 Hello, and welcome to Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future. I'm your host, Raya Salter. I'm an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. I'm also the principal attorney of Imagine Power LLC. Today we're going to take a look at important energy and utility news from Hawaii, around the country, and the world, as reported in the last week. First, let's take a look at some recent developments in clean energy and clean energy policy in the islands. We've got a lot of interesting news this week, some important news on energy storage, and also, I think, taking a look at some really important politics that Hawaii and other states are deeply ensnared in, really, with the federal government. So let's go ahead and move forward. So first, a bill that would have provided a tax credit for energy storage projects has been shelved. Senate Bill 365 failed to cross over the Hawaii House after being deferred by the Senate Committee on Transportation and Energy. This is as reported by Pacific Business News. Senator Lorraine Inouye, Democrat from Hilo Kona, Chairwoman of this committee, also was one of the introducers of the bill. The bill received lots of support from the state's renewable energy industry, including the Distributed Energy Resources Council, which noted that the investment in energy storage is seen as a crucial next step towards the development of a resilient and reliable electric grid that can accommodate more renewable energy and help Hawaii achieve its clean energy goals. The Ulupono Initiative, however, a Honolulu investment firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Ominiar, opposed the bill because in its thinking it is too costly for the state. The firm said that in an attempt to make it more fiscally neutral for the state, there are several changes to the bill that it recommends, including that it should have a sunset date and tax credit caps per system. Eric Kovam, who heads the Renewable Energy Action Coalition of Hawaii, said that House Bill 1593 is the next best energy storage incentive being considered by the legislature. This bill, which would create a cash rebate program for energy storage in Hawaii, is being heard by the Senate Energy Committee and the Consumer Protection Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday at the state capitol. In the previous legislative session, lawmakers shall Senate Bill 2738, which would have established an energy storage system rebate program. This is very interesting. I think this has been a very fast-moving development at the legislature. There's been a push to take funds by some thinking. Some of the funds may have come from the $150 million slated for the Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority's projects to go ahead and create a tax incentive for energy storage projects. We know that we need more storage in order to reach our renewable energy goals. Apparently, however, there are questions in the minds of some about the cost effectiveness or the value of what those tax credits might be versus what the costs would be to the state. It certainly would have been a good thing for installers in industry. Now it's on hold, and we will see what's happening going forward. This will also tie into some broader stories that we're going to talk about later. Now, I'm going to dig into a few things that may not be as directly related to energy, but are very related to the current political environment and what that will mean for energy and funding for energy research and development from the federal government and the state. This is talking about how members of Hawaii's congressional delegation are reacting to the Trump administration agenda. So as reported by Hawaii News Now, members of Hawaii's congressional delegation have pledged to fight the president's proposed federal budget, which seeks deep cuts to a number of programs in order to bolster military spending and other administration priorities. How would the president's budget be felt in Hawaii? The full extent of the proposed cuts aren't yet clear, but Hawaii's representatives in Congress said Hawaii could lose significant programs and warned that cuts could lead to big layoffs. President Trump's budget is a statement of his values, said U.S. Representative Colleen Hanabusa, Democrat from Hawaii, in a statement. While he clearly supports a strong Department of Defense, as do I, his budget prioritization cannot come at the expense of other programs essential to Hawaii and the well-being of Hawaii's people. He vows to fight for a budget that puts Hawaii first. U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, meanwhile, said he's willing to fight to make sure we protect federal funding for Hawaii. The president's budget proposal, he says, is simply that, a proposal. It's not going to happen, said Schatz. If enacted, President Trump's proposed budget cuts would have a terrible impact on Hawaii, but Congress holds the purse strings, not the president, the senator continued. Trump's budget increases defense spending by $54 billion and sets aside nearly $3 billion to pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, but it makes huge cuts to other government agencies. The president wants to reduce the environmental protections agency's budget by 31%, cut funding to the Department of Agriculture by 21%, and slash the Department of State's budget by 28%. The Hawaii losers under Trump's budget proposal range from the East-West Center to Hawaii's Sea Grant program to a popular after-school program at Jarrett Middle School in Palo Alto and other campuses around the state. Students get free food, tutoring, and enrichment classes like art and sports as part of the After School All-Stars program. Trump is also proposing to eliminate federal funding to the East-West Center. The institution, with a staff of 125 people, got a 17 million appropriation in the current fiscal year, and that accounted for about half of its revenues. The center's mission centers on education, professional and leadership exchanges, and policy-making research. In 2016, the center had some 469 student fellows from 53 countries and territories. Meanwhile, Hawaii's Sea Grant program could also lose its federal appropriation. The program gets about four million in federal funds for educational outreach, research, and training. Only three departments would get a boost under Trump's budget—the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs. The president's budget only covers discretionary spending, which includes funds that Congress can adjust every year. The president would completely eliminate programs that support Hawaii's affordable housing efforts, clean energy investment, and opportunity for educational advancement and community service, said U.S. Senator Maisie Hirono. It would end the essential air service program that serves as a lifeline to Kalapapa, Molokai, eliminates the Tiger Grant program, which funded improvements to Saddle Road on Hawaii Island and Pier 29 on Oahu, and would threaten the Impact Aid program that ensures that every student in Hawaii's public schools receives equality education, according to that politician. So that was not 100 percent about energy, but I think that as many of Hawaii's efforts in renewable energy development, in particular research in development, in addition to state efforts, you know, work with the federal government in tandem with the federal government, and clearly Hawaii, for many reasons, which in part could be from agitation from our Attorney General, which I'm going to talk about next, in part could be agitation by this being President Obama's home state, and perhaps there being animosity there, or perhaps could be because it's a democratic state. I mean, there are many reasons why Hawaii could be such a loser in the Trump budget, but that seems to clearly be the case. I primarily work in energy, but I'm also someone who's worked with children and in after-school programs, and I will, you know, I'm editorializing a bit, but I am strongly against and feel that it's a tragedy to cut funding for after-school programming in food for young people in Hawaii and anywhere. So let's see what happens. And I think it would, in general, getting a good deal from Washington is why we send our representatives to Washington. So let's wish them good luck as they fight, as they state, to bring home funding to continue good work here on the islands. So next, we're going to talk a bit about what happened with the Hawaii Attorney General. As many of us know, it was Hawaii, in addition to Maryland, that challenged the Trump's round two travel ban and ultimately led to forwarding those efforts. So we're going to talk a little bit about Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chim and also what this means now for the role of Attorney General throughout the country who may wish to oppose the current administration and how that's changed as could be expected with the flip-flop of political party in the White House. So until this year, Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chim had never sued the federal government. Now, as the Trump administration embarks on a string of policies that Hawaii's Democratic leadership opposes, it is likely to become a far more common occurrence. Now, Chim has sued the federal government three times since January, including twice to block President Donald Trump's executive orders, restricting travel from a group of majority Muslim countries. In a third action, Chim joined 15 states and the District of Columbia in entering a lawsuit in defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government agency created by the Obama administration to mend banking practices that led to the mortgage meltdown and recession of 2008. Other topics likely to emerge in the next four years as flash points for conflict between Washington and Hawaii are consumer protection, environmental regulation, social services, health care and other aspects of immigration policy. So as reported by Civil Beat, Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chim is finding himself at the center of an increasing number of disputes with the Trump administration. Chim was appointed to his position as Attorney General by Democratic Governor David E. Gay in January 2015 after serving as a criminal prosecutor, a city official in Honolulu, and managing partner of Carl Smith Ball, one of the oldest law firms in the state. He was sitting in a foggy bottom coffee shop taking a break while attending the conference of the National Association of Attorneys General in the nation's capital. Typically, it's the opposite, he says, it's the federal government filing a lawsuit against the state because they are challenging how we are running our prison system or whether we are following environmental protection agency guidelines. But things have changed since Trump was inaugurated and Chim is starting to see himself as in an expanded role as the protector of the people. He says, with a Republican president and a Republican Congress, the only check in balance is the democratic states, pushing back when necessary to make sure our laws and our constitution are respected, he said. Chim, the son of Chinese immigrants who went to Stanford University and later the University of Hawaii Law School, is confident he is doing what's right. He said he expects he will be filing more lawsuits against the federal government in the next few years. Now Chim isn't the only Democratic Attorney General to decide there's a need to go to court to block actions by the federal government that may be wrong or unconstitutional in their thinking. The state's top lawyers find themselves at the center of these kinds of conflicts because they serve as senior legal advisors to their state governments, including the legislators and state regulatory agencies. Now most AGs have law enforcement responsibilities too, as Chim does in Hawaii, which means that in many ways they operate in parallel or in conflict with the federal government. So we'll end that there and we're going to take a break and when we come back we'll be, we'll talk more with Power Up Hawaii. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory and I host Kondo Insider. We talk about issues facing the Kondo Association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one-third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate. We broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. Please tune in. Tune in. Thank you. Aloha. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to stand the energy man at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Big Tech Hoy. Hi. My name is Seymour Kazimurski. I have a show called Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Our show is about opening minds and facilitating conversations. To tell you the truth I have no idea what we're going to be talking about. I have no idea who our guests are going to be, but I guarantee you we're going to have lots and lots of fun. Aloha from Seymour's World. Hello and welcome back to Power Up Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to walk towards a clean, renewable and just energy future. I am your host, Raya Salter. We talked from the first half of the show about some of the political developments in Hawaii from battery storage and what's happening with Attorney General Chin and the Trump administration and where Hawaii stands to win and or lose and it's mostly lose in the proposed Trump budget. Now we're going to go ahead and move on and talk about some clean energy developments in policy and happenings throughout the nation and the world. So as reported by Technica, Google has announced that its revolutionary project sunroof tool is now able to provide a reliable estimate of how much sunlight a given rooftop might receive in all 50 United States up from 42 states nearly a year ago. The last we heard from Project Sunroof, it was revealed that it had been expanded to provide data to 42 states across the U.S. up from 10 states only a few months earlier. Project Sunroof started as one of Google's 20% projects. Now this is projects Google employees can work on in 20% of their time at Google which sometimes then get branded as a Google product with the company's full backing. Got to be kind of fun to work at Google. Project Sunroof uses an imagery from Google Maps and Google Earth, 3D modeling and machine learning to estimate how much sunlight a given rooftop receives helping to answer how much energy a given rooftop could produce if it had solar panels. Now visualization of solar potential at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California they announced that the keyword blog this week that Project Sunroof is now providing data, sorry they announced on their blog that Project Sunroof is now providing data for all 50 U.S. states and according to their project manager has expanded its data that now shed some light on some interesting insights about the potential in the U.S. solar industry. So 79% of all rooftops analyzed are technically viable for solar meaning those rooftops have enough unshaded area for solar panels and that includes over 90% of homes in Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, 90% in those states are technically viable while states like Pennsylvania, Maine and Minnesota reach just about 60% viability. Now according to Google, Houston, Texas has the most solar potential of any U.S. city in the Project Sunroof data with an estimated 18,941 gigawatt hours of rooftop solar generation potential per year. Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio and New York follow Houston for the top five solar potential cities. You can actually go to Google and see the actual chart below. So this is very interesting in that actually you know what I think we're going to go ahead and continue. We'll talk about what is a very interesting op-ed by Stephen Taylor at the Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford. Aloha. My name is Reg Baker and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at two o'clock. We highlight businesses and individuals that are successful in Hawaii and we learn their secrets to their success. I hope you can join us and listen in because we always have a pack of information on successful stories in Hawaii. Aloha. I'm Kawe Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is Joe Kent and I'm the Vice President of Research at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. The Grassroot Institute is a public policy think tank and we try to build a better economy in Hawaii and you can see us on the TV show Ehana Kako on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcasting Network every Monday at 2 o'clock. We'll see you there and let's build a better Hawaii together. Aloha. Hello. I'm Crystal from QuackTalk. I've got a new show here. You've got to tune in, check out my topics on sensitive provocative female issues. So Tuesday mornings, 10 o'clock, don't miss it is going to be fun and dangerous. Hello and welcome back to PowerUp Hawaii. Bear with us. Sorry for the interruption but we're back with you and happy to be so. So what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about an interesting op-ed that appeared in the New York Times today. And actually I encourage everybody to hop on the internet and take a look at it. And it really I think reflects a lot of the stories that we talked about earlier. So this was an op-ed by Jeffrey Ball who's a scholar in residence and Dan Richter, the executive director of the Steyr Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford. So this is really a piece that's about China renewable energy vis-a-vis the U.S. in our current perspectives and where maybe we could be moving. So according to this op-ed, today China utterly dominates global solar panel manufacturing. Last year, according to the consulting firm IHS Market, China accounted for 70% of global capacity for manufacturing solar panels, the most common type of solar panels. The United States share was 1%. And we have at times in the United States responded by placing tariffs on these goods. Now these tariffs are prompting Chinese solar manufacturers to set up factories not in the United States but in low-cost countries that aren't subject to the levies. And the Chinese government has responded with its own tariffs against American-made solar goods. Now those tariffs have eroded the United States share and one part of solar manufacturing where we used to have a significant role and advantage. But now China's solar industry is changing in little-noticed ways that create both an imperative and an opportunity for the United States to up its game. The Chinese industry is innovating technologically. Indeed, it's starting to score world-record solar cell efficiencies. Contrary to a long-held myth that all China can do is manufacture other inventions cheaply. Now I don't know if that's 100% true but I think that it is in the ethos that America innovates and China copies. And I think that is, if it was ever true, it is no longer true. As China is expanding its manufacturing footprint across the globe. But it's scrambling to import more efficient ways of financing solar power that have been pioneered in the West. Now according to this op-ed, the United States needs to take these shifts into account in defining an American solar strategy that minimizes the cost of solar power to the world while maximizing the long-term benefit to the American economy. So in the thoughts of these authors, a more enlightened United States policy approach to solar would seek, above all, to continue slashing solar power's costs. Not to prop up types of American solar manufacturing that can't compete globally. A more enlightened policy would aim to leverage, not bury, China's manufacturing superiority with closer cooperation on solar research and development and it would focus American solar subsidies more on research and development and deployment than on manufacturing. Now according to the authors, as solar manufacturing continues to automate, reducing China's cheap labor advantage, it is likely to make more sense in the United States, at least for certain types of solar projects. Now the United States needs to play to its comparative advantages in the solar sector. That requires a sober assessment of what China does well and I think the authors are saying there are tensions between China and the United States, including the tariff fight, doubts about the protections of intellectual property in China and national security concerns, but it's time to look at these concerns in perspective, says the authors, as investors, corporations and governments try to do every day. The shifts that these authors propose in American solar policy will upset or has the potential to upset partisans across the political spectrum. They could potentially offend liberals who have promised that solar manufacturing subsidies would bring the United States huge numbers of green factory jobs. They may wrinkle conservatives who see China as the enemy. How will the Trump administration view them? It's unclear. So and talking again about this op-ed, I think it's extremely interesting because I think when you look at the big picture of what these folks are saying is that the United States would do well to take a look at how it fosters clean and renewable energy development, which as they noted, has been sometimes to support some big manufacturing projects and oftentimes to support the solar energy through various types of tax credits. And I think what this article is saying is that what we need to be doing is thinking of a broader-based plan that thinks about what is the way to get mass production, mass adoption of clean and renewable energy in a way that can actually, A, make the United States a leader, B, leverage renewable energy for environmental benefit and also the benefit of folks' pocketbooks. And I think these authors posit that the current strategy of sort of having trade wars with China and pointing tax credits to industry may not be a comprehensive enough view. And I think that in light of what Hawaii is looking at in storage subsidies is sort of a real piece of this decision-making puzzle in terms of where we should be putting our resources in order to promote clean and renewable energy. So that brings us to the end of another edition of Power Up Hawaii. Please join us next week, where we will talk more about important clean and renewable energy news and policy, aloha and mahalo.