 Back to the 2 o'clock block on ThinkTech, I'm Jay Fidel, and more specifically, welcome back to Making Leadership Work on ThinkTech. Our host today is called Life on the KIUC Board, and we're going to talk about striving to 100% renewable energy and what it's like at KIUC and Kauai. If you want to ask a question or participate in a discussion we have today, you can tweet us at ThinkTechHI. We'll call us at our new 808 phone number 437-2014. Our guest for the show is Jan Tenbergengate. He's been a KIUC Board of Director for some time, and he's been a journalist for some time and a Kauai resident for some time, and he's appearing today to talk about what happened on the KIUC Board for him and others, what happened for energy in Kauai, and life in general in Kauai and on the KIUC Board. So welcome to the show, Jan. Nice to have you here with us by Skype from Kauai. Thanks, Jay. It's good to be here as little as I'm used to this technology. Well, you look fine. You look very comfortable with it, I must say. That means we have to do this again, you know? So let's talk about, let's qualify you, so to speak. You've been a journalist. Let's talk about that, and I'd like you to talk about your time on the KIUC Board. I'll do a quick run through. I'm a Molokai boy. I was raised in a pineapple plantation on Molokai, graduated with a degree in journalism and English from the University of Hawaii, was working for the Honolulu Advertiser before I graduated, moved because I was a country boy to Kauai the moment one of our neighbor island bureaus opened up, and that was in 1971, which dates me, and moved to, so I moved here in 1971, worked 37 years as a reporter for the advertiser. Much of that time I was the environment and science writer, which included the energy beat. So I was writing about electricity and renewables and climate and a lot of the associated issues. Retired in 2007 as the advertiser was downsizing, which eventually led to its merger with the Star, which was now the Star Advertiser with the Star Bulletin, and a couple years after that, a couple of board members at KIUC came to me and said, hey, you ought to run for our board. We're a cooperative, we're owned by our members, who are also our rate payers, and I don't pretend that people voted for me because they knew where I stood on energy, I suspect. I was a familiar name from having been in their daily newspapers for 40 years. I think I might have had something to do with that. I'm hoping that I've been twice reelected, and I'm hoping that I've done something right in the meantime that justified their initial inclinations. How long is the term? We have nine members on our board, and three of them are reelected every year, so it's three staggered terms of three years. And you've been chair? I started out as the lowest rank possible in a neophyte that didn't know much and had been fortunate to run many of the committees, and I was chair for a couple of years and passed the baton to Alan Smith, who is the current chair this year. So I'm the vice chair as we sit. Yes, yes. You know, I guess my reaction to the whole KIUC experience is that the board and the KIUC in general and David Bissner, they've done very, very well in order to move it ahead to clean energy and do all the things they've done and done so many good initiatives. And a lot of that happened on your watch, and I wanted to get into the dynamics of how that board works, how the leadership and the company works. You know, address the subject of our show, which is making leadership work. It's an example, in my opinion, of leadership in Hawaii, and it's a notable example. So can we talk about, let's talk about the projects that you've seen unfold in your tenure on the board. Well, when I first got on the board, there were two notable things in the offing. One was that the board had just passed its first strategic plan, which called for 50 percent renewable energy by 2023, which was a 15-year window at the time when it was passed in 2008. The, you know, at that time, it was nobody knew how you could do that, how you get to 50 percent. Nobody knew what technology you might use. Nobody knew whether it was possible, but it was an aspirational goal that our board members, before I was on the board, felt was appropriate to put in writing. How do you pick a date like that? I mean, we did that on the state level with 2045, and I don't think anybody can tell you exactly how we got to that number, but was it just throw something on the way? Well, as I said, I wasn't on the board at the time, so I wasn't part of that, but they set a goal 15 years out. That seemed like, I guess, a reasonable period of time. We were also aware that we were short on a lot of our generation infrastructure, which was 92 percent oil fired at that time. A lot of that infrastructure was getting old. We needed new generation. What we had on our plate at that time was a proposed, as I recall, 10 megawatt fossil fuel fired plant. We called it Gen X. And shortly after I got on the board, we nixed that plan and decided to move more aggressively into renewables and started developing first with the cooperation of landowners who were the folks driving the first couple of small solar arrays. And then we started doing our own solar arrays because we realized that we could do them cheaper. And cheaper power means lower rates for our members because our cost of power flows directly to the bill. So I find that interesting because not every utility company is going to get into that. Some utility companies like to do RFPs and have contractors provide the power, although that that issue may be in flux statewide now, maybe nationwide, but you guys decided pretty early that it'd be more efficient if you did it yourselves rather than let it out to a contractor. Well, we did. We did a series of projects where a developer came to us and proposed a solar array. The first one was a one megawatt solar array. And Kapa was the biggest in the state at the time. The second was a six megawatt solar array next to our Port Allen power plant, but it's owned by Alexander and Baldwin, which was the developer in that situation. And we were able to look at some of the numbers and recognize that with the benefit of some of our advantages as a cooperative, we don't pay, we pay some taxes. We don't pay federal taxes. We have a cheap rate of capital. We can we can borrow money fairly inexpensively and we have a few other tricks up our sleeve that help us do a project and actually get get the power into the onto the grid at less than what a for-profit utility or a for-profit vendor normally could. So these part of that is due to the fact that you were co-op rather than a profit corporation. Absolutely. I mean, the the advantage of being a cooperative is is critically important. I think it it provides us with a really single-minded focus. We don't have shareholders to worry about to the degree that we we can make decisions that reduce rates. Our customers are happy. And you know, from a mercenary standpoint, board members get re-elected under those circumstances. Sure, it was the opposite, isn't it? For example, if I'm a profit corporation, I have to provide dividends to my stockholders or my board is out. In a co-op, there's no such thing as profit and all you have to do is provide the power at cheap cheap reasonably cheap rates. It's a different orientation completely, isn't it? That's that's my perception. And I think that's about that's the perception of our of our membership as well. It's it's really a very different way of looking at things. You know, the state public utilities commission often establishes rates on the basis of what your what your plant in use is. And and so that you could argue that there's a there's an impetus for a for-profit utility to put more plant in into place because they get compensated based on that. And that that improves the bottom line for for the owners of the company. Yeah, that might be that might be changing around us now as we speak. But let me let me ask me. So here you are, you're a fresh member, you're seeing all this great stuff unfold. It sounds to me, I'm just guessing that you were advocating for this stuff. You came on the board, you wanted to see clean energy and you wanted to see it soon. And you were, you know, an important force in the dynamic of those decisions. I'm guessing here. But yeah, that's, that's, I mean, that guess makes me look perhaps better than I should. You know, one of the things that that I found as a journalist who had covered energy and covered utilities, I assumed that I knew a lot more about utilities than it turned out I actually did. When I got onto the board of KIC, actually, some of my fellow board members thought I knew more than I did. I found that it was an exceedingly steep learning curve. I mean, to some degree, I'm still learning, but those first couple of years, I wasn't a whole lot of use. And I don't think any new board member is until you understand more about, you know, the remarkable complexity, taxes, insurance, rate making, borrowing, all of the things, you know, beyond simply generating power and putting it in the line. So it comes out the plug that's at your house. You know, that's in many ways. That's the simple part. Did you do research? Did you go home at night and read books and articles? Oh, absolutely, lots of, I have stacks here sitting around me still, stacks of books that I, at KIC, we ship our board members. It's actually a requirement. You can't run for a second term. If you haven't taken a series of classes on the mainland in the operation of a utility. So we, we, one of the benefits is that we make sure that we give them a couple of years to get their feet under them. But by the time a board member runs for a second term, they know something about utilities and how to do what a board is supposed to do. So as you go to the mainland for these classes at your own expense or at the utility's expense? No, the utility pays the way. Many, many of the classes are given at, at the beginning of conferences that are held by organizations like the National Renewable Electric Cooperative Association. I'm, it's, I misstated that the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which is the statewide organization of more than 900 electric cooperatives that provides us with a really deep well of expertise that we can tap when we have issues before us or when we need educational or other, other kinds of assistance. Does the utility pay compensation of any kind, aside from the expense of traveling to the mainland for these classes? Utility pays directors in this case? Directors get a stipend on days when we're called in to, to work. Or just by the day then. I'm sorry? It's by the day. Yeah, it's, if you're, if we have a board meeting right now, I think it's about $200. It, the, so, you know, some months we'll have a committee meeting day where we, where our several committees meet and a board member day. So that, that month, a board member might make 400 bucks. So why, why do people run for the board? Why do they, you know, why do they want to be like you wanted to be? I mean, undoubtedly the chair of the board. What, what drives you? What makes it, you know, what makes it attractive to the people involved? Well, I mean, to some degrees, to some degree, it's the same question you'd ask, why would somebody be on the Land Use Commission or the Department of Land, or the Police Commission? There's, there's a level of community service doing something to, to give back to the community. Most of our board members are, are older. They've been in the community. They've, you know, had some of the advantages of living in this community and, and benefiting from decisions made by the people who preceded them. And, and many of us are simply trying to, to, to give back. That's, that's certainly my role. Our, at our cooperative, we're also really fortunate in that the the members have elected board members who, who represent a really broad and, and in some ways unique perspective. I mean, we've got, we've got a judge, a guy who ran a large business, a guy who ran a large corporation, one, one, a family business, one, a major corporation. We have, you know, insurance agents, we have a whole bunch of people who know a lot of stuff, and it all comes to play when we sit in the boardroom and make decisions on behalf of the cooperative. Yeah, it sounds like all those skills are very helpful for an organization like KIUC. Is there a big competition running for these seats? Do you find, you know, a number of people running for the same seeds? Do you find the campaign? I think the max is in, in the recent era, I think there were some 20 who ran for the board the first year. But in the recent, in the last five years, the, the max is, I think nine ran for the three seats that were open. And we've had as few as I think five. But yeah, we have a pretty good, pretty good cross-section of the community comes out and participates. Jan, this is Jan Tenberg and Kate. He's a journalist and also a longtime member of the KIUC board of directors. We'll take a short break when we come back. We're going to talk to him about the challenges that they've had in these initiatives, and we're going to talk about, you know, how it works between the members of the board, between the, the members of the board and the leadership, the management of the company and, and the government will be right back. Aloha. My name is Raya Salter, and I'm the host of PowerUp Hawaii, which you can see live from one to one thirty every Tuesday at thinktechkawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate and community outreach specialist. And on PowerUp Hawaii, we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable and just energy future. To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum, from clean energy technology folks, to community groups, to politicians, to regulators, to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for PowerUp Hawaii. And maybe you can't see how to. He's a journalist and also a long time member of the KIUC board of directors and through him, we're examining the notion of leadership and how leadership works. And there are many lessons to be learned from KIUC. So tell us how the, the dynamic of the board, Jen. What makes it make decisions? You know, how are those decisions reached? What's the flavor? The we benefit from having a really good staff. It's I haven't worked with any other utilities as directly as this one. So it's not clear to me how that's different or whether it's different from elsewhere. But top to bottom, we have a remarkable staff whose whose interests align with those of the of our membership in part because they all are members. You know, every everybody who works for us also gets an electric bill and to the degree that we can make their electric bill go down. You know, they're they're working alongside us to make sure that happens. All the board members are also members. Board members, you know, interface with the public. We have regular public meetings. We have them around the island. We try to spread them into different locations. But but board, I mean, we when we're sitting sitting down at the down at the dock after a fishing tournament talking to folks, we're hearing about electricity. When we're walking in the in the halls of Costco or Safeway or Times, we're hearing about electricity. People come up to us and talk to us. They ask questions. They they bring up issues. They report to us, you know, I've got a tree banging on my power line and I'm really worried that it's going to that it's going to, you know, knock off my power. I mean, we as board members, people know who we are. They they see us on the street. We're a small island. We hear from folks folks a lot. And I mean, and that that interface helps, you know, we absolutely know when we're in the in the boardroom, as does our staff, who we're working for. We know those folks because we're married to them. We're related to them. We have spent a lifetime working with them. We play with them. We paddle canoe with them. We drink beer with them, you know, it's we know those folks. They know us and and and they're no divided loyalties. Yeah. How important do you think those meetings are when you run around the island? And and I guess it's a periodic thing where you talk to people and expose the directors and the management to people's questions. You know, it's it's really important. It is on the other hand, increasingly. I mean, I've been to meetings where we had 100 people in the room, angry and yelling at us. And we had some of those in the early years when I first got on the board. Lately, the meetings are smaller and calmer. I hope that's because we're doing some of the right things. To some degree, I recognize that we're still 60% oil fired. We're trying to to eat away at that. And we hope to be 60% renewable within a couple of years. And but the fact that we're 60% oil fired means that when oil prices are low as they are now, our bills are lower than they would otherwise be and and people are are less anxious. It's also true that that in my experience, our membership is well aware of the of the things that we've done to keep rates down. And we and we this is also something that wasn't happening in the early days. It's happening now. People come up to us and and thanks, thank us and tell us they're proud of the things that KIC is doing on the renewable front. Yeah, that's what I wanted to get to that that I'm aware of that phenomenon. There was a time when the people in Kauai were not necessarily behind KIC. There's a certain amount of complaints and argument going on resistance, if you will, and it changed. It seems to have changed over the past not too many years, two, three, four years. And now people are proud of proud of KIC. And I think that the state looks at that and notices that. But the question, if I could just dig a little deeper on that, why, what is it that you have done or not done that has made, you know, made things change in that direction? I'm not sure I have a great answer for that, Jay. The I do think that that we we have been able to move the needle on on renewables. In a way that very few other utilities in the country have been able to do it. We've we've, you know, as I think I mentioned earlier, when we when I first got on the board, we were 92 percent oil fired. Today, we're about 60 percent oil fired. We have three significant renewable energy projects in various stages of approval that can get us to 60 percent renewable 40 percent oil fired. And and I, you know, and we can expect to continue building on that in that direction. We also recognize that there's some risk to moving too quickly. Well, you can't afford to make a whole lot of mistakes because then people will not be confident anymore. No. And well, it's also true that that we we have a couple of strikes against us. We're a little cooperative. We can't we can't do some of the things that bigger electric companies can do by trying out nascent but but somewhat untried technologies. Occasionally, people come up to us and say, you know, why aren't you doing wave power? There's waves all around this island. It's a great thing. And, you know, the answer in part is wave power is still largely an experimental technology. There aren't there aren't large tried and true wave power systems around the island. And people say, oh, tech, well, we're too small for oh, tech, as I understand the the technology and the and the finances. It also isn't really in the market yet. So but, you know, I remember David Bissell came. This takes me to David Bissell. He came to one of our conferences at the Energy Policy Forum in Honolulu. And he said, you know, we recognize that sometimes you got to take risks. And what I get out of that is that that's what David says. He says that sometimes you got to take risks. If he took no risks, if you guys took no risks, I don't know if it would work as well. And I I suggest to you, there's an element of two things here. One is in an in an area where you have moving technology changing all the time is very exciting, all that you've got to take some risks. As with all technology, if you want to adopt it and make it work for you're going to take a certain amount of moderated risk. The same time you have to explain this to the people who are affected by the risk. So if you don't take any risk, I think that puts you in trouble. And if you take risk without explaining it to people, that puts you in trouble. But if you take a little risk, a little moderated risk, and you tell people what you're doing and why that makes you a leader. Don't you think? Well, I'm not going to disagree with you on that. But yeah, I mean, there's no question. I mean, a lot of what we're doing, the least risky solution for KIC would have been to continue building oil fired power plants. Because you absolutely know your fuel source. You absolutely know the technology. It's been around for a long time. The only thing that's at risk there is the price of the fuel. And that was that was a least risky technology until oil spiked at 147 bucks a gallon. And suddenly it seemed like a very risky technology. And and and the risk sort of, you know, what's risky today isn't risky necessarily tomorrow. So I mean, we suddenly found that that anything that had free fuel associated with it, solar being an example of something that's pretty expensive up front, but then you don't have big operating costs. Anything like that, you know, changes, changes the numbers. But yeah, you ultimately you can't avoid risk in the utility sphere. You know, one other thing that I noticed that he said and he said this in the in the Kauai Energy Conference to place two, three weeks ago where I saw you was that he had a plan or the KIC had a plan and they had a couple of projects lined up to meet a goal. I think it was in 2030. I'm not sure I don't recall exactly what the goal was, but 2030 was a milestone year. And maybe I said this to a more flying, but I said, gee, what happens after 2030? And he says too early to make a plan for that. We have a general idea, a vision of where we're going on this. But, you know, you can't ask me to make projects how many 13 years away. I got to get closer to 2030 before I make those. And I think there was some real wisdom in that. You make a plan to reach a goal and then you take a look at how to see how that unfolds. As you get closer to that goal, then you plan your next goal. Exactly. I mean, when we established our 2023 goal of 50 percent in 2008, I don't think the plan was that we were never going to set another goal. And in fact, here it is 2017. And we've updated we're about to reach our within the next 12 months, we should reach our 2023 goal. And we've updated to the 2030 you referenced. And our goal now is 70 percent by 2030. Right. So as we approach those goals and and are assured that there are technologies and and and designs that'll get us a little farther, we keep updating the goal. But, you know, once again, our 2030 goal is 13 years out. Yeah. So it's a ways to go. Yeah. And there's a rhythm involved in planning and then checking and then planning again and making goals without without reaching too far. And I appreciate his comment. But we're almost out of time, Jan. And I wanted to ask you one last question. I remember that this is about, you know, leadership working, making leadership work here today. And as I see it, KIUC has done that. It's done some remarkable things in terms of gaining public acceptance, in terms of moving ahead with complex and sometimes risky projects. And it has planted its feet solidly into clean energy, consistent with the views not only of the people in Kauai, but most people in the state. And so I see that as a kind of an institution, an example of institutional leadership. In other words, it's not just you or Smith, your successor as chair. And it's not just David Bissell either. And it's not just, you know, the political officials who support you. It's the whole enchilada. Somehow this enterprise has managed to put itself into a leadership position. And I wanted to ask you to comment on that and tell me what we can learn from that in terms of, you know, other similar projects in the future, not only in energy, but any initiative that we need to take to sustain the state. You know, that's a tough one. I mean, we could have gone south at KIUC if we had not had David Bissell and his team's excellent leadership. If our board were not as, I mean, we work together as a team. We don't have fistfights in the boardroom. For the most part, don't have yelling matches in the boardroom. Although occasionally we also don't have all unanimous decisions. We have pretty rigorous discussion. And as you know very well, often there are three good solutions to a problem. And you may disagree on which one to take. And you go back around and around and look at your core values and look at your strategic plan and look at your capacity to do one as opposed to another and make your decisions. To the degree that you're asking me how we make this happen somewhere else, ultimately it comes down to our membership. Our members elected, I think, a really good board. Our board selected a really good CEO. Our CEO has selected a really good staff. And you put all of those things together with a continually supportive membership. And things happen. If you let any of that go, I mean if our membership were marching at the doors with signs calling us names, we wouldn't be able, we wouldn't have the fortitude to make some of the tougher, you know, we're making 100 million dollar decisions. And that's not easy for a bunch of, you know, Kawhi guys and gals out here in the sticks. But we have the support of our membership. We have some successes behind us. And we have, you know, we're sort of unified top to bottom from the staff through the board to the membership. We have a sense that, we have a sense of mission, a sense that we know where we want to go. Not always sure how to get there. And we may disagree about how to get there. But we're going to get there together and we're all coming along. Great. Great, Jen. Jen Tenbrugginge joining us by Skype from Kawhi. Jen, a longtime member of the KIUC board and a journalist and was chair last time around. And we will talk to him again. We want to follow what's going on in Kawhi Energy. Thank you so much, Jen. Thanks, Jay.