 It's Wednesday and we all know what that day is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy day. So I'm really fortunate to have Mark Watt with us from the Hawaii State Energy Office and Mark's the resiliency and energy assurance program manager. So he's a guy that works before the storms hit and when they hit and after they hit to make sure we're all safe and sound and thinks ahead because none of us do. So Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you, Mitch. I really appreciate it. Really am glad I could hook up and be on your show because I think you guys are doing a lot of good work with energy. Thank you very much. So first of all, you have some slides with us and first of all, let's talk a little bit about the kinds of energy disruption issues that we have that we experience here in Hawaii. So would you like here to talk about that? Yeah, sure. I mean, people think about disruption in systems and I kind of look at it, go back to what does energy provide as a service, as an enabler for other functions? So you know that modern society is highly dependent upon energy. You just think about almost everything that you do on a daily basis. You're using some form of energy to accomplish that. And I think over the years, especially here in Hawaii where we have very high reliability of electricity and we have very good weather year round. So we don't get the kind of things that happen in the main line where they're having a fire that takes out the power for hundreds of thousands of people or other disruptions that take out the whole bulk power grid. So in Hawaii, I think we've become very used to having uninterrupted energy. And so people's perception about that it's always going to be there has changed over the years that they become frustrated if the power is out even for a short period of time. So it usually hits doing Super Bowl. For some reason, whenever the Super Bowl game is on, it's been my observation over the last 20 years, we always seem or pretty well always seem to lose the feed. And that's why that's a total disruption. Everybody gets really angry about that. Right, but you know that the consequences of a disruption could be a lot greater. For example, things happen, water supply is interrupted, food spoils in the refrigerator, medical care is impacted, water and sewage systems fail, communication networks, so we rely so much on cell phones, those become disrupted and businesses go dark and if your businesses has to shutter if you don't have power. In addition, I mean, even within the energy sector, you see that gas stations can't sell fuel if they don't have power. And so you get this idea that we have some sort of vulnerability because we're exposed, we have so much reliance upon reliable and resilient power and fuel. And so what happens when you look at the systems, the markets and the resources involved, you realize that everything has to work in sync. There's a lot of coordination that goes on in order to deliver you the fuel and the power that you're using. It's a life-and-death thing too. It is, it is and we see this with how it works even during COVID with the need for a supply chain to be intact, same thing with energy. You have to have a complete supply chain intact from where the energy is produced all the way to the end user. So I kind of look at it like, then you start dissecting it and wear all those pieces in that puzzle. And you'll have to see that most of the pieces are in the private sector because the government really doesn't own a power plant or a refinery or pipelines and all these other infrastructure and systems that deliver those things. So how does this work? Because, you know, private sector government have to work together to make sure that there is this continuous supply of energy. Yeah, so how can we work from home with COVID if we didn't have a very reliable source of energy? But here you and I are talking on ThinkSec Hawaii and our computers are working, everything's working and I can still do my job. I'm one of the lucky ones can do my job from home. But I've lived through, I lived through the ice storm in Quebec in Canada. We're without power for almost two months in the middle of winter. And actually, you know, we had all our homes were powered by electricity because electricity is so cheap in Quebec. So all the homes were electrical. And one of my neighbors actually froze to death in her living room because she didn't want to leave her dog by himself and they found her the next morning frozen solid on her couch. That's an extreme example of the importance but people on dialysis machines, like you said, communications, what would we do if our cell phone towers didn't work and we can put our text messages? I mean, we'd be like, we couldn't survive on that kind of stuff. Right, so if I may briefly explain to you what the role of the Hawaii State Energy Office is in resilience and emergency response. If we'll go to the slides, please. We talked a little bit about the disruption issues but next one please. And we talked about these kinds of issues that are related to disruptions. And one of the things I wanna highlight here is the last bullet down there is that, there's a lot of vulnerabilities in the way that we manage energy loss and the expectations that people have in restoration and then the public's response. How can we educate people on what the expectations are and how we go about coordinating a unified response in making sure that energy comes back to quickly as possible for critical services. And on the next slide. And we have to plan ahead. That's like when the emergency hits, it's too late to say, well, what do we do first and what do I do second? So that's why we're so fortunate to have you in the Hawaii State Energy Office kind of putting these plans together and I don't wanna steal your thunder but and then trying them out like doing training exercises. So like when it hits, man, we're ready to rock and roll. So. Yeah, yeah. So that's a good segue to the next slide Mitch. Yeah, perfect. So our challenge really is to be prepared as possible to effectively contend with the energy emergencies and threats to our energy security. So this really what our mission is to keep energy flowing in disasters. The reason why we wanna keep it flowing is as you alluded to is there are tremendous numbers of critical services that rely upon energy to deliver things for health, safety and the wellbeing of people and property. So the way we look at it is what is energy resiliency and if you could go to the next slide I'll explain to you what energy resiliency is. So energy resiliency, it's really, we hear about it a lot about, oh, we need to be resilient. The community needs to be resilient and how do we define that in terms of energy? So it's really a focus on people who usually think it's about just infrastructure or systems or something like that but we see that the definition is much more nuance than that. So there's elements of the resiliency that includes such things as robustness. And so when you think of robustness, what is that? That's the ability to operate or stay standing in the face of disruption. So you have this, like it's hardened. So it could be stronger poles or it could be that you've hardened a pipeline or that you have redundancy in certain systems. So that's that ability to continue operating in a disruption. Another component of resiliency is resourcefulness. And so you think, why is resourcefulness? Because really what you're doing is you're managing that disruption. So this is really about people skills. This is workforce. This is skilled how you respond. And so I think we look at the people who operate the energy systems here in Hawaii be it anywhere from a truck driver, a gasoline tanker truck driver who's moving the fuel. It's not just somebody who's a truck driver. You have to understand all the components about how to handle hazardous materials. What's the best way to deliver that fuel safely? Same thing with linemen and people working in power. Electricity, these are highly skilled and trained people because there's so much danger associated with electricity and explosions if it's gas or other things. So I think about we have to have skilled people that know how to operate the equipment, know what the capabilities of that equipment are and know what the right buttons to press. And not only that, I mean, yes, they're highly skilled but they also have to be fully certified. Because it's not like, oh, you say, what does highly skilled mean? Well, they have to take annual or buy annual refresher courses and get certified and meet the standards that government has set for their ability to actually operate that truck. For example, I know that from operating hydrogen trucks. I mean, the guy has to be more than just a truck driver. He has to have had the course in dangerous goods transport. He has to know how to fill out all the forms and what the precautions are. He has to have a background check because you don't want anybody just driving that truck. So it's very complicated and it's a challenge and you want your best people doing it and we do. And if I may, another factor of resilience is rapid recovery. So it's the capacity to get things up and running again quickly because you don't want it to take like you were mentioning, like days or weeks to get your power back. That's totally not acceptable here. I understand that the tolerance of people to have outages or lack of things differ depending on where you live. And like I mentioned, is we've become accustomed to having a reliable power and ready supply of fuel and gas at any time, which is a good thing. I really think it really helps to have that certainty. But really to understand how to keep it going, you have to learn lessons from outages or disruptions that have occurred in the past. So what kind of lessons can we learn from Hurricane Lane or Kilauea? There's a lot in every event, there are lessons to be learned about energy supply and distribution. I think it's just learning from them and bringing that knowledge into your organization. And over time, everybody becomes a lot better at managing any disruption once it happens. So as you mentioned, for example, how do you do learning lessons? You document what happens, you train, you exercise, you write after action reports, you make corrective action plans and you're constantly doing this. It's not just during hurricane season or when there's a tropical storm crossing 140 West that you start worrying about these things. It's a full-time year-round occupation to look at your systems and your people and to strive to make everything work better for contingencies if we have a major disruption here in the islands. And it's your equipment. Things like, when was the last time you ran that backup diesel generator? And has the fuel been filtered or has it got a whole bunch of ickies and algae growing in your filter so that when you really need it, man, it's not there because I didn't learn the lesson. So like Hurricane Sandy, not one backup generator worked during that storm, except the fuel cell systems, they all worked. Yeah, they're great for a short time, but I mean, if you have a prolonged outage, a lot of times these generators fail. They're not designed to operate under load for a prolonged period of time. They're temporary. They're really for short interruptions, short disruptions. So it's your organization that helps us document the lessons learned and manages this whole thing. I mean, it's a huge job to manage all this and you're waiting for the big storm. Sometimes they don't happen. Right, I mean, there's a whole structure. You know, the national response framework, if we could see the next slide. You know, this is doctrine from the federal government down with FEMA and how the emergency management is organized nationally. And so the national guidance is organized around what are considered community lifelines. You'll see here, you probably can't see it, but it's things like, you know, food, water, shelter, health and medical, communications, transportation and energy as being in the center there. And these are all linked. You'll see that there's a lot of interdependencies between the main lifeline systems. And so what a lifeline does is it enables the continuous operation of government functions and private sector operations. So you'll see that if you have power, you can have communications. If you don't have communications, it might disrupt other things down, like health and safety issues. So all of the lifelines work together in order to seamlessly keep a, you know, continuous operation of, you know, even if it's under an emergency situation to keep up human health and safety and economic security. So it's a challenge that is not laid out in every organization's mission statement. So FEMA or in the case of the state, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, which are the agencies in charge of the state response, which are the agencies in charge of the state response. Organizes around what are called emergency support functions. And these are just groupings of agencies, whether they're public agencies, private sector companies. And they come together in times of a disaster to coordinate and communicate about situational awareness, resource needs, any, just, you know, any kind of emergency response. And so we have a lot of, you know, emergency response and things like that. So we have what is at the state level called emergency support function, 12 energy. And the energy office, the Hawaii state energy office is the lead primary agency for that emergency support function. Right. So where is, where is civil defense fit into this? Like at the county level, they all have civil defense organizations. So what's the difference between you and the civil defense organizations at the county level. The only county that's called civil defense is Hawaii County. Hawaii County has kept the old name of Hawaii civil defense. But now Hawaii Maui and Oahu, Honolulu city and county are called emergency management agencies because it really gets away from the cold war era about. You know, a nuclear attack and it really looks at. The kind of all hazards approach. And so all hazards is everything from hurricane tsunami floods, fires, pandemics, you know, radiological events, all, all these kinds of things are really like an all hazards approach. And those fall under. Really what's more correctly called emergency management. So. And in real emergency management is a mixture of art and science. Because you have. At the, at the heart of it, it really is about a unifying. Of resources and capabilities coming together. To. To deploy those resources to a disruptive event. Whatever that disruptive event may be. Where's the military fit into this because they're really good at, you know, organizing things like emergencies and jumping in, whether it's the national guard or like the, you know, like, or the regular, regular forces. Right. So the way that it's structured is that. You know, you know, The federal emergency management agency is. The, the lead agency for coordination of federal government resources, which includes. At certain times, Defend DoD assets and capabilities. Okay. They do not lead the show. It's basically. all those acronyms and they fall under these ESFs. And there's a structure that parallels with the state, for example, ESF 12, at the federal level, that's the US Department of Energy. And at the state level, it's the Hawaii State Energy Office as the primary. But under both of those agencies, there are support agencies that help. And so, you look at how the DOD interacts is, for example, I'll give you a quick example. All disasters are local. So it starts off at the county level. A county says we need help with clearing this road because it's been blocked and there's debris. And so the county looks at their capabilities and their resources and what's on Island to address that issue. If they can't do it with their available resources, they turn around and they make a request for assistance to the state based on the fact that they don't have the capabilities, adequate resources to address that. So the request goes from the county up to the state and then the state looks at it and says, okay, we have some additional trucks, we have personnel, we have some contracts that can help with that restoration. So you see that it's all addressed by at the local level. They're the ones that are really in charge of addressing that emergency. And the state is like a coordinating body at the higher level to address those state resources. If the state says, hey, we don't have that capability and it's a life safety issue and we need assistance, where else are they gonna go? They're gonna send a request up to FEMA. And so you find that it goes to FEMA, FEMA looks at their resources as an agency. FEMA doesn't have very much really in terms of their resources. So they reach out to other federal agencies, for example, with the pandemic, HHS or other sector-specific agencies that have expertise and capabilities in that need, in that lifeline. And then they ask them to help through the state to address the county issue. Again, how DOD gets involved is, for example, I don't wanna get too complicated here, but it is very complicated on how these things operate. There is something called the Defense Support of Civil Authorities and so FEMA can ask DOD, hey, you can help the state. And then they deploy, it could be anything from military, guard assets, it could be a number of capabilities that the federal, the DOD has. I think though the one thing they realize is that there's this structure and these organizational linkages that make emergency management possible in the first place, without this kind of framework and operations plans and people working together in training and exercises and updating plans and doing all this stuff, you cannot expect an effective or timely emergency response. And so for us in energy, that means that we have to stay abreast of what's going on in industry. What's the situation in terms of how many outages? What's the fuel situation? Is there any damage to the energy infrastructure and quickly identify what those needs are, whether it's in the public sector or in the private sector, and then really problem solve on how we go about restoring that capability. So that brings us up to the next slide. How do we keep the energy flowing? I mean, we've touched on it in a way, but this is like a more direct question. Seeing as how- Right, I mean, I just really break it down into responding. And then also what we haven't talked about very much is the prevention and the protection. So it's mitigating risk. So it's the stuff that goes on in pre-planning. How do you mitigate vulnerabilities or how do you, I can mention about resiliency, how do you make the system more robust? And so what we do also is to try to identify and focus resources on prioritizing whether it's infrastructure or if it's policy issues or if it's workforce development to make a more secure, reliable and resilient energy infrastructure. So I'll give you an example. For example, you may have heard that there is a new FEMA program called BRIC, which is Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. And so FEMA has just let out a grant period for people to make applications toward getting federal monies to strengthen infrastructure. Right. And so a lot of the focus is on energy issues, and it's not just temporary emergency generators. It's hardening facilities. It's looking at micro grids, options for micro grids, energy storage options. And you mentioned things like talking about resilient communities and critical customer hubs where we're an isolated community. The members could go there and get power. And you talked about hydrogen. If you want to mention that, you know, an option for, yeah, no, there's alternative fuel vehicles, whether they're powered by electricity or LPG or hydrogen that could support emergency response activities. Well, I always got to get my plug in for my hydrogen buses. They're going to have export power units on it. So all your buses become mobile backup power units. So I won't bang on about it because I do it every show, every chance I get. So just looking through some of your slides, let's talk about emergency support functions. And we only have about a minute, about two minutes to go. Okay, then if it's only two minutes to go, why don't we just jump to the end because I really want to plug what we can get out of this about energy resiliency and emergency response. I really think that what the public should know is that the coordination that it takes to keep energy flowing is, it's complicated complex. And though the really critical thing is when we do have a disruption that people act in a responsible fashion. I think in a way, we want to conserve energy for critical services, for fuel for ambulances, fuel for trucks that move debris. There's, if you're not using your vehicle, it really doesn't make sense to suck all the available inventory of fuel and put it in your car that's going to be sitting all the days on end if you can't drive. So I just caution people that think about energy usage when there's a disruption and to conserve energy because the more we conserve, the more they'll be available for providing for that emergency response, those emergency response functions. And I think that kind of coordination with the public, private sector and government to help the most vulnerable in the community that are impacted by a disruption, whether it's energy, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's flooding or fire, earthquakes, tsunami, emergency management pools all those resources together to make a more unified and efficient response. Well, Mark, that's, believe it or not, that's the end of our time. So I'd really like to thank you, A, for coming on the show, but more importantly, I'd like to thank you for the services you've provided. You're like one of these unsung heroes that works behind the scenes. And then when the emergency hits, you guys and your organization is there to help us all. And so for that, we're all very, very grateful. Yeah, no, on behalf of the Hawaii State Energy Office, really appreciate you inviting me on to talk this subject. I'll come back if you wanna give me a call. Yeah, let's do that. So with that, it's like Aloha everyone and that completes Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy for this Wednesday. All right, thank you, Mitch.