 hao mai kakou and welcome back to Energy Justice in Hawaii. I'm Ali Andrews of Shake Energy Collaborative and today we have two special guests. One is Richard Ha from Hawaii Island, Energy Expert here to chat with us about energy justice on Hawaii Island. And also I think Tech Hawaii's own Jay Fidel is here to join the conversation. I actually am just meeting Richard today for the first time a couple minutes ago so I'm going to ask him to give his own intro to you all so you guys have an idea of who we're talking to in the room and then I think you know Jay. But Richard, can you tell us a little bit about your background particularly in the energy field because I know you have a breadth of experience. Yeah, my family is a Kamahiri family from Lua Pula and I learned quite a bit of what I know what influenced me in my life since I was 10 years old by stories that came down to you know this people talking. So and I'm a farmer, I've been farming for 45 years. We produced about six million pounds of bananas and a million pounds of hydroponic tomatoes when we're in operation. And then several years ago I was a CEO of this big island grown cannabis company and then I retired from there to do the stuff I really like to do, which is what we're doing today. Sustainable energy, that's what we all really like. Jay, would you like to add your two cents about what we're going to talk about today or do you want me to just dive in with questions for Richard? Well I think the first item on the agenda is Richard's passion, one of Richard's passion. Richard is passionate about a lot of things by the way, but right now he is thinking about talking about trying to advocate for geothermal. So we should ask him his latest projects and his thoughts and you know his hopes and dreams about geothermal. Amazing, I think we should definitely ask that put that on the agenda. The other thing that I would love to put on the agenda is I want to know about the Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative. I know that Richard is involved in that group and as a person who's involved in a cooperative initiative on the island of Moloka'i, I am very interested in kind of how the Hawaii Island Cooperative vision was incubated and where the vision going forward is. But let's go into geothermal first because I know this is what you are working on at the moment and passionate about. So tell us about what you're up to in the geothermal space. Well you know it started back in 2007. Now that's when oil prices spiked to $147 a barrel and you know as a farmer we were looking around G because our fertilizer cost and plastic and all the byproducts of fossil fuel started rising and we had no idea what was going on. Once we found out then I started to kind of figure out who was talking about this and there was this association for the study of peak oil. So I went to the first conference in Texas and so the first thing I noticed is what they mentioned is the world had been finding had been using twice as much oil as it had been finding and 20 years prior to that. So you know just a common sense farmer I could tell wait a minute that ain't good news. I went to Houston for the first of five peak oil conferences. So that was in 2007 and they told us that we've been using twice as much as it had been finding. So I paid really close attention to it. What I also realized that I was the only person in the world from Hawaii and I was trying to figure out now what is my responsibility because I couldn't ignore it. I heard it, I stuck with it, became a kuleana. I didn't want it, I didn't need it, but I was stuck with it. So I figured okay what do I, what is the best thing I can do? The best thing I could do was just observe and try to figure out who was credible and who was just like spoke. So the first year you couldn't tell right by two or three years I could get a good sense of what that is and today I have a real strong confidence that the people I can I'll refer to are solid. So that's the evolution. And so today you know looking at energy you know we have geothermal and what is amazing about geothermal is that the geologist tells us we're going to be over the hotspot for a million years. Actually Don Thomas said million to two million years but it makes me scared to say two. So he said one million but anyway it's sustainable. He's trying to tell you Ali that he expects to live a million years but he's not so sure about living two million years. I think we got him. Very conservative estimate love that. Yeah very conservative. Yeah so so we're going to be over the hotspot for that long and what is amazing is you know the geothermal needs are you need the heat and you need the permeability and you need water to move the heat around and we've got all three under you know all the islands in the in the state. So we have it here and just just think about it. This heat is free and it's going to be free for a million years and we're we're about like 1% of the whole world has this available this resource available. But it goes more than that. So you know if you think in terms of lightning. So there's a lightning bolt and part of that is electricity. Part of that is heat and what you get out of it is hydrogen, oxygen and ammonia. Ammonia is fertilizer so so that's what gets the farmers attention fertilizer. So so how do you do that with geothermal? Okay the bottom line is the cost of the electricity. But you know we go back to hey we're going to be over the hotspot for a million years and the price not going to change. It's free. So basically what you do is you put a pipe down there and the steam comes up and it turns a turbine and generates electricity. You know the techniques changes stuff like that is more modern but basically that's what it is. So we're extremely lucky. So so what we can do is using the electricity run that electricity to water and what you get is hydrogen and oxygen. Now you can you can take it one step further and make you know take the hydrogen and go one step further because hydrogen burns hotter in electricity. Oh and that is key because you know just like lightning it takes heat yeah to make the uh to break the bonds of all these whatever that is electrons or whatever. So so we can do the same thing you think it's a slower process and some people will say you know it's not really efficient uh a geothermal. 100 percent of a 20 percent efficient operation is still free. You know so at least that's how I think about it here. And everybody we talk to you know we just talk sorry like we are right now that's that's um we can we can do that and we need to do that because the alternative is to go to um like what they're doing in the heavy wash process. It's a huge huge you know operation way too big for Hawaii we cannot do that. It's you know and they do that because of scale it makes a cost for them but our our you know just common sense we we think that maybe what we should do is look it totally rescale it and just make a small operation and then make the ammonia and use it for us here internally. And that's the whole talk of speech. That was a great speech. Well yeah but just more to the story though Richard in the sense that um my my recollection is that uh Pune Geothermal Venture PGV is generating or I think it's it's online now. Is it online? Yes. It's capable of generating something you know around 40 40 megawatts. 46. 46 now. But it could easily be be uh be generating like 100 uh or more. I mean you you talk about an inexhaustible supply. We could take a lot more from Pune but we haven't. Why not? And what are the challenges of developing this to its fullest potential? You know they're allowed to go up to 60 other than that they would have to go to another process. And then you know there's also the point culture of sensitivity and that is you know doing a down on the east riffs where the lava is live and you know just recent eruptions. Some people feel like uh building into the breast of telly is what you're doing. So what what we suggest instead is not we're not talking about that. You know we're talking about exploring um the flanks of the five volcanoes on this island away from the east rift. So what what we'd be doing then is spreading a risk. I was just down here this morning like we just you know myself and Nicole Loutse were there. You know it's it's amazing what the lava flow did. It raised the land up like 30 40 50 feet. What used to be on the top of a mound is now kind of almost level. So the next time it happens it's going to be a big risk. And if people look back where the when the recent eruptions where it wasn't that long ago you know so there were several 55 60 this one you know it's frequent. Well that takes me to another concern about geothermal. I would like you to I would like to ask Ali to force you to answer. I'm ready to enforce. What's the question? You know every now and then you know that the natural elements prevail and we have an eruption. Hawaii has had eruptions you know over and over again forever but even now in our lifetimes. And although we're better at predicting those eruptions we will have them again. So every time you have an eruption especially in the zone where food is geothermal venture and other you know potential geothermal installations would be located. We run the risk of losing that installation of having the eruption essentially knock it out of destroy it. How do you factor that in to trying to get reliable dispatchable you know inexhaustible supply of energy from geothermal. Yeah so geothermal is committed to to get up to speed and get to 46 megawatts as soon as they can. And they're just waiting for the PUC last decision. And once they do that you know and they're operating already I mean they're they're they're moving forward already. So the key is to locate at different parts of the island. First you got to do the research to do the assessment the surface exploration. And once you do that it'll lower the risk for companies that want to bid because other than that you drill and miss them that's going to cost you a million several million every time you miss so you really need to know. And there's another reason why you should do that is because the geothermal resource is not going to change. You can move your solar and wind all over the place within reason of course but you can't move the geothermal so it's better to do the surface exploration understand where the best possibilities chances of hitting hot geothermal and then and then go from from there and be ready you know it's be proactive and that's what we think we should be doing is just be proactive. I think when I get out of that you know about the risk of having further eruptions is if you had a number of correct me but this is my reaction if you had a number of installations they in various places on the big island for example and an eruption knocked out one of them you'd have the others and so that would be less likely to disrupt a whole system. And so I think that may be one of the reasons that one would advocate for multiple installations because it makes it less likely that the entire source would be you know terminated on any given single eruption am I right? Yeah exactly what happened with this last eruption it just stopped it and we had to wait a long time until they back online yeah so but if we spread the risk by you know two three four different locations that that would that would help us a lot. Yeah well well let's go there I'll you ask him how to get there I mean here we are and we have this great vision because Richard always has great vision how do we get from point A to point B where we're satisfied we're actually using this resource I mean completely or at least in a greater in a greater effort. Yeah I can make him answer that but I think he's got the clue. Well you know when I went to these people conferences the thing I realized was that you know and everything was from the website point of view and everything was fossil fuel driven so we think and and conversed in those terms. What became very apparent to me is that the fossil fuel supply world supply has probably been so right now nobody actually realizes it because we let people just borrow money and they can keep on going and stuff like that but if you speak and if you try to anticipate what the downside of the curve looks like we don't have that much time so we got the people that are in charge you know has got to understand that we do not have time you know and 10 years is is going to be really spooky. So that's why what we need to do is now make some laws so that we can make this process go smoother and we need to get some funding because there's a really good organization in New York Manoa it's called the Hawaii groundwater and geothermal resource center and they do do this water and geothermal the two most important things for us in Hawaii and they're vastly underfunded so you know we we we got to make sure that they get the funds they need because they're dying to get out there and get going. I was just with Nicole today as all we're talking about they have their own drill rigs but what we need to do is take a surface exploration identify where the likely spots and and and document it all and be prepared so when Halco says we need more electricity we have the information and people can go in and be right now where we are today we have nothing you know it's pretty unbelievable that here we sit and you know like in the US mainland the people who buy the land owns a resource under under the here in Hawaii the resource is owned by the state and let's exclude uh uh uh i hope the land for it but for a bit but the state owns a resource so geothermal PGV for example because the state owns the resource the PGV pays the royalty and 50 percent of the royalty goes to DLNR 30 percent of the royalty goes to Hawaii county 20 percent of the royalties go to OHA which is all going to find except none of the royalty is used for exploration you know that is critical some way we got to figure out how to how to take the resource money and do the exploration um Nicole Lowsey estimates that it will probably cost about 22 million to to evaluate all the five volcanoes on this island to put it on paper you know for a lot of people this is kind of like kicking feet you know like for example um solar solar had um and i'm not picking on solar just just to pick up solar but they had uh uh 673 million of uh what do you call that when when you get money back so for doing the project tax cut it yeah yeah yeah yeah that that's critical and geothermal had none so you know you asked yourself what why is that you know couldn't we figure out something so we incentivize you know to do this but but nevertheless we need to get out there and do the uh get to get the money so where's the money going to come from yeah so it was a company from korea it's uh called suiva and they want to come into hawaii and they what they want to do is set up some kind of uh i'm not really clear and what they what they are uh what how are they going to do this but it's uh they want to set up a uh headquarters in hawaii and and and use this resource uh this technique that they're using which is all internet stuff of banking i think um and and so what we they came and gave us a presentation and it didn't go over well to them because we didn't recognize that how high profile they were in korea everybody in korea knows that we we didn't know that so they asked us to give another presentation and so what i told them was you know to save you for some time what what we you know what we would want is 22 million to do the surface exploration and 33 million to build a culture center above the cloud and i told you know and i was real serious yeah so and you know what they did we signed the paper letter of intent at the mayor's office so i don't know if it'll turn out and they'll be here next week oh no no i'm sorry uh the second weekend in february so we'll we'll kind of see what it is but nevertheless you know we we're not only looking at that um if we get enough uh publicity and make the case we can probably talk to you know how many Hawaiian people they got plenty money like the rock and and kissing no more and and and all of those folks right i will ask them hey come on that's that's what we need to do here we need to do surface exploration just a footnote to that is uh if our viewers don't know who nicole lousy is she's a part of so west in the university she's a volcanologist um and she is um has worked with and is the successor to a very famous volcanologist by the name of don thomas what i'm sure richard knows on thomas very well who worked on these um these seismic issues and um and you know geothermal for decades and decades so that's the connection with the university the other the other thing which i really think you have to ask about this and it was your idea ollie hi i've got a question too but i'll put it in there oh hi ec oh are we switching to co-ops now well you want to get you know you have a few minutes left i've got a few minutes left find out how that all plays in yeah right right um but i've got a question before then because something that richard what you said earlier about like streamlining and making sure that we're ready for investment and ready for understanding the resource um i'm not super familiar with geothermal i'm learning a lot today but i'm curious um what you said before about you know a change in the way that you are exploring where and how geothermal is developed and how does that change the conversations that you are having with communities particularly communities that are interested in the cultural impacts of this development like how is that conversation changing are we in a better place for geothermal to be kind of ready to move through a community conversation or is is that is that not part of where you're at at the moment no absolutely we are part of that because we know it just let you ask the question you understand that it's tied to the other right so so what i'm involved in uh hello here which is uh idiot kanaka oli's class uh about how hawaiians were in in the ancient days Hawaiian values you know what it's pretty amazing about that and and and because i'm in there and i'm Hawaiian you know it's a commitment you know it's it's uh so i have a certain amount of uh understanding and knowledge so now i'm able to bring what the lesson side as well as the the cultural side because the cultural side is very very very important we need to make sure we tie everything together and go forward together um well great i really want to hear more about that but we only have a three uh three minutes left i was told and i i would love to also hear about the the kind of cooperative model and and uh i would love to know where hawaii island energy cooperative is now and how does that play into thinking about um uh developing renewable energy such as geothermal on hawaii island yeah gee myself and marco are in the in the co-op marco may also though i feel good friends yeah yeah so what happened was you know when uh next year i wanted to come in and buy a gi so that's when we said hey wait a minute um we better go figure out how how to make a walk so we call the the folks from hawaii to give us a talk and when they give us a talk we form the core and then we started you know touching bases with everybody and then we realized okay what will this likely cost where will we get the financing we went to the co-op financing and we got we got the money we got the commitment and what what our objective was was to be ready in case there was a willing seller there's no guarantee you're going to get a willing seller or one thing for sure we're ready and so the willing seller depends on the spot price yeah so if it drops down below 38 we're in the bogie but i don't think it's going to drop down below 30 but that's that's so so it's inexistent and they're just standing by they're kind of waiting in the wings for the moment and you guys are you guys are going for the full turkey the we want to be the full utility owner from uh bottom up rather than looking at individual projects uh to be cooperatively owned is that right yeah and we're focusing on the big island and that uh just in we only have maybe one minute left based on a map here but i would love to know uh based on why you guys form that what do you think the benefit of the the future of energy on hawaii island being cooperatively owned maybe particularly even bringing geothermal back in why would geothermal be better if it were cooperatively out um well mainly because if it's cooperatively owned all the money stays here that's that's a bottom line for co-ops yeah um so we're ready if we have to but we're also not waiting that's why we're doing all this other stuff yeah wow great um uh you answered that in less than a minute jade do you have any other final thoughts you want to add yeah i want to talk about the uh just for a minute that we have richard um you know how how is the big island doing on renewables uh you know uh that they took a piece out of your pie uh when geothermal stopped a few years ago but you have a lot of solar i don't know i don't know how wind is doing um on the big island i don't know other sources of renewables are doing but can you give us um you know a handle on how much renewables you have uh and whether my recollection is that big island is is ahead of the game and it has the resources to approach the you know the target the target of 2040 or 2045 and achieve 100% renewables by that time and if not sooner um how is it doing now this is really important yeah well well it's doing pretty well you know um even even with the a put a geothermal only having 25 megawatts online now we're i can't give you the numbers but but i can see this uh we're we're one of the highest in the state here except for kawaii um and and they haven't they haven't come up to 46 megawatts which is what they'll get uh soon um and if we start doing more then then we'll end up you know being able to meet the 2045 or it really depends how fast we can do geothermal new stuff the future the future lives on the big island i know that's why you live there that's why you're connected that's why you make suggestions that's why you have the vision that is a great wrap up quote i know that uh we're here uh right at the end of our show um richard sorry i cut you off for a minute did you want to add or just a couple seconds no all right um well thank you both for joining me on energy justice in hawaii uh today um richard haw and jay fidel um here on the show uh join us again in two weeks to learn more about energy justice in hawaii thanks guys all right thank you