 I mean, Wednesday again, I jumped the Friday. So, Mitch Ewan, I'm here with my co-host, Jay Fidel, and it's Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And today, we have a special treat for everyone, a really long-term friend of mine, I think I've known Toby for about 28 years. Toby Kincaid, beaming in from the West Coast of the United States, and Toby is an entrepreneur. He actually has a company called Solardyne, which specializes in solar systems. He's not like a PV installer. They do all sorts of solar-related systems, plus renewable energy systems. He's an inventor in the clean energy space. They're actually a very prolific inventor. He has numerous patents, and he's still going at it full bore. He's an author extraordinaire, and he's published several books, which are available on Amazon for download. I've read most of them, and they're really interesting books, a really interesting slant on things. And we're gonna talk about his latest book. It's called Why the Green New Deal is Good for America, Focus on Facts, Not on Fears. And we'll see his unique take on this. And tell us, Toby, why is the New Green Deal good for America? Well, Aloha from Portland. Thank you for having me on. You're two of my favorite people, because you talk about real things, and this is a time in life when we need to get real. So thank you for having me. The Green New Deal came up three or four months ago, and there was so much disinformation putting out in the world that I thought, I'm gonna write a book about this and try and set the record straight. How energy is the cornerstone to everything that we've done, everything that we're going to do. And if we get energy right, everything can be very good. But if energy is wrong and you don't have access to energy, then we're all in big trouble. So the premise of this book was to look at how can we decarbonize the world? How can we actually evolve away from burning things, which is causing so much disruption and so much problems with toxicity? How can we get away from that paradigm and enter something that's truly sustainable and approaches the biggest question that we have, not only the preservation of our earth and other species, but how we can actually obsolete human poverty. You know, there's no law of nature that says that people have to be impoverished. And I've seen it in my own career, where you take a small solar panel sterilizer unit and the water is potable. Your kids don't need to die in front of you. I think this is the cornerstone of how important energy is and how we can use it to move forward for a 21st century, which is stable and affluent for everyone. There's more than enough energy. And so that's what this book is focusing on is if you have energy independence, you have a greater chance at political independence. Excellent. You know, Toby though, what about the money? What about the economics? I mean, we can do all that stuff, but people are going to resist spending their last farthing on it. Yes, now that's a great point because that's part of the propaganda. You've probably heard, well, this will cost a trillion dollars. I've heard that. But if you only say, what you only say half of it, what about the other half of the question? Not just how much does it cost, but how much does it make? And so here's the real thing. If I use equipment lease financing, then the customers are happy because they get to charge up for less cost. So it's a profit to them. The vendors and the installers, the contractors, they're happy because they get paid. It's the underwriter that comes up with the capital and the underwriter is happy because if they put up capital in an equipment lease financing package, then we pay a monthly payment, which not only pays back the principal, but over five years, 50% in profit on top of the principal. So that turns out to be a 10% levelized rate of return. So the question is, who does this cost? It doesn't really cost anyone. It makes money. It's profitable for the user, profitable for the vendors and the jobs that we can create. And it's profitable for the underwriter. This is where capital can be applied and actually earn a return. So I think the question isn't how much does it cost. The real question is, how much does it make? That's a great point, Tobian. Here, this legislative session, the legislature passed and the governor just signed today, new legislation that allows the county governments to actually get into what's a new thing. I don't think it's done at anywhere else in the U.S. or the world. I think this is world-beating technology or a concept that Hawaii came out with to finance energy infrastructure. So an example is on the Big Island, they're looking at bringing in private companies to have a public-private partnership with the county. The private company provides the vehicles, all the infrastructure, all the maintenance, the whole nine yards, and charges the county on a cents per mile, passenger mile basis. So it's just like you said, the investors are happy because like you said, they're making money on their investment. The county's really happy because they don't have to go and raise like 30 or 40 million dollars to buy a whole fleet of new buses and all the infrastructure. And of course, the most important thing is the local residents of the Big Island are happy because they're gonna get a great bus service and particularly with low-income people who rely on transportation to get from where they live to where they work on the Big Island. The Big Island is big and they gotta travel long distances. So you have people traveling from Hilo all the way over to Kokona to the big hotels on the quote, gold coast. And you know, it's a major, major draw on their income and they don't make that much. So if we have a really great bus service so that your first option is, oh, I'm gonna take the bus and then it's all paid for by the private industry, that's a great thing. And it totally mirrors what the main theme is in your book, you know, that we're talking about today. So, well, I've talked before about reality. And I just wanna add one other point about reality because reality comes crashing through when you talk about spending all that money. I totally agree, Mitch, and what happened in the Big Island is a fabulous event because it demonstrates what Toby is saying that you can find financing arrangements to soften the blow of what it costs. And that's the secret, you know, I always ask people, how are you gonna pay for this? Great idea, but how are you gonna pay for it? And you've actually found a way on the Big Island deal with the buses, that's really fabulous. And I think Toby's talking about the same thing. So the key, at least one of the keys to moving ahead with clean energy is financing arrangements. It's like those solar companies that bring in banks and lease companies and all that and make it happen. But the other part, okay, is political will. And I just wanna take one moment, then I'll get off to subject to the game. Political will, there is a case that was on 60 minutes, you know, 60 minutes on Sunday, called Giuliana versus the United States. It emanates from the federal district court in Eugene, Oregon, interestingly enough, and a judge there by the name of Ann Aiken, A-I-K-E-N. And a bunch of kids, 21 kids from around the country all sued the United States on the basis that the Constitution, when it requires the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and presumably property, includes a life for the generations to come, which is a life that deals with climate change and the environment. And their argument in this case is that the United States government has not done enough. And they want the courts to intercede, they want the district court in Eugene, Oregon to make a national order telling the federal government what it needs to do. And that's the other part of the solution. What I mean is political will. There's somewhere in the government something is happening, something is going on. And this case in the concept is unprecedented, really. I mean, you can find little precedents, but there's a big president here to find a constitutional right to a life that without the effects of climate change. So this case has been opposed in motion to dismiss have been filed several times. It emanated at the time of the Obama administration, the Trump administration trying to stop it. It may get to Supreme Court, that'll be good. But you know, the Supreme Court is not likely to give it the political will that it needs. So my point, though, and you can answer this, Toby, is, okay, we may find the financing arrangements. We may find that we have found the technology. We understand the connection of this kind of, you know, new energy, revolutionary energy technology such as you're working on, but we still need the political will. What's your answer to that? Well, it's in the children. It's their life. We have a constitution and our preamble says to promote the general welfare. I think they have every constitutional right to expect the natural inheritance of our earth. That means the species, the diversity, the quality of human life. And the political will can follow the economic will because once we take away all of these bugaboos, all of this disinformation, we can package the finance and package the technology together. That's what Mitch is talking about. That's just good capitalism. And capitalism is an extraordinarily efficient tool if it's directed properly. Now, to your point, Jay, about political will, you know, we have the political will because we're human beings. And if you take away any economic interest of fossil fuels or any other interests and we get down to the reality of people that two of the scariest words in the English language are toxicity and bioaccumulation. Frankly speaking, we're trashing the earth. And maybe we could bring up slide number one and we can get to the point. And this is what's behind the political will that is growing for everyone. First, we have to state the problem. What is the problem? Well, if you burn carbon, all of these problems occur. You get greenhouse gases, partially consumed hydrocarbons, endocrine disruptors. There it goes on, nox, socks, ocean acidification. You know, I'm not chicken little. I'm not saying the sky is falling. I'm saying your pH is falling. And that is a concern. You know, toxicity has inertia. It accumulates. And we've been spewing enormous amounts of toxicity into our environment for 300 years. And this builds up and builds up and builds up. Now we're to the point where we're dumping something on the order of 30 to 40 billion metric tons per year of greenhouse gases and these other trace elements. And the problem is if you add CO2 to the atmosphere in the oceans, you will form a weak carbonic acid. And this is the basis of acid rain and the ocean acidification. Look, if the base of the food chain can't form shells, we're in trouble because we eat these things. 70% of humanity gets their protein from the ocean. If we don't get this right, and in the next 10 years in my estimation, that's what the numbers reveal to me, you may not be able to change this because of inertia. So the political will has to be, how can we do what no one imagines possible? How can we get the right equipment to people? And once they tap into clean energy, there's no balance of payments. You don't have all of the struggles and economic stress. If you can become energy independent and clean, use as much as you want. You know, have you ever heard a fossil fuel company say, well, you know, you have to use fossil fuels or you're going to live in a cave? Well, that's silly. You know, the truth is, and maybe we can go on to the other slides, the fact of the matter is you don't need the carbon at all. So it's kind of the best kept industrial secret. So here's a little shot. You see that, you know, we've had in history five mass extinction events. Four of them were from volcanoes and volcanism. The last one was from an asteroid. Are we becoming the sixth extinction event? Because we're behaving like a super volcano. We're putting out massive amounts of heat, massive amounts of knocks and socks and greenhouse gases. And we're dumping this into the atmosphere and into our system at the level of a super volcano. Now, we can make a choice. And I believe that choice is to find a path through profit. That if you can demonstrate profitability, then you can release the enormous power of capital. There's a tremendous amount of capital just looking to go to work. And if we use that capital the way Mitch is talking about by solving problems and packaging it so that the rate of return is there for all of the players, I think that's the way to go. And that's how you can gain- Wait, wait, wait, wait. You said rate of return. Rate of return has to be at least as good as for fossil fuels in order for an investor to invest in renewables. Okay, isn't as good? Yes. Or will I do better if I invest my money in old fashioned oil? If it's not- You'll do better? I can't do better with renewables. I'm gonna stick with the oil as an investor driven by self-interest. Exactly. And therefore the challenge is to package this finance and package the technology so that we make a healthy rate of return. Now, I remember that the equipment lease financing, if you do a lease term over five years, you can use a factor called 0.025. That's the lease factor. And what you do is multiply that number by the capital expense and that'll tell you the monthly payment. So if I have a large capital that I need to place, I look at the CapEx, which has all of the guarantees and warranties. So we protect the capital, making sure they get their return. But moreover, they own title to the equipment until they're paid. So it's actually self-collateralizing. And so the idea is exactly to your point, the more money I make my shareholders and my underwriters, the more they keep pushing money at me. Hey, can you place 20 million? Can you place 50 million? Well, yes. And this is how we'll do it. But I have to demonstrate to capital exactly how much they're gonna make. Now, at over the five year term, if they make 50% over five years, that's a 10% annualized levelized rate of return. Now 10% is a lot better than anything I've seen at a bank or a treasury note. Plus you have the title to it, so it's collateralized. It's the way to go. So we need to go for a break right now. I'm gonna interrupt you in mid-stride here. And we're gonna go to a quick one minute break and we'll see you in another minute. I know you're all fascinated and wanna hear more. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Jane Sugimura, our host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thank you so much. Well, we're back and are we all ready for round two? Here I am with Jay Fidel and Toby Kincaid, all beaming us in from Portland. And I hope you've had a chance to towel down and change your mouth guard out and everything like that. We're ready to go for round two, Toby. So I want to start off quickly. You made a really great point towards the last end of what we're talking about is that the investors still own the capital equipment. And so if you look at how government uses their vehicles, so first of all, they're not open on the weekends and they only work from like eight in the morning to five at night. So basically your capital is only being used 30% of the time or that device. So as the investor, I'm saying, God, I'm only getting 30% utilization. So one of the ideas that they've come up with is, okay, for that 70% that we're shut down, we're not using the equipment, the owner of the equipment can be released to go ahead and rent it out to somebody else during the weekends or in the off hours and really get some more return on his investment and make it even better. So he has guaranteed non-recurring revenue coming from a government, plus he can go out there and utilize the assets for earning more money. And it might be even a better deal than what we talked about. And so we talked about political will. There's nothing easier for a politician than to do something good, which basically they all want to do something good, but they have the resources to do something good with and they're not getting beat up for higher taxes and what are you spending your money, our money on that for? Well, you're not spending their money, you're investing, you know, investor money in this thing and we're giving you a better life. I mean, I really want to do that as a politician. This is going to help me get elected. So I'm going to be thinking of even more innovative programs to make everybody's life better. So back to you. Bravo, yeah, Bravo, I completely agree. And that goes right into this ride share economy. You know, things are changing. In the old days, you bought a car, but it's turning into the point where now cars are available soon autonomously and you can just ride share. And this is very attractive because you don't have to personally go into debt to buy the car, buy the insurance, buy the fuel. In this way, you just use it when you need it. And what you're talking about is how the entire economy of the world is beginning to move into shared resources in many of these fields. And the bottom line of it is, you know, energy environment and the economy are intimately linked. I call them the big E's, the three big E's. If you base that on carbon, you're really in trouble because you have to keep buying the fuel. It's toxic. This causes trouble for the environment and the fossil fuel companies, you know, they didn't make it and they don't have to pay for it being used, all of the toxicity released. All they pay for is extraction. But it's that, you know, I wanna go back for a moment to this economic question. Jay, we talk about how much do things cost? How much is the state of Hawaii paying now for fossil fuels? I was looking for the number at somewhere between three and $6 billion a year. Now, from a balance of payments standpoint, that's just being sucked right out of your economy. If you go to clean energy and with gusto in the way that Mitch is talking about, by bringing capital to bear, then you don't have this enormous cost for fuel costs and even liability for the toxicity. So Hawaii is- I think you've hit it right on the head. You've hit it right on the head, Toby. Let's say $6 billion. That's my recollection. $6 billion. $6 billion. And if you could save that would be, we'd all have part of $6 billion. Wow, what'd be fabulous. Why don't we do that? Well, it's not that people don't realize we have climate change. It's not that they don't realize that $6 billion are leaving the state. But the decision makers, the public officials, are being not only affected by their notion of doing good for people, they're also being affected by those with the checkbooks who come around. And there are a lot of people with checkbooks that want the status quo. They want that $6 billion to go offshore. And this exists in many other ways, in many other states. And in fact, it's dreadfully worse in some other states. So the problem is developing political will in the face of those who would oppose, actually, affirmatively oppose political will. And to me, I'd like to hear you talk about this. How do you deal with that? Because democracy is tumultuous. It's messy. There are two sides to every bloody coin. So you can't just go and say, let's all be idealistic because there are those, I don't wanna tell you anything you don't know, there are those who are not idealistic who would affirmatively oppose the principles you are espousing. Yes, and they have every economic reason to do that. Let's face it, 15% of the world economy is going into just a few people's pockets. I mean, let's be real. Holds in the ground surrounded by men with guns. Is that really any way to run a world? No, no, all of this causes disruption. In fact, if you go to the next slide, maybe we'll go through what some of this problem is. And I agree, the path is through profit. So the big lie is that for 120 years, we've been told that we have to burn carbon. We always will burn carbon. And the fact is it's just not true. And this slide kind of gets to it. When we think of fossil fuels, we think of hydrocarbons. Well, that means hydrogen and carbon. So if we look at coal, oil, natural gas, and then hydrogen, let's look at coal. It has the most carbon and the least hydrogen and the lowest energy density, 30 megajoules per kilogram. Then we go to oil, we see that, oh, we have even less carbon, more hydrogen, and it has a higher energy density, about 40. Then we look at natural gas, which has even less carbon and more hydrogen. And here we see now we're going up into 50 megajoules going up. And then when you compare that to hydrogen, which has no carbon, you have 140 megajoules. So what do we see here? We see that it has nothing to do with the carbon. If everyone wants to frack and strip mine and drill and railroad and pipeline and process and fuel depot and refineries and super tankers and gas trucks, it's all to sell you something. The carbon is what the hydrogen is stuck to. So everyone has made for last 120 years since the evil genius of John D. Rockefeller, where he realized, wait a second, and you know what, this is telling. In 1892, he had made a 25-year career of selling kerosene. Kerosene was the lighting fluid. We didn't have electric lights, but in 1892, when Tesla and Westinghouse electrified the Chicago World's Fair, the whole world saw an electric light and went, oh my goodness. Well, Rockefeller saw that too. And he realized his business is over because no one's gonna haul around a volatile fuel if they can flip a switch. So in perhaps the most brilliant pivot in the history of economics, John D. Rockefeller said, well, we're not gonna make kerosene anymore. We're gonna go for this new fangled internal combustion and we're gonna make gasoline. And when he made that decision and applied all of his very nefarious methods, look, if you were in his way, it really wouldn't matter if your legs get broken and you can't feed your kids. That's not his concern. So let's have no romance about John D. Rockefeller. He was a tough guy. He was also a brilliant man in terms of his organization. But all this did was set the world on a path which is confined to carbon. And in the last century, we've had two world wars and how many skirmishes. The whole concept of carbon means I control the source, the holes in the ground. And with my thugs, I'm gonna make sure you pay. And this has been the case for 120 years. But now in the 21st century, we have all these incredible technologies. We have fuel cells, electrolyzers. We have all of the equipment we need to actually not use carbon at all. It has nothing to do with the energy anyway. So by jumping and making this, by getting this clear, I think the political will can rally around the economic benefit of putting solar everywhere and using hydrogen as the battery. You know, we can, what a world, we live underwater, fly to the moon, have a new heart. But you know what's missing in the entire world? We don't have a standardized industrial battery. That doesn't exist. People want to go pump hydro, but then why you don't have pump hydro? So that's not an option. And everyone else is saying, okay, go lithium. But again, this is why Mitch and General Stan Osman are national treasures, because they're pointing out the physics. That if you use hydrogen as the battery, then we have everything we need. You have solar panels, wind turbines, a battery, so that whenever you need potent energy, you can get it. And that's the key. That really is the key. And it's wonderful in Hawaii that you are spearheading this against all of those interests, against all of the winds that would love to shut you down. But we have people of integrity. Mitch, Stan, Jay, you too. And these people are standing up and saying, now wait a second, do you really want your children's children to survive? Because from a toxicology standpoint, we are going down. I mean, I almost hear low terrain, pull up. Low terrain, pull up. We're in a situation where we're going to crash. And until the very last day, the fossil fuel guys will say, well, you still got to burn some coal. And I don't know what it takes. Maybe their door has to get blown over by a hurricane before they kind of go, maybe we have a problem. No, no. We have a problem. So, Toby, thank you for giving us hope. And we have a solution. And we just have to implement it. And let's pull up the last slide in the slide deck. And if you want to know more about Toby's ideas, please dial into amazon.com and download his book. I tell you it is awesome, a great book. And he has his own unique way of drawing pictures, which are so simple, but so effective, as you saw in some of the slides we have here. So, Toby, thank you very much. A handshake across the water. Thank you, Toby. We're going to bring you back. We have to bring you back. We've got to bring you back. When you come back, you can tell us how you really feel. Yeah, exactly. We'd love to join you. Get emotional about it, instead of being so low-key, okay? So this brings us to the end of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I hope you all enjoyed the show. And we'll be back in next week with a canned presentation. We're going to show you a video of us presenting some of these concepts to the County Council on the Big Island, and while I'm in Houston. So I'll be beaming in from Houston, and we'll show you some more of this. Solutions. That's what we deal in. Solutions. Aloha, aloha. Thank you. Aloha.