 This is Stink Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo! It's Wednesday. Well, that means energy day, okay? Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Richard Wallsgrove joins us tonight. He's a professor at UH Law School, William S. Richardson Law School, and we have a bunch of students. Hi, Richard. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for having me, Jay. He's a co-host. And, Glenn Morioka, who is the transportation guy at Hawaiian Electric. That's not your real title. Let's try to give a real title here. It's General Manager of Electrification of Transportation at Hawaiian Electric. EOT for short, yeah. EOT. We'll call you the EOT. Very good. Okay. And this is our visiting piece of news, press release news, and after an embargo, this came out, what, yesterday or today? Last Thursday, March 29th. Last Thursday? Oh, I know. And it's called... Because that's been the target for the last nine months. Okay. And it's called... The article, anyway, is called Broad Economic Environmental Benefits Described in Electrification of Transportation Roadmap. So, Brennan, tell us about the roadmap. Well, so the electrification of transportation strategic roadmap was in the works for a number of years. It had never really been put to paper, and so PC had requested us to actually file something formally, put down what Hawaiian Electric thinks its role is in the electrification of transportation, and what some of the initiatives that we would like to be putting forward. And so it's a very thoughtful, very consuming document, but what I'm most proud of is it's a very collaborative document. We had a number of workshops with stakeholders, individual meetings with smaller groups and individual groups really to get their feedback because it needed to be something that our community, our energy and transportation community was bought into going forward because it's not just something Hawaiian Electric or the utility can do on its own. It really needs a number of partners to be pushing various aspects forward. And what was also nice to see was that it was a marriage or building relationships of organizations in the energy sector and combining that with organizations in the transportation sector, which doesn't necessarily have an immediate or direct tie, but with electrification of transportation, there are a lot of agencies, transportation industry sectors that really must buy in and understand some of the energy aspects of their business. And so Hawaiian Electric and our companies want to play that role of a facilitator, be there to help educate people, be a liaison or be that trusted advisor that we can help answer questions for people or businesses that want to make the move, which we believe is a necessary move. And one of the things that are the EOT roadmap is really meant to do is really three things. One is help assist in the state's efforts to achieve 100% RPS, you know, I think without electrification, well, just RPS and the initial 100% RPS goal, the original 100% correct. You know, others have now thrown on this clean transportation initiatives as well, which I think is very much a part of us getting to that 100% overall RPS. I think without EOT, we can still achieve it, but it becomes far harder for us as a community to do with EOT. There's a lot, a lot more avenues that we can now take advantage of that wasn't necessarily available to us before, especially with some of the innovative technologies coming on. But also electrifying our transportation, you know, and it's not just electric vehicles, it's electric buses, it's electric cranes at the harbors, it's electric ground service equipment at the airports, so it's really transportation industry as a whole. If we can move toward that and get off of the dependency on fossil fuels, we end up with a cleaner environment, we have more energy security because we now don't need to import and rely on all the petroleum that has to come from someplace else. We kind of control much more of our own destiny. And then all of that in turn, if we do it right and we partner right and everything kind of falls in place, we can see overall savings for all of our customers, not just those who own an electric vehicle, but all of our utility customers across the board, they would see some form of benefits or value by electrification of transportation. So what's the status of this road map right now? Is it approved and ready to go and actually being implemented or you have to go through some process yet? Well, we just followed it with the PUC on the 29th of March and so now the process is still kind of undetermined. They did not ask us to submit it for approval, it was more for information, but once they read through it, there may be a decision to create a docket of its own or create, have further discussion. And so we're also planning on having a meeting in advance with the PUC, the State Energy Office, Consumer Advocates Office, just to kind of answer whatever questions that they might have. So you want to get broad-based acceptance? Absolutely. So we do tend to try and be as proactive as we can in trying to answer whatever questions people might have. And so that's our next step, I think in a couple of weeks we're meeting with them and hopefully that's going to be a very fruitful dialogue. We've included a number of parties including those three along the way through the entire development of the roadmap. So hopefully there were no surprises for them and we've shared all of our ideas along the way. So hopefully it's just a matter of moving forward. We do plan on starting some of the initiatives that we outline in the roadmap very soon. And so we intend to have to have a lot more dialogue. We had a lot before but it's just going to continue and grow. I take it that when you say initiatives, they're incentive programs to incentivize changing of community and business conduct in order to adopt electric vehicles and electrification of transportation more than they might otherwise have done. So what kind of incentives, what kind of incentive initiatives are we talking about? And incentives is just one aspect. There are other programs that we do think are necessary in order to achieve some of the goals that we want including public education and outreach. That I think is going to be probably the key piece to a successful roadmap implementation. But in terms of some of the incentives, one of the biggest barriers for someone to choose to buy an electric vehicle right now is that upfront cost. Right now electric vehicles are a little bit more expensive just because of the cost of the battery. As battery prices decrease, the cost of the cars will come down as well. And people believe by 2025 you have cost parity. An electric vehicle in the same type of model will cost about the same as a regular gasoline car. Are you going to go for a resumption of state credits on this? So tax credits, so the federal tax credit which is currently in place is a big incentive that is already out there. There's talk about whether or not we can incentivize state tax credits. We had some in the past. Can we do some again in the future that would help in this interim until we hit 2025 in cost parity? But also working, Hoan Electric, working with some of our car manufacturer and dealerships. Last year we were very successful in working with Nissan in offering a $10,000 rebate. Right off the top of the bat you get a $10,000 cost reduction of the Nissan Leaf. To the point where by November Nissan started running out of Leafs here in Hawaii and they couldn't get enough inventory. So people weren't actually able to take full advantage. That's the kind of program I'm talking about. But we're also working with them right now. So Nissan is until June 30th they're going to be offering a $3,000 rebate on the 2018 Leaf. So it's not the same as the $10,000 that you got last year, but $3,000 is still a significant amount when you're trying to make a decision on buying a car. Brandon, I want to offer Richard the opportunity to ask you a question just to keep this flowing between us. We only have a minute left. Yeah. I'm excited by the roadmap. I think one of the things that really excites me the most is this idea that there's savings for everybody. And what Brandon didn't say is those savings get even bigger if we just incentivize simple behaviors. Biggest example is if we can get folks to charge these cards in the middle of the day, say you show up at work and you plug your car in at work, then the savings grow by a factor of two or something like that. Two or three in certain aspects, yeah. So what do you think is the key to getting that sort of driving on sunshine concept going? The first one is obviously providing the infrastructure. So we've already started meeting with developers, business owners, employers, trying to explain the benefits of workplace charging for their employees as an employee benefit, but also as a greater participation in trying to provide a cleaner environment, cost savings in the future. And so that's the kind of conversation and the public education aspect that I talked about that needs to continue, that we'll be doing in the interim, and hopefully we'll see further support and partnership with many of our other stakeholders moving forward. Thank you, Brandon. Thanks for coming down. Appreciate it any time. Continue down the road with you. If you want to hear more about it as it rolls out. Absolutely. Aloha. We'll take a short break. We'll be right back after this break. I'm going to talk to Richard's friends, lots of them. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Living in this crazy world, so caught up in the confusion, nothing is making sense. For me, there's got to be solutions, how to make a brighter day. I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational, so I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science. Hello everyone, Ted Ralston here, a host of our Think Tech show, Where the Drone Leads, where we talk weekly at Thursdays and Noon, by the way, on subjects related to emerging technology and business of drones, as they might apply here in Hawaii. Issues involving commerce, education, legislation, technology, public safety, all the things that you might want to hear about. We talk about them with local experts and people from across the country. So join us at Noon on every Thursday, and we'll have a new subject, and we'll have new faces to talk about this most interesting subject area. Hello, I'm Helen Dora Hayden, the host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veteran's advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty, and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here in Hawaii, the state of clean energy and Think Tech on Wednesday. It's our flagship energy show, Richard Wildsgrohe, Professor Richard Wildsgrohe, William S. Richards, and School of Law is my co-host, and he has invited some of his students down. We're going to talk to them now. So Richard, can you please introduce them and let's talk about the scope of this discussion to follow? I would love to, and thanks for allowing us to come in today, Jay. So we have Magdalena. She's been, she's actually a post-graduate student at the law school. She's been working on what's called a law thesis, right? So it's sort of like a PhD thesis, but in the law. And as part of that work, she gets to take some courses, so she's in our clean energy law and policy course. We have Chase. Chase is a second-year law student. He's actually been working on energy issues for a long time, even before law school. And so Chase is also in the clean energy law and policy course, and they're working on projects this semester related to real energy issues here in Hawaii, and I'm excited to have them talk about it. So maybe we'll start with Chase. Sure thing. Chase, you want to tell us a little bit about your project? Yeah. I've been studying a recent PPA, which is a power purchase agreement application for a, it's a solar plus storage project on Molokati, and it is going to be actually a quite large project contributing about 45% towards Molokati's 100% renewable portfolio standard goal. And so this project, it's known as Half Moon Ventures, but they're going to be... That's a real project. Yes. This is actually happening. I don't know if it's been fully vetted and accepted, but it's a company called Half Moon doing a project. Yes, sir. Is this coincidence or what? Well, it's going through the process. We'll see. Okay, all right. But so it's now reached the PUC, and so it's being reviewed, but it's quite a large project, and so I'm just examining kind of the various ways it's going to benefit the community, both on the island and in what is the whole... It's like a reality show. You got a real project, then you got a law school project tracking on the real project. It's really very close. It's awesome. It's right inside the deal, eh? Absolutely. It's a fantastic way to learn. We've done two shows on that project, so it might help you in your research to watch the two shows. Definitely. I'll check it out. Okay, is that what you wanted to bring out? Chase, do you want to describe a little bit about the time you spent on Molokai and the perspectives that you've learned from the community? I think, Jamie, you should hear. Yeah, so I had the privilege of going over and attending a community meeting where we had some of the project developers, actually the main project developer, Mike Hasting, so we had representatives from MECO as well and a number of community members. And so it was a really cool experience. It was a great opportunity for the community to learn about the project and to raise some of their questions and hopes and perhaps concerns about the project. So it's really, it's well on the way, but there are still things that are being worked out. And so that community engagement, I think, is going to be really key. So what's your advice to Hastings? What's your statement of concern to him? What should he be looking at? Be his lawyer for a minute. Listen to the community. That's the number one. It didn't take too long to get an answer on that. Yeah, you know, that's the key here in Hawaii. We live in an island. It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. Every decision, development, it impacts everything else. So it's really key to kind of get that wide... Great. Interesting project. Okay, Richard. Magdalena has an equally interesting project and one that, when she mentioned it to me, my ears really pricked up. She's looking at whether or not real estate investment trusts could be a good vehicle for renewable energy investment. Oh, wow. Do you want to tell us what you know about that, Magdalena? Yeah, so I'm researching the topic and I believe that it would be a good vehicle to expand the sector, to provide investors, or to allow investors, and especially on the local ground where we are so secluded. And that's why we need local people with even small investors to bring some money into. Why a real estate investment trust? Why not an LLC? Because it's an interesting entity that was created in 1960 to expand the two small investors. That was the main idea. But also there are some interesting tax breaks that if REIT meets certain requirements under internal revenue code, then they are not taxed on 90% of their income. So what's also interesting is that because of the broad portfolio of the investments, the possibility of lowering the cost of the renewable energy projects is big if we're thinking about real estate investment trusts. The only problem is the definition of real property. So to actually make it happen and allow those REITs to benefit from the full potential of that entity, we would have to seek some guidance from internal revenue service and expand that definition. Like an opinion or something of revenue ruling. Are you looking for a change in the statute somewhere, federal or state? Not necessarily. We don't need the change in the internal revenue code, only the opinion. So we might be able to move some. So if I tell you that for the past couple of years maybe more there have been bills in the Hawaii State Legislature that would attempt to make REITs taxable here as if they were corporations or else, well corporations. Does that change your conclusion? It doesn't change my conclusion because I do not believe that those bills will succeed. Because what? I do not believe that those bills will succeed. Well they haven't yet. Yes. And there are people who fight Tuesday out to stop them, I might add. As we see there are as many as 42 or even more REITs here in Hawaii that invest in all sorts of real estate including our shopping malls and health care centers and other facilities and doing lots for the local economy. So hopefully we'll allow them to stay benefit from the... Very interesting. Very interesting idea. And even expand them to renewable energy. Yeah sure. That could be a very interesting vehicle to increase the amount of investment locally and also offshore to our projects. We're interesting. Was that your idea? Unfortunately not. Or maybe yes. Okay, why don't you summarize this part and then we'll go to the next. There's an interesting parallel here if you think about it. I know the community on Moloka has expressed an interest in actually owning projects like the Half Moon Ventures Project. Perhaps they need a real estate investment truss that allows these small investments to happen. So these guys are working on cutting edge issues and I'm really excited to read the papers that come out of it and I'll get a little smarter at the end of the semester. No pressure. I'm sure Amir Javendra is watching this show from Moloka. She's the group. A sustainable Moloka. Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a break now. Thank you both. Thank you Chase. Thank you. And thank you Magdalena. Thank you. And we're going to talk to two more of your friends, Richard. Wonderful. Short break right now. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king. Come play and know your chest. You can be good. Talk to God. Don't fail your heart. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch. The pitch. The pitch. The pitch. It looks like the original pitch. Wow. It looks like it's going to be a good match. Out of mud. That's it. Followed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. We're back. We're alive. We've had another break. We're back with Richard Walarsgrove. Professor. I guess mostly in energy or in everything at UH Law School. We end up in everything, but energy law is what gets me excited. Well, let me say that energy touches everything anyway, doesn't it? You can't study it in vacuum, ever. So Richard, would you introduce your next two friends? I would love to, round two. So today we have Tara. She's here, she's working on a project that I think is fascinating, related to her home state, Virginia, and thinking about how we might import renewable energy policies from places like Hawaii to places like Virginia, which have, you know, a whole host of differences. And we have Kevin. Kevin's looking at an equally interesting project. He's looking at the Department of Wine Homelands and how solar development might happen in conjunction with DHHL, particularly concepts like community solar. Who wants to go first? I think I'll go first. Okay. I like that. Building someone off what was just said in the earlier segment, you know, community involvement and community investment in renewable energy and in Hawaii's goals of meeting our renewable energy standards, I think is going to be an important aspect moving forward. So DHHL, Department of Wine Homelands, is uniquely situated in that they have a large amount of land that is potentially available for use for project sites, such as the proposed Kalei Loa solar project. So actually just recently, the bidding period, which was a 21-day period, closed on March 30th for a proposal to build a solar plant near the Kalei Loa airport. My project is looking somewhat at community involvement and how we can bring community members through some sort of investment plan into the scope of these projects rather than just keeping them in the hands of a renewable energy company or any other entity that may pursue it. Is it easier to get money somewhere else? Well, specifically what I'm looking out are the benefits to the recipients of Department of Wine Homelands funds, whether it would be more beneficial to lease the land, which is the proposal now, or to actually be involved in the project and have a power purchase agreement in which members receive a return based on their share, their percentage of shares. So one part of the proposal is to have a 25-year buyback plan where the infrastructure would be built by whatever entity wins the bid. And in 25 years, the Department of Wine Homelands could buy back that parcel fully operational. So I think that potentially that may be a good option to pursue with maybe a shorter time frame for the buyback period. But again, just benefiting the community and in particular Hawaiians and people that DHHL funds are supposed to benefit. So you're a law student. You're creating this plan. There's lots of wrinkles to it. There's legal wrinkles. There's policy. There's, you know, gosh, there's half a dozen areas of law. How do you present? Do you present orally? Do you go in front of the class, in front of Professor Wallsgrove here, and tell them, what do you write in my big paper? If you write in my big paper, do you publish a paper? If you publish a paper, where? And where can I see it? So that was a lot of questions. I think the class has heard me... It's called a multiple compound question. Yes. The class here doesn't even present every day. We have a two and a half hour class once a week. So we have a lot of discussion time during that class. And I don't exactly intend on publishing my research or whatever paper I do write out of this. It was more just an examination. I may bring it to the attention of certain people that are involved in these projects. I have in the past submitted testimony to the PUC and different legislative matters. Perhaps portions of this could be used towards that. But no concrete plans. What strikes me is why I asked you the question about why not use another source of capital. If you have people, local people, people right there on the ground investing, you have buy-in automatically. You have investment and support automatically. You also have the possibility of return. It just makes for a much more robust, nourishing experience for the whole community than trying to get it from Wall Street. Sorry, that's how I feel. Right. I mean, I agree with that. One thing that was interesting, I was looking at the budget for DHHL and their operating budget for fiscal year 2018. Almost $1.5 million towards electricity alone and their operating costs. So potentially buy-ins that could go towards offsetting those costs. Investors from the island locally are great. I think the community can be involved as well. So many great possibilities. Okay, next one. What I haven't told them yet is there's actually an energy paper competition. Papers do right around the end of the semester. And so you may actually see some of these papers in print. I want to see that. We can follow up with that, don't you think? I think we could. So next we have Terry. You want to tell us a little about your ideas about renewable energy in Virginia? Yes. Okay, so my home state is Virginia and I really love Hawaii and learning about the environmental laws that are here. And I would like to try to import those to Virginia because currently Virginia doesn't even have an RPS goal. They have a voluntary RPS goal. And they don't have any incentives for solar. So I think that being able to lobby and get these laws on the books in Virginia would be beneficial, especially from the region that I come from which just so happens to be below the poverty rate in Virginia. So if we could tell them how it will be benefiting them, then lowering energy rates and also with clean energy, I think that would be a great thing to take to Virginia. What about this appeals to you, Richard? Well, I think one of the interesting facets to Terry's idea... Richard's been out of the legislature as much as in a human being alive person kind of thing. What's interesting about this is that I think Terry has a really good understanding of the renewable energy policy landscape here in Hawaii, but she also has a really good understanding of how different the policy landscape is in Virginia. And so she's giving real strategic thought to which policies might work. How do you frame those policies? I think some of the, you know, her idea is about cost as the sort of the driver as opposed to here. We talk about emissions reductions lots of times. The sort of the whole package she brings to this, I couldn't write this paper. There's no way. I don't know enough about what's happening on the ground in Virginia. Do you have any ideas about sort of sequencing? What do you think is the most important policy to get the ball rolling in Virginia? I think for the rest of Virginia, because most of Virginia is actually red even though the state turned blue a couple of years ago, so how I would frame it is the cost reduction in electricity. So I think first thing that would need to be there would be tax incentives, I think. And that would actually start affording it. Otherwise they're not going to get it and our state's not going to have clean energy and it'll be all four ways. Having an RPS goal, but no one being able to afford it or buying in for that reason, then the RPS would be... How do you think that the red counties or the red areas of Virginia would respond to the idea of a tax incentive? I think it would be a very positive thing. So where I'm from is the red part. And AEP right now has a monopoly just in that specific area that I'm from in my region. And electricity costs are extremely high even during the winter because whether people in the red buy into climate change or not, they would still buy into reducing their electric bills because whether they believe climate change is real or not, we're in spring and it's snowing a lot. So they're still having winter electric bills that they're not used to and those are relatively high. So the study is to figure out how to reach people, how to appeal to them on projects and I suppose again how to change their conduct as a group. And what we can learn from other states is useful here. I always find that when you come to legislature, mostly the policy of the people, and you tell them this is the way it works in another state, another state, another state, that's very persuasive because people in Hawaii always want to know, they always want to compete and compare with things elsewhere. So this would be persuasive. I think there's also an issue there with Virginia being red instead of telling them that this state comes from a very progressive state, right? It's a very liberal state. It's going to be, well, this is going to benefit you and this is how. We're really going to have to take both of the parties, putting them together and come together. Richard, what have we learned today? The students in my class are much smarter than we are and so if we're talking about the energy workforce of the future, we're in pretty good hands. All right. That's wonderful. Thank you for coming down, Richard. And thank you Tara and thank you Kevin for having us from before. And I want to do it again. I hope we can do it again. Okay. Come down and talk to us about how these projects unfold, especially after you've arrived at town. Of course. Richard Wallsgrove and Kevin and Tara. Thanks so much.