 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Hey Aloha and welcome to Stand the Energy Man. I'm Stan Osserman from the White Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. Merry Christmas for our last show of 2017. It's been a really heck of a busy year and I just don't know how it could go by so fast. Anyway, today I'm going to focus on hydrogen on the show. The name of the show is The Answer is Hydrogen. Now what was your question? Before I get into the meat of today's show, I'd like to thank the folks here at Think Tech Hawaii for all their support and hard work. Thanks to Jay, the big hefe here, Carol, Nick, Ian, Cindy, and Robert and the rest of the staff and hosts here that serve your community. I also sent out a note to a lot of folks that highlighted the attention being given to scaling up hydrogen worldwide by the new Hydrogen Council, but apparently a lot of the folks thought I was celebrating my role in their work. No. The energy man is not in this for the ta-ta-ta-ta factor. So for all of you that had to be on the back and said, hey, thanks for a good job, congratulations. Just look at the videos and the report from the Hydrogen Council and read the tea leaves. Hydrogen is starting to take off and that's the perfect lead in today's show. I've said this before and it's worth repeating again. When it comes to clean renewable energy, few people would argue against the fact that Hawaii is one of the very best places to lead the charge towards clean power. Hawaii has few fossil fuels other than wood or natural gas from landfills to treatment plants or agricultural digesters. The Hawaii imports mostly oil, but even some coal to provide most of its grid power. At the same time, we have an abundance of renewable energy resources like solar, wind, many other types, including all the thermals, geothermal, ocean thermal, and even just plain thermal heat energy that we can collect from the sun and focus that energy into heat and store the heat. This creates a great economic incentive to kick the fossil fuel habit here in Hawaii. When it comes to transportation, we're still mostly gas and diesel driven, but the science of blending renewable portfolio and making the transition from a carbon fuel based to a renewable based sustainable energy system grid and transportation is not intuitive. Last week, my guest, Ryan Wubbins, an electrical engineer and I talked about some of the ramifications of moving from a gas and deal based fuel to electric drive transportation systems. And some of the challenges were things like, how do you upgrade the current grid to accommodate most of the current demand for electricity? It's going to double over the next few years. How do you accommodate that and still meet the 100% renewable goal by 2045? How do we fund road sustainment, repair and maintenance when gas taxes draw down with less gasoline being sold? What happens to industries that rely on byproducts from the two refineries that we currently have when they shut down? How will we manage all of the batteries in a million cars here in Hawaii? And what will happen to the price of batteries when the materials to make them grow scarce as battery demand grows exponentially? The bottom line is we haven't really tried to do comprehensive planning and design for renewable sustainable Hawaii that is rapidly developing before our eyes. And whether you believe it or not, why is leading the way for the US and the people that live here want to be cleaner and greener? But that requires profound change. And as one of my good friends used to say, the only person that gleefully embraces change is a baby with a poopy diaper. So electric company doesn't want to change. It doesn't want to change its grid or its business model. Drivers don't want to stop driving themselves or give up their big cars or their powerful cars or their gas park cars or diesel cars. And people don't want to spend more money for cars just because they're cleaner or wait for them to recharge because the battery is low. As you begin to tackle these problems, more and more problems surface and more and more resistance is meant to change. And this only stifles the effort to move any change forward. Another way to express this is, what have you personally done to become more energy efficient, use clean energy and reduce your own carbon fiber footprint? In reality, we're all waiting for someone else to solve the problem for us. To tell us what to do, to show us the way, to make it easy and affordable, and until that time comes, few of us are doing much. Even if you buy an electric car today, unless you buy the solar or wind power turbines to make the electricity to recharge it, you're burning mostly oil to recharge your car. So who's doing the big plan? Who's got the big plan? No one. Who's planning to make the big plan and put it together? No one that I can see. Therefore, no change or very little change. To start with, the grid is tracking towards clean renewable power, particularly on the neighbor islands. And soon I expect that many of the folks buying and leasing electric cars will proudly charge them, mostly from home, from their own PV systems and maybe even some wind systems. In addition, more and more manufacturers are bringing out great stylish hybrid vehicles that burn less gas by taking advantage of electric drive trains. They use smaller and more efficient internal combustion engines to drive electric generators. And they use them only when they're needed. The future and I dare say the not too distant future will also include hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. And when we start down that path, things will really get exciting. And that's what today shows about. Why is energy future? What will it look like? And how will we get there? With one extra emphasis rather on the world we, we actually started down the path of clean sustainable economy over a decade ago, in fact almost 14 years ago. Most people have forgotten that back in 2006, the state of Hawaii committed to a clean energy future and even more specifically, a clean hydrogen economy. It wasn't a policy decree or a line from a top politician's speech. It took the form of a statute, a law, that was signed into law by the governor in 2006. It's Hawaii Revised Statute 196-10, the Hawaii Renewable Hydrogen Program. I'm going to read a little bit of it. The Hawaii Renewable Hydrogen Program, there is established within the Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism, a Hawaii Renewable Hydrogen Program to manage the state's transition to a renewable hydrogen economy. The program shall design, implement, administer activities and include strategic partnerships for research, development, testing and deployment of renewable hydrogen technologies, engineering and economic evaluations of Hawaii's potential for renewable hydrogen use in the near term and project opportunities for the state's renewable energy resources. Electric grid and reliability and security projects that will enable integration of substantial increase of electricity from renewable energy resources on the island of Hawaii. Hydrogen demonstration projects including infrastructure for the production, storage and refueling of hydrogen vehicles. A statewide hydrogen economy, public education outreach plan focusing on the island of Hawaii to be developed in coordination with Hawaii's public education institutions. Promotion of Hawaii's renewable hydrogen resources to a potential partners and investors. A plan for implementation during the years 2007 and 2010 to more fully develop hydrogen technologies and infrastructure capable of supporting the island of Hawaii's energy needs and including the expanding installation of hydrogen production facilities, development of integrated energy systems including hydrogen vehicles, construction of additional hydrogen refueling stations and promotion of building and constructing fully incorporated clean energy assets including reliance of hydrogen fuel energy generation. There's also a plan for implementation during years 2010 to 2020 to transition the island of Hawaii to the hydrogen fuel economy and to the extent application of this plan through the state after the island of Hawaii. Evaluation of policy recommendations would also encourage the adoption of hydrogen fuel vehicles and they would continually fund the hydrogen investment capital special fund and support investments in hydrogen infrastructure including production, storage, dispensing facilities. That's the whole law. It may not seem as comprehensive as a plan would be or one would like but it's a start and the interesting thing is that the more comprehensive planning that has been done and the arrows all point to hydrogen. So when you look at that law it basically does outline the role for improving Hawaii's economy, improving our ability to be sustainable and use clean energy and it was all based around hydrogen and that was a law done in 2006 and we haven't really done much with the law except sit there and look at it on the books. When you ask enough questions about how to best store large volumes of energy and accommodate high voltages for long duration, answer points to hydrogen. When it comes to transportation refueling times, distances traveled between recharge vehicle weight particularly in large trucks and trains, safety affordability the answer is hydrogen and when it comes to improving Hawaii's economy by reducing imports and using our own renewables effectively the answer is hydrogen. Solving the power balance and distributed challenges faced by the electric utility grid today and you'll see that the answer is hydrogen. Even cleaning up our fossil fuels that we use like natural gas the answer is hydrogen. The planning has actually been done the solutions are at hand and the answer is hydrogen. The sad fact that you may have noticed is that very little of what was mandated 14 years ago has materialized. The initial $10 million of funding that the hydrogen implementation was mired in controversy and many of the politicians felt at the time that the effort was wasted and future funding never really materialized for hydrogen. So other efforts to move Hawaii toward a clean energy future including a barrel tax that gleaned just over a dollar per barrel from each barrel used here in the state. The efforts to reduce the use of oil. In the case we weren't really I don't know if you're really aware of it but about 65 percent of that revenue has been coming in since 14 or 15 years ago and 65 percent of that revenue has been deposited into the state's general fund to support other items rather than cleaning up Hawaii's energy economy. The other 35 percent is directed into programs specifically supported for three energy security related areas food security with the department of ag health security with the department of health and energy security with the state energy office at Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. Many of the individuals view this as misuse of the tax revenues because those 65 percent mostly go towards paying salaries or excuse me the 35 percent goes towards paying salaries in those departments and little actually goes towards getting fossil fuels off of Hawaii's fuel habit. It also appears to get past most folks that these barrel tax funds have a built in disincentive to be used as intended because reducing the amount of important oil would mean reducing the tax revenues going to the general fund and that means that the legislature would need to cut programs or find other tax monies to pay for their favorite programs. So the bottom line is the state of Hawaii has laws that mandate we go to a clean energy economy the plan has been laid out and put into law but the political leadership and that includes not just politicians but big business invested in the status quo local labor unions interested in keeping jobs in their particular trades and other special interest groups want to keep things the way they are and so it's it's the end state is that we're avoiding the change even I've been quoted if it's not broken don't fix it but the problem is things are broken and we just are all numb to the fact that we live in a broken system and we just can't see it anymore. Some of some frustrated individuals think the answer is to get all the scientists together and scream climate change loud and often hoping we'll get people's attention but the founder of one of the world's most premier environmental organizations Greenpeace cautioned us that blaming man for climate change variations is not backed by hard science others think if we write enough laws let enough taxes and twist enough arms that the government can provide the changes and that gets us going in the right direction that everyone else wants somebody everybody wants someone else to fix things but when we get tired of things being taxed coerced and threatened threatened with prosecution we're all wringing our hands and no one does much of anything. The reality is and people are getting tired of Teinkiko and having the government lean on them our government has grown too large our regulations suffocating we fail to see the change like the frog that sits in a pot as the heat slowly rises into our cook so maybe it's just time to get back to basics and take care of yourself and your family and do what's right for you and me and everyone else and not wait for the government to mandate it tax it or restrict it. Let's go back to the hydrogen plant and see how much we can do to make Hawaii better. The world will watch and follow but we're going to take a quick break now and we'll be back in 60 seconds after we look at some of Think Tech's other great programming. I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of Human Humane Architecture which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. and with the show's host Martin Desbang we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii but internationally as well so join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. I don't want to sound like all gloom and doom or Mr. Negative but really there's a lot that is in your hands that we can start doing and one of those things would be to just start making personal choices like putting solar on your roof and maybe even going off the grid. A lot of folks are looking at going off the grid now and if you just have a house the process is pretty simple you do need to work with a good contractor a good solar contractor and put solar on your roof and you need the adequate storage usually batteries to keep you operating 24-7 like the grid but without being attached to the grid especially if you're in a rural area and a lot of the rural committees being developed I think may start showing up as off the grid option. Let's say going back to yourself and what you can do what would you want in tomorrow's car? I imagine it would be a car that's well-styled reasonably priced ran on a fuel that you could make at home for a matter of fact from a system that operated nearly for free particularly after you pay for the initial equipment the fuel keeps coming for free. The car should be fast powerful safe have a great range between your fuelings and be environmentally friendly from the source of materials used in production. All the way to emissions controls these should be clean sourced cars. The car should be easy and inexpensive to maintain have room inside to carry the things you need and be able to reconfigure from passenger to cargo mode to whatever you want to carry in it. It'd be great car great to have a car that didn't go out of style a classic design it didn't look like a box or a food processor and lasted over a decade and in the end be completely recyclable. Does that car exist today? Many of these features do how about self-driving what about heads-up displays and total situational awareness via sensors and cameras and a full entertainment suite. The bottom line is your future car will have some great features but it will probably be electric and not gas or diesel powered and many of those electric cars will run on hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell technology. I'm predicting that you'll be driving a hydrogen fuel cell car vehicle sooner rather than you would ever imagine and here's why if you take all the great features I've talked about above and the ideal future car they're already here they're already a reality and they're already in production and soon the infrastructure will start popping up here in Hawaii and across the US mainland and around the world and I don't make this prediction from a crystal ball or with magic but with fact and logic all the major car manufacturers and some manufacturers you've never heard of are already in production I say that in production with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles Honda Toyota Hyundai General Motors BMW Mercedes Ford they're already either in production like the first few I mentioned or they're going to be in production by 2020 they've already announced it they've already said it in fact just this week there was an article that I read in one of the periodicals that said Hyundai who already produces a vehicle a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle announced that they're going to be increasing hydrogen vehicle production dramatically and introducing a second generation hydrogen vehicle in 2018 this is really exciting news so the choices that you're going to have to make are becoming more and more available the technology is clean proven safe and getting cheaper by the day the fuel is virtually endless and boundless every country on earth can make its own hydrogen and when you burn it you make water the fuel cell is basically just a self-charging battery and the way it works is very basic chemistry not hydrogen bomb stuff the reaction is between hydrogen and regular air to produce water heat and electricity it's the same electricity your typical battery a DC electricity cell would use in fact I tell people that when you think why they use the word fuel cell it's sort of the phrase fuel cell to describe this technology it doesn't make sense what it actually does when you have dry cell batteries those are kind of batteries you use in a flashlight wet cell batteries are like the 12 volt battery you have in your car or on your boat and a fuel cell is a self-charging battery where you put gases into it and it keeps making electricity when you add the fuel to it so it's a fuel cell and there's different kind of fuel cells besides just the hydrogen fuel cell there's there's a solid oxide fuel cells and other fuel cells used in larger industry they're usually heavier bigger and generate more heat so they're usually used in stationary applications but making clean hydrogen can help pico absorb their renewable energy and store it for nighttime use hydrogen can replace propane and natural gas for carbon free gas applications and hydrogen can be made from geothermal power in such large quantities that it can be liquefied and exported as a clean energy to asia and the mainland us not to mention bringing it from the big island to oahu as was mentioned in the law it could turn hawaii from an energy importing economy to an energy exporting economy and that is huge hydrogen from solar and wind and other sources give hawaii survivability during storms and natural disasters and what's the first thing people do when there's a storm or a tsunami hit in our way they fill up their cars with gas when you make clean hydrogen you also make clean medical grade oxygen that you can use for welding or in the medical field we start to make our own fertilizers as we diversify our agriculture the list of benefits is long and it's well established hydrogen fuel cells electric cars and trucks and buses are coming to hawaii and the infrastructure will be here to support it and at that point you will have choices choices on what model and make of car or truck choices on fueling it at the station or at home choices on how far you want to go how clean you want to be and the government won't be pushing it it will be changing the way you like it it will be changing hawaiian hydrogen style it's time to revisit the plan that plan from 2006 we can scale down to individual households or make hydrogen to make hydrogen or scale up to liquid hydrogen for exporting the choices up to us all we have to do is follow the laws already in the book and demand better a better future for our kiki and for that matter that future is based on hydrogen but i want to do now is take a quick break and show a short video that we produce that h cap that i think talks to the future of what hawaii's grid could look like and i'd like to share that with you right now there are over 300 million people in our country and the vast majority rely on large-scale centralized power grids for their energy but the infrastructure is aging and it is vulnerable natural disasters cyber attacks and other threats can leave large swaths of the country without power fortunately there is an alternative a renewable energy micro grid represents a different path for the future renewable micro grids generate power from sources like solar wind hydrogen waste to energy and geothermal that power can be stored within the localized system using technologies such as advanced batteries hydrogen flywheels pumped hydro and others these micro grids can provide reliable and efficient energy transmission especially to critical facilities like hospitals airports and military bases unlike our current large-scale systems micro grids eliminate single points of failure and are therefore more resilient to disasters threats and power outages our current energy infrastructure loses a lot of money grid outages cost up to 33 billion dollars annually they are expensive to build expand and maintain and they're inefficient losing more than half of the initial energy to factors such as line loss spending reserves and theft micro grids solve these issues and greatly reduce transmission loss and maximize efficiency they also reduce carbon emissions and eliminate imported fuel costs keeping money within our local economy and even create new local industries and jobs based on clean renewable energy our energy grid was built over 100 years ago when energy needs were simple with the increased complexities of energy demands power sources and transportation now our old grid struggled to keep up we required new ways to generate store deliver energy renewable energy micro grids are a potential long-term solution that will provide safe clean reliable and efficient energy for generations to come i hope you like that video we've we've uh spent a lot of time producing it with a local company care called Hyperspective and we did one on hydrogen one on micro grids and one on the project we're working at Hickam but what the videos show more importantly is that hydrogen can play a vital role in our total Hawaiian economy and also have a profound impact on improving the military survivability and ability to do their mission as they move forward and we have everything here in Hawaii that we need to do it we have the laws in place we have the natural resources to make our own energy we have the intuition the in um inborn characters and cultural incentives to stay clean and green here in Hawaii and we have the technical ability to make it all happen and that technical ability wraps itself around hydrogen not the hydrogen will be the only thing we'll have batteries to and we'll have electric cars in the metropolitan area and while bicycles and we'll do mode shifting and ride sharing and car sharing and autonomous vehicles and lots of other things that will help us get to clean transportation and clean energy but it's all here for us to do and it'll be growing over the next few years most people aren't thinking about that they're busy thinking about a lot of other things but it's coming so I'm just telling you you should be helping us get towards there and look at the products that are available now and coming online that will help us turn Hawaii into an energy exporting economy and a clean economy that's sustainable for everyone so aloha and thanks for spending part of my lunch hour with the stan the energy man and thanks to sinney and robert here in the studio merry christmas to everyone and we'll catch you next friday and that would also be next year on stan the energy map aloha