 Hey, Aloha and welcome to Stand Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii, the place that community matters and all that other good stuff that Jay Fidel says before the show. So we're glad to be here and we have a kind of an interesting show today because we've been really busy at work and distracted so I don't have one of my usual guests that are kind of from outside my normal network. I have somebody from inside my normal network named Rachel James who you see replacing me when I'm not here sometimes and we're going to start talking about just what's going on in the real world today in terms of clean energy and transitioning to clean energy and so welcome Rachel. Thanks for driving over here with me. Thanks for having me. But Rachel's a real interesting character because we both share a military background from different services. We both have worked for the federal government. We both worked for the state government. I've worked for the county before. I don't think she's worked for the county and we both have experience in the private sector and we both have experience working with non-for-profits and charities, charitable organizations and things like that. So we both together share a lot of experience instead of just kind of getting a job on a college and going one direction. We have a pretty varied background and that's going to weigh in today as we start to talk about the subject of what's being done to really clean up our environment and go to clean energy. And so I kind of like to start off by hopefully not being too political because I'm a state employee. I'm not allowed to be real political on TV anyway. But I like to kind of talk about a phenomenon that I noticed when President Trump kind of said, I'm pulling out of the Paris Accords climate change thing. And there was all kind of consternation and not gnashing of teeth and people getting all excited and after a couple weeks it kind of died down. Then our mayors and the governor weighed in and said, we're going to do it anyway and I thought that was great because I like the climate change accord principles and what they want to do and I think it's real positive and it's something that we all need to be striving for. But I think when you look at it from the president's perspective, he saw it as a hundred billion dollar bill every year from all the developed countries and mainly the U.S. kicking in there and he couldn't see that really resulting in a lot of change when you're just giving away money to a bunch of other countries that are setting their own mandates and doing their own thing and hopefully aligning with what they really signed up to do. So the idea of climate change and the idea of trying to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce greenhouse gases and clean up our petroleum and our natural gas and get it down to zero emissions and all our vehicles and all our grids, totally, totally great, great initiatives. It's where we want to go. But the real question is what's everybody doing? I mean really, really doing. Even if you signed up for the Paris Accords and you said you're going to do all this stuff, are you really doing it? In the Paris Accords, it's all voluntary. The countries that actually established their own goals and objectives and they're different from each country. Some countries established a particular goal by a particular year. Another one said, well, we're going to know we peaked out on carbon when we peak out on carbon and then we'll go down from there. And it was like no year attached, no timeline, no nothing. And there was also like a cap and trade piece to the climate change accords and things like that. Some of these are not necessarily productive, I don't think. I see cap and trade as kind of a coercive thing or probably more of a carrot than a stick but still a way of manipulating people into meeting certain goals but it can just be used as a financial tool or things like that. So what really boils down to is in everybody's everyday life, in every country across the globe, if we're really concerned about climate change or just cleaning up the environments even if you don't have a bent on climate change, what are we individually doing to clean up our world? What kind of car are you driving? What kind of car are you going to buy next year? What's the city doing with mass transit? What's the state doing? What's the federal government doing? What are the non-for-profits doing? What are the businesses and communities doing that are outside buying and selling every day? And we're going to talk a little bit about some of those things. So I'll start off with asking Rachel, you know, she's been working this issue, these issues for several years now even before she came into HCAP and let's start off at a fairly low level. I mean the personal level. Even when you look at the people in our shop who are focused on efficient vehicles and all that, none of us have a hydrogen car, none of us have an electric vehicle. I drive my Mini Cooper which gets about 31 miles a gallon, that's pretty good, but it's not a hybrid. It's still not as clean and green as it should be. And we're energy people and that's pretty typical. In the state of Hawaii, I think Dave Rolfe tells me there's like 5,000 or 6,000 electric cars in Hawaii on the road. But there's like 800,000 cars in circulation in Hawaii and when you look at that number and go, okay well how many cars would we have to buy every year for the next 25 years to be all electric? And it's like 33,000 cars a year. In the entire time since there's been electric vehicles, we've only managed to pack in 5,000 or 6,000 in Hawaii. So on the individual level, where do you see us lacking momentum or what do you think we need to do on transportation in Hawaii at the individual level? I think it's hard to look at the individual level without speaking about infrastructure just because we can do things as individuals that are contributing to a cleaner future. But the challenge sometimes is a lot of those actions are reliant on having the support of stable infrastructure or at least robust enough infrastructure to allow more people to transition. And so in Hawaii, the State Energy Office particularly has been working toward establishing a more robust electric charging infrastructure for the state. And even in islands like Molokai where people do have electric plug-in vehicles, they don't actually have public charging. That's something that MECA was working towards, I think this year they'll have it. But so some of those things are, they affect and in some cases inhibit people's individual opportunity. So you can have a car but if you live in a place that you're not able to charge or if you live in a shared living environment where you... Like condominium or something. Yeah. Or like for me, so for instance I live in a house that has its multi-level but we all share an electric bill. So if I got an electric car it would severely increase our electric bill but that would just be me plugging in but we would all still share that increase. So for people who live like that, which I think is pretty common in Hawaii, the Ohana Home Setup, some of those considerations limit kind of the individual opportunities to transition to clean. And I don't know if you know the answer to this question but you know about how many charging stations and why electric is put in? Because they've been putting some out there. They have been and I don't know the number. Okay. Yeah. I mean, but is it in the dozens or hundreds or... Oh gosh, well I think it's in the double digits. I think it probably would be closer, at least on Oahu, I think it would be closer. I think it's under 100. I think it might be considerably less than 100. Okay. And then even like you say, you're living in a household that may even be a single family dwelling with maybe a couple different families living in it. If you're buying electricity from HECO because you don't have solar, you're not really clean and green. You're burning fossil fuel to make the electricity to put in your electric car, which essentially is like driving a gas car anyway, except it's a little bit more efficient with a motor. So you know at the individual level, how do you think we could improve things like the infrastructure, the charging stations and things like that? If whose responsibility is it to help encourage that or boost that? If not the individual. So I own a single family home. If I want an electric car and I put in solar, good on me. I did my share. But not everybody can afford it. Like you said in Hawaii, there's a lot of multi-family dwellings because that's what you can afford. How do we crack that nut? What are some of the solutions? I'm going to get on my legislative engagement high horse. So as individuals who are contributing to our society, whether that's positively or negatively, for those of us who have the opportunity to vote, and even if you're not voting so far like students, which is particularly becoming more apparent in the recent months, you have a responsibility to engage with your legislators and the entities that really are tasked with establishing that infrastructure to support a robust economy and just a robust opportunity for the inhabitants of wherever the area is. So whether that's the county, whether that's statewide, if that's federal. So I think in terms of what's happening locally in your county and your communities, it's our responsibility to, if indeed we live in a situation where we're limited because we don't have public access to charging, to let the people who are responsible for that infrastructure know. And in the same token, it's not that they necessarily have to establish policies and then point a finger and say, go do. It's really their responsibility to figure out how to make those opportunities available, because it's not something that people can individually undertake. What about some of the other options like public transportation or bicycles or walking or moving to where you're within walking distance or where you work and things like that? Those are all great examples. So multimodal transportation, which is something the city and county, and even the state generally have really been looking into, and so I mean we see the bike lanes coming up, we see Beaky has done really well, lots of rides, I think they're over 200,000. Yeah, we're going to try and get them back on the show here to talk about their success because we had them on when they opened. Yeah, so things like that create opportunities in the midst of transition where people can still incrementally kind of adopt things that are contributing to more positive kind of environmental impacts as opposed to the day-to-day kind of just waiting, kind of doing what you usually do, waiting for something to change on the outside. But in terms of public transportation, I remember Mitch Ewan, one of the things I most recall from early meetings with him was his just advocacy for making sure that hydrogen transportation was integrated into public transportation because he felt strongly that the community broadly should be able to benefit from the clean energy initiatives and capabilities that are presently available. Well, that's a good transition to the next level. So you talked about public transportation and Mitch's proposal for hydrogen and the bus system. So the bus system is run by the county and so the rail system be run by the county. So what do you see their role as? I mean, are they supposed to take a loss as they're operating that system because it's for the greater public good and it's being subsidized by the public? How do you, what's the role of the city in making those kind of things happen? So the city has a challenging task because they're tasked with successful implementation and because that is cost-intensive, figuring out how to make sure those costs are covered. So obviously the end goal is to benefit people but trying to ensure that people aren't harmed in the process. So even in terms of electricity and so when we just talk about HECO's transition, they're still struggling with how to keep rates low and lowering while integrating more high tech equipment and changing infrastructure all to support a renewable energy goal. So in the same token and transportation, establishing that infrastructure is a heavy capital investment and I think the city and county is doing, I can say the city and county of Honolulu at least as one of the 100 resilient cities, they're part of a network that's really investigating and sharing like lessons learned but like high points and low points and just really digging into how to make that transition successful. And so in terms of planning and preparing themselves to make the transition, I think they're doing just about everything they can. They're tapped into a number of networks. Well, as I mentioned, as part of their response to the climate change accord, all the mayors signed up and said our fleets are going to be 100% green by what I think was 2035 or 2045? 2035 for the county fleet. And so what do they really need to do to get there? I mean, have we thought about how many buses they need to buy every year to replace their fleet by 2035 and get where they need to go? Are those things that, if you're aware of it, that the counties are doing right now? They are. So right now, I mean, in addition to just kind of understanding their existing fleet and what they envision as applicable for a future fleet, they are currently kind of massaging what that can be. So recently Proterra was here. They had one of their buses on loan, which is an electric bus, electric plug-in bus just to kind of, I remember actually Sophia sent me a picture of my daughter. She sent me a picture in the morning and she's like, Mom, there's an electric bus on the road because it's blue and it's got all the wrapped writing. But that was an effort with the city and county to say, OK, how do we test this on our existing routes and see how is it going to work for us? And so they're in the phases of investigating what's, not only what's immediately available, but what they can build into. And so a lot of our job is to talk to the entities and let them know obviously about hydrogen infrastructure, but just about transportation planning in general and electric transportation planning and how planning in conjunction with your electric utility is not important just from a dollars and cents perspective. It's really important in terms of reaching a goal of a clean energy ecosystem and understanding how you can collaborate in that development. So I would say the city and county, at least again at Honolulu, but even speaking with the folks from like Kauai County, I'm a big island, so across the state, they're still in an investigatory phase, I'd say. OK. Well, we're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in 60 seconds. Take it up to the next notch, which is the state of Hawaii. And after that, we'll talk federal government. Then we'll get into the private sector. So we'll see you in 60 seconds. I'm Jay Fidel, ThinkTech. ThinkTech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco, and Me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays, every two weeks on ThinkTech. Aloha. Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. The host for Young Talent's Making Way here on ThinkTech, Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on ThinkTech, Hawaii. Mahalo. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stan, the energy man here with my favorite hydrogen project manager on the planet, and that's no lie. Rachel James, I think she's the only hydrogen project manager on the planet, at least in Hawaii. So back with Rachel. And let's talk a little bit about the next level up from the city and county, because like I mentioned, the city basically carries a burden for public transportation that they don't really get to collect a lot of tax money. They get some money from the legislature and things that, for general welfare, but they pretty much carry the load for public transportation. So whatever they don't collect in terms of revenues, and they try and keep the revenues low so that people aren't getting carried over the coals, paying for public transportation, they have to absorb it. So at the state level, we have a couple of things going on. Number one, the state has tax incentives for businesses to start building infrastructure. They have other tools, grant money and things that they can help produce and bonds that they can put together to help promote infrastructure and things like that. Have you seen the state's efforts in some of those areas to promote infrastructure and clean transportation? How do you view them? I'm gonna get upset somebody at this one, but I like the GEMS program, which I think for all its good intentions and what they wanted it to do, it kind of got off to a rough start and probably didn't succeed the way everybody thought it would. But what are the kind of things like that program that could probably help us get over that hump, maybe build more charging infrastructure and more hydrogen stations? Maybe even the state got some of that Volkswagen settlement money, how should we be spending that and how should we spread it across the state? It's interesting, because you ask a few questions that kind of touch a few different departments, but I think it really, it helps to kind of make real that these are issues that touch a number of different sectors. So for transportation specifically, the Department of Transportation, they host sustainable transportation forums, which they've hosted for at least the past, little over the past year, and they continue to do. And what is excellent about that is that, obviously it's focused on sustainable transportation, but it's really an opportunity, one for people to learn kind of what's happening in the state, but then also it's a good opportunity to brainstorm about solutions and to speak with folks and kind of, so in the same way we're having this discussion about what level and who's doing what, the forums are a good opportunity for that discussion as well. Who goes to DOT because that's not in their lane. I mean, everybody thinks, oh, their Department of Transportation, they should be doing this. No, their job is harbors and highways and airports, not designing, you know, clean infrastructure, ground is, yeah, it's not in there. But, you know, former director for Fujigami, you know, he stepped out there and talked about what he's doing at the airport or what we're still doing at the airport as a state project. I think that's pretty forward thinking, especially again, that's not in his lane either, but he made it in his lane and they're continuing on even though he's moved up in the governor's office. Yeah, I think the Department of Transportation is, I think they're an excellent example of the recognition of kind of the necessary integration of a lot of different departments. So I remember even when the Department of Transportation adopted sustainable into their transportation definition, they really made it a point to articulate that transportation is less like these things that move people and it's more that people are being moved to different places and how to best do that. And so whether that's in a car and you need to maintain the highways or whether that's in a plane and airports, whether it's through boats and harbors or whether it's through multimodal transportation systems. So they've really, and I can't speak necessarily to their past because I wasn't as engaged before, but at least in the recent two, I'd say two to three years that we've been engaged, they've really focused on moving people successfully. So I think that's important. And I would definitely say that's a highlight of just their kind of trajectory for how transportation can be envisioned. And on the fixed side, they actually did a lot of lighting changes and saved millions and millions of dollars for the state in terms of electric bill by changing harbor lighting and airport lighting and street lighting on the highways. So the county owns the streets and the state owns the highways and the federal government gives us money for H1, H2, H3 kind of stuff. So they're doing their job. What about the legislature? I mean, you talked about engaging with the legislature as a civilian or as a citizen. What are the kind of things that we should be asking our legislature to really step out and do as constituents, as taxpayers? What should we be asking of our legislature and the governor? You mentioned also that VW money. So that's one of the things that I think currently that tasks with the state energy office to decide kind of what to do with that. And the state energy office, obviously, as a departmental, well, under the Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism, I mean, that's something that the legislature and the governor have oversight for what their directives are. So to the extent that legislation can speak to what could or should be done with those funds, as well as just generally what the direction should be for those offices that are currently tasked with that, I think that's something where we as citizens can engage. And that's not necessarily just to say, you should spend it on charging stations, and that's all you should do, but really tasking those entities to, again, think holistically, because the days of thinking of just transportation as gasoline and how do we make sure we get oil, like those days we have stated as a state are fewer and fewer. And so we are purposefully moving in that direction, but we have to make sure our policies and administrations are implementing things that are supportive of that transition. I think that's a really important point, and I was actually going to emphasize that. I've actually watched the legislature over the past four or five years, and I've been really impressed with a lot of our legislators that work hard to put bills through, try hard to put money against the bills, but sometimes they're not implementing because they're the legislators. They don't implement. It's an executive branch where Ford stepped out as DOT and changed lights and stepped out with a bus trial at the airport to do alternative vehicle stuff at the airport, but Department of Energy puts a lot of solar panels on roofs and things like that. It really gets down to departments, and I think that's where the rubber meets the road, no pun intended. For the state is the departments, the civil service layer under the legislature has to be willing to execute and has to get the funding set aside to execute to do some of the things that they need. Maybe putting in solar charging stations at some of the city and state municipal parking or employee parking so that it's available to them. Well, let's move up to the federal government now and take it up to the next level. So on the federal side, you used to work in the congressional offices, and I'm sure you got an airfo when you're answering the phone. One of my pet peeves is that when I get into a discussion with somebody on hydrogen, especially electrolysis, they go, well, standard just doesn't pencil out. It's not cheap enough yet compared to gasoline. And I turn around and go, well, how much of gasoline has got tax exemptions and subsidies to pay for infrastructure that they've been building for a hundred years and have paid off dozens of years ago and hydrogen is just getting started and it's clean and we're trying to replace the fossil fuels, but we get no incentives and no tax breaks and no nothing. How do we eat that elephant? How do we get past that with our federal side? What do we do? I really appreciate you mentioning that. I don't necessarily know that I know the answer of what to do, but I think it has a lot to do with reframing the discussion. So just as you mentioned, speaking about the tax exemptions and existing infrastructure that you're just kind of adding onto and augmenting in terms of fossil fuel, that in itself cuts costs because it's been around for a while. But if you are only ever thinking of a transition in terms of its comparison to something you're moving away from, you will always find a way to make it like, oh, it's gonna be more expensive. It's gonna be something other than what you have existing and the likelihood that it's gonna cost more is pretty, like it's 99% that it's gonna be more expensive. But if you and I believe governments have the responsibility to develop the infrastructure and if you have the ability to plan holistic systems, you have to think further than what the cost is right now to do this different thing and really think of long-term costs, but also long-term benefits and again, electricity and electrification of transportation provides a unique opportunity where you really have an opportunity to leverage transitions. And so to the extent that federal, state, city and county individual, like to the extent that we can think in that way, I think we can make it work because there are pieces that are accessible. I mean, material handling, like those package of deals that Plug Power puts together where they bring the forklifts and they bring the station, like those opportunities are readily accessible to private industry. That's why Walmart has partnerships with them to do it. So if we keep saying that it's not possible and we can't afford it and you don't look at the places where it is possible, well, you can make incremental integration, I think we'll continue to miss those opportunities. So what is the average, again, taxpayer or citizen do with their congressional member to influence them to move that direction? I mean, we're actually lucky in Hawaii that we have two congressmen and two senators that are very much environmentally attuned to clean transportation, clean energy and support that lock, stock and barrel. They really do. But how do we get the rest of the world? I mean, when you're in New York and you've got Niagara Falls giving you electricity here or you've got Hoover Dam giving you electricity, which is clean power. How do we get all those states to start promoting and helping states like Hawaii where we're dependent on fossil fuel for all our electricity and make it so it makes sense? Like what kind of stuff can we do? Oh gosh, that's an answer I don't know that I have. I mean, I'm all for legislative engagement for sure. And for the people who have the opportunity to travel, do. But I mean, even the conferences that we attend, it's so important for people who come here to understand Hawaii isn't just special because we're Hawaii. Like we're special and unique because truly we are special and unique. Like we're a state of islands and that doesn't exist anyplace else in the United States. And so even for states that have coastal cities and coastal island communities, they still have that link back in some cases to their mainland kind of core. And for the ones that are outliers, sometimes they're generator-based outliers. So there are efforts for island communities to come together and kind of be reliant on one another and to have a collective voice. But it's information sharing essentially. Like people don't know what they don't know. Yeah, well we do have one big advantage. We have a lot of clean energy available to us between ocean thermal, geothermal, wind power, solar power. We even burn our rubbish and have plants from methane and biofuels and things like that. All available to us, probably in greater quantities than we'll need for at least the rest of the century. But tapping them and storing the energy for nighttime and things like that present some challenges. But I think if we keep pressing, especially what we do in our office, it'll get there and we'll work on it. But I'd like to thank you for coming and commenting and giving your monologue on what we should be doing in Hawaii and really what we should be doing in the world to combat climate change and clean up everything. One of my favorite quotes that you always tease me about is, well, if you think you're doing good, go and wrap your lips around your tailpipe and start breathing. If you're carrying that clean. I'm like, I don't tease you about that. I say, don't say that out loud. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. So anyway, a controversial that I am. I think we all owe it to our state and our nation and our planet to clean our energy act up. And I'm encouraging folks to take the individual effort. Right your congressman, right your councilman, right your state legislator, help them with direction. If nothing else, you need to encourage them because trust me, they fight their battles every day between themselves, amongst themselves, even when you have a unicameral system we do or uniparty system we do in Hawaii, they still struggle to make the budget ends meet. So do what you can to encourage our legislatures and the bureaucrats under them to do the right thing like Ford did in DOT and the Department of Energy folks or education folks have been doing. And let's all try and do our part to clean up. I'm looking at a hybrid at least, if not an electric vehicle and hopefully a hydrogen Marai real quick here from Toyota if I can pull it off to clean up my act personally on the clean energy side. So thanks for joining us this week on STEM Energy Man. Thanks to Rachel and Cindy, Humana Fakai and Robert back in the control room for making today's show happen. Aloha.