 GANOSI 16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Dukou Ishii. And I'm Kauai Lucas. In our show this time, we'll cover the 8th annual Hawaii Clean Energy Day. It was presented by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, the forum at the Laniakea Downtown YWCA on Tuesday, August 16th. This program was the latest statement on where we are along the road to 100% clean energy in Hawaii. It was really chocoblock and featured a number of very interesting and provocative speakers and panels. It was a full day program and included remarks by Governor Ige, as well as a number of energy experts and officials. It was a statewide conversation in that it was streamed live on the internet and did Q&A on the internet through MinningSIFT.com. In general, the program and the speakers were candid and tried to give us a new handle on where we are in clean energy these days, particularly after the rejection of the next STERRA attempt to buy Hawaiian Electric. The first panel presented performance reports. How are we doing? Milestones and actions. It featured Carl Friedman of the Forum, Mark Glick of the Hawaii State Energy Office, Randall Iwasi, Chair of the PUC, and Brian Kealoha of Hawaii Energy. First of all, in the electric sector, we have renewable portfolio standard goals. You're probably familiar with some charts like this, but the state target of 2015 was 15% renewable energy. The state has attained that. All the individual utilities have surpassed that goal. We have an energy efficiency performance standard, which is by comparison rather mushy. It's based on a forecast done in 2008 and a certain number of gigawatt hours, about four gigawatt hours of savings that aren't really well defined what those savings are. First I have to say that Hawaii is well positioned to achieve its interim RPS goal of 40% by 2030, but it's not something that we should take for granted at all. At the State Energy Office, we're focused on making sure that investments in new and upgraded utility infrastructure result in maximum renewable penetration at the lowest cost and highest reliability. We have to do all three. Just can't do one or two. We have to do all three. To be sure, our energy transformation will be progressively more challenging, but there are reasons for guarded optimism in Hawaii. I think the big point is we need more diversification. Wind and solar alone with the interminsity, the variability is going to be very difficult at some point. Up to 40%, I think Mark just said it, we can actually get there by staying the course and if I went through this set of slides, which is probably like 30 slides or something, I'd eventually reach it. We can get to the 40% goal by basically staying the course on solar and wind, but it's considerable more solar and wind. It's probably, you know, if it's like 600 megawatts of wind or 600 megawatts of solar or 300 wind and 300 solar to get us to kind of that 40% goal. We have a new commissioner, Tom Gorak, as an interim commissioner. I did not know Tom when I came to the Public Utilities Commission. I was able to observe him during the year and a half that I've been there. He is hardworking. He is invaluable. He's a man full of integrity, experience. And I will tell you that the PUC with his appointment will not miss a beat. In fact, I think with his appointment and his experience and his skill, we will skip a beat and in fact, maybe more than a beat. Moving forward, the next terror case was about who would run the utility. Energy efficiency can greatly affect and accelerate our pathway to 100% clean energy. The loading order should always be conservation, efficiency, and renewables, but that hasn't always been the case here in the state, especially as a number of programs have facilitated the proliferation of solar systems, particularly, you know, net energy metering programs. We've seen a lot of solar come first, but now is the perfect opportunity with the changes to NEM, with the evolving policies that Cherry Wase had talked about to put efficiency first on our road map to 100% clean energy. That was followed with two featured speakers, Brandon Belford of the U.S. Department of Transportation and Kyle Dada of Ulupono Initiative. Putting aside, you know, political affiliations, it's interesting that the energy question is actually one of the more, is one of the starkest differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Just this weekend in Barron's, which is the Wall Street Journal's kind of weekly periodical that kind of is directed towards investors, they did a whole spread on kind of comparing and contrasting Hillary versus Trump from an investment perspective. And energy was the number one issue where they were drawing the contrast in terms of Donald Trump who still thinks that climate change is a hoax that was, you know, perpetrated by the Chinese government. We have three fundamental energy decisions to make as a state. Question one, what will replace our refineries as the primary source of energy for our cars, our ships, our houses, and our machines? As we answer this question and make the decisions, we need to think holistically about the entire energy system, the sources of primary energy, their conversion, their distribution, and their end use. Question two, how can we align the shareholders of all our energy companies to their customers and public policy? I worked in over 15 countries in five continents and once alignment occurs, real progress happens. We then had a panel on the electrical sector. It was moderated by John Cole of HNEI and featured David Bissell of KIUC and Colton Ching of Huaini Lecture. In 2008, we had 5% renewable on Kauai, we're now at about 42% by the end of this year. It's been a big, as some of the other speakers have talked about, it's been a big capital investment. It's about $350 million spent in total on the island and that's not all KIUC, that's KIUC, that's developers, that's our member customers spending on rooftop solar and that, but just in perspective, that's more than doubling KIUC's balance sheet during that period, so a huge capital investment for us. We've put 31 megawatts of utility scale PV, KIUC owns 24 of that. There's 18 megawatts of distributed PV from our member customers. Seven megawatt biomass plant has recently came online, which is about 10 to 12% of our island's energy and we've got about 10 and a half megawatts of battery storage online in service on Kauai that's really been fundamental to helping us get our intermittent penetration up. So one of the things that we're working on as a pilot now and installation is actually proceeding as we speak is the device on the far left. It's a panel that only engineers will find sexy. Sorry, where did Brian go, right? Only engineers will like this, but in that panel is a very, very new technology that is designed to help levelize and adjust the voltage for electrical service that comes to all of our homes. We took this idea from this manufacturer out of Silicon Valley with one intended use and we recognized that it could potentially solve for a lot of issues for distributed solar. So we're working with them to test it out on a grid, on a circuit out in Kailua. We're also looking at distributed storage systems where we're doing a pilot on the island of Molokai to allow more distributed systems to connect there. Batteries too heavy, so I couldn't bring it in this morning. And then the third device which really helps us get visibility on what's happening to our grid way down all the way up to homes is our grid 2020 device and we have a couple of them on display here which allows us to measure what we call secondary voltage, the voltage of electricity that goes into all of our homes and allows us to actually read that remotely on a near real-time basis. Governor David Ige then delivered remarks on the state of clean energy. Now that the Public Utilities Commission has spoken on the next era merger, it's time for everyone to come together and recommit to our shared clean energy future. The solutions and people who can implement them are right here in this room. The forum then presented six awards for transformational achievement and advancing clean energy. The awards reflected outstanding achievement through transformational technologies, projects and programs. For collaborative problem solving, the award goes to the County of Kaua'i for its transportation partnerships, revitalizing Lihue Town. Very happy to be here of course to receive this collaborative award and collaboration, coordination and cooperation is the big three. The communications and outreach award goes to Kaua'i for its energy literacy social media project. Wow, well thank you so much for recognizing our work. We feel like it's very important. For energy education, the award goes to the International Facility Management Association Hawaii chapter called IFMA for the University of Hawaii West O'ahu Facilities Management Degree Program. IFMA Hawaii is composed of volunteer members. We don't get paid to do what we do. For energy efficiency transformation, the forum recognizes Hawaiian electric companies for their electric vehicle fast charging public network program. I think for us, we truly thank and appreciate the recognition for our efforts at Hawaii Electric, Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light. The forum recognizes Ter Viva for its integration across sectors in agriculture, energy, environmental conservation and community development. It is a tremendous honor to be up here with such distinguished company. And I'd also like to say a special thank you to the folks at the Energy Accelerator. For energy technology, Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, powering Kauai County with 97% renewables on the grid. Thank you, Mike and Sharon and thank you for everybody here that voted for us for this award. I'm pleased and honored to accept it on behalf of the employees and board of KIUC. On behalf of the forum, I'd like to congratulate the awardees and it really is inspirational to see all the great things that are happening. After lunch, there was a panel on stored energy. It was moderated by event masquerade of Honeywell Smart Grid Solutions and John Cole of HNEI and featured David Bissell of KIUC, Luke Eveslin of Civil Beat, Ray Starling of Island Energy Consulting and Stan Osterman of HCAT. Cell phones have had lithium ion batteries in them for years or about as advanced technology-wise as they can get. And if you run your battery and your cell phone down once a day or so within a year or two, what do you got? You got about half your battery output. So one of our concerns is the evolving technology with lithium ion and how long are we lasting? Long-term or optimistic and we're really counting heavily on it on Kauai and probably throughout the state, but the technology is new, relatively new. And I think, oh, I can have a solar panel at home that's taking advantage of this sun. And I really, that was the extent of my thought process when I set up my system. Over the last five years is to realize sort of that this is all a lot more complex and that our solutions to climate change, whether it's energy or land use or transportation can't be done at an individual level, that they have to be done from a systems-based approach. And that's been really hard for me as an off-grid person to really end up swallowing what I am. So I think at the end of the day, my off-grid experience has taught me that the one thing that I can do as an individual is to put faith into the system, you know? So that's all, and don't go off-grid. Now I've listed here some of the non-battery storage technologies that are already proven and available today. Some of these technologies have been commercially operational in Hawaii for a decade or more. Some are technically proven, but they'll still need to find a commercially viable sweet spot on the Hawaii's new clean energy grid. But most of these non-battery storage capabilities are on the customer side of the meter, and that will require some unprecedented collaboration between the utility and the customers in order to determine, number one, what non-battery storage is best suited for the Hawaii grid, and it may change over time. Let's say once you get above about 10 megawatts of storage, batteries aren't the answer. You have to go with something that's above that red line, and it could be pumped hydro, it could be compressed air, but those two have some issues. If you're gonna use compressed air, you probably have to have salt caverns and things like that in your geology. You have things like that you need. For hydroelectric, if you happen to have a big valley and you wanna dam it up, which I don't think would go over big in Manoa, that's probably not an option. In-stream hydroelectric's good, we've got some options there, but look at the big circle up there, hydrogen and methane. Think of methane as LNG or whatever. There's a lot of technologies in there that give you the hours, days, and weeks that batteries just don't do. And to again, Dave and I talked a little bit at lunch, if you wanna really entertain yourself, go on the internet and look up the worldwide reserves for lithium. This panel was followed by remarks from featured speaker, Brandon Belford of Boundary Stone Partners on advancing a clean transportation strategy. The last thing I'll point to is just mode shifting, and this is everything from the importance of transit and the heart project here in Honolulu, the importance of figuring out the right regulatory regimes for ride sharing and ride hailing companies like Lift and Uber. I know there was recent activity in the past couple of weeks here about Lift and Uber, but I think it's important to remember not only are there great benefits on those types of services for mobility, but in terms of effecting climate change, you look at what Lift and Uber are doing in San Francisco, and I think about 60% of all of their rides are actually using lift line and lift pool. This was followed by a panel on clean transportation. It was moderated by Maria Tomaeva Forum and featured for Fuchigami of the State Department of Transportation, Ed Sniffin, DOT Deputy Director on Highways, Ross Igashi, DOT Deputy Director on Airports, Daryl Young, DOT Deputy Director on Harbors, Mark Garrity, Deputy Director of the City Department of Transportation Services. We made tremendous strides when it came to electricity, but for some reason, when you talk about transportation, electricity is not in that arena. They're talking about reducing the use of fossil fuel more than likely gasoline, and that's what we're taking on next. With the vision of Ford at the airports, we realized the need and the ability to reduce our utility budget, which is about $50 million or actual expenses each year, and looking at that, we said we need to take advantage of this statute called 3641, Hawaii Revised Statute. What we try to do as an enterprise system is try to keep costs as low as possible. We do that through one of two ways. We do that through operational efficiencies, such as this road that we created through the old Kaplanama Military Reservation. It takes off 1,200 trucks from a small neighborhood road, reducing emissions and reducing wait time. We also do that through energy efficiency. There's been a lot of work that's gone into the highways division. The energy savings performance contract was about a $60 million project. Our goal basically was to get rid of the high pressure and sodium lights and go with LED lights. I think any of you who drive on the freeway has seen the difference. They're flat lights. The illumination is 180 degrees down. From the city's perspective, there's really two basic things that we can do to improve sustainability and reduce energy use that we see. There's, in the box over here, we're gonna work on making our fleet greener. The city has a fleet of vehicles, ranging from transit vehicles to garbage trucks to everything else that we drive around. And the second is making the trip greener. And what that is about is encouraging the general population to not drive so much, essentially providing alternatives, opportunities to walk, bicycle, use transit rather than driving. So that's the two focus of what we, what our current efforts are related to. After that, we heard from Colin Moore of the Public Policy Center at UH Manoa. We're blessed here in Hawaii to have a generally supportive public, more or less a supportive administration and legislature. But the frequency of high stakes public decisions will ratchet up in the coming decades. And we shouldn't assume that this support will always remain. After all, fundamental political realities stand in the way of devising effective governmental responses to the threat of global warming. The first and the most clear, at least to a political scientist like myself, is the timeline for re-elections. They're two, four and six years. And they are certainly not aligned to processes like climate change that unfold over half a century. And acting to mitigate climate risks involves short-term cost imposition on political constituencies. In fact, the main beneficiaries of greenhouse gas emission reductions aren't even born yet, so they certainly can't vote. And finally, we had a summary and action panel featuring Mark Lick of the State Energy Office, Rick Rochelow of HNEI, and Kyle Dada of Ulupono Initiative. I think we're at the point where things get more difficult. I mean, you know, we had to clean energy initiative. There were a lot of lofty goals. There was, you know, big visions of what could happen in different areas. And in reality, you know, with our electricity costs and there were some tax incentives that certainly made a big difference, but business really took over. And things that happened that really just directly made economic sense given the environment we were working in. And as a result of that, you know, there was some expansion of projects on the Big Island. Solar went in in a very big way. Wind farms were developed. And while there's been bumps along the way with utility in terms of how to integrate that in, it was really astounding that we saw today from the very beginning a whole variety of, well, some very, very good speakers. I want to talk a bit about what Brandon Belford talked about in terms of transportation solutions. And in his number three, or his three-step plan, EVs, which I would expand to Electric Drive, which includes the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Alternative fuels, which clearly can be expanded if we're able to make progress. And there's some glimpses of progress, potential, and biofuels. And I want to start by having us reflect on what we didn't talk about this forum. Because the conversation actually has changed. It's changed in a positive way. We didn't talk about whether it was possible, technically, engineering-wise, to achieve 70% or even 100%. And actually, that was a big, big discussion for over a decade. Can't get there. Lots of sort of whinging and whining about how hard it is. And actually, it is technically hard. But what's interesting is the plucky folks on Kauai, that little utility just went ahead and did it. All in all, this was a great program. And some people felt it was the best energy day of all. If you want to know more about the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum or about Hawaii Clean Energy Day, visit hawaiienergypolicy.hawaii.edu. And now let's take a look at our ThinkTech calendar of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then, we broadcast our earlier shows all night long. And some people listen to them all night long. They're all archived on demand on thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to thinktechhawaii.com slash radio. Visit thinktechhawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links. Or, better yet, sign up on our email list and get the daily docket of our upcoming shows. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our programs, contact jayatthinktechhawaii.com. Give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at thinktechhi. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in Hawaii. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. Speak out on an issue or event you can. We love the First Amendment and we love hearing from our viewers. You can come down to our speakers corner and make a video statement on the web. See thinktechhawaii.com. You can also call in and join our talk shows live. While you're watching any of our shows, you can call in at 415-871-2474 and pose a question or make a comment. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. Hops up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on OC16 several times every week can't get enough of it just like J.F. I. Dell does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech Ohana and supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and globalism in Hawaii. You can watch the show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Dukou Ishii. Aloha everyone. And I'm Kaui Lucas. Aloha everyone.