 Noontide, this is Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, on a cloudy just about to be sunny Monday, February 1st, 2021. So far, 2020 is pretty good here. So my guest today is the distinguished managing director of Blue Planet Hawaii, which may be the most active environmental group in the entire state of Hawaii. I'm sure Melissa would not argue with that. And we're going to talk about generally what Blue Planet is doing to get us toward 100% carbon free by the year 2045, unless you have moved that needle, Melissa. So welcome to Melissa Miyashiro, managing director. Go ahead, Melissa. Yeah, thank you, Howard. I really enjoy chatting with you about clean energy and energy efficiency and all things related to climate. So thank you so much for having me on the show to chat a little bit about Blue Planet and what we've been up to and what we have on the horizon. So I was thinking about maybe just starting, sorry, Howard. Go ahead, yeah. Great. This is fun to do this on Zoom, although I missed the in-studio, but someday we'll be back. But yeah, I thought I could start by just sharing a little bit about Blue Planet for folks that aren't familiar with our work. You're absolutely right that we always have a lot going on. We're a small team, but we work really hard to create a big impact because we're motivated by doing something to tackle the climate crisis. And we really believe that Hawaii is a special place that can lead the world in global climate solutions that really motivates us. So we're a 501c3 nonprofit founded in Hawaii. We're about 13 years old and our focus is really on shaping policy, recognizing that some of the challenges that we face are systemic and we really need to address issues at the policy level. And then the other side is really our community facing work and activating the community in the journey to 100% clean energy. And we love to do that through creative storytelling campaigns and really believe in the power of story and finding unique messengers because this transition to 100% clean energy is really about all of us. It's not just something for the utility to think about or something for the state energy office to think about. It's really about everyone. And that's what we try to do at Blue Planet. Thank you, Melissa. And that phrase shaping policy sounds less than fascinating, but you and I know that it's absolutely key and it's not an abstract word. It gets translated into the real world real good. Please give us some examples of shaping policy. Yeah, there's so many and it's one of our favorite things to do at Blue Planet. So probably the most prominent example is Hawaii's law that requires that 100% of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2045. So that idea started many years ago, but it started through a piece of legislation that Blue Planet was championing at the legislature beginning in 2013. And it's something that we continued to bring back to lawmakers and really tried to bring community voices behind that bill to show lawmakers that this is something that the community wants for its future. So through talking with lawmakers and then also through grassroots activities where we're bringing students into the conversation and getting different voices from the community, we were successful in passing legislation in 2015 that made Hawaii the first state in the country to set 100% renewable energy targets. And now, as you know, Howard, nearly half a dozen states have followed Hawaii's lead and set 100% renewable energy targets. But Hawaii was the first. Yep. And usually California prides itself on being the first in all things environmental, but they follow little old Hawaii. And then other states followed suit. But you said 100% clean electrical energy. Do we have our sites set on anything besides electrical energy? Oh, that's an excellent question. And certainly Blue Planet does. And I think many others in the state recognize that the electricity system is just one piece of the puzzle when we're talking about decarbonizing. A large portion of our emissions comes from the ground transportation sector and then also aviation. So transportation generally is something that actually, you know, Hawaii has a way to go. And you were just talking about California stepping up and leading the way on environmental policies. And they've really done that with respect to transportation. You may have seen the announcement, the governor of California committed to banning the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles by 2035. So that's actually a policy proposal that's been considered in Hawaii. But but hasn't passed. There has been conversation around setting a target for 100% renewable ground transportation. So a similar target to what we have on the electricity side. And in the value of setting a target like that is that you know, stakeholders can then come together in plan and strategize and coordinate around achieving that target. Rather than it just being more piece piecemeal and, you know, taking a longer time. So that's something that we we absolutely hope to see, particularly with this the current legislative session that that just kicked off and is just getting started. There's a lot of opportunity to set policy frameworks for decarbonizing the transportation sector. And we can't do it without the cooperation of the private sector. There's a teeny little corporation, I believe still in Detroit called General Motors. Has General Motors had anything to say about this very recently? Yes, there was actually a big announcement from them that they are committing in just a little a little over a decade to only sell zero emission vehicles. So this was, you know, it's something that we've we've been hearing about manufacturers really betting big on this conversion to electric vehicles and electric transportation. But this was one of the biggest announcements that we've seen to date and really solidifies in a public way that this transition is underway. So it's really exciting to see and it brings up all kinds of questions about, you know, whether Hawaii's ready for all those new electric vehicle models to come onto the market, particularly, you know, is our charging infrastructure adequate to handle everybody converting to electric vehicle. Well, the new, I'm calling it a new Department of Energy US. The department isn't new, but its emphasis or its shift, its focus, has become new in the last month or so. And one of the initiatives is to get out thousands and thousands pay for thousands and thousands of electric vehicle charging stations. And I did a little math for little old Hawaii. And that translated, I believe, into hundreds of charging stations to be installed by the compliments of US Department of Energy. Yeah, that's really promising to see. And it also just reminds us, you know, in Hawaii, how far we have to go with building out our charging infrastructure. So right now, you know, folks that live in single family homes, it's quite easy for them to install a charger so that they can charge their electric vehicle at home. But so many of our residents in Hawaii live in multi family dwelling and don't have that easy access to charging at home. So then they're left and I speak from personal experience here. They're left with, you know, relying on the public charging network. That is just very early and it's kind of build out stage. So there really isn't enough public charging available for residents to encourage them to make the leap to an electric vehicle. And don't we see a problem here? Let's assume that the evolution towards electric vehicles is, in fact, or will soon in fact become a revolution. Fast charging, pun intended. But what's going to happen to poor old Hawaiian electric company? How is it going to handle all this massive new demand? Yeah, I think that that is is really exciting, exciting to think about. And I think it's something that Hawaiian Electric is thinking hard about and excited about kind of stepping into the future, particularly with, you know, smart charging and dynamic charging. So there's a lot of opportunities to really coordinate our transition to 100% renewable electricity with this transition to clean transportation. So ensuring that we are charging electric vehicles in the middle of the day when abundant solar is coming onto the grid and really being smart about how we're charging. So there's a lot of opportunities to, you know, restructure and play with that two way conversation, the way that electric vehicles communicate with the electricity grid and vice versa. So that's something that we know Hawaiian Electric is thinking about in utilities across the country, are thinking about that kind of two way communication with electric vehicles, which are essentially batteries on wheels, right? Mm-hmm, yep. And that brings up another wincey topic, namely storage. One of my colleagues in the energy office is helping with the permitting of a huge storage farm. What in the world is a storage farm? Could you elucidate that? Yeah, so this is one, I'm glad that you brought this up because all of these solutions are part of what we see as a holistic picture of what 100% renewable energy looks like, right? So there's a lot of different in a diverse mix of resources on the grid. So it's not all kind of large utility field projects, that's a piece of it, but then there's also, you know, rooftop solar and residential batteries. So what's been really exciting about the storage conversation is just that the price of storage has dropped so dramatically, so that it's really unlocking all kinds of new potential for transitioning to 100% renewable energy because many renewable energy sources are intermittent, right? So they're not on all the time, whereas a fossil fuel plant, you know, you can keep that running and providing power on a 24-7 basis. So by having things like large storage farms, we can store renewable energy for youth, you know, after the sun goes down, which just unlocks a whole suite of possibilities and it's more cost-effective than it's ever been. We have a very interesting problem here in Hawaii now, where in the middle of a sunny day, all those solar panels out there are actually producing too much electricity. What does that mean? It means that the electric power plants can throttle back only so much, just like a car can idle only so slowly. It goes slower than that, it dies, so we don't want that. So the utilities scale back as much as they can, there's still too much PV power, and that is when I believe you're referring to put that excess power in those storage batteries because what happens to electric demand in this state once the sun goes down? Yeah, right, it ramps up, right? Everyone's coming home from work, and yeah, it's been interesting to see some shifts in that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more folks are working from home, but generally in the evening, that's when folks are using the most power. And what you talked about, kind of having so much, the abundance of renewable energy is so prominent here in Hawaii and we're really lucky to have that, but it creates a unique challenge for us in particular because each of our islands is an isolated electricity grid. So in states on the continent, they can then offload that excess power to places on the regional grid, but in Hawaii, we really have to balance that load, which creates a unique challenge here in Hawaii or something that I know other states are looking at at how we're managing that. But we can also do, in addition to storing that renewable energy in batteries, we can also explore things like producing hydrogen with that excess renewable energy and that locks a whole nother speed of possibilities, right? Because we can use that hydrogen, which would be renewably produced in our gas pipelines and then also for transportation, particularly large vehicles. So yeah, a lot of opportunities. A lot of opportunities. And looking down the road with regard to the utilities, I don't know if there's legislation on the table right now, or if the Public Utilities Commission is considering this, but there's a little phenomenon that utilities can do called time of use pricing. Do you know anything about time of use pricing? Yeah. Yeah. And we think that's a really smart strategy and something that the utility has looked at and we hope to see additional conversation there as well. You know, that goes back to what we were talking about charging your electric vehicle during the day. So this is time of use rates are really about aiming to shift behavior and sending price signals to customers to encourage that behavior shift so that we're really using energy at the best times of day that are going to be helpful for this transition to 100% renewable energy. And as I understand it, the best time or the strongest solar time is say between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. And if you had time of use pricing, wouldn't you make electricity, wouldn't you set the rate for electricity really cheaply during that time? And then when you have your peak load, wouldn't you make electricity more expensive and people will say, well, we can't do anything about that, but consider your typical residence, which has maybe a dishwasher, clothes washer, and a dryer. And there's a brand new invention called timers. Couldn't you put your dishwasher timer on to go on at 10.30 in the morning, your clothes washer to go on at noon, and your dryer to go on at 1.30 in the afternoon. Wouldn't that be a solution? Yes, that would be fantastic. And I think it would be even better if it was all automated, right? So it's not even something that you have to think about, but your appliances and the way that they're set up to run are actually helping the grid and helping us achieve 100% renewable energy. And that happens too on the EV charging side. As an example, I have a Nissan Leaf, and I live in an apartment building, so I don't have home charging. So I rely on the public charging network. And there's a fast charger on Ward Avenue at Hawaiian Electric that I use often. And the cost to charge your vehicle is cheaper, as you said, during those non-peak hours. So it's actually cheaper to charge my car on solar than it is on fossil fuels in the evening. And you mentioned that interesting little word price. When we look at all utility options, traditionally, we made electricity, this is as a nation now, made electricity with coal and with nuclear. And here in Hawaii, we still get the dominant share of our electricity from oil. What is happening to the cost of producing electricity by natural gas, oil or coal versus producing electricity via sunlight or by wind energy? I think there's something happening to the price points here. Yeah, well, it's shifted, right? So now renewable energy and solar plus storage has emerged as the cheapest source of energy. And it's cheaper to pursue renewable energy options than it is to pursue fossil fuel options. And that's something, I mean, it's very layered and complex, but it's something that we've had some awareness about in Hawaii, considering, as you said, that we import so much of our fuel, the most oil dependent state in the country, and we're making that transition. But that's all money that's leaving the state, right? So we're paying to import that fuel whereas renewable energy is homegrown. So we're able to keep that money and keep those jobs for developing those projects in states. And you mentioned another very interesting word, namely jobs. We just now, thanks to the COVID, we went from having the lowest unemployment rate in the nation to the highest. We were well over 20 percent there back in March. And we have since regrown the economy so that our unemployment is down, quote unquote, to I believe it's 9.5 percent, which is still much, much too high. Is there any correlation between all these renewable sources plus storage correlating with job creation as in creation of skilled workforce? Yeah, this is something that we've been thinking a lot about Apple Planet and actually motivated us to put out our waypoints report, which I think you've seen, Howard, it's available on waypointshawaii.org. So it's Blue Planet, thoughts about 50 actions that Hawaii can take to recover from the pandemic. But doing so in a way that's equitable, that promotes resiliency, and also addresses the climate crisis that we're in. So we saw the need thinking about the economic hardship that we've experienced and are still really in the throes of. We saw the need to change the conversation around our climate future and really pulling out the opportunities that can both help us create jobs and foster economic growth, but that are also moving us in the right direction. on tackling climate change. So part of that report was really looking at what are the opportunities to create jobs, certainly in renewable energy, but then also in things like energy efficiency, which I know that you care a lot about as well, and there's just enormous potential in our built infrastructure to capture savings, to reduce our energy consumption, and create jobs in energy efficiency and retrofitting for building. And consider the fact that a lot of the people, well, much of the unemployment is due to the tourists or visitors sector where we only have about 20% as many visitors as we did as recently as a year ago. And a lot of those people who are employed by the industry are young people. And when you're young, you're flexible, and you're open to acquiring new skills. So isn't there a possibility, and this is something that the energy office is working on also, of giving training opportunities to these young people who are currently unemployed to go from visitor sector to the renewables and the efficiency sector. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, this is something that Hawaii has been grappling with for a long time, thinking about how to be meaningfully transition our economy and kind of, you know, disentangle it from being so heavily relied on the visitor industry. So we see this as a really critical moment to move forward in that conversation. We've been having that conversation for a long time. But this is the moment to do it. And there are so many opportunities in the climate, renewable energy, energy efficiency space that we see that as the key to helping us really move in that direction. So Blue Planet does a lot of work with youth, particularly at the high school level. There's just so much enthusiasm for them to be part of this clean energy conversation. So we work with them and help them learn about the field and then also kind of jumpstart their interest in career opportunities. And there are other organizations and the energy office and others really working at, you know, connecting those dots between that interest and then getting people to actually, you know, sign up to be part of that field. Because that's an important bridge, right, that we have to cross. It's not just saying, here's the job, you know, aren't these interesting books? Getting youth and young people really excited about those careers and seeing them as long-term career options. Plus the little fact that these are skilled positions they would be trained in and generally speaking skilled positions have pretty good salaries. But we have only three minutes left and a question has come in and you can choose not to answer this. The question is, will Hawaiian or will the rail project run on electricity? And by inference, if so, where in the world is this electricity going to come from? Because when you start these big, heavy rails up, you're going to have an enormous surge of electricity. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't know, I know that Hawaiian Electric has thought a lot about this, so I won't kind of, you know, butcher the planning that they've been doing. But it certainly will create additional electricity load. But it's kind of part of this whole pie, right? So there's other ways that we're on a system basis, reducing energy efficiency, also reducing, you know, the hope is that the rail will really provide a public transportation option that hasn't been, you know, convenient and available for many folks on the island. So that's going to reduce, you know, the need for transportation fuel to fund individual, you know, personal passenger vehicles. So it's really kind of taking a careful, holistic approach. And I know that folks are doing that and we're happy to be part of that conversation and great that folks are connecting the dots on all of the different parts of the system, because we have to manage it all. We'll work together. And as a final thought, let me put this all together, even though we're going to have, we're going to have hopefully 100% electric vehicles, all this electricity used by the rail, especially when the cars start up again, our vision by that, I mean, Blue Planet Plus, the Energy Office Plus, a whole lot of other folks, our vision is to have 100% of that high energy, high electricity demand supplied by solar, wind, maybe hydrogen and other clean sources. Is that a good summary, Melissa? You've got about 30 seconds to wrap up. Yeah, that's a beautiful summary and it's actually the law, right? So we have to figure out how to do that because we've set that mandate for the state and we're going to figure out how to do it. And yeah, it's really wonderful that so many members of the community are part of this conversation because it really is about all of us. So at Blue Planet, we're always happy to chat with folks that are interested about this and particularly getting involved in the legislative sessions. So visit our website to learn more about how to do that because that's a big, powerful lever that we can use to create the future we want. And what would they Google to get your website? Blue Planet Foundation is good, hopefully we'll pop up on climate and clean energy non-profit Hawaii also, but BluePlanetFoundation.org is where to go to find out about our work and how to get involved. And on that cherry note, we must bid fond adieu. Melissa Machiro, Managing Director, Blue Planet Foundation, thank you so very much. Been a very, very enlightening conversation, Melissa, and look forward to conversations in the future. Likewise, Howard, thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Bye-bye.