 I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. The handsome young man over there is Marco Mangelsdorf, a provisioned solar retired. And he spent a lot of time with wine electric years ago, and even more time with provisioned solar. And now he can speak from the 50,000-foot level, okay? And we're doing energy 808, the cutting edge. We need to do that. We all need to know more about it. And we're calling this show Renewable Energy Potpourri. And the first thing to do, Marco, is for you to talk about what is a potpourri and what is in our potpourri this morning. Well, first greetings and salutations from the People's Democratic Republic of Santa Cruz. And specifically, I'm in the enclave of the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is my home away from home as I'm teaching my course on Southeast Asia politics. So thanks so much for having me on with you again, Jay. And potpourri is kind of the word I came up with for a mishmash this and that, a little dash of this little dash of that. It kind of came to my consciousness and attention as things may be worthy to talk about. Yeah, what's the difference between a potpourri and a cornucopia? I hope you don't mind. We take a moment on nomenclature here. Well, I'd say a really big difference is one starts with the letter C and the other starts letter P. There you go. You heard it here. Write it down. Put it on your yellow pad. It'll be on the final exam. So there are four. Make that three. And there's plenty of stuff to talk about. One is the doom and gloom, the mornings of doom and gloom from the solar industry. The second is Joe Biden plays host to ASEAN. The third is energy issues along the mighty Mekong, which relates to your Santa Cruz experience. And of course, I guess the fourth one is Pujo Nua. Query, don't they ever give up? Wow, what a potpourri. The answer, we can start with four first and since it's the most fresh in everybody's mind, it seems. No, they don't ever give up. They have been running full color ads in both the Big Island newspapers over the weeks. They've been running apparently same ad in the Star Advertiser. They met with the Star Advertiser editorial board in days gone by and recently, that is, which prompted the Star Advertiser to write an editorial expressing the views of the editorial staff or management, however you want to look at it, that was taking a decidedly pro who are new of you and urging that the Public Utilities Commission go ahead and allow this power plant to go online. So no, they don't ever give up. It's pedal to the metal, at least until the Commission announces their decision, which I expect to imminently just because we have Dr. Jay Griffin's term as chair will be winding down as of the end of next month, which isn't that far away. So all eyes on the Commission, yet again to our friends Jay, Jenny, and Leo and the staff as far as what they're going to come up with. But I've never ever witnessed in the 22 years I've been really very much an participant and an observer of the energy seen in Hawaii and going back even more than that, just kind of more casually. I've never known, never witnessed any company, Jay, that has been so doggedly, relentlessly, unceasingly persistent in trying to achieve their goal here. And there must be an individual or two on the Hujo newest side who obviously I would think is in a position of controlling the money flow, who has decided that this is a top priority and they're just going to keep on pushing and spend whatever money they need to to try to get this across the finish line. But it's truly an exemplar as far as if you were to be teaching an MBA class of a company that is seniorly focused on trying to achieve their goal over a very long period of time going back easily over 10 years to when discussions first began, if I'm not mistaken, about converting the plan up in Pipekea, which had been burning coal after it had been burning the gas and then it shut down and people have been talking about a new fuel source. So yes, relentless, great work. Yeah, well, I mean, gee, I wonder, they have managed over these last couple of years to create a controversy, which is really unprecedented, as you say, and also unexpected, because, you know, there is a environmental consideration, a climate change consideration, and a renewable, you know, the purity of renewables. And I for one, do not understand how they could create such a controversy in the legislature and now bring the star advertiser along. What reasons did the star advertiser give for supporting them? That would be really interesting to analyze. I'm not going to speak for the star advertiser, Jay, but the, you know, one of the one of the pitch points is and has been from who are newer that they are going to be quote, carbon negative. And that has been in dispute amongst the parties to the docket. And, you know, when all said and done, I happened to put a lot of credence and I put a lot of weight on what Dean Nashina and the consumer advocate had decided or what they recommend. And of course, the CA has been a party to this for the duration of these dockets, this particular docket. And Dean and his team came out negative. In other words, we cannot recommend approval of the PPA as is. So now I have to be swayed by that clearly that goes counter to both who are newest position that goes counter to a one electrics position. And now again, you know, all the parties, including Henry and Tuiri have made their their case made their cases to the PUC. And as I said, an imminent decision will be upon us. That's a great test. As you say, it's exemplar. It's a test of government of all branches of government. It's a test, certainly the PUC, the legislature, the test of the media. It's a test of the state on energy on energy policy in general. So of course, we'll follow it. So let's go to the next one. How about the warnings of doom and gloom from the solar industry? In fact, one solar installer, mainland solar installer pulled out from two projects on Maui and Oahu in the last few days saying they couldn't do it anymore. What's going on? Yeah, just to give a little context, that company that pulled out a project on Maui and Oahu, I believe their company's company's name is Long Road, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. And I wonder why they called it Long Road, never mind. Sounds better than Short Road. Well, it's not a short road. It's never a short road. And then in this particular decision, the part of Long Road pulling out of, believe it is, Bulehu project on Maui and Mahi on Oahu was not related, is not related to this particular kerfuffle. And kerfuffle is probably an understatement given the screaming and the dire predictions of doom and gloom that's coming from the solar industry. And so let me give you some context here. So it's been over 10 years now that the U.S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission has been involved in reviewing and at times slapping tariffs on imported solar modules from China. And in fact, when I was with Provision, we learned very painfully because we got caught up in that trade war with a very onerous and painful penalty, essentially tariff that was slapped on us retroactively after a modest purchase from a solar company outside of Shanghai. So I've got the battle scars to prove that. So the government under successive administrations, Democrat, Republican, Democrat, have put tariffs on the importation of either Chinese solar modules or the materials that will go into modules that materials that come from China. And the claim is now from a small, and I mean really small, photo will take manufacturer in San Jose, California, not more than 40 or so minutes from where I said right now, a company called OXIN AUXIN Solar. They brought this case before the U.S. Department of Commerce, which by the way is obligated under law to investigate these charges. And the charges are that the Chinese are essentially doing a workaround by manufacturing in four Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. And that these manufacturers are partially owned or wholly owned, partially controlled, wholly controlled by entities in China. So it happens to be that a very large percentage of the U.S. photo will take module consumption manufactured in these four countries. So the threat is that if the U.S. Department of Commerce were to find these allegations to be true, then the threat is that there would be tariffs that would go on exported modules from Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam. And not only that, but once they decide, if they were to decide that, then they could slap retroactive tariffs if they find, quote, critical circumstances on product that had been shipped prior to the announcement of new tariffs. So that's the background, so the net effect is that the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington, which is the main trade group, as well as installers and solar companies across the country. I haven't seen a kerfuffle like this in years and years, and there is a lot of great concern, and maybe we could get that first graphic to be put up there. So this is a projection from SEA, courtesy of our friends at Canary Media, and it shows there in 2022 that yellow bar is no tariffs, business as usual. And then the dark bar to the right of it is with new tariffs. You can see that's about a reduction of 50% according to these projections in 2022, and then they project out several years. So that particular graphic indicates that if these tariffs happen, there's going to be a dramatic slowdown of the deployment of solar, both commercial, industrial, residential, utility scale across the country with the concurrent loss of Boku jobs, six-figure jobs. So it is interesting, and on some of the folks in the Commerce Department, Gina Raimundo, I believe is the Commerce Secretary, Washington former governor of Rhode Island, she has been apologetic in terms of saying, we have to do this because it's the law, but I really don't want to do it. I really don't want to do it. I mean, there's a subtext there, and he'd even had Jennifer Granholm, who's the Department of Energy Secretary, former governor of Michigan. She too has been speaking out on this. So there's a full-blown lobbying campaign on the part of solar interest in Washington on the president, on the executive branch, on senators. And it's a big deal, because what essentially this does is it freezes things. So folks don't want to order modules with the prospect of bidding out projects based on a cost, which has got a big question mark right now. So it's wild. It's really wild. Well, what's wild also is that the traditional, I'm sure in your studies, you know that the traditional purpose of tariffs is to encourage economic activity in the home country. So theoretically, this is prior to Trump, BT, if you will, a tariffs were mostly to encourage state manufacturing in the United States. That's why you do it, even the playing field. But we aren't manufacturing solar. We're not doing it. So this isn't really actually achieving the purpose, the traditional purpose of a tariff. The other thing that comes to mind is that these cells require certain elements, rare earth, I think, and special elements that you need to build to manufacture cells, which I'm not sure are available in the United States. There's supply line issues on that side of it too. So we don't, we can't, we won't actually be manufacturing the kind of solar cells that China and its friends indirectly are manufacturing. So I think at the end of the day, you'd have to say we were shooting ourselves in the foot. And Joe Biden's express policy is to move toward greater renewable energy, obviously for the purpose of dealing with climate change. But this is inconsistent. It contradicts that policy, doesn't it? Yes, it would if there were to be tariffs put on. And the thing is, is that nothing happens quick, quick, wiki, wiki in Washington, this could drag on for over a year, which is kind of a worst case scenario, because it essentially, you know, it freezes, freezes, freezes everything or freezes a lot. And I mean, I can tell you with great confidence, because I've been for witness to this industry for over 40 years, is that the PV manufacturing space is brutal. There isn't a whole lot of money to be made. And this particular company, Oxen Solar in San Jose, is not likely to last long as a viable financial entity. But that's not stopping them from taking a lot of flak. And I mean, a lot of flak, a lot of social media flak, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, people were showing up there at the warehouse and doing not so savory things. So now there's been a lot of pushback. But my point here, Jay, is that the notion of a American based and owned solar photovoltaic manufacturing base is a fantasy. It is just not cost effective. So if we are going to achieve under Biden and successive administrations, assuming they follow that same course, now a continued dramatic increase in the deployment of renewable energy with a lot of solar, then our fate and the necessity of buying the vast bulk of the solar modules needed from foreign lands where labor is cheaper, materials are cheaper, labor laws are less enforced. The regimes can be rather savory or unsavory, I should say. It's, you know, got to hold your nose and buy it because the alternative, and I've seen multiple companies, Jay, multiple companies over the years, some of which I've dealt with very closely, who've tried to carve out, start up a niche of manufacturing solar modules in an American warehouse, American facility, fab facility, one after the other, after the other, after the other has failed. And I just don't see a future, honestly, at least the foreseeable future for US manufacturing to be competitive solar wise with Southeast Asia and China. Well, that's the magic word here, competitive. I mean, if you can't get them at all, because of supply line issues, because of tariffs, because of geopolitics, and an American company would somehow be able to do it at twice the price, then if I'm in Cincinnati and I want to put solar on my roof, I'm going to have to pay very nearly twice the price. But it's doable, isn't it? It's doable. I mean, that's one of those interesting poll questions, right, is if you ask Americans generically, right, if you had the choice between buying American made fill on the blank, or paying less, or let me finish it another way, if you had the choice of buying solar modules at X price from China, from Vietnam, from Malaysia, from Cambodia, from Thailand, and you had the choice, the other choice was to buy American made solar modules and pay a X percent premium, a modest premium, you know, not 1000% or 500%. People, you know, in principle, they'll say, oh, I'd much rather buy America, right? But then practically speaking, if they're comparing two quotes with solar modules from Vietnam versus solar modules from oxygen solar, and there's a several thousand dollar or more price difference for the overall system, then a lot fewer of those people who said in principle, I'd rather buy American, would kind of maybe take a gulp, or maybe not much of a gulp, and they go ahead and go with the lower quote. Yeah. And that kind of thing exists more and more in the face of inflation, in the case, for example, of, you know, the gas crisis now that Mr. Putin has created. And for that matter, all the other implications of the Ukraine war. And I asked a lot of Americans whether they would pay higher prices, spend more money, have the government spend more money in order to support the Ukrainian country and people. I think a lot of them would say yes, we would, but then a number of them would say no, we wouldn't. We don't want to pay, in this case, I noticed yesterday that the gallon of gas could be as much as 450 here in Oahu. That's a lot. Is it 450 or more? Maybe it's more. Maybe it's over five. In any event, what I'm saying is that we as an economy can tolerate that kind of survey question for a while. But after a while, it gets old. And I think we're having that experience now. And so if you care about climate change, query, are you going to pay the price? Or are you just going to go the easy route and capitulate? What a horrible dilemma it is. Sophie's choice. Okay, Joe Biden plays host to ASEAN. What does this mean in terms of energy? Yeah, let's put that graphic up, please. That's his second graphic, which is the photo op from the White House lawn just from last week. And Joe Biden invited nine out of the 10 ASEAN members. Can you guess which of the ASEAN members was not invited, Jay? Bonus question. Myanmar was left off the guest list because of what the military there has been doing since February 1st of last year. So I find it noteworthy, not just because I'm teaching a course on half of ASEAN. What I mean by half of ASEAN is that you've got mainland ASEAN, which is Lao, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam in order of pop increasing population. So that's mainland ASEAN. And then you have ASEAN, which is connected to more water, actually islands, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. So what I find noteworthy is that whether this goes back to Barack Obama's so-called pivot to Asia, and this continued under Trump as well. So clearly Washington, whether Democrat or Republican, this is a bipartisan issue to continue to have a strong American presence in the ASEAN region. And by Biden inviting nine out of the 10 ASEAN members to Washington was a clear, both symbolic and intangible commitment on the part of Washington and the administration and the United States valuing Southeast Asia. And there are a whole bunch of reasons why Southeast Asia is worse, is definitely worth valuing. And that's something I've been teaching about and educating my students about. So I haven't fully supported Biden's reaching out to ASEAN and to doing whatever he can to further American interests in the region. The clear heavyweight in the region is the People's Republic of China. I mean, that is their backyard. So we're not going to essentially peel off ASEAN members to go counter to China because that's not in their best interest. But what's really important from my perspective, and this is being carefully watched among all ASEAN members, is just how much staying power, how much of a commitment will the United States, does the United States have now? And how will that commitment last? So what I mean by that is will, whether it's Biden, whoever comes after him, will maintain a strong emphasis and strong priority in that region of the world is something that these countries pay close attention to. So, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it is a vital region for American strategic interests, and I do fully support any and all efforts. Now the rub, of course, one of the challenges is that none of these countries in mainland Southeast Asia is, I want to be careful here, and diplomatic is not all that democratic. You have communist parties, you have one family rules as in the example of Hun Sen and his patriarchy in Cambodia. So, you know, it's the classic trade-off, right, between doing business and maintaining friendships with people, with countries with whom we may not share a whole lot in terms of political values and ideology, but we do share common interests, security interests, financial interests, trade interests. So, you know, it's ongoing. I can tell you, especially in Vietnam, is at the very top of the list, Vietnam and Thailand, but especially Vietnam, we put a lot of emphasis on a relationship with Hanoi. And in fact, we have, are urging them, have been urging them to please, please, please, this is the United States asking them to upgrade our so-called comprehensive partnership to a, quote, strategic partnerships. Now, you're just modifying a partnership by one, one adjective, right? But that actually is a substantial deal. If we could get the Vietnamese to elevate the comprehensive partnership that we have with the U.S., they have with the U.S. right now to a strategic partnership. So, there's a lot of interest, especially, especially in Vietnam. Well, let me connect up a couple of things. What has this got to do with energy is one question. Well, I know we're pretty much out of time here, so I'm going to have to make this pretty darn quick, quick, as far as what does that have to do with energy? Well, it has everything to do with energy, my friend, everything. Because without an adequate energy supply for these countries, both for transportation, for manufacturing, for the entire economies, they're kind of dead in the water. And just because of the sidebar note, I've been watching this over the past week or so. Laos has been so hammered by COVID, so hammered by having their foreign currency banking stash been hammered by a significant reduction in the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Laos and KIPP is that they're running out of gasoline in the capital and VNCN. You've got people lining up by the dozens and dozens with plastic bottles, with cars, with their scooters. And it's just a very, very big deal. So it has everything to do with energy. And if we can maybe put on that number three slide, just in closing here, there's a graphic there showing how the top 10 countries in the world, as far as percentage from solar, you see Vietnam there at 9.9%. So Vietnam is in the top 10. And that's not just by accident, because Hanoi has been spending a lot of money encouraging, this is just the past handful of years, Jay. They've been very aggressive and very proactive in terms of solar. Now, it's principally utility scale, so less so residential or distributed. But I mean, it's all about energy. And this is something the United States is not on this list at all. Well, for one thing, the United States has a, you know, we have a lot more people in a much larger grid and much more larger energy demand. Now, that said, we can maybe gain some solace in the fact that about 20% and growing 20% of all U.S., at least power generation, the less so transportation comes from renewable energy sources with a big chunk of that being hydro. Now, of course, hydro is in trouble right now in many parts of the U.S. because water has just been going way down, down, down, down, down. One other thing is you spoke before about the tariffs that would follow the money, follow, you know, the construction of Chinese solar cells. And some of those, some of those countries where they're doing China's work are in ASEAN. How does this deal with ASEAN? How does Biden's special attention and concern about ASEAN? And I agree with you. It's really important that we stay close with them. How does that, how does that affect these tariffs? That seems contradictory to me. Well, the thing about ASEAN that's really important to remember, Jay, is that I don't want to describe this. There's no executive body in ASEAN. It's not similar, let's say, to the U.N. where you have the secretariat. Well, you do have a secretariat but you have, you know, a U.N., at least in the form of the Security Council, has theoretically some teeth and actually practically some teeth as well. ASEAN is based on consensus. So you have to get all 10 countries on board. And it's been the case a number of times, because I've been reading about this and teaching it to my students, is Cambodia is very in deep, Phnom Penh is very in deep with Beijing. They're probably the number one stocking horse that China has within ASEAN. And the Chinese were able to get the Cambodians to push back on various statements or agreements that, let's say, eight or nine of the other ASEAN members wanted to move ahead with. But because you need consensus, 100% consensus, the Chinese were able to use their influence with the Cambodians to essentially forge various agreements or pronouncements. Well, will Biden in fact tax due tariffs on the construction of solar cells in these ASEAN countries, when at the same time he's trying to encourage an enhancement of our relationship with them? That is the big question, my friend. I don't have an answer to it, but I mean the optics of the Department of Commerce receiving a legitimate complaint and by law needing to follow up on the complaint by the investigation of the complaint, right? To have the executive branch step in and essentially say, don't do that because of competing interests and priorities. I think that's a very slippery slope. Okay, got it. Let me ask you one more question, then we have to go. That is, you mentioned before in connection with Auxen that the problem from a business point of view is trying to anticipate the future. The problem for an installer, a solar installer is trying to anticipate the global market and supply line. Very hard to do business that way, okay? Now we have a problem on the geopolitical level of the same sort. Joe Biden is liberal and kind if he cares about ASEAN and he's the globalist, if you will. He certainly is and I join him and I know you do. What happens to those people who are concerned, those countries that are strategically concerned that Joe Biden will not be in office after 2024 and we could have some gold-plated isolationists in office? How can they do business with us? How can they trust us if it's at least a fair chance that Biden will be followed by a gold-plated isolationist? Well, you nailed it. You nailed it. That's why as I've been teaching, hedging and leveraging, hedging and leveraging is critical. So just in the case of Vietnam, since they have this best frenemies with Hanoi and Beijing, the Vietnamese have answered that question that you posed or point that you posed, Jay, in having and cultivating good relationships with Moscow because the Russians supplied them with a large bulk of their weaponry and they also cultivated strong relationship with Japan, with Australia, and with the European Union. It should be of great concern to us because you talk about elevating it from a comprehensive to a strategic relationship when they're buying weapons from Moscow applies in the other direction. Marco, we've got to go now. We're out of time. Thank you so much for this discussion. Thank you for making the time for me, even from California. Appreciate that. Look forward to our next discussion where we can follow up some more on energy in the Mekong. Well, thank you so much, Jay, and from the home turf of the Banana Slug, which is the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and damn proud of it, I wish you a good Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.