it's still a minority percent of any grid. And it's the production profile of renewable energy project is understood and then planned around. So we are not, you know, obviously building it and planning or expecting it to be the sun to be shining all night long. So, you know, the idea that we're not, that it's not being planned around and still cost effective on that basis is understood. But yeah, I think, you know, when when the utilities have to move forward to get off of some of the, you know, baseload generation that's coming from, you know, still imported oil, etc. Some of which used to be coming from coal that some of that will get replaced by biodiesel likely, you know, and we'll have to keep looking at all these other types of energy and hoping that some of them pan out to be cost effective. But I think a lot of people get pie in the sky ideas about what they'd like to see and just tend to ignore the realities of how expensive some of these things cost. I mean, we don't have ratepayers that are going to want to pay for the amount it will cost to, you know, deliver them electricity from OTEC at this point in time, for example. Yeah, it's expensive. On the other hand, it's expensive the way it is now. You know, the high rate must be close to 50 cents. So what about KIC? We haven't talked about KIC. It's it's it's it's it's in this discussion, isn't it? It is affected by some of the bills. It is it operates differently. Your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of brings my mind back to talking about the wildfires, actually, I think can you see as a co-op in not that they haven't had their own struggles, but they really just provide a good example of how that model of ownership has really allowed them to keep rates stable, bring rates down and provide more renewable energy more quickly. And yeah, when you look at the situation that's going on with Hawaiian Electric and, you know, their their financial situation, you know, right now they're with the securitization that we discussed earlier. I mean, they're essentially asking for the state to come in and and bail them out and allow them to borrow a large amount. On, you know, on the backs of what would be a significant increase of every ratepayers bill, you know, depending how much I think we had. Well, I won't go to in the week. Sorry, let me reel it back. But I think at the same time when you look at Hawaiian Electric, they haven't revealed any information to us at least about what they've been doing internally, if they've sold any of their assets, if they're looking at selling, you know, American savings bank, if they're looking at, you know, their their very high salaries and very heavy administration or any of that stuff before they come to ratepayers asking us. And so I think when you look at something like KIC and how that's worked out and and pair that with thinking about how there's been kind of a long time interest in talking about possible cooperative ownership models on Hawaii Island and Maui, it's probably more feasible for neighbor islands because as rural areas, they can qualify for funding in different ways than Oahu could. And so this could be, you know, a potential opportunity. It's that's never happened in the past because Hawaiian Electric doesn't want to sell and without a willing seller, it's really not not on the table. So it's a little I'm a little far field of maybe what you wanted to ask me about KIC, but it just reminded me that I didn't bring that up earlier. And I think it's something that should all be talking about in the state, really, as a this is a window of opportunity. And it's an opportunity to just try to understand what would be in the best interest of ratepayers. I mean, not even to say that there should be a specific outcome or there should be a co-op or shouldn't, but we should play out the scenario, understand it and try to figure out what makes the most sense for the public benefit, you know, before we just jump in and agree to basically bail out Hawaiian Electric. Yeah, thank you. I'm just a couple of other loose end issues that have come and gone. No, there are still people around who believe that next era should have been permitted to merge or buy Hawaiian Electric. How does that look retrospectively? Oh, I mean, that's such a counterfactual. Like, I mean, I don't I don't know what they would have done differently or not. Or, you know, what that that or what people's reasons for thinking that are specifically. So yeah, I don't know if I have a good answer for that. So what about what about LNG? LNG, I remember David E. Gay got up at an energy conference and he said, without really conferring with the energy community, he said, I don't want you to, you know, do this merger. And I also don't want you to bring in LNG. On the other hand, LNG is recognized on the mainland as a bridge fuel. It is happening globally as a bridge fuel. There are a lot of countries that are actively using it with with apparently reasonable plans to bridge to renewables with LNG. Is there a possibility of that here? I mean, in my view, I don't I don't I wouldn't see it happening. I guess I mean, I'm not the decider of that. I wouldn't say anything's in the realm of possibility, I suppose. But but I just think that the infrastructure that would have to be built and the retrofits on the existing plans or even if they would have to be a build, new ones would be like it would be incredibly high cost. I think for some of the places on the mainland using it as a bridge fuel, they already have the infrastructure to bring it here. Would be like a whole new thing. So it's not as simple as it sounds. So I mean, just on a on a cost, if you weren't even worried about, OK, do we want to and if you pick something as a bridge fuel to move from oil to gas and then to renewable when you actually have the option of building out renewables? I mean, if you're going to commit to building all that infrastructure, you're locked in for, you know, a minimum of 30 years, probably longer, just otherwise it would just be, you know, throwing throwing money away to even invest in it in the first place. So I just don't know that. I don't know that it would make sense. And my guess is that's probably part of the reason, you know, why that that didn't, you know, didn't get approved. And it was part of the conversation because I think there's all the. Things people say publicly about not wanting its mainland company or not wanting LNG because of fossil fuel and so on and so forth. But behind the scenes, you also have people doing the analysis at the PUC and, you know, you know, other entities and just looking at what does it really cost and what's the real reality of how feasible it even is. And I think there would be some questions there. Yeah, we have to be practical. That's for sure. And if you have a big expense like LNG, LNG, you know, facilities, you have to amortize that you don't get the money back. OK, and there are two bills pending in this session about nuclear energy. Nicole, can can you talk about nuclear energy for a moment here in Hawaii? Yeah, you know, we didn't, at least on the House side, I haven't followed what's moving in the Senate, but on the House side, we're not hearing either of those bills. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things. One, Hawaii has a in the Hawaii state Constitution. It says that any nuclear project has to be approved by two thirds. So a first thing to do to move forward on anything nuclear would be to undo that that probably does not the kind of thing that sort of on a principal level makes sense to have in the Constitution. And I think we should always be open to, you know, any potential technology. But I mean, kind of similar to what we just talked about. I think nuclear is incredibly expensive to build. So it wouldn't be an affordable option for Hawaii to build a new plant. I think most of the federal investments in nuclear right now are have to do with keeping existing nuclear facilities running for as long as possible because they are low emissions. And in our important part of like the decarbonization efforts and Hawaii also being like a seismic volcanic state, it might not be the greatest choice for here either. But that said, I think, you know, like we were we spoke earlier about modular nuclear, like a kind of small smaller scale. And I think there could be certain use cases that it could make sense. And I think it just would have to really be considered case by case. But again, I just look at it as one of these things where people's idea of it gets ahead of them looking into the reality of what are the financials for it? Because like everything that I understand about nuclear and nuclear power plants, it's incredibly expensive. So we're trying to find ways to bring rates down for everyone here in Hawaii, not not up. Who knew I'd been very controversial? It's still controversial because they went soon one electric for some kind of contract claim. And they're, as I said before the show, they keep on going and going and going, even though the court, the courts have ruled against them. So query, where are they? And what does it mean? And what does it mean for, you know, for that kind of fuel, that kind of plant? I honestly, since the last PUC decision, I have not was it court decision? It was PUC. I haven't followed super closely what what who who knew is up to. I think as far as being a power producing facility, it's, in my opinion, not going to happen, despite like rumors that keep circulating and so on. And, you know, why the the owners of the company keep pushing? I'm not sure. You know, there's all kinds of sort of conspiracy theories out there. I don't know the reasoning. It's sort of hard to fathom for some of us what's going on. And and to the other point of the question, I mean, biomass, biomass can, I think, take a lot of different forms. So I would say, like, you know, like any like any kind of power, you would never say never, you'd want to look at it case by case. But I think that that this particular case judging by the, you know, greenhouse gas analysis, it just didn't make sense because it wasn't really reducing emissions. And they're their only way of balancing the checkbook on it and making it look like it reduced emissions was to talk about all these mitigation efforts they were going to do to plant trees in the future. That was would have been really hard to enforce or follow up on or even know if it was going to happen. So I think that particular project, I don't picture it coming back. Yeah, yeah, surely. So one last thing which we would be remiss if we didn't talk about, and that is electric vehicles, all the rage, not only, you know, here to a certain extent, maybe an extent that should be greater, but on the mainland and everywhere in the world, the China is building an enormous number of electric vehicles right now. It has the market on that. But but query, how are we doing and what can we do more? I recall a few years ago that we had not only a federal incentive tax credit, we had a state tax credit. Now we don't have a state tax credit. What do you see in the future on that? Is there anything bending on it? I think right now the focus has been on continuing to try to build out public infrastructure. I mean, sales of electric vehicles increased, I think in Hawaii 30 percent in the last year and just sort of anecdotally, like everyone you talk to says, oh, my next car will be electric. And so there's a big need to continue to build out public infrastructure. And I think right now, because people who charge at home tend to be home owners who might have solar on their rooftop, who own a single family residence or something like that. And the idea of getting more public charging out there so people can charge while they're at work, while they're shopping, you know, maybe while they're, you know, it's parked in different places out and about that will open up the option to let more people sort of share in the savings that you can realize by owning an electric vehicle. And I think, as you said, we're seeing more and more models come out that are more affordable. The whole question of range anxiety is pretty much settled at this point. Like you can go just as far on a charge battery as a gas tank. It's just figuring out where you're going to charge it in the fact that charging does take longer than just filling out a gas filling up a gas tank. And then like one measure that we're considering as an example at the legislature this year would be to require all new construction of state facilities to be charge already in their parking and then to also do some retrofitting of parking at state facilities. And the idea is if we can get people to charge while they're parked at work, it brings that use to the middle of the day where it's better for the grid when there's more renewable energy on the grid, where there's more overproduction and kind of balances that out. So it's a win-win and then the convenience of just being able to charge while you're parked at work. But I always say whenever we start talking about the clean energy transition, the part that gets left out and the part that's always the most important and should be the overarching goal should be to reduce vehicle miles traveled. Like we have a lot of traffic problems and land use problems and lifestyle problems that come about from just getting in our cars every time we want to go somewhere and not relying enough on public transit, not properly funding public transit and not building walkable communities. And those should be the first things that we focus on always, but we just don't do it enough. Yeah. Well, that last point, that's really valuable because if we had public transit, we would be in the larger picture, we'd be saving money, we'd be saving the environment. We wouldn't be stressing out our resources and doing greenhouse gases. Because most people still have gasoline cars. It's not a good thing. And so, yeah, some public transit. More efficient than a EU2. It's not directly on any of your committees, but what about rail? Your feelings? Oh, I mean, I support it in concept. I think right now, I mean, we got a chance to go ride the part that's open. And right now, it's just not, it doesn't go into town. So it's not like useful to a large amount of the population of Oahu. But like in concept, yes, we need transit like that. We need rail, we need buses, et cetera. I mean, I grew up in Europe, you know, until I was 15 years old. So it's such a different, it's just such a different whole world, I guess, in the way that public transit is accessible and it goes everywhere. And even if you're in a more rural area, there's a train or a bus. And in America, it's just like all cars, all the time to the point where people here are so used to it, I think they have a hard time envisioning anything, anything different. But like really having better public transit would make so much sense for an island in particular. And it's just, it's a healthier lifestyle overall. So, I mean, just things that I know will never happen here. It's like, it's great that we're getting rail on Oahu. They should be talking about rail for, you know, Big Island or Maui, like build it now before you're trying to puzzle piece it in between everything that's already built, you know, make, you know, things like that. But that's, you know, it would be a county project. It's not really a state thing. It's not a state. It happened. There's probably not public support for it. This is just my thoughts. But yeah, and my thoughts, as I remember a couple of administrations ago on the Big Island, they had these buses for people who lived in Hilo and worked in hotels in Kona. And the buses were free. The buses were free. I say that the buses were free. And I tell you, if you want to encourage people to take public transportation, make it cheap, really cheap or free. And then everybody will do it. I think buses are free right now due to like a federal grant, but it's still not convenient enough on Big Island, maybe a little bit more so in Hilo, but in Kona, they just don't come often enough. So it's true though. I mean, it's like, you know, roads aren't free. We pay for them in taxes. But we're not shelling out a dollar or swiping a card every time we use them. So people don't think about what they pay to drive on roads. And it should really be the same for public transit. I mean, it should be open and covered by taxpayers and available to all. And we shouldn't have to feel like it's a nickel and dime thing every time you use it. That definitely discourages people too. OK, last question, if you don't mind, Nicole. So Chair of the Energy Committee, you know, with my dreams, I'd like to be chair of the Energy Committee, but I'm not going to run for office. I'm telling you now. But, you know, you have an interesting possibility, interesting place in the state, in the future of the state, because as energy goes, so goes the economy of the state. Everybody knows. So as the chair, looking down the road between now having a show by the way called down the road with electric vehicles, looking, looking down the road as the chair of the Energy Committee on environmental connected. What what do you see as the deliverables, you know, that you would like to see adopted into law this session. And if not this session next session, you know, what's what what do you wrap your arms? What do you embrace as what you could provide to the state in terms of those deliverables? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think that a lot of a lot of what we've talked about some of the specific like project implementation stuff falls to, you know, either private entities or the PUC or energy office to have oversight. But I think that we can ensure that we're setting up good, clear, transparent and, you know, functional processes to move that forward. And then, you know, I think that what at least what I've worked on a fair amount since the time I've been there, it's really a lot of focus on energy efficiency, which of course is like the look the kind of the the thing that people get least excited about. But also that's the most important, right? That we can really do a lot more digging deep in energy efficiency and just reducing demand in a lot of little ways that people just don't think about and probably won't notice actually once they're implemented. But that's really important. And then I think we've worked a fair amount on the clean transportation transition. You know, a lot of that focus, like I said, has been on transitioning to electric vehicles, mainly because we don't have the same kind of jurisdiction over the public transit piece and the EVs are right now the kind of the ready the ready solution on the market. So I focused on those things. But I think more broadly speaking, I mean, the state has those big goals of no 100 percent renewable energy being fully decarbonized. And just as far in so far as we can support that on a policy level, that's what we try to do. And then the committee, of course, has other things besides energy that we're working on. So there's those things as well. Now, that's another show. I do want to have another show with you about all the other things you're working on. What strikes me to call is that when when clean energy first came up, which has to be 20 years ago by my measure of it, and Sharon Moriwaki was just starting the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and all that, it was simple. We have to have clean energy and in whatever form. And there are people who resisted it and ultimately, you know, the battle went to clean energy and now that's a settled issue. The only question is degree. And what I what I get out of this discussion with you is that it was a simple issue 20 years ago. It is no longer simple. There are so many sub issues and collateral issues and other issues involving. So, you know, your desk, your plate must be completely full of all these issues. You know, it's like every day, something else. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, yes and no. I mean, I think the legislature has, you know, we kind of have our role to play and we're not always as involved in the day to day or privy to all the information necessarily either. So I would say that. But but yeah, I mean, I think that that just going back to what you said about clean energy, it seems simple and maybe it's not simple. I mean, I think the thing that is simple right now moving forward is that one, we know it's cheaper and it's that's proven out, right? It's and, you know, just with the volatility of oil prices and all the uncertainty associated with that, I think, you know, we know that it's not it's not a choice. People like like I think used to cast it more as a choice between being renewable and good for the environment and being affordable. And I think those actually those two things come together, which really helps us move forward. And the second thing I would say is that I think, you know, people ask, can we make it to 100 percent? Can we do 100 percent? And I would say, absolutely, yes, but that that there's too much. I think people get overly focused on whether whether 100 percent or not 100 percent or how. I mean, I think the more important thing is that we can quite easily make it to, you know, 80 or 90. You know, keeping prices low, moving forward, largely decarbonizing, being more self-reliant, all of these things and that the the last, you know, 10 percent or, you know, 5 percent or 15 percent. That's more tricky. That's going to be something we have to think about now, something we've got a plan for, something that will have to be tackled. But like it shouldn't detract from the efforts that we have now to move forward as quickly as possible with adopting more clean energy, because I think it really is a multiple multiple benefits. Representative Nicole Bowen, chair of the Energy and Environment Committee in the House of Representatives State of Hawaii. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me.