 This is Stink Tech Hawaii, the room of the matters here. Bingo, we're back. This is Stink Tech Hawaii, Hawaii the state of clean energy. You've probably been waiting all week for this one. We'll have a week. OK, the co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. That's Sharon Moriwaki. Take a bow, please. OK, there I need you to do that. Yeah, OK. And co-host of the program, Veronica Rocha from D-Bed and the Energy Office, State Energy Office, welcome to you. Thank you. And we have one of our two guests, Marvin Buen Canseo. Perfectly said. OK, from Hawaii Energy. Marvin, why are you here? Well, when we last left our heroes, last time we took them, we have since visited the island of Molokai, beautiful island, beautiful people. But as part of our work with Sustainable Molokai in our Huey Up Refrigerator Trading Program, great program. It's an opportunity for those on the island to swap out their aging refrigerators, old refrigerators, some dating 20, 30 years, for brand spanking new energy star refrigerators. But instead of you and I just talking about it, as always, I brought a little bit of video about the movie. Let's take us all to the island of Molokai right now. Where's the popcorn? Saving energy, you know, it's a good deal. 250 for brand new delivered on the island? Yeah. I mean, how can you beat that kind of situation? And they're going to load them. It's awesome. Love it. For the island of Molokai, no home depot, no loads. We have a perfect, we can save money, energy at the same time. How's that? Well, it's important, especially on Molokai, because there's no supply chain here. They don't have any retail stores. There's no outlets. There's nowhere for them to buy a new energy saving device of any kind. Refrigerator alone here, based on the utility bill, run them about an extra 350 a year and just excess utility saving costs. So really, it makes a lot of sense for them to replace their old refrigerators. And we provide them a vehicle to do that. It's wonderful. These people are fantastic. They're appreciative. They're happy with what we're doing. It's always a good feeling to come to Molokai and work with the people here, especially with our partners at Sustainable. And there you have it, another satisfied customer on the behalf of Molokai, including the Hawaii Energy Incentives and all the work by the various stakeholders, if you will. It cost each family about $250. Actually, not a problem. It was a great deal. General Electric Energy Star refrigerator. We were able to deliver 177 just go around. And it was so popular that plans are being made to keep the next go around sooner than later, hopefully, about next month or so. Now, you get the old ones back. That's important. The risk here is if they keep the old ones and put them here in the garage, then you haven't gained anything. That's right. So we want to make sure we take away the man fridge, if you will. And it's important because a lot of those refrigerators would be more of a burden on the grid, if you will. And so yes, it's a critical component is to pull those off the grid and out of circulation because they are energy guzzlers, energy eaters, if you will, and replace them with energy. So what happens to them? Where do you take them? Well, we ship them back out. So we pull them off the island and bring them to WoW. And then we have them delivered to for recycling purposes, to the proper recycling companies that can do that kind of work. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Just shaking. No, I haven't, right? So you got some numbers for us. How much energy does this save? How much benefit for the community? Well, as far as energy is concerned, I'm not really quite sure about that. But when it comes to saving in terms of dollars and cents, we're looking at $350 over the course of a year per year. So for all those families. For the cost of the electricity. That's right, that's right. So we're reducing the bills quite significantly for those folks in Mallorca. Yeah, and they need it because they pay you high rates for electricity. And because the disposable income is pretty low as a community. So what other communities would qualify for this special deal? Well, the biggest part is, because Mallorcai and Lamnai would be the same way. They have no mechanism to purchase these themselves. So we continue to reach out to the various communities. But those, because they're especially isolated, do what we can to help them. You had mentioned the savings on Mallorcai per capita. They do pay the highest electricity statewide. So it was really important that we go in there to these hard-to-reach communities and help them out, help us out as a community. Yeah, this helps level the playing field. Are you going to Lamnai, too? You know, I can't speak to that. Oh, that's key. Yeah, but you know. But you will do this again. That's right, that's right. So Lamnai is in your jurisdiction, is it? It is, because it's in the Mallorcai County, as you were just saying. So Mallorcai County, Hawaii County, and of course, City County, Honolulu, it's only key IUC because of the co-op there. That said, though, we do reach out to our friends over on the Garden Isle to remind them about the energy efficiency case. He does a nice job of doing the same thing in terms of messaging why it's important. And they make those independent decisions on their own. So they're doing a terrific job. We work with them nonetheless, even though they don't fall into the rate pairs that fund this program. Great program, Marvin. Very good. Very good. Thanks to the public work. Backbone program for the whole Hawaii Energy Initiative. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for a lovely movie. Yes. Will you come back soon? Yes, and we will, as always. And you'll be saying that. So the short break will be right back. Well, next month, he's going to have the whole month because it's Energy Awareness Month. That's right. So our executive director, Brian Killow, will be a special guest throughout the month of October. Excellent. That's right. I'm being in the big dog with you. Oh, OK. All right. Ooh, I'm looking forward to that. Thank you, Marvin. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Raising Public Awareness. Aloha. I'm Tim Apochella, host for Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic. We identify those areas where we do have problems in the state, but also the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions, not just detail our problems. So join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apochella. Thank you. We're all part of your community. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. This crazy world, so caught up in the confusion, nothing is making sense for me. We're back. Bingo. Hawaii is a state of clean energy. And if I didn't mention it before, that's Sharon Moriwaki. Aloha. Co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And you have to look at their website to see Clean Energy Day fabulous website, hawaiienergypolicy.hawaii.edu. You get it right? Correct it. All right. Thank you, Sharon. And Veronica Rocha, thank you so much for coming down. You are the co-host. So you're going to be asked to summarize at the end of this discussion. Are you ready? Absolutely. Thanks, Jay. OK. Nicole, you're our principal guest today. Excited? Yeah. Yeah. We talk about geothermal, right? So Kessica say, what is it, and why? And you're with HIGP, which is part of SOES. I'll translate that. Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, part of SOES, the School of Ocean, Earth, Science, and Technology. And you're also with the WRRC, Love Acronyms, yeah? All of Manoa loves acronyms. Water Research Center, WRRC very important to our future. That's right. And you're working on something around geothermal. Talk to us. Yeah, I work on groundwater, so better understanding the hydrological systems in the state. And over the past few years, I've been funded by the US Department of Energy to do a updated geothermal resource assessment for the state of Hawaii. OK. What's the state of geothermal these days? The state of geothermal is that there's one proven resource in the state that's in the Puna area. And we really cannot answer whether or not resources exist outside of Big Island of Hawaii. And data suggests that they may. Discussion earlier, like years, a couple years back, that Maui, and they were probing Maui, is that not really a resource or a big enough to do? We don't know. So there's only one way to assess whether there's a resource that is through drilling down and finding temperature. So it hasn't been drilled. It hasn't been drilled, no. But maybe we can take a step back a little bit and talk about this funding, this grant that you got through the US Department of Energy. And you get to do some really cool stuff, two faces. Maybe you can describe each one of the faces and some of the things that you learned from your work there. Sure. So DOE defined that in phase one there was to be no new data collection. So the goal of phase one was to identify, to compile, and to integrate all data that exists in the state that's relevant to a geothermal resource. So we looked at geological data, geochemical data, groundwater data, and geophysical data that existed and came up with a very complicated Bayesian statistical methodology to assess the probability of a subsurface resource. And my team, we defined that we wanted to look at the entire state, not just one island or a portion of one island or something like that. So at the end of phase one what we had was a probability of map of the state, probability, color-coded, red is high probability of finding a subsurface resource, blue is low probability, and then also a map of confidence that said how confident we are in that probability. So where we have low confidence is where we'd want to go get more data. Where do you have high confidence? Don't say under my house. Or where is their high probability? So where is their high probability of a resource or where do we want to get more data? So that was phase two. We're successful in phase one at getting phase two funding and in phase two DOE said go get more data to improve your probability map. So we know that Pune has working geothermal. Yeah, Pune. That'd be a high probability, high confidence area. Right, so in Hawaii our geothermal resource exists because of magma, subsurface magma, so we would want to focus our energy where we know that there is or recently was magma. That would be a high probability. There you go, there you go, there you go again. There you go talking like a scientist. You are a scientist. You are a scientist. Yeah. So Kilauea is our active volcano. The Kilauea caldera is a national park. We can't do much exploration in the national park. Down Kilauea's East Drift Zone is where Pune is. That's also a very active region and that's where the initial exploration was conducted in drilling. And so that's why we have the one proven resource in Pune. There are other active volcanoes or recently erupted volcanoes and then there are volcanoes like Haleakala and Maui that erupted not very long ago and there's even rejuvenation volcanism on this island where there was eruptions 100,000 years ago and we really don't know whether or not there's enough heat in the subsurface to constitute a geothermal resource. Is that what phase two you're gonna go island to island? So in phase two, what we did is define 10 kind of target areas where we wanted to collect more data and so we're in the process of doing that and they are from the Big Island to Kauai. So believe it or not, there's warm water wells on Kauai. Really? What do you think is the possibility of geothermal on Kauai? There's a possibility. Might be a low possibility but there's a possibility. Well, the magic of all of that is wouldn't it be something if we had geothermal on every island, one degree or another? Did you guys look at Lanai? We did look at Lanai. Oh, and? Lanai also has, I mean, quite obvious data to look at is the temperature of water. So wells are drilled to bring us our drinking water and so there's data on the temperature of the water that was found when that well was drilled in Lanai and Kauai actually have some of the warmest water in the state. You know, it's so interesting to me that you mentioned Oahu. What does the data say about Oahu? Is there enough data to be able to say anything at this point? Not really. Not really. Not really, and a tricky thing about Oahu is that because it's so populated and there's so much infrastructure, one of the main techniques that we can use to assess subsurface structures won't work here. So we're trying to kind of figure out what else we can do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you might have a pushback in Oahu. Yeah, we should talk about that because. About pushback? Well, we should talk about uses of geothermal because it's not all for electricity generation. Not all of it is that invasive, right? What are some uses of geothermal resource? Well, Iceland, which you and I had talked about earlier, the direct uses of geothermal are for heating, where it's cold. So not too relevant here to dry out fruit or things like that. So there are a lot of direct uses that communities can engage in to use a geothermal resource, but really the key, key thing that I think Hawaii should be interested in with respect to geothermal is that it provides baseload power, meaning non-flexuating power, different than wind and solar, which fluctuate minute to minute, hour to hour. Geothermal, you've got it. And it's respectable. You can call it up or not call it up. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you know how much you're gonna get. It's the best, it's the best. Let me take a moment to advocate. I mean, it lasts thousands of years. It really has no negative effect on anything. And you can go island by island and bring up all this power lasting thousands of years. It's a fabulous resource. And why are we, let me say, why are we limiting ourselves to Puna, which as I recall had no more than 48 megawatts so far. 38, 38 megawatts. Puna's potential is probably exponentially larger than that. Yeah, so is. Yeah, but you also don't want more energy than your community needs. Of course. So that is something that needs to be balanced. You could drive the whole big island on Puna geothermal, right? Probably from Puna's resource, you could. And it's reliable. I think if I'm not incorrect, I think that PGV does power about 80% of the big island. So this is really worth making the investment in. What's interesting too is that ORMAT is running it and it's a separate company. And that's what we want, right? We want RFPs. We want to purchase power agreements. We want situations just like we have in Puna. That same footprint. Now, Mililani Trask was talking about this, what, five years ago. Are you aware of any other facility that's been considered in the big island with other groups other than ORMAT? Yeah, IDP I think is the name of Mililani's company. Yeah, there might have been a proposal by one other company. Anything happening? No. So what has to happen between where we are now and the research in your project and getting more geothermal online either in a big island or Maui or Kauai or... Good question. So scientifically we need a lot more data to be able to determine whether we have resources on the other islands and what the extent of those resources are. As you know, geothermal is somewhat controversial in the state. Not with me. I want you to be clear about that, not with me. But I think, and it's something that I'm trying to begin a dialogue about how to engage the community, how to have a conversation where shared learning is a term that Veronica used that I like, where we can listen to communities' concerns, but we can also advocate for the benefits of geothermal and then ideally together make a decision whether to move forward or not. There's the camera. Okay, Nicole, let's see with the red light. Advocate. I mean, I got involved in geothermal kind of in a haphazard career path. I liked the environment. I like science. I like the outdoors. And so I majored in geology. And then I studied volcanoes and then kind of funding happened to exist to do this geothermal research. I mean, and I started about five years ago learning about geothermal. And I have been amazingly impressed about what a good clean energy it is and that it's baseload. I think it's maybe the only realistic way for Hawaii to achieve its 100% renewable energy pool. Yeah, good point. To energy pull into that. Is it cheap? Huh? Is it cheap? Geothermal is not cheap. That's one of the problems about geothermal. The upfront costs are really high. So the exploration phase is really high and you have no guarantee of reward. So to be able to understand whether we have a resource and what that resource is, as I've been saying, we need funding. We need more funding. So I've been trying to tell the Department of Energy we're disadvantaged to begin with in Hawaii because everything is more expensive here. Are they listening? No. Well, I mean, the Department of Energy in this administration is different than the Department of Energy in previous administrations, isn't it? And they're less likely to be sympathetic to renewable energy even if it's really renewable. Even if it's really renewable and even if it's a matter of security. I mean, in Hawaii what we do to get 80% of our energy is import petroleum from outside sources, which is really expensive. And I would argue detrimental to our environment and insecure. Yeah, so. Yeah, so we have to do this. So assuming that you find it, okay? And it's. Get funding and then find it. Well, okay, is there any other source of funding? I mean, how about capital investment by Wall Street, for example? There is. There can be developers that want to invest in geothermal. A lot have shied away from doing so in Hawaii because of the controversy. Controversy, which lingers, you know? Back in the, she was, Don Thomas, you know, and your team can tell us all about this. But in the 90s it was really controversial. There were really bad things happening and lawsuits and all that. Is it less controversial now? A lot of that is still happening. Yeah, I'll tell you what though. So earlier this year I had an opportunity to be in Iceland and then maybe a couple of years ago I was in New Zealand. And what I observed was that the community's relationship to geothermal energy there was very different. It was very positive. In Iceland in particular, the Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik is really famous. It's a tourist site. You go there and you, you know, enjoy the water. Next time you have to take me. I'll think about it. No, of course you're welcome to come. But the water for this natural pool comes from a geothermal power plant, right? It's the effluent of the power plant. Of course people there are bathing and enjoying the water. Waste nothing. No, whatever also comes out of the geothermal power plant is also used for heating, heating water, heating. If you take a shower in Iceland it smells like sulfur because the heat comes from it. Sulfur pool, great for you. It's not bad for you, it doesn't smell that good. No, and then fragrant soap. Yeah, and then they also use it for electricity generation, right? So when you, I took the opportunity to talk to just the local people that live there and they love geothermal. So I guess my pitch is that there's a real opportunity here to have a better conversation with the local community on this subject. And I think there's an opportunity for shared learning, both for us as government entities, researchers, et cetera, to have a conversation about what we know, what we have seen in other countries about geothermal and then to also hear the concerns from the community with regards to geothermal and see if there's a path of moving forward and actually developing this resource, which as Nicole pointed out, we very much need base load in order to get to 100% renewable energy. So yes, I think there's a huge opportunity there. But you know, Nicole is actually, pardon me if I talk about you, Nicole is actually a very important part of this project going forward because it depends in such a large part on what she finds. If you find a lot of geothermal, if you find it on all islands, that would be something. There certainly is more geothermal, I should say, than just in Puna. And as I think you and I have talked about, the results of a drilling project that Don Thomas led on the Big Island in the saddle, drilled into warm water. And that was a big discovery in a way that water... A lot more water than expected, which could be a groundwater resource for that area, which is of interest to the military and possibly to Department of White Homeland as well. But then the water was warm at the base of that borehole. So not just, we know that heat exists outside of Puna itself and then whether it exists on the other islands, we're still not sure. Well, that was... So if we did have it on every island so that you don't have to have cables running through and I think that's what was a problem with finding it on the Big Island and not being able to transport it and not being able to use all of it on that island. If you could find it on each island, how much do you need to find it? Can you say this is worth drilling and then put the resources and get the support to actually drill and... Yeah, so I think Oahu... I think I'm correct maybe, Veronica, that Oahu uses more electricity than all the other islands could find. So if we were to find a resource here, I think the chance of it being developed would be higher, but it's unlikely that we're gonna find a resource as that contains as much energy as on the Big Island, just because that's where our active volcanoes are. So as the mantle plume moves away or the islands move away from the mantle plume, the resource will cool and so we won't find this high temperature of a resource. And if you dig deeper, if you drill deeper theoretically, you can have a greater probability of finding it on or under the mantle, though. Well, Hawaii's geothermal resources are already fairly deep relative to the mainland or to the rest of the world and that's based on Hawaii's geology. We have really permeable rock. Our lava flows are very permeable so the water goes down to deeper. So we're already, where we anticipate potentially finding a resource is at 1.5 to two kilometers depth and I think down to three kilometers, drilling is economically viable right now but not my sheep or anything like that, yeah. Before we close though, I mean, I think you touched on something I really would like to explain to people. Your work is really not just the geothermal, it's also water and when you drill for one, you look at the other two and your team found some remarkable things in, what is it, monacaia, monoloa area, the saddle, things we didn't know. We had an imperfect understanding of the way the lens works, I guess the lens and we found there was water way high over sea level, fresh water in unlimited amounts really, lots of water, not only on the big island but this kind of investigation found that it was also on other islands. So we have a whole new view of water, we have a whole new source of water and water and geothermal are connected so the work that Nicole's doing is really important for a lot of reasons in this state and it would be, it is likely to give us a new water supply of enormous magnitude and it is likely also to find it all about geothermal. So can you talk about that? Thanks, Jay. Thank you. Jay's very optimistic, I hope so. It's true that our, we have talked about, last time I was on your show that the prevailing models of Hawaii's hydrology are decades old and in select locations there's updated models and largely the USGS has done that work, which is great but there's still a large gap in understanding and we think it's because there's subsurface geologic structures that affect groundwater movement and storage that we don't know exist. So this lens idea is correct but if you put a boundary in the lens it's gonna affect what groundwater does so we're trying to piece that together place by place across the islands cause it's not just a uniform model that's gonna exist for statewide. No, but every way you learn something that lesson applies somewhere else. Yeah, in principle, even if not in geologic reality. Or degree, yeah, yeah. So tell us where you are in this, so the USDOE funded you, so phase two will cover what and then we'll get moved to phase three. Yeah, so we're currently in phase two and this is the data collection phase to improve our probability map. Phase three decisions actually have been made and when the new administration was voted in, the mandate in phase three was to validate a geothermal resource. So my team was successful in moving forward to phase three but not with enough funding to in fact validate a resource so we're looking to form a partnership in order to do so. Are there other places in the country or elsewhere that are doing similar research that you could pull resources and work together? The problem is Hawaii's geology is unique relative to the mainland US or even Alaska and so yes, there were five teams nationally selected to move forward so there's a team looking at the northwest, looking to looking at the volcanoes around like Mount St. Helens area. There's a Reno team was selected to move forward so in the Great Basin, their geothermal resource, there's a lot of geothermal in the country actually and in the mainland US I think geothermal is almost universally perceived positively as a good resource. Yeah. Well, you could save us a lot of money. I'm thinking of San Diego. San Diego is in a project now is somewhere between 10 and 12 billion dollars for desalination because they figure they're gonna run out of water. So your research could save us the cost of desalination when we start to run out of water. If there's water. If there's water. So if there's not water and it's possible there's not, I can't make water appear. Okay, well. Yeah. All right, well I was counting on you. The other thing is you could find geothermal and save us a lot of money there. Yeah, I think the geothermal is geothermal and groundwater so I myself and Don actually started on this Hawaii groundwater and geothermal resources center and there's a website on there or we have a website that has a lot more information about in particular the geothermal and the history of geothermal in Hawaii. So I'd encourage anyone, any viewers to go there. Do you want me to say what it is? It is, can you say what it is? H-I-G-W-W-L-U. Yeah. Look at the H-I-G-P. Look at the H-I-G-P. H-I-G-P.hawai.edu slash H-G-G-R-C is the acronym. Hawaii Ground Water Geothermal Resources Center. And so those two are really particularly geothermal and groundwater I think are particularly relevant for the state. Last question, what's the timeline on this? Assuming you can get the funding. What we will be looking at for your project and from some fruition out of your project. Well phase three will end in 2019. That's the timeline we've been given by DOE. I as a researcher am not gonna develop geothermal. I would advocate that its response, in my opinion the state should know what it's geothermal resource is and then maybe engage in the discussion. The state energy office. Yeah. That's why I'm with my job. And you make your reports public. I mean there's no secrets here. So somebody who an entrepreneur could come around and a developer of energy or renewable energy could come around and have great benefit from what you find. Exactly. Yeah, that's the goal. For us we would stop it at like research and we either know or have strongly suspect there's a resource there and hand it off to the developer. And at that point I think engaging in community, starting now I would like to engage in the community discussion but also at that point when it would be production of a resource and so it's very important to have that dialogue. Well what I get here is that at the end of the day we need the state. That's super. We need the state to take an active role in developing geothermal to make it happen. It's not the utility necessarily, it's the state of Hawaii which has all these claims on mineral rights including geothermal. So yeah, the state gets a royalty from development of a resource. Right, right. That goes to what? Actually no, that'd be nice. No, it goes to DLNR and I believe to DHL and perhaps even OHA, yeah. Yeah, so I say all of that about the state because we're out of time and I thought you were gonna make a kind of summary at this point. Happy to. I hope you include the state's role in what Nicole's talking about. Absolutely, so today we had Nicole from the University of Hawaii, very long acronym for your department so I'm not gonna try to repeat it. I'm joining two departments, it's more confusing. Perfect, she talked about the great research that they've done under the phase one and phase two of the play fairway analysis under USDOE in which they basically compiled all of the learning of more than 30 years of geothermal research and analysis throughout the state and then in the second phase they further helped to characterize the resource. They did win a third phase but of course they're looking for partners so if anybody knows any partners that would be interested in this field please by all means contact Nicole. I'm really excited about this research that Nicole is doing. I think it's fundamental and foundational to move forward with geothermal in the state and really happy that our office is also one of the people that have really been excited about the work that Nicole and her team is doing. So with that, thank you so much and thanks Jay for having me on the show and also Sharon. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you all, thank you Nicole. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you.