 It's Wednesday afternoon, almost over the hump, and we all know what day that is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy day. I'm your host, Mitch Ewen. This show is hosted or sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum with funding from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So we've got a really great show today. You've got the Hawaii State Energy Office on board with Gail Suzuki-Jones as our guest. And she's the program manager for the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program Office. Did I get that right? Building's program manager. So welcome on board, Gail. And Gail's going to talk to us all about their show, about their program for Hawaii Green Business and what that's all about. It sounds like going through slides before the show, it looks like a pretty good program. And it's going to save Hawaii a lot of CO2 and a lot of money. So Gail, how about talking to us about your program? Welcome on board. Thank you, Mitch. Thanks so much for hosting the show and inviting me to be here today. I'm going to be presenting some information and an update on the Hawaii Green Business Program. I wonder if Eric has the slides up yet? Eric, are you there? Anyway, OK, excellent. Great. So I'll be talking to you a little bit about the program. And if you want to advance the slide to the next one, that would be great. So what is the Hawaii Green Business Program? It's a program that recognizes businesses that go beyond compliance. And they're greening their facilities, whether it be hotels or resorts, restaurant, food service, office, retail, as well as events. And why would a business participate? Well, one of the things is it receives technical assistance, realizes savings, and it gets promotion for its efforts. So where can you get more information? We have the website listed on the slide there, greenbusiness.hawaii.gov. And how to participate? First of all, a business would complete the checklist. Secondly, we would conduct a site visit. In these days, it's either virtual or via images that are submitted. It used to be that we would go out to the business in person, along with our green team, and check to make sure the items in the checklist were verified. And lastly, the businesses agreed to mentor another business. Because as we hear in Hawaii, you know, word of mouth goes a long way. And hearing it from another business means a lot more than hearing it from the state of Hawaii. When does this happen? It happens all year round. And the recognition ceremony occurs once a year. In fact, we just had one last Friday at 10 a.m. with the governor in our first virtual award ceremony, who are our partners. I'm from the Hawaii State Energy Office. We work closely with the Department of Health, the Board of Water Supply, and the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, as well as other organizations. Next slide, please. Thank you, Eric. These are some pictures from some past ceremonies. You notice how close people are standing without masks. That would not happen these days, unfortunately. But here are some images from past ceremonies. And they were occurring at the governor's office, as you can see with a big seal in the background. The top slide on the left, you might recognize some folks. Our former D-bed director, Eric Al, from the Hotel and Lodging and Tourism Association's Engineers Advisory Council, as well as the Princess Kailani, Chief Engineer. Karen Nakaoka, who was with the HLTA at that point in time, and the Director from Department of Health, Deputy Director Keith Kalooka. And then in the picture below is a picture of our green business team. As you can see, it takes more than one person and a few partners, but quite a few people that work closely together from our departments, as well as with the support of interns. So, Kail, that's quite an investment of people. One of the questions I was going to ask you is, what about cash? Does the Energy Office, I mean, having all those people and people inspecting, you know, that's a big investment, but can businesses expect any cash to support their programs from the Energy Office? Directly from the Energy Office, no, we provide technical assistance resources. We point them to sources of potential rebates and incentives, and we have interns that also help walk businesses through the process. In many cases, help them complete the checklist and or find resources where they don't have resources. Well, that's all very valuable stuff. What about the Hawaii Energy? Do they have a role to play in this? Yes, definitely. Hawaii Energy plays a very important role. They provide the rebates and incentives to the businesses on Oahu, Maui County, as well as a big island. And for KIUC, for Kauai, we refer them to KIUC for similar resources, but this would be the financial. Our office doesn't have, unfortunately, those same financial resources that the other entities do. Hawaii Energy has a good, you know, a good level of resources because they take a little percentage off everybody's electrical bill, utility bill every month. Correct, correct. And we also do a number of different educational and training sessions co-sponsored by Hawaii Energy. So they really help get folks up to speed on many different levels. Okay, thank you. Excellent, thank you. The next slide, please. The next slide shows a picture from our first annual virtual ceremony. It has the Governor E. Gay on top as well as slide four, this slide of the awards that were actually given out, not in person, but received through the mail as well as I delivered them in person, just because I wanted to make sure they got them. So they include a plaque from Found Wood. It's an operation on the North Star made out of reclaimed wood, felled trees up here in the state. They get a certificate as well as a commendation from the governor and a window decal and some swag from the Board of Water Supply. We actually gave away some hand sanitizer, some pens and a reusable bag. That's really great. So it was the first annual virtual awards ceremony where of course, hoping it's the last virtual award ceremony. First and last, yes. We will have a video of that on our website posted very shortly. For those of you who are interested, it's only about half an hour. And I think you'll get a feeling for who's participated, who got recognized and what they did to get recognized. Okay. I think that's quite valuable. So anyway, our partners, like I mentioned before, range from state and county to Hawaii Energy, also professional lodging and tourism members, hotel engineers, they also work with HPU, UH and the community colleges and have secured some very capable and knowledgeable interns that have also in exchange gotten the experience of working with us and the businesses. The U.S. Green Building Council, Hawaii, as well as AIA Honolulu participates, BOMA and APA Chamber of Commerce. And then with nonprofit associations such as the Sir Frider Foundation, who has a program that's similar with the ocean friendly restaurants, we co-promote with them and their program. And the tourism authority has supported us recently just for a short period of time. In helping us expand our program and allowing us to hire an intern from HPU to help us. He was a marketing finance intern and was very valuable in the time that he worked with us to help us expand. And then of course, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. EPA. Here's a list of the awardees from this past ceremony that range from hotels to venues here on Oahu, well as Maui and Kauai. Next slide please. And then these are the other awardees from office and retail, as well as restaurants and events. So as you can see, it really ranges from a number of different business types as well as to a number of different sectors and what they are focused on. So we try to meet people where they are and that's why we develop the event program because that is a much less rigorous checklist but people can kind of get acclimated and involved in the program at an event basis and then always move up to say their office or business following that. So I do have a question. So what is your impression of the degree of enthusiasm? The uptake, are people very enthusiastic about this program or are they like, oh, well, so what? What's the first thing- It's interesting you should ask that because in the past we've done promotion through the Tourism Association, Restaurant Association, et cetera. And this year we thought because of COVID we might run into a problem with businesses not wanting to participate. But it's interesting because they actually have been contacting us somewhat out of the blue. There have been three hotels, two on the neighbor islands as well as one on Oahu and one event that have contacted us just right before the ceremony. So we're starting out with about five businesses right out of the gate in January, which is very unusual. And so we're really looking forward to 2021 to be a bigger and better year. And COVID doesn't seem to be affecting the response to these businesses. In fact, some may have more time to sort of pursue alternative areas of interest while they're not so busy and getting back up to speed with the economy, getting back to normal. Well, the other driver of course is this can potentially save them a lot of money. So businesses are hurting anything that can help them improve their efficiency and save them money is a good thing as well, I would think. That's so true. In fact, the next slide that we have on metrics is a great slide to illustrate that. This is just from the 15 businesses that were recognized this past year. And you can see the amount of solid waste reduced, gas reduction as well as energy kilowatt hours reduced and water reduction. Mitch, you had some great ways to calculate this. Yeah, I calculated how much water was in an Olympic swimming pool. And for all those who wanna know, it's 660,000 gallons. So 91 million gallons turns out to be 139 Olympic swimming pools full of water, which is a lot of water. That is a lot. Yes. And then for the energy one, you also, being the... I multiplied the energy by 27 cents a kilowatt hour just to whatever it is, but using 27 cents, that works out to around $6 million. That's pretty impressive. And so that's just with this group of 15 businesses. So you might imagine how that might be expanded upon with more participation. Okay, next slide, please. So the Hyatt Regency Maui, this is one of the hotels that participated and has participated in past years. Talking about going beyond compliance and above code, they participated in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program for existing buildings. And this is quite rigorous. It involves a lot of commitment from their side, a lot of data collection, as well as certification fees that are involved. So they've made a commitment to this at their property level and they've gone from lead silver level to lead gold level. And so that's been really impressive. They also have a strong commitment to renewable energy and they've increased the size of their PV array to 2,138 panels on top of their rooftop to produce renewable energy. Mitch, did you... That's a lot, no, that's a lot of PV, so. It's a lot. Yep, that's right. And the next slide, please. What Hawaii Pacific University at Aloha Tower Marketplace has done. In terms of renewable energy and energy efficiency, one of the champions there is Clarence Nakube. And I think he's been on ThinkTech before, but I really think he needs to come back again. And he's a real champion for these efforts. In terms of continuously improving upon what they're doing, not just with energy, renewable energy and efficiency, but also with waste management. And he works closely with the students as well there. And so there's a strong, strong team that he has. And he has a strong commitment to this. And then the next two slides are focused on sort of a COVID response, because as we all know, these are different times. And hotels have definitely adopted and adapted and shifted towards a different way of doing business. And so they really focused on health and safety and cleanliness. And so the protocols that they've developed are in this slide about social distancing, sanitizer stations, as well as more frequent cleaning. They have an EPA rated hospitality grade disinfectants, which are used. And they definitely are doing their part in terms of making sure guests as well as their employees feel safe. And the next slide, the Outrigger Reef, Waikiki Beach Resort, their COVID response, I've noticed has been on different commercials and ads, but they have the Outrigger Clean Commitment Program as well as Hotels for Heroes. They're giving back to the community as well as to the essential workers. And they definitely are looking at using new products and enhancing their cleaning protocols. Okay, the next slide. Okay, this shows just sort of the range of different programs that we have available for different sectors, hotels and resorts, office and retail, restaurant and food service, grocery stores, events and venues. And these are the areas and our checklists on the right that we focus on, energy and water conservation, waste reduction and preventing pollution, natural resource conservation, as well as giving back to the community and preserving the culture. Okay, the next slide on why to participate. Oh, it's getting so bright and sunny in here. No lack of sun here in Manoa. Okay, that's a little bit. We don't have sun over here in Kanoi. Got to find the right place. Okay, so why would you participate? Definitely some of these entities have just such a strong commitment to it that year after year they participate on their own coming back some of them four or five and six times to get the recognition. And the Holly Corps recently said they're just working on each time improving their score. And so it just goes to show that they have a commitment to continuous improvement. They also have a commitment to their clientele and to their employees and providing a safe and healthy place to stay as well as work. And they also see that it creates a positive relationship with regulators. So one of our partners is at the Department of Health. And so when we do our site visits and compliance checks, Department of Health is definitely there as well as Board of Water Supply. So I'll tell us a little bit about the scorecard. You said they're trying to improve their score all the time. What does that mean? Right, so there's, if you go to the next slide, it just shows the steps to participate. And that slide up on the top right is a slide of the checklist itself. And so I think the hotel and resort one may be a little over 20 pages worth of items in energy, water, waste, pollution prevention, all the categories that I mentioned before. And what it does is it really gives folks a sense of where they are, but also where they could be, things they could implement in the future. And so it's kind of inspirational or aspirational as well as very practical. The site visit and verification, we're kind of refining that and figuring out new ways to do that remotely. But it used to be in person as is shown in the slide. And then the next slide just talks about recognition because we feel that the annual award ceremony is extremely important, that it's a great way of businesses being able to demonstrate not only within their own operation and organization, but to the public and greater community, what they've done and what their commitment is to going green. And then maintaining the recognition, like I mentioned, some of them are really proud to come in year after year. The Kahala Hotel and Resort is another one of those that is always challenging themselves to do better and more. And then the last slide, just give some contact information of where you can contact me via email or phone and get more information because we're starting to recruit for next year's round of businesses. So please let us know if you're interested. So a question I have, is this just a Wahoo centric or is this, how do you handle all the neighbor islands? I mean, are they all part of the program? Yeah, it's definitely statewide. And all of us in our team are located on a Wahoo. So it's been quite challenging, but now with the technology as it is, we've developed ways to get around that. And in fact, I think we had more people at the award ceremony this year because of it, we had, I think it was over 70 participants. So yeah, so a lot of people could link in on their own time from wherever they were rather than having to fly over if they were from a neighbor island or take time out of work to drive over. And then that other slide, I know Eric, you pulled that up is also interesting because it shows the map. Thank you of where these businesses are located and you can click on it and get the businesses by sector as well as their location. And we're gonna be updating this map as well for the next round of awardees, but thanks for bringing that up as well, Eric. So I have another question about, so you go around all these businesses and you have a check off list. So have you identified like where are the real gaps? Like, is there like a trend among all of them? Like, is there any one area that everybody could improve on? Be air conditioning, because we put in an air conditioning proposal earlier this year where we could save like 50% or 60% of the cost of air conditioning. So have you identified any particular target areas where the HSEO, the State Energy Office would like to really zero in on? Well, that's interesting that you should mention it. Definitely, and especially with COVID, ventilation, air conditioning, as well as air quality is definitely something that we're looking at. Howard Wick from our office has been doing a number of different webinars with the IES and Hawaii Energy on UVC. Lighting is a way to sort of address COVID. There are also ways to do it that potentially could affect with added filtration the air conditioning usage and therefore energy usage and cost. But we're trying to kind of explore different methods of both keeping a building safe and healthy as well as not necessarily increasing their energy bills as a result. Natural ventilation is so important. Where you can get it and where it can be used. And I know this isn't a business, but as far as schools go, there's been some talk of more natural ventilation, opening the windows instead of using air conditioning, looking at outdoor classrooms, different creative ways to address both air quality as well as energy usage. So one of the programs on the Big Island, Sustainable Energy in Hawaii, I had them on my show. And what they found out was just a standard air cleaner, like portable air cleaners, like you can buy them at Costco and they have HEPA filters in them. And if you just put one of those in a room, it'll clean the room because it filters the air through the filter and it's a filter that can filter out virus. So for example, one of the restaurants over on the Big Island is gonna put in or has put in these portable air filters in like the bar area, the restaurant area, even in the bathrooms. And so what Sustainable Energy in Hawaii wanted to do was spread them throughout the schools in every classroom. There's one of these filters apparently, I'm not exactly, I guess classrooms come in different sizes, but one filter can pretty well filter all the air in a single classroom. Maybe you have to have two depending on the volume of different size. So there's an area that State Energy Office should be looking at as well. I mean, the Department of Health needs to get involved. The Department of Education really likes this whole idea, but they were doing it on their own, they're raising funding through crowdsourcing to pay for these things. Right, we had looked into that because we had gotten an inquiry from a school. And I think at least one of the filter types that we had looked at, I think it was a EPA Energy Star rated one. Just with one filter, you could filter a classroom the size of 900 square feet or so. It's usually about what a portable classroom type space is approximately. But yeah, definitely we're looking into different areas such as that, not just for businesses, but for schools and offices as well. We actually have some of those filters in our own office right now. Yeah, yeah, you have to do that. So are there any other areas we're just about ready to close? I told you it would go fast. But are there any areas that you feel we didn't cover that you would like to give a shout out about or comment on? Well, I really want to emphasize that our program is very flexible. It's very accessible, it's free. We do not charge any fees for participating in it. It definitely might involve some of your staff time to go through the checklist. But the sections can be separated apart if you have different areas of your business that take care of different particular needs. And we're happy to walk you through it. I think it's about an hour's worth of time that it has taken us in the past to just go through it point by point, just to get a preliminary sense of where your business is at. And if you've gotten the required number of points to meet the threshold, great. But if you don't, you sort of have knowledge of what you can do in the coming year to be able to qualify as well as get recognized for all that you've done and are doing. So it's a great way to kind of get a benchmark of where your business is at. And then also a way to provide you with some inspirational points to try to achieve to move up higher and higher. So how do you get the word out? I know you said the people in your group have to agree to act as a mentor. You have any, do you do advertising or like any spots on TV or is there a way to do that? Or do you do it through trade associations? How do you get the buzz out? Yeah, we work closely with the trade associations like the lodging and tourism, the BOMA, you know, the IFMAs, the food industry association and others and some of the design professionals that have contacts within those groups. And they have clients that are interested in it. We've done some things for O'lello, but we have a very limited budget. So we aren't able to advertise widely. But now that we have some video clips from the award ceremony that we just did, we may use those because there's some really great testimonials in that. Well, you also have a Think Tech Hawaii show now that you could link people onto as well. That's correct. Yeah, that's right. And I hear that they're recorded and Able, are they archived somewhere? Yes, they are, yeah. And they can go global, the whole world. Oh, wow. So you're gonna be a global celebrity after this. Yeah, that's better. So we're out of time. So I've been very, I've been delighted to have Gail Suzuki-Jones who heads up EERE and the division in the Hawaii State Energy Office doing really good things for Hawaii. So thank you so much Gail for coming on the show and for all the great work you're doing to keeping us healthy and engaged in good things. Thank you, Mitch. And thanks, Eric. Appreciate it. Yeah. Take care. Well, hi everyone. We'll be back next week at Hawaii, the state of clean energy.