 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Well, and welcome to StandOsterman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. And it's been a busy month for me. In fact, I have no idea how this year escaped so quickly, but it's just been zipping by. Welcome to the first day of fall, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Supposedly, on this very day, the hours at night and the hours at day time are equal. We've got 12 hours each and that only happens like one day a year, so welcome to fall. And doesn't seem like fall quite yet, but we won't get into the climate change discussion yet. Anyway, thanks for being at the show today. I hope you enjoy it. I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about what I did Monday and Tuesday of this week. As part of my travels, I was in New York City, and we can bring the first slide up. I was at the International Hydrogen Council, which was a two-day meeting. Day one was when a whole bunch of the leaders of the industry that work with hydrogen met with a whole bunch of international investors to talk about scaling hydrogen up to the next level, where it's really making an impact on greenhouse gases and reducing greenhouse gases and cleaning up the environment. So it was a great presentation by all these companies to pitch to the investors. And then day two, we met the states and the federal government, met with the same council and talked about what the states and federal government can do to help them with their industry and grow their industry in all the states in the U.S. and even internationally. So it was a great weekend for me or a week for me so far. And of course, I came back a little jet lag from New York City, but I'm recovering nicely. Alcohol helps, but I didn't drink a whole lot of it. But I'm back in the saddle. Another exciting thing that's happening with us is coming up near the end of the month or I think the 29th, we're going to do an eat the streets, street grinds kind of thing. And we're going to actually have some hydrogen stuff out there to show people. So the next two slides coming up show some of the equipment. This is our light cart by Luxford GTM. It's one of the things you see at the construction site or in an emergency where you can take this cart anywhere, pop it down and run it for like two days and get LED high-powered lights to light up your football fields and stuff. And then this is a five kilowatt generator and both of these things run off hydrogen. And both of them have about a two-day run time. You can just turn them on and run them and pretty much completely silent. In fact, the traffic going by makes more noise than these things do. Other advantages, the power coming off of this set is really clean signal-wise. So we're trying to show it to Hawaii 5.0 and some of the other movie folks so that they can see how clean the power is off of it. And so besides being quiet, it's also great for the environment and a clean signal for their audio guys to use in movies and TV sets. So we're going to be showing that on the 29th. I think it's a coca-occo park. Rachel will give me a heads-up and next week we'll talk about it some more before the event happens. But today we have Carl Compagna from Kamaka Green that I screwed up. No, it's perfect. So you guys might recognize Carl as one of the former hosts here on Think Tech. And he and I have talked legislative stuff from time to time and political stuff where we sometimes differ a little bit, but so far we're still good friends, I think. Yeah, absolutely. But we're going to talk energy things today and what's been going on. Carl worked a little bit on some legislation last session. Like to talk a little bit about that. And maybe we can start off by telling us a little bit about Kamaka Green and what you do. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for joining the show and definitely appreciate the work that you do. You're doing a lot of really good work and it's important to make sure that we're bringing hydrogen into the picture because it's an important player. We need to have a diverse portfolio, so appreciate everything. As far as Kamaka Green, what we do is we provide, we're primarily consultants. We provide environmental consulting, planning. We've got senior planners that can really help with the development of anything. Our CEO actually was the deputy project manager for the Guam Military Buildup, the EIS for that. So we have a range of experience on the federal side, state side, and then commercial side. Providing as I mentioned environmental, planning services, project management, construction management, development services throughout. And we just provide a lot of times the in between part so that things don't fall down. So you help dispel the rumor that Guam is going to sink if you put too much on one side, it's going to flip over. Yes, there was a small, I think, statement about that, there isn't a concern. It went viral. Yes, it did. I remember that. I remember that. It's funny. Okay. So it sounds like, tell us a little bit about the legislation that you worked on this session with the state legislature. Sure. It really starts with last year. As I get brought into different projects to work on different things, most of what I end up working on is energy-related, not everything. Last year I was brought in by mutual good friend of ours, Duelsa Monpietri, to work with the UH Applied Research Lab. We were given the task order through Paycom for the gift-packed project to write up and complete the final report for the green initiatives for fuel transition for the Pacific. That's gift-packed. As a result of the work we did and what we were able to complete through that, one of the pieces, and this was really analyzing and laying out what the supply chain would look like if we were to do a biofuels, a supply chain here in Hawaii, that was the premise of it. One of the pieces within there that was needed was friendly local policy to help support and grow this industry and add to the economy as a result. So as I completed that contract and finished the work there, I started to look at what that would mean and what that might look like. In terms of growing a friendly policy. In terms of that policy and how we can begin to bring that idea to the legislators in hopes of achieving that friendly policy. Exactly. So what I immediately realized was there's no reason why it could not have been in some ways a mirror to the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative from 2008. So I took a look at that and took a look at some resolutions and I wrote the resolution calling for a green fuels initiative. So it's the Hawaii Green Fuels Initiative and the resolution calls for, based on Governor Ege's desire to double the amount of agriculture in the state, making reference to the Clean Energy Initiative and going through all of the bullet points that really makes biofuels and other alternative fuels a viable option. And what it would do for jobs, the resolution is really calling for, really is really a jobs resolution saying that if we were to advance this, we would really start up a new industry with regards to manufacturing and the manufacturing that goes along with biofuels, as well as increasing our agriculture once again. Okay. So that's the premise of what that resolution was. Yeah. And you know, I focus a lot on transportation energy and we already have the state focused on grid power. But inside the transportation, you know, area, the one place that is, I want to say untouched and complicated is aviation fuel and fuels that we use other than vehicle transportation. So I can see us electrifying our, you know, cars and trucks and things like that in hydrogen. But when you start looking at aviation, I mean, I grew up in aviation, I did 35 years in the Air Force flying airplanes and you're not changing that fuel next week. I mean, that's a big thing. But that's where biofuels could come in because you can blend the Air Force, the Navy, everybody has already put drop in fuels in airplanes and proven that it works. So the real place that biofuels could make an impact in Hawaii is in the aviation sector. And it's important because airplanes come here with as little fuel on board as they need to save fuel. Right. Because if they carry a bunch of fuel they don't need, they're burning more fuel than they need to carry their fuel. So they're going to land here with just the reserves that the FAA wants them to have or requires them to have for the weather. But then they have to load fuel on here. Everybody. Japan Airlines, Hawaii, it doesn't matter where you come from, they're going to put fuel on. So if we had the right mix in ag to produce food and fuels that could be dropped in, talk about how those would work out in jobs. Absolutely. And that actually was another piece of the resolution was calling that together saying it will increase the amount of food production, whether we're using the food byproducts as part of the biofuel conversion through the biofuel conversion process or other currently grown or potentially grown crops that can do the same thing. What you're doing is you're adding jobs into the ag industry. You're adding a significant amount of money and resources for the development of land and for the infrastructure needed so that we can actually make that happen. So now we're creating jobs and we're bringing infrastructure more out to rural areas, which is another huge piece that a lot of people are missing. So that's a huge plus. Those jobs, they're not low wage jobs either in many cases. We're talking about once you start to get from growing something, but now we've subsidized that a little bit through these tax credits that we might be able to apply. Now we're able to really start paying a solid income for people as that works its way up through the conversion process right into that drop in fuel. And that is the key is what are we doing and how are we growing that? And as we get through the conversion and refining process, the goal is let's target jet fuels. Because if you target jet fuels, you're going to hit every other fuel as you go as a process. It's just you'll inevitably hit them all. And so that I know it's more than a theory because it has been proven biofuels exist. Airlines such as Alaskan Airlines has committed to as much. I think they try to go 100% biofuels at the moment. Biofuels are alternative fuels. There are a couple of others who are starting to add on their percentages, increase their percentages of biofuels. But it's not just airline. I agree with you completely, airline. I know that CAFE is 100% behind this, which is the commercial aviation alternative fuels initiative. Also the marine industry. And specifically that comes from the Navy. That gift pack project that we were working on was very specific to the great green fleet of the Navy. So it was about getting that fuel into the ships as well. So it really covers a lot of territory with regards to biofuels, marine, air, and ground, ultimately. So as far as I'm familiar with biofuels, you have the Pacific biodiesel model where you basically take oils or seed oils or whatever and you turn those into diesel type fuels. But then you also have taking waste products, putting in an anaerobic digester, getting methane, and then creating liquid fuels off of that. So is there kind of a good mix between the two for Hawaii, what would be a good mix? Yes and no. And it's not always about methane, either. Again, you're looking for the methane isn't necessarily the best, and I'm not the scientist on this, but methane isn't necessarily the best jet fuel. So what you want, and that has everything to do with a combination of what the crop is that you're using and what the conversion process is in order to convert that into that fuel. So it's really what level of ethanol are you able to create, what level of methane, or how does that work in this way, into a jet fuel? And there are five ASTM regulations that are approved for biofuels and trying to hit those is the goal. And each of those will accommodate everything from a jet fuel down to diesel fuel. Was there ever, and I'm asking you this on basically your experience with the legislature, because you have a little bit more depth in that than me, but anything we're working more on like E85, something on a straight alcohol base, locally where we're growing it. And I tell people that I have a pickup truck that says flex fuel on it. I had no idea what that meant. I just go put regular gas in it, but come to find that I could run my truck on pure alcohol. It's meant for E85, but it can even run pure alcohol in there. I'm not taking vodka and throwing it in there, but we have the potential locally, but you don't have the source. You can't find an E85 station except maybe on the military bases, you might be able to find some. Exactly. It's tough. So is that an opportunity here for the ag community? I'll say yes and no, mostly no these days. And I'll get into why. First of all, most vehicles can run on alcohol. It's not necessarily good for your vehicle in the long run. More than anything, it's not good for the fittings. It's not good for the seals and so forth. So I wouldn't recommend that to anybody. No, I wouldn't recommend that. Boats and other engines not even designed to run on ethanol, just they're torn up by it. Exactly, exactly. But when it gets to the ethanol, yes, the flex and E85 vehicles, they can use ethanol. They're designed to be able to accommodate that. However, as far as locally, what we learned, because there was an initiative for a while, there was an initiative to try to make sure that we're doing an ethanol project here, that we're going to grow it here, that was one of the first steps as we were looking at it. The problem with it is the enzyme necessary in order to convert the corn, essentially, into the ethanol had to be exported or imported into Hawaii. And the cost of importing that enzyme to do that wiped away all of the potential value of it. So a lot of people don't realize that Hawaii actually grows a lot of seed corn for farmers on the mainland because we're isolated, so we don't have disease issues. We kind of isolated from a lot of diseases that propagate on the conus or other countries. And number two, they get like three or four growing seasons a year instead of one, so they can actually produce a lot more corn here. So I just thought ethanol might be a really neat option, but it has its limits, too, apparently, with enzymes. It has its limits, and it's really that enzyme, because we can't produce that enzyme here. OK. Well, we're coming up on a break here. We're going to take 60 seconds and talk about some other shows on Think Tech, and be back with Carl in a few seconds. Ted Rawlson here, folks, your host on where the drone leads, our weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on Think Tech, where we talk about drones. Anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework, and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation, with local experts, as well as people from across the country, please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every Monday at 1 o'clock, I present Think Tech, Hawaii's research in Manoa, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully, you can join me 1 o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech, Hawaii's research in Manoa. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stand Energy Man here on the first day of fall in Hawaii. We can't really tell. It's just like yesterday. But it's a beautiful day in Hawaii outside, so we're looking forward to a good weekend. I'm going to be doing a yard sale, so come by, pull them on in the home-windward side and buy all your stuff at the yard sale for Christmas presents. Anyway, Carl Capanga back here, and we're talking energy stuff. We just finished off with some biofuels. Let's talk a little bit about solar, because I think you've got a solar project in the works. Why don't you talk a little bit about how things are going there and what you're doing? Sure. In itself, it could be a big topic for a lot of reasons, depending upon where you want to go. But yes, I actually just completed a contract where I was working with a company, helping them finish off the construction side of the development phase, which feeds into, but as well as the permitting side. They were trying to get permitted seven megawatts total of PV. So it was all commercial, 500 kW to a megawatt size farms, and a total of 12 of them is what they were looking at doing. So I get brought in to help them go through the process. So I assess and analyze where they are and what they need. And there are things that get in the way that not everybody understands how to read, let alone address. And that includes if you've got conditional use permits and requirements or supplemental use permits and the requirements thereof. And those can often get in the way. And that's going to be part of the conversation we'll have later as well. But that's where as we jump in and try to assess those things and figure out how we resolve each of those hurdles, then you get to the point where then now your permit gets to be awarded to you, and then you get to go build it. So that's what we were brought in to do, to help bring them through those phases to get those permits. We were able to get 10 of the 12 permits. The two we did not get were because there were more finance side development that had not been completed. So those had been postponed. But that's the projects that we were working on. So 10 of the 12 projects were on Oahu, two of them, which was equal to a little over 2 megawatts, was actually on Maui. Well, I know that we have a lot going on on Oahu. And there's a general observation. A lot of the electric demand is on Oahu. And a lot of the renewable resources are on neighbor islands. And the question is, how do you get it back and forth? And we've talked undersea cables and turning it into fuels and shipping fuels or however you want to do it. But we cover the gamut in terms of permits. And you hit on it. It's use permits. It's building permits. It's county. It's state. It's federal. It's regulations. It's FAA. It's EPA. There are so many pieces. And depending on exactly what you're doing, I mean, if it's agriculture related, you might even have health department or regs that come in. And you will. If it's a flood zone, you have to make sure that you're addressing and accommodating that accordingly. Sometimes you have to build what you're doing up 6 feet to accommodate the flood zone. It's understanding that. So is there any like, I mean, it's probably your court employment security. But is there any one stop, shop that you go in and say, I'm starting a new business in making hydrogen and help me get my permits? And you go in and you get a checklist of who to talk to at the federal building and City Hall and everybody. And you just smooth right through it. And in two weeks, you got your permits and you're off and running. In two weeks? Yeah. No. No. But why? There's no shortcut. For a lot of reasons, you don't want shortcuts for one thing because you need to make sure that things are being looked at correctly. The only way you would want a shortcut is if you've got, if you have parameters set up, prerequisites that are set up that you have already confirmed that you have abided by. And if you can do something along those lines and say, OK, we've already completed all of these prerequisites, which means here we've submitted this for your final review. And as long as you know what that is supposed to look like, you know what your drawings sets are supposed to look like, what's supposed to be included, you've already collaborated with all of the utilities necessary to make sure that everyone is in agreement on what you're doing and how you're doing it. If you go through each of those steps and then, you know, but it doesn't all exist that way now, to answer your first question, is there a one-stop shop? There are a few different companies out there that are really good that know what's needed. And that's their job? That that is their job. They are permitting expeditors and they're really good at it. They probably don't want me to mention who they are. And they have connections with Monopua and Malasada. Absolutely they do. Absolutely. And actually you get more ingratiated with them when you bring them to them. But now there are a few companies out there. There's a lot of companies that will say that, hey, they are permitting expeditors. Some of them are better than others. So knowing who and where to go based on what the product type is, is important. So what are some of the longest lead? Like if you're starting a fairly large environmental project or an energy link, a solar project, and commercial-grade industrial-grade solar project or something like that, what are some of the long term you've got? It takes a long time to get through, like an EPA assessment. Going through an EIS, in most cases, most developers try to do a skip as much as possible because it costs money. But as most of us here in Hawaii know, there's something called the superfairy effect. You don't want to get superfairy. So you don't want to skip those. So my company and several others are similar. We're one of the companies that says, OK, no. If you don't want to go through and do each step that you were supposed to do appropriately and pay the small amount, relatively speaking, up front to make sure that everything has been done so that you have checked all of those boxes, if you don't want to do that, then I'm not your contractor. I'm not your consultant. I cannot help you because I have a problem with someone who tries to cheat the system. Someone who tries to get around all of their requirements. That doesn't work for me because the superfairy happens because reputations are built and destroyed based on what you say you can do. And if I were to come in and say, well, I think you should get all of these studies and all these reports done. And they say, well, I don't want to do all those. I say, well, OK, I'll do all of this for you without doing all those things. And then I don't get it done because I didn't do this, or something gets kicked back. And the project that just spent millions of dollars anyway and now they can't build it, you don't want that scenario. And all that does is create more friction with all of the agencies and departments, including the Department of Planning and Permitting. You don't want those relationships. Is there a correlation between the superfairy effect and the 30-meter telescope effect? Are they different or similar? Different. I think they're different. I think they're different in that the superfairy effect is they didn't do the EIS, or certainly not all facets of the EIS that they were supposed to do. And because they were told, don't worry about it, we've got it covered. Well, that was somebody thinking that they had a political end that they can pull this and be done. Well, the problem with that was as soon as a couple of people decided they didn't like it, they looked at it and they found the angle that got in there to give the leverage to shoehorn it out. Didn't they use the Army's fast trimer and ship that runs around and does similar speeds and similar routes as, hey, we already do it. It's already out there. It's already running. Yeah, I think they used that, but that doesn't. It doesn't do it. You can't use their EIS, or whether or not they got an EIS is I can't speak to that. But you can't use their EIS. You have to have your own study. Now, you might be able to, if you look into some, and depending on how old they are, because all of these studies, whether they're archaeological studies or environmental studies, whether it's what's called the bugs and bunnies, whether you're looking or plants, all of these studies have, they go stale after a period of time. Going stale means they don't fly anymore. They have a shelf life. Exactly. So depending upon when that was done and if it was done, and if it included and encompassed the area that you are planning on affecting, that's whether or not you can lean on that one. So as a general rule, do you start off with an environmental study and then do an assessment? I mean, which one's the longer? One of them's longer than the other. In environmental, there's environmental assessment and then there's environmental impact statement. The environmental assessment is the short version. And is it normal to do that first or unless you know you've gotta do a whole? It depends on the project. Yes, it depends on what the project is, the size of the project and the total area that you are impacting and what is impacted by that area as well. So for example, if you're gonna go and put a relatively small PV farm on a plot of land that has already been determined is industrial and is 55 feet above sea level and start going through all these little check off bullet points and you hit all of those parameters and say, okay, well there's no reason for us to have any trouble with this. You can go through and do your basic assessments and have your environmental assessment, indicate by the way, we are 55 feet above sea level, we are more than 500 feet from shoreline and all of these other requirements that come into place. We do not have a CUP requirement for anything, including state historic preservation. You start going through those lists and realize, okay, this project, you just need a little... Staying basically helping them evaluate your project. Exactly. And when you've done saying, there's no reason that anything else has to be done and you have an official person who is either certified or their profession is doing these assessments, provides that report and you provide that report to all of the entities that need to see it as you submit it for your permit. They go, yeah, okay, we agree with you, we've done that assessment, we agree with you, you're good. Nine times out of 10, that's not true. Nine times out of 10, you're gonna have a flood zone you have to deal with, you're too close to the shoreline, you've got a flood zone issue, you've got runoff issues, you've got transportation concerns, maybe your project actually isn't anywhere near an access point from the highway. So how do you do that? You're crossing over somebody's, someone else's property or easement and you've got utility easements, three or four different levels of easements to deal with sometimes. And all of that stuff needs to be understood and you need someone who knows how to, number one, understand it and then how to address it. Well, as a contractor too from the old days, that's why I said two weeks is fine. We can actually get a building permit in a couple of days sometimes, but on simple projects, but we used to use rules of thumbs a lot, the rules of thumb. So we go like so much a square foot and you can build a building or so much. Okay, nowadays with all the permitting, is there like a percentage of the project costs that you just figure you're gonna sink 8% into someone to help you facilitate your permits and do all that work? Let me say you should, you should. And if you contact the right people, the right companies that know these concerns and knows the territory as well, knows the land, then yes, they can begin to put a little packs together for you say, okay, this is gonna cost you $50,000 to get all of your studies done. And then so what is the size of your overall project? How does that fit into your budget? You should do that. What I have unfortunately come across more times than not is that non-local developer that doesn't care, that non-local developer that doesn't understand what it costs to do with the work here, that doesn't understand how the system works here, thinks that they can bully their way through the process. I don't need to do this because of this. I've never had to do that before over here. I've never had to do that. Only causes more trouble. So again, I choose to not take most of those contracts. So I guess my question is, if you were coming in brand new and trying to do an environmental project or energy or solar project, how much should I roughly budget for? If my total project's a million bucks or two million bucks, like what kind of percentage is it? Is it like a big percent or something under 10? It's a small percentage, it's way under 10. But they just have to account for it. It's a percentage point at best for most of that. And it's worth the investment. More than worth the investment because once you've done it, then you have nothing else getting in your way. You have no other stumbles getting in their way. Well, believe it or not, we've pretty much bumped up against 30 minutes here with Carl, and it's always great to talk to you, Carl. And thanks for your insight. Especially on the permitting piece. That's a big bugaboo for a lot of folks that are trying to start off in business. And the permitting's a big issue. So thanks for some insight on that. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today on Stand Energy Man. Thanks to Sydney and Robert here in the control room doing all their good stuff and making the cameras work and making me look skinny and everything. And I appreciate it. See you next week on Stand Energy Man. Aloha.