 Aloha and welcome to Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to walk towards a clean and just energy future. I am your host, Raya Salter. I'm an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. Today, we'll look at how community planning is important to climate adaptation and energy justice. Hawaii's mandate to reach 100% clean and renewable energy is important for many reasons. It's important for the environment and the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps more important, however, is the need for the islands to end its dependence on imported oil and improve both the energy affordability and energy security of Hawaii. As we move towards a clean energy future, there's an emphasis on distributed clean energy generation, like rooftop solar and community solar. Now, as energy assets transform and spread throughout our communities, it's more important than ever that energy customers have input on how energy decisions are made. Further, communities need to make these decisions in the context of the threats posed by climate change. This climate change will mean increasing temperatures and increasing incidence of severe weather events. So, today, we will learn how advocates in New York are doing cutting-edge work to engage communities in climate adaptation. We will also discuss work being done in Hawaii to include communities in energy planning. I am joined in the studio by Sean Aronson. Hello and welcome, Sean. Sean is a student at the University of Hawaii at Minoa Richardson Law School. He's focusing on environmental law with a specialization in property and land use, as well as energy policy, and is a participant in the Energy Justice Clinic at the Law School. He also has degrees in anthropology and documentary filmmaking. Welcome, Sean. Thank you, Raya. Thanks for having me here. I'm looking forward to the discussion. Excellent. You're very, very welcome. Now, I am also joined via Skype by Arash Kaurazad. Arash is an urban planner working and living in New York City. His practice is focused on the democratization of urban planning and development processes. He currently works as a policy coordinator at React for Environmental Justice based in New York City and as a lecturer on urban planning at the New School, at the City University of New York, excuse me, at the New School and at the City University of New York. Recent projects of his include the Northern Manhattan Climate Action Plan, WayCount, a tool for community-based transportation planning, and the redevelopment of the 135th Street Marine Waste Transportation, among others. So this is someone who is deeply involved in community planning and environmental justice. Arash has a degree in urban studies and a master's in urban and regional planning. Welcome, Arash. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. So I am so pleased that you're both here today. And we're talking about what I think is an increasingly important issue, which is how can communities be involved in decisions that directly affect them as we transform our energy systems and also face climate change. So I'm so pleased to have you both here. And Arash, I'm going to ask a question I'm going to start with you. Could you please just go ahead and let us know? Oh, actually, let me back up. If you could introduce yourself and tell us about We Act for Environmental Justice and the work that you do. Sure. First of all, thank you for having me. Congratulations on your show, and we're happy to be joining you from New York. The organization I work for goes by the name of We Act for Environmental Justice, as we mentioned. They're a very historic and important organization within the environmental movement and within New York City, too. And that's because they were the first environmental justice organization in New York. We've been doing community-based work in Northern Manhattan and broader New York City for about 25-plus years. And, you know, the organization and the community members that the organization is comprised of, which we'll talk about more later, have really led the way in doing participatory research, legislative advocacy, you know, citizen science, direct action, all of the different approaches and tools that are necessary to create greater social equity and how we all experience environmental impacts are things that We Act has been working on for many years and, you know, have led the way in developing. And we do that primarily in New York City. All right. Thank you so much for sharing information about We Act. And would you like me to go on in terms of the work that we're doing now? Um, Arash. All right. So I think we are going to go to a quick break and we'll return with Arash and Sean and talk about community adaptation and energy justice. I'm Gordell the Texar here on Think Tech Hawaii, where we co-host Hibachi Talk, where we talk about technology and bring in all kinds of cool guests. Also, my co-host with me today is... Andrew the security guy. Okay. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching Think Tech Hawaii and thanks for watching Hibachi Talk. We also have Angus. How do you know that in the lab? It's Angus. I bring in all kinds of wee things. Oh, look, you can see my lips move. Thank you and welcome back to Power Up Hawaii. So, we had just heard from Arash talking about the work of We Act for Environmental Justice. So Sean, if you could please tell us a bit about the environmental... Sorry, the Energy Justice Clinic at UH Richardson Law School. Yeah, sure. So very much, I would say, differently than Arash. Arash is a very new organization. And so I am in my third year of law school and the program started in my first year. So it's less than three years old. And the goal was kind of filling a void. We didn't see our Professor Shalanda Baker and other students really didn't see this work being done by any other group that was specifically targeting communities in Hawaii on energy justice planning. And so, you know, classic when you can't... When you don't have a group to join, you might as well start your own. And so we have been working with communities on this island and then also communities in other islands and other parts of the state. Our first project was with the North Shore of Oahu and we did some community energy planning workshops around the merger and what was going on with our utility. And then most recently we've done some work on the island of Molokai. Excellent. Yeah. That's interesting. Great. It is fantastic to know that this work is happening in Hawaii in a real way. So we're going to go back to Arash. Yeah, sure. I'd like to ask you, can you tell us what is community adaptation planning and why it is important? Absolutely. Well, WEAC has been working since January 2015 on creating a community-based plan for Northern Manhattan. And for people who are familiar with New York City, Northern Manhattan includes the communities of Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood. It's about 500,000 people. A wide range of ethnicities, races, income groups being a very diverse place and also a place that's very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because there's a lot of coastline, there are a lot of heat islands and there are a lot of social issues which are compounded by those environmental impacts and that's what WEAC works on is helping for people to understand the connection between those social issues and climate change or environmental impacts and to make sure that those impacts don't have a disproportionate outcome on low-income communities of color. And in terms of community adaptation planning, there's an environmental justice aspect to every environmental justice issue and climate change is no different. And environmental justice is an issue in New York because the public sector has not implemented the necessary policies to make sure that certain demographic groups, as we've been discussing, aren't severely impacted. And so in terms of doing community adaptation planning, it's about community members coming together, talking about the issues that they know very well, doing that in collaboration with the scientific community who can help communicate what the long-term impacts of climate change will be and trying to get a comprehensive picture of what the future of any specific area will look like and to take the steps necessary to make sure that, you know, whether it's flooding, whether it's increasing temperatures, whether it's increasing, you know, the increased likelihood of blackouts or any other outcome that we can expect to happen more frequently and more severely as a result of climate change, you know, making sure that we're doing everything we can to adapt to those changes and to mitigate them and to become resilient to them so we can bounce back quicker and we don't experience a greater amount of suffering because of what these changes will inflict on us. And there's all kinds of tools and techniques that you can use to do that and we can talk about that more. Yeah, actually, let me continue with you. Could you tell us a bit about the work that you're doing in New York City with climate adaptation planning? Sure. So this is a process that we started in early January. We act as a membership-based organization and so, you know, we've been working with several hundred people on a very regular basis leading up to this and we continue to engage those people within this climate change adaptation and resilience process. You know, we focus more on the concept of resilience, which is creating an environment that's strong enough to absorb shocks that occur to it from the outside. That's the technical definition. We always add an environmental justice focus and so we want to make sure that certain communities are resilient, communities that don't have a lot of resources, communities that are very vulnerable to those impacts and that's who our membership is comprised of. Those are the people we engage in this process. We started out by doing something called scenario planning, which is to simply work collaboratively with the science of the community and with other quote-unquote experts, people who have done a certain amount of research on the subject to help us understand, well, what will the impact of climate change be? You know, what if there is another Sandy and it happens at high tide this time instead of low tide? What would that mean for the community? If there is a blackout, how would that affect this? If temperatures do go up three, four degrees and there's five heat waves one year instead of three heat waves like there were this year, what would that mean for us? And to talk about that, to have a discussion as a community about what those impacts will be and then to more importantly come up with a plan that utilizes all of the social capital that we have within the community to deal with those impacts. And that's what our process is focused on and that's how we develop something called the Northern Manhattan Climate Action Plan which is a comprehensive plan to create resilience. And that's what we've been working on implementing since we developed it last year. Oh, excellent. That sounds like really interesting and important work. Sean, if you could, I know you started by telling us some of the work that you've done on the North Shore but if you could tell us a bit about some of the work that the clinic has been doing on the actions. Yeah, sure. Yeah, no problem. Again, so we started this work back in about 2014, 2015 so it's been going on about a year or two and we were really looking at areas that may have been underrepresented in politics and in different areas here on the island and the North Shore community has always been a very active community politically but they were dealing with some... they have had the highest proportion of wind turbines on the island and so they were very concerned that they might be dealing with future wind turbines which, you know, they had people support but they wanted to have that community discussion going forward because they felt like they weren't included the last times and so we came up with a plan to hold some community meetings. We held three community meetings all within about a month of each other and they were in three different parts of the North Shore which is kind of a geographically diverse area and also ethnically diverse area and we wanted to make sure we captured all those different diversities within our working groups and so we worked in those groups and they were very collaborative. They were very... you know, we gave a brief introduction to the landscape of Hawaii energy law and energy policy which takes years to understand but we wanted everybody to not feel like they didn't have the information that maybe other people did so that was really important to empower them with at least a basic understanding of energy law or energy policy here and then we had small groups small working groups and we just talked things out what are your priorities? Is it money? Is it environmentalism? Is it security? All these different issues we tried to get out on the table and then come forward with some kind of consensus and then what we were able to do was report those findings to the public utilities commission. Oh, excellent. That's really interesting and I would like to come back to that and hear more about it. I also want to ask Arash since we're talking about community planning for climate adaptation and resilience and you mentioned that blackouts are also a part of that so how do energy issues if at all fit into the work that you're doing Arash and I know that there's other work that we act for environmental justice does on this topic too. Energy is a critical part of our planning process it's something that New York is focusing a lot on as many of you are aware after Hurricane Sandy happened over 20% of New York was actually without power and that created more of a crisis for many people than the actual storm did so for people who didn't who weren't impacted by the flooding they still had a really hard time readjusting afterwards because they didn't have access to power and this also occurred at a more frequent rate in places where there's a lot of public housing in places where there's a lot of old infrastructure and older housing and that includes a lot of affordable housing so that was something that happened after Sandy and that was a big wake up call for people and so New York has focused a lot on energy as a result of that and a lot of the resources which is over a billion dollars that was going to be put back into redeveloping infrastructure that was damaged by Sandy is now going to renewable energy distributed renewable energy sources and something that we are working on developing within Northern Manhattan it's important for that reason but equally important are the economic reasons that are associated with our energy infrastructure it's a multi-billion dollar industry it's maybe a trillion dollar industry globally speaking it's something that can provide educational opportunities it's something that can provide job opportunities and it's something that can provide cost savings which are very important for people in the city and it's good to be here with you because I think that Hawaii has the most expensive energy in the country and New York is right up there with it it's second or something like that as you know many people experience something called energy poverty and they either don't have access to reliable energy or they're paying too much for the energy that they get access to they're paying a higher percentage of their income for energy than other people are and so for us you know we want to not only get off of fossil fuels so we can reduce carbon emissions and mitigate global warming but we want to make sure that everybody's included in that transition and that's what you hear referred to as the just transition it's not good enough just to transition to renewable energy you have to do it in a way that helps build a new economy that helps reduce inequality and that's really the kind of environment and the kind of society that we want so that's something that we're working on and we're doing that primarily through something called community shared solar and community shared solar allows the development of rooftop solar which in New York New York City has buildings everywhere there's not a lot of open spaces so we need a lot of rooftop solar a solar could generate a good percentage 15, 20%, something like that of the power consumed by New York City so it could be a reliable source and community shared solar allows for anyone in the city to subscribe to a solar panel or a set of solar panels with community rooftop within the region and so that would get a lot of people access to solar who don't have access to their own rooftop and that's something that we're doing it's actually that's fantastic that you mentioned that we actually on the last power up Hawaii well the week before last we had Jorge Madrid from the environmental fence talking about community solar as it's happening in California and I'm really glad that you mentioned it because I think that next to California Hawaii and New York are New York probably a bit out ahead in terms of we're here we're just still developing some of the tariffs but are working on that issue and I'm also very glad Arash that you brought up the high energy prices both here and in New York which really creates an economic imperative for energy justice and reducing energy costs let me go back let me go back to you Sean and if you could talk a little bit more what it's like actually gathering the information from the community and what happens then and how do you make that link to policy makers or the intended audience or stakeholders and who are those intended audiences I think that was a particular challenge for us getting the information and gathering people was not easy but generally people were engaged with this information and we were happy with the turnout of our events and the level of awareness and energy that people brought to the table and I think just for people who may be watching outside of Hawaii we were engaged in this very intense takeover buyout or merger of our utility which ended up not succeeding but that allowed a real heavy spotlight on energy I think that maybe hadn't been there before so we were happy with the engagement and of course we knew that our information would only be as effective as the people we could get it to like you said, who are the stakeholders and we definitely were most focused on the PUC at that point, the Public Utilities Commission because they were making this decision getting impact from the people directly into the process that the decision making process that was happening I think we felt like they're asking for community input but not everybody's going to write testimony so if a citizen may contribute in this process we were trying to come to them a little bit more than them having to come to the table which is a lot to ask for do you feel like you had an impact did you feel like you were heard and what type of feedback did you get through that process do you think you mentioned in decisions the commission made were the press conferences I don't think we got any shout outs in the you know or anything but I do think there were stakeholders outside the PUC who did tell us that they think our work was important and did again I think it was this idea of getting everybody on an even playing field because I think O'Rosh talked about a just transition and I think that's really the key here in Hawaii because we have this 100% mandate we know we got to get there and we probably will get there but it's that pathway and we could take many pathways that allow a same kind of economic system and the same few people to benefit from that system or we can choose a different path as we head towards renewables and I think that's still being worked out in here in Hawaii I think there's a lot of people who are pushing that way but where we're not nearly where I think New York is California in terms of making sure that those community groups are at the table and do have an impact and so I think this was one step in that process and I think we were happy with that first initial step but there's a lot more work to go it sounds like a new clinic was opportunistic in seeking opportunities to have an impact let me ask you O'Rosh a similar question what's it like when you know how do you and I know that you've got a lot of experience with community based action tools so how do you get this information from the community and then how do you figure it out to get it to the stakeholders and who are the stakeholders who need to get it yeah that's a good really good question and I think it's something that everybody needs to be asking themselves who are doing community work because it's different everywhere and it's really important to have a process that is inclusive of everyone for us it means having people that are a part of our organization who are from the community first and foremost you want to make sure that you're engaging people that are representative or not just representative but can speak directly to the issues going on and you have a thorough extensive engagement with them they're part of a process where there can be educational opportunities for everyone where there's a lot of open discussions that occur and facilitated discussions that occur where you're working in collaboration with a really diverse group of people to help answer questions but to also know that the community is always the expert in terms of the issues are most important for them and what the biggest issues are and how to go about them so you know there's some basic things that we need to acknowledge especially when working with underprivileged communities that's where our focus is and these are places that don't have a lot of resources in certain respects they're very wealthy in terms of their social capital in terms of their knowledge but they lack their resources or the political influence necessary to make certain changes and that has to be taken into account when you're engaging with certain communities first you have to undertake a process of political let me ask you not to interrupt you but I wanted to you talked about how of course working with communities is very local getting community representation is local yet also you need that interconnectedness and that sort of building the power of political movements and it's a bit off topic and we have about five minutes left but I'd like to ask both of you about the Dakota Access Pipeline issue with such an incredibly high high visibility issue now and it really is about environmental justice groups indigenous justice groups coming to the fore and it seems like more people are coming to join to work together with those groups than ever before so I wanted to ask you Arash and then also you Sean on your thoughts and experiences in terms of what is going on here with folks coming together on this issue and what does it mean for in your case environmental justice and climate justice comment and then kick it over to Sean but I'm happy that you asked that because I think it's very critical that we understand our shared struggle this is a shared struggle and when you research what's actually going on with these projects you see that there's a pattern that exists many of the same public institutions many of the same private institutions whether they're banks or fossil fuel companies or what have you are responsible for a lot of the extraction of fossil fuels and a lot of the pollution that exists and I think we have to be united in order to address these issues if we're not united it's very easy to divide people especially if they lack resources and if you divide people then you can do anything you want and nobody will hold you accountable so I think we have to be united to hold these people accountable Thank you so much and Sean is this something that students here and others in your experience have been following and have been impassioned about as well Yeah I think I certainly was following it and looking to it as you kind of have these moments where you feel like you know as the attention is brought to it we saw this with Occupy Wall Street and I think we're seeing this here today we saw this with the telescope resistance protectors as they called it and I think there is a shared feeling that indigenous people and possibly disadvantaged people in other ways are going through the same thing no matter where you live on the planet and so I think climate has been a uniter in that way and I think Hawaii people are recognizing that there's no reason we shouldn't be there at the table Well thank you for that I think that's incredibly interesting and there are so many ways even though we're so far away I think there are so many ways that places like New York and places like Hawaii really share share a lot of progress and share are really asking I guess similar questions so thank you both for asking that so I think that will now lead me to say thank you very much Sean Thank you for having me You're very welcome and thank you so much Arash for joining us from New York City and that brings an end to another edition of Power of Hawaii Thank you so much Mahalo