 It's Wednesday afternoon. We know what time that is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy time. And I'm your host, Michiu. And I'm very pleased to welcome Howard Wieg on our show. And we're gonna be talking about decarbonizing the economy using a tool that he's had a lot of influence on in Hawaii. And that's codes and standards. And so Howard, welcome to the show. I know you had your own show as well. But welcome to my show or our show. And tell us a little bit more about codes and standards and how they're gonna de-health decarbonize our economy. Well, first and foremost, it is a great honor to be in the presence of Mr. Hydrogen himself. Thank you for inviting me on that, Mitch. You're welcome. We beyond the codes and standards are just one step toward decarbonization. Now, what in the world is decarbonization? It doesn't come up very often in your cocktail party conversations. It's doing without carbon. Now, does that mean I can no longer write with a pencil? Because the pencil lead is carbon? No, you can stick with that. But what you can't do, hopefully within another 30 years is emit carbon dioxide either from your transportation that you're getting around on or more to the point when you use any electrical appliance, you're using electricity and still the majority of our electricity is coming from. Fossil fuels, what are fossil fuels there? Natural gas, coal, and oil, they are hydro carbons, full of carbon. The other stuff is burned. The carbon is not burned. It goes into our atmosphere with not good effects. Global, not global warming, climate change is what's happening. And we're having a beautifully cool winter right now, but summer months are coming on and we all remember that miserable time we had about three years ago. We were just sweltering away. And hopefully that is not a portent of the future because we're gonna decarbonize the economy. And in fact, it is the governor's goal to have a carbon-free economy within the next 30, 40 years. Okay, now let's look at the first slide, please, on decarbonization. This is from the State Energy Office and it shows where the different sources of carbon are and there's a commercial section, commercially electricity, that's our buildings, schools, hospitals, so forth. And then there's a residential section or single family homes, mainly. And you combine those two slices of the pie and it's a pretty good hefty slice. We'll be focusing on that when we talk about codes and standards, but looking a little further down the road, that big yellow slice, that's ground transportation and we're already seeing buses and they're powered by Mitch's favorite fuel, hydrogen. And we will also be having electric buses coming down the pike very soon. And as long as I'm in transportation, let's digress just for a minute on that, something that the Energy Office and others are doing is emphasizing our shift toward electric vehicles. But you say electric vehicles, they run on batteries, batteries are powered by electricity, electricity emits carbon, carbon dioxide, what's going on here? Well, as we get closer and closer and closer to 100% clean electrical energy, mainly via wind power and solar power plus storing all of that power for the appropriate time, we're gonna be able to accommodate hundreds and hundreds and then thousands of electric vehicles running off of clean energy. That is part of our goal, a large, large part of our goal. And then you say, well, what about all those planes coming in and out of Honolulu Airport? Good point. Hawaii was the pioneer in the first battery powered airplane. Granted, it's just a little single engine plane and it's maybe in its Wright Brothers stage right now, but that is coming down the pike. So let's get back to Earth here and look at decarbonizing buildings and homes. This is probably a good time to bring up the next sites, all the steps that we're going through. Okay, so what are codes and standards? The ultimate, the cleanest piece of equipment that you can use is equipment that is off. Turn a light bulb off. It's not using any energy. When an air conditioner off, no energy. How does that relate to codes? A large part of building codes, building energy codes, which is a standard, not a standard, it's a law. We make these things into law that when you install air conditioning, say in a commercial building and lighting in a commercial building, when nobody's around, that piece of equipment must be off. That's an integral part of energy codes. And how do you get them off? You don't have somebody flicking a switch out over the place. You can model when the building is occupied and when it's not occupied, when it's not occupied, stuff goes off. And then we are now sophisticated enough, say you come into an office building on a Saturday or a Sunday, all the lights are off, boom. It's controlled, the lighting is controlled by occupancy sensors. So you walk into a hallway, boom, the lights come on, you walk into an office, boom, the lights come on. You leave, there's no movement, the lights go off again. That's an integral part of energy codes in homes and building. Let me take a sip here. Well, while you're taking a sip, Howard, let me just jump in and ask a question. Absolutely. Yeah, so what are some of the challenges? I mean, the codes and standards are great, but what kind of push, I mean, what kind of pushback do you get and why would people actually push back? That's a good thing. Because homes are, oh, it adds to the cost of a home, it adds to the cost of a building. Most of the time you take out or you substitute a very, very high efficiency air conditioning system for an inefficient system. It's certainly gonna save money down the road. It's gonna save lots of money. There's the first cost. And the people in the industry after any good business man or business woman needs to reduce the cost of doing business. And part of that involves buying the equipment or the building materials with the lowest first cost. So there are two ways of looking at the world here. And we in the energy office are looking at the long-term install piece of equipment that say costs $100 more initially, but it saves $30 a year and it lasts for 20 years, 20 times 30, you've saved $2,700 over 20 years in exchange for that initial bumping cost of $100. But business men are business men. So we are in perpetual discussions with one another to reach a reasonable compromise. And yeah, go ahead. Oh yeah, what about the banks? I mean, I've heard stories that in some jurisdictions because you're buying, you're a new homeowner, you're buying your house and that the banks will look at the costs of operating that house, the energy costs. You know, if you're on the max of what you can afford as your monthly mortgage payment, that they will take into consideration the fact that your overhead costs, i.e. your electricity costs, for example, that we're talking about is lower because you invested in this better technology, this more efficient technology, therefore you'll have more disposable income available and therefore you're better able to afford this mortgage because you're buying at the top level of what your credit. You're in the wrong place, Mitch. You should be with us in the energy office. That's the type of thing we talk about all day long and twice on Sundays. And one of the many activities we do is work with realtors. We're pulling homes or helping clients get their homes ready for sale. And we pitch and pitch, get your energy costs down and use that as a marketing tool. And in the same way for home builders, when they're selling new homes, one thing they can do is say, great window performance. The sun's heat is not coming in. So you need less air conditioning, you need a smaller air conditioning system. We've got great super efficient lights that are gonna use very little wattage, produce almost no heat, and they're more comfortable and they're gonna save you money. So we work with that type of industry. What's the response been? I mean, are they listening or are they just like, oh, that's too much work? Mixed bag, mixed bag. Some of my good friends are in the real estate industry and they push this stuff like heck. And there's a whole, it's not just the energy office, but it's our sister and brother non-profits who are likewise pushing this. And by George, I've been in this business since the upper place to see. And I have seen such, such a cultural shift towards the home-buying clients now asking about energy efficiency, energy efficiency. And now we're tying that in with comfort and safety also. Because say for instance, you have an inexpensive window where the sun is just pouring in, you're feeling the heat, that's uncomfortable and you're cranking up the AC. And so you've got heat coming from one side and cold air coming from the other side. Number one, that's not pleasant at all. Number two, it's not healthy because your body's getting all confused. What if you have a window and it's all part of the energy building, coincidence by the way, we specify high performance windows, but if you have a window that allows in very little heat, that's nice. Plus you can have a smaller air conditioning system and run it on low instead of high. So you just have this very, very, very gentle cool breeze. So it's more comfortable and because there's an equilibrium of temperature, it's a healthier product. So this is a type of thing that we use to push energy codes. Awesome. So if they have any incentives for this, like we have a Hawaii energy is the state like kicking in any money to help out on this? We have supported the income tax credits, especially for solar water heating and photovoltaic systems. And there's credit for wind energy systems also. And you combine the state credit with the federal credit and you're talking some pretty gosh darn serious money here. So let me describe basically what a building code does. So you're designing a new home, number one, and this is if I were designing the home, for Hawaii, what we wanna do is keep that home as naturally cool as possible. So we look at the roof, that roof is gonna get one heck of a lot of sun's heat on it. Well, what if the shingles on the roof are rough, almost black shingles? What is their temperature on a hot sunny day? As much as 180 degrees. Wow. And measurable stuff. What if instead, that roof coating was white, reflective white with reflective material in it and relatively smooth, instead of 180 degrees, let's try 105 degrees, a drop, a delta T of 75 degrees. Question is more heat gonna penetrate through the roof and into the living space at 105 degrees or 180 degrees, pretty obvious stuff. And then you put insulation in the attic or above the ceiling on top of that and you have virtually no heat penetrating in Hawaii's climate from the roof to the, into the interior space. So you can be naturally cool very, very, very easily. And just a little side note there. If you're just a little bit on the warm side, how would ceiling fans perform? Answer, very, very excellently. These ceiling fans remove by blowing over you. They remove our, what is it? 98.7 degree body heat away from us. And that just makes us just comfortable as anything. So that's the roof. Now how about the walls? Walls by the code have insulation in them, but what we in Hawaii do is emphasize cool walls, reflective surfaces on the wall likewise when the sun's heat, it's that wall, most of it, almost all of it bounces back out instead of penetrating into the wall and into the living space. Now, and then there's conventional insulation, you know, the pink panther and other types of insulation. Now, what about windows? Our generation, Mitch, you and I, I'm assuming have you passed the age of 45 lately? I know, I'm still working on that. Yeah, yeah, well, you're a little bit spring chickeny of me, but we grew up with what are called single pane windows in our homes. And those are just one pane of just almost pure glass. And when the sun's heat struck that glass, 87% of that heat would get into the living space. Ooh, not very comfortable at all. What the energy code does is specify high performance glass, which it's a double pane. And there's one pane and then the air space or argon space in the middle and then another pane. And it has special reflective materials in it so that reflects back outdoors 75% of the sun's heat that is striking it. So 87% getting in, only 25% gets in. That's pretty darn good. And we're now coming into the market are triple pane windows and they are gonna be even more efficient. They're gonna be like 85% efficient reflecting back and not a whole lot of added cost. And let me, that brings me to the concept of market transformation. The energy codes that I'm talking about start at the national level where I and some hundreds of other people go to one scene. This is in the old days when we actually congregated together and there are proposals in to have this added to the code. We change codes every three years, energy code and all the other codes. So we have these hearings every three years. So there's proposal after proposal after proposal. And we in the audience as long as we're duly registered get to walk up to the front and testify one way or the other on a given proposal. And we consider as many as this last round 750 proposals. We were a long time in that auditorium. And then there's a vote at the end, yes or no. So the end product is the model code, the national code. And then it gets back to the states. Every state has a state energy office and the state energy office convenes in our case a Hawaii building code council. And we consider whether or not we want to adopt. Oh, we're mandated by state law to adopt to update codes every three years. We consider whether or not to adopt this and that and all the provisions of the model code or you can call it the mainland code. And in many cases we want to modify it for Hawaii's unique climate. We have no need for heating. We have no space heating. So we're all we're looking at is keeping the homes cool in as energy efficient a manner as possible. And while I'm on that subject energy efficient equipment that is refers to equipment that will do the same work for less energy input. Say in the case of a car, you trade in your 20 mile per gallon gas guzzler and trade up to a 60 mile per gallon hybrid, you have multiplied your efficiency by three times. Or with household appliances, best example is a refrigerator. If you have an old clunker refrigerator around it is probably using about 1,400 kilowatt hours a year. Trade that in for the same size refrigerator with all the new bells and whistles, 450 kilowatt hours a year. You have reduced your energy use by two thirds while getting all these wonderful accoutrements. And your food is stored at this temperature, this temperature, this temperature, this temperature, you just take your pick. So that's an example of energy efficiency. That's the type of thing we push in the energy codes. So the way I would- Doesn't everybody just, don't they all take that old fridge and put it in their garage for a beer fridge? So like- This is where Hawaii energy comes in. They say, we will give you, and Hawaii energy for clarification is the nonprofit outfit under the Public Utilities Commission that gives rebates for businesses and individuals who discard old inefficient equipment and replace it with efficient equipment. What happens in the case of refrigerators is they say, we will give you, I'll toss out a figure, $200. If you will buy an Energy Star refrigerator, and we will deliver that refrigerator and install it for free, and this is part of the deal, we're gonna haul away that old refrigerator so you don't store it in the garage for your fish and your beer. Where do they go when they dispose of the refrigerators? I mean, is there like a black market out there that they just get recycled? No, no, no. They actually- I'll give you a quiz in return. What Hawaii's greatest export used to be sugar and then it was pineapple. What is Hawaii's greatest export now? Well, it was water, bottled water from the big island at one point. I don't know whether this probably recycled refrigerators are subtracted. Recycled metals, yeah. The refrigerators go to an outfit in Campbell Industrial Park called Hawaii Metal Recycling and they, these great big grinders that can grind up cars. Well, first they take out the refrigerant. Refrigerant is full of nasty stuff that can deplete the ozone layer. So they take that out and they carefully store it and then they grind these refrigerators the way you would grind an apple in your little grinder thing to make juice. And all the parts are separated by air. There's a lot of fluff in there and there's a lot of plastic in there. That gets separated out and then there's ferrous metals and nonferrous metals. That gets separated out. Those metals get billed up and in the old days they got shipped off to China because China had an endless appetite for that. I don't know where they get shipped off to now but that's what we do with our old refrigerator. So only got about three minutes left. What salient point of enlightenment would you like me to leave with here, Mitch? Well, I think I'd like to address this challenge of people, the cost of buying something versus the ongoing total cost of ownership. I think that's really important that we educate people on that. It's a false economy to just look at the cost of acquisition and have to look at what the total cost of ownership is. Okay, let me give you an almost outmoded example right now but that would be light bulbs, your standard old household light bulbs. You and I grew up with something called incandescent lights. The Latin word for white hot heat is incandescer. And I guess you can still buy these things in the store for 60 cents a piece but an LED light will cost $3. That's with Hawaii energy subsidy, $3 versus 60 cents. Of course you're going to take the 60 cents except that that incandescent light is going to burn 100 watts. So over a thousand hours, you have burned up over a thousand hours, $47 worth of electricity. And this is white hot, it's heating up your home and it dies after a thousand hours. The LED that you didn't spend $3 on instead of using a hundred watts is only going to use 15 watts. It's going to produce no heat whatsoever and it's going to last for 25,000 hours that $2.40 premium that you paid for will be paid for not within years but within months. The energy savings alone will pay for itself within just a few months. And again, you're living in a nice cool environment. That's called life cycle costing. Back way. So we need to get the young Kiki involved in this right from kindergarten. So they start thinking life cycle rather than acquisition costs. Precisely, precisely. Or as we say, lowest first cost. What kind of, we have about 30 seconds left. I'm assuming the energy office has some kind of educational programs. Oh, yes, yes, yes. If we could bring up the last slide, yay. Thanks for reminding me, Mitch. This, you can't read this all but we will be offering training on November, May 12th and May 19th. May 12th was residential training. May 19th is commercial building training and everybody and anybody who wants to, this is Zoom, wants to attend that training. Very, very welcome. It's engineers, architects, builders and the entire interested the public. You can, oh, Hawaii achieves zero net energy and save the environment and keep money in your pocketbook all at the same time. Well, that's a great note to end off saving money, saving the environment. I mean, how good is that? That's awesome. So I've been very happy to have Harold Wigg from the Hawaii State Energy Office helping us save money and protect the environment. So Howard, thank you so much for being on the show. It is a great honor. You're a great host. I think take my hand or you're one of these days. I hope so. Well, this is Mitch Ewan from Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy, signing off and I'll see you next Wednesday. Aloha.