 Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, May 10th, 2021. We've got a very shady presentation for you today in the form of two trees. What is, what does Hayashi mean in Japanese? Two trees together or forest, which introduces Brandon Hayashi. And he's got so many distinctions, so many awards, so much education. It would take the whole program just to describe that. Let me give a little insight into Brandon. We go back in the energy world for forever. And one of my colleagues and I were listening to Brandon present many years ago. And we dashed up to him afterwards because we're both ardent postmasters and said, Brandon, Brandon, you, your presentation was brilliant, but it was full of ums and ahs and oohs and so's. You've got to take postmasters. Yeah, real busy. I'm real busy. And then there was silence didn't hear from him. And next thing you know, he's giving a Ted X talk. And for those of you not familiar with Ted X, it's almost the pinnacle of the pinnacle of all presentations internationally. So that that's a little insight into Brandon and Brandon welcome welcome. I haven't seen you for a while. So good to see you again. We are going to talk about trees and EVs. And in the end, you're going to link the two together. And you talk about, oh, this is all about energy, energy efficiency. We talked about renewables, but you're going to link trees and EVs into a grand scheme of pooling the planet. Brandon, begin by talking about the significance of trees. Yeah, so let's first of all thank you hard for that introduction. I'll try to live up to that really fantastic introduction. I wanted to take us back a little bit in time to kind of explain what process I went through and what happened and how we get to hopefully at the end of this conversation that that dovetailing that coming together of trees and EVs. So earlier this year at the end of February, you know, I left my previous employer and went on a little bit of a journey, if you will. And that journey you can kind of start really at the beginning of March if you want to go to the next slide. What you see in front of you is what was reported on almost exactly 10 years ago. These were known as tsunami stones in English, but effectively what they were were previous generations, letting those who they would not even know were born about the height of the trees that come when the tsunami were to arrive in Japan, basically what these stones saying there's many of them this is just one example in one part of the water in northeastern Japan. But this stone basically says do not build below this level. And there are a number of tsunami in the 1890s and so on certainly thereafter there were some as well. And of course, 10 years ago being the 2011 March 11 tsunami we know as a total good tsunami and earthquake and nuclear meltdown. So I went back taking this kind of as my cue this was really, it happened. The 10th anniversary is about 10 days actually after I left my previous employer. And it pushed me to kind of think back and delve deeper into my own history, my own heritage and going back to the islands and the countries where my ancestors came from, and really stumbled upon really looking at this once again. And as I delved in that area, other things started to come to light so for example to go to the next slide. What you see here is actually a really famous five pointed fort in northern Japan in Hokodate Hokkaido. And the reason why I bring this up is for a number of reasons so what you see there obviously is a beautiful example of what it looked like in March and April with cherry blossoms that's all the pink you see within and in certain parts outside of the month. But you'll also perhaps know that on March 27 of this year was the first time in recorded history that you had the peak blooming of cherry blossoms come so soon. And it's been recorded for 1200 years because that's what the Japanese do with things so important as cherry blossoms. And so you have this record of blossoming that actually reflects climate change that has happened over the last millennium plus. And what's also important to note on this particular fort was right at the time when Japan is going through a massive transformation from a feudal era into what we now know as the Meiji Reformation or Reiji Restoration. It was a political, economic and land use change drastically in a very short period of time. That fort was the first foreign designed fort in all of Japan and part of that war that happened at that period was taking place here as well. And it was prior to that wetlands. So you have both from a natural ecosystem services perspective changed because of political times and then economics and then when they replanted it and turned into a park around the turn of the 20th century. You then start to see cherry blossoms which again as noted earlier this year was the first time in 1200 years that it's this early and that is directly an impact of the climate crisis that we're facing. So that Goryukaku Fort is an example of what we see of how we are as people are changing our climate around us at massive scales that we sometimes have a hard times grasping. And that's really where I started to focus more on, well what can I do, what makes sense for me. And the next slide is an example of some of the thought processes that I had and this is not developed by me. This is actually pulled from a series of designs from a bunch of folks. Some people will refer to this as Ikigai, and other sources will absolutely say this is not Ikigai, but rather focusing on one's purpose. If I can explain this real briefly Howard, how it works. So what you have actually in the center labeled as Ikigai, again some people can replace that will want to replace that with purpose ones life purpose. And you could imagine this as really just four circles with Ikigai in the middle right of Venn diagram just reshaped, and you have starting from the right, what the world needs, what you're good at, what you love, and of course, what you can get paid for. And you'll see I'm not going to go through all the 1234 but you'll see where you have either two or three of those circles aligning, you get good but not great. It's only when the four come together, that's when you get that purpose. And so that's really kind of as a lens what I did for several weeks after leaving my previous employer, and just thinking through what this all means for me. But ultimately at the end of the day, there is the lens of the climate crisis. So on the next slide, I don't think anyone who's watching this Howard you certainly don't need a reminder of this, but this tells us exactly where we're at right now. And you can see this is only tracking from obviously the 1960s and there's a much longer cycle here that we should be examining. But this gives you a good idea of how irrespective of the pandemic where we thought, Oh great, you know, as bad as it is, at least we're going to reduce our carbon right emissions being emitted into that atmosphere and that's not entirely true. Yes, it did slow down a little bit, but you have the aggregate that's still floating out there right our so called legacy greenhouse gas emissions. And so this just shows you and it gives you those arrows right depending upon which particular protocol you're pointing to, whether it's the Paris Agreement in 2015 the protocol from the last century and so on and so forth, but where we're aiming to be. And I just checked on all website and even though they're going through, you know, essentially reconfiguring and making sure they're confirming where the measurements were were effectively at 419 parts per million. And that Paris Agreement has us hopefully not surpassing 450. So, not that far away at the end of the day, from something that's going to need a global massive effort to curtail and change. So, I know I've been talking a lot how I just kind of want to pause but just give me kind of a brief as to where my mind has been, what kind of things I've been looking at listening to reading, you know listing mind mapping and so forth. And that's really where it all kind of culminated and where I created my consultancy, and ultimately looking to how things connect. So we can move to the next slide. This is really for those of you on O'ahu or those of you familiar with O'ahu, this is actually on the hike out to a loop trail. There's a lot of exposed routes on that particular trail. And the reason why I wanted to share this picture, it is really the confluence of a bunch of different things so obviously you have the roots themselves when when you're looking at from an ecological forest right what's underneath the soil is much larger than what's above you can oftentimes use that analogy of the tip of the iceberg versus what's below the surface of the sea. And that's in a way to a certain extent reflective of how a lot of things are converging so you know you talk to people like Pono Shim, who often will talk about our need to connect, and yet we have a tendency to correct. So a lot of these discussions that we have, whether it's policies processes projects, what we're really trying to do is make things right, but in the process perhaps it's not about making the right thing by correcting people are correcting actions, but by connecting and driving things in the right direction. You know another great person I think, who's spoken very eloquently about this is Dr Catherine Heho, right where she kind of lays out the pack of saying look, we really only have three options. We have mitigation, adaptation, and or suffering, and anything that happens in mitigation or adaptation lowers that suffering, but the only way to reach people is to actually meet them where they're at. And have a discussion around values, shared values, right, and that to me is that network it's those interconnectedness of roots where you have older trees helping out younger trees passion on nutrients. Right, that's, that's to me where it all kind of comes together. And with regards to energy, me, what's under the ground or hopefully will very soon be under the ground is going to be this very complex intelligent network of interconnected charging stations right or EVSE that will allow us to have hopefully bi-directional flow of electrons coming from vehicles from the grid from PV systems and so on and so forth. So that's really Howard how, you know, my thought process has been is bringing it all together through this interconnectedness at the end of the day where all people being interconnected. You described EVs as batteries on wheels. Right, right. So in a way, physically speaking, technically speaking, that is, that is what they are, but hopefully what can come from that is not just a bunch of batteries rolling around in cars individually, but that the aggregate benefit and value streams that can come from that, such that they can be connected and create grid services for the utility and some of the events that they have when we have peak usage and so forth, and for the consumers as well too. Obviously, driving towards a solution, no pun intended by driving, but driving towards a solution that enables us to reduce the amount of emissions going into that atmosphere. I think that's an important point, right? Everything Howard, you and I have been working on in the past was about reducing emissions. That's through efficiency, through renewables, through the strategic application of energy storage. So to the end of the day, going back to, you know, that that previous graph that we had shown, even if we reduce the emissions going forward, we still have the legacy emissions to deal with. We have to address that. How do we capture? How do we draw down? How do we remove and sequester those emissions? That to me is a big part that oftentimes doesn't get talked about as much. It's not seen as as cool or as sexy, and maybe by the investment community, maybe not as much previously as an investment opportunity. I would argue that tide has kind of changed on that in the past year or two. But I think previously it was, you know, Howard, you and I have talked about how efficiency sometimes was the ugly step sister, right, of the sexy renewable energy. I would argue to a certain extent if you had to put a pecking order in there, a forestation and natural based solutions would rank possibly even below efficiency. I think that's changing. I think you're going to see and you're already starting to see locally and internationally investment, real investment in natural based solutions with regards to carbon capture and sequestration. And give some examples of natural based solutions, please. Sure, sure. If we want to move forward a couple slides actually so we can remember why we're in this situation that we're in. This is the slide with Brazilian rainforest being burnt. So we have challenges in front of us that are no small feat to tackle with regards to how we're treating our tropical as well as temperate force which make up the large majority of our forests around the world. This is just a picture of what we see. And what we know is happening on a daily basis right you're basically burning down rainforest to create other economic opportunities whether that's pasture land or some other way of creating sooner, quicker, better supposed economic output from that use of the land. And again that's a non recognition of what the value of an actual pristine rainforest can provide, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So when we look at the opportunities here one of the things that you know I was looking into is that there's been some actually really good global analysis of the forest around the world, both from a geographical geographical representation but then also getting down to the weeds around how do we solve for this, what kind of trees operate and work best in what kind of environment, and what are the things that come from that whether that be, you know it's best to have something like an agroforestry where you actually have say, you know a a revenue stream that could come from the medicine from the plants or the fruit that comes from the plants, or if you're talking about the sheer amount of biodiversity that comes back to a place, once you have it reforested to how it previously was or similar to how previously was. There's a lot of good examples of why we need to do it and lots of models, there's a really good model that was put together about a year ago. And it's essentially being inputted by folks all around the world. And it's basically showing us that if we're able to take back what was taken away, if you will, and reforested and I think the number was around point nine. So almost one billion hectares, if my math serves me right from metric to imperial hectares about 2.471 acres. So you want to multiply that by 2.5 we're talking about, you know, almost two and a half billion acres of land perhaps even more that can be put back into reforestation or could put back in through a forest station of what was there previously and what that does by way of the ability to draw down carbon and sequestered into the soil, but all the cold benefits that come along with that. Oh, just one example just to give you a chance to take a deep breath there, Brandon. This is a negative example but approximately 1620 1630s Cortez and the conquistadores were marching from what's now Mexico City down through Central America, and then started spreading out through South America. And as they did so, they of course slaughtered a lot of the native peoples but more to the point they spread disease these people just like the Hawaiians were very susceptible to disease. And whole villages got wiped out because everybody died of smallpox or whatever it was. And at that point, there was an increase in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and a decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide because all those villages with all that agriculture and human activity were just swallowed up by the jungle again. So just a little historical negative example. I think there's a lot of examples actually there's a good book Jared Diamond put out one called collapse several years ago, and he gave kind of a good example of a Tokugawa era managed forestry in Japan and a negative example that I think many of us here in the islands of Rapa Nui or Easter Island of the complete opposite of a desolation right a desertification of that island's forests. So there's a lot of examples of that throughout history, but I think what's really interesting is looking at what's being done now. So if you take some examples around the world, you know there's a gentleman who used to work for Toyota, who's an industrial engineer. I'm sure I'm not properly saying his name correctly, but I think it's somewhere along the lines of Shibendu Sharma, and he's created a company called a forest with two trees. And they've taken Milwaukee method or professor in Japan and done amazing things with first three both in India, as well as outside of India. And I think I think that's a good example and they've been doing it for a number of years. That's a good example how you're bringing back the power of the forest and we talk about Japan and Dr. Miyawaki, he walked some of the very places that were decimated by the tsunami back in 2011, and some of the only things standing were some of the very trees that were native to that area. He has a thought process around how can we create natural barriers, right? This isn't necessarily a green wall per se as to some of the things that are happening in Africa, right, around the deserts there, but in a different way, right? How can we use nature to help protect us from some of the other things that are challenging us, like tsunami and, you know, the types of tidal waves, we're going to have tidal by way of king tide, tidal waves, not tsunami, but other natural events that we're going to have. That's an interesting example of one kind of thing that's going on, but let's bring it home here to Hawaii, right? There's a company here that got started just recently called Terra Formation. They're based on Hawaii Island, and their CEO was actually the former CEO of Reddit, and I'm just digging into them and really starting to learn what they're doing as far as I know they're the only one locally doing what they're looking to do, basically from a for-profit perspective, enabling through the sharing of technology and processes and knowledge how to grow a forest, right? And their goal, their goal is super simple, right? Their goal is simply plant a trillion trees, that's with a T, not a B or an M, a trillion trees by 2030. And what seems like a, you know, a B-hack, right? A big, hairy, audacious goal. I think through their processes that they've gone through, it changes everything from a B-hack to just a G. It's a goal. It's a big goal, but it's not hairy, and it's not audacious, and they kind of work through, and I've listened to a couple of podcasts and read articles on what they're doing, really fantastic things, and I hope they have a lot of success going forward, because that's exactly the kind of things that we need. It matters, if you will, analog technology that is the trees, right? Nature's best carbon capture and sequestration technology with the know-how, the lessons learned from Silicon Valley, understanding the flows of capital and how you attract adventure funds to exponentially scale at speed. And that's really what we need, right? We have a massive challenge in front of us with a very short period of time to enact impactful scale of work, and how do we do that? And if the terra formations of the world can get going, right? It seems to be open source, they're going to share everything with what they're doing with others, because it has to be a global action, not unlike the pandemic that we're facing right now. It has to be everyone, right, forced in my head. And to me, what seems to be really inspiring, and this is why we have this slide, you know, with the kupu-kupu, right? The ferns coming out. They're the first, in most cases, the first natural rebirth, if you will, after a lot of flow, is to me, it talks about what's already in the soil. It talks about what was previously there. And I had heard how we're starting to see this in examples around the world where you'll see what was previously a desert, when you start applying things such as water to the land and planting indigenous or native trees, you start to see how it changes the microclimate itself, and then in the soil itself was the seed bank, right? Those things were already there, they were dormant, they needed the right inputs to make it happen. And to me, the kupu-kupu fern on a very local scale represents that. When we have something horrific, sometimes horrific like a lava fall, lava is not just a bad thing. But in this case, what comes first is the kupu-kupu, and after that, you get more native plants, and through that, you then get natural biodiversity coming back, which was once there. And that's kind of the interesting and exciting part to me, when you look at a terra formation kind of company. And Brendan, can you repeat the name of the local company and the name of the founder? Yeah, it's Terra Formation. TerraFormation.com, and the founder, his name is Yi Shan Wang. Sure, a lot of people will want to Google that and find out more about it. Yeah, they've actually, I think it was in the Hawai'i times, just a couple weeks ago, there was a piece that was written. They've already planted, I think, 3,000 trees in a short period of time, and they importantly have already done a demonstration project of desalination. And if my memory serves me correct, there's something on the scale of about the physical, the plant itself being the physical size of about a half garage and almost a little less than a half an acre of PV. And what that could do was provide enough water to create a forest and something from 50 to 150 acres. So you're looking at, you know, if you're looking at half an acre to 100 acres of forestry, that's the kind of ratio, right? That's the kind of scale that globally I think we need. And we're having it here right in our own backyard. That to me is very exciting. Yeah. And we've only got a few minutes left, Brandon. We need to close with EVs. Yes. What I'd like you to do is do an analogy between the interconnection of roots and how the trees help one another and scale that to the integrated grid or the smart grid where you can enter into agreement with EV owners that at certain times they can signal the utility. Okay, my battery is available and everything gets integrated with everything else. Right. Right. And just like the company Terra formation, what I'm going to be talking about here, what we're doing with an organization called sustainability partners is not theoretical. It's actually happening. Right. So one of the things that I looked at through my process was who's already doing this. So again, we're talking about practice, not theory. So there's a group called sustainability partners out of Arizona. They want a contract here in the state of Hawaii to deliver to the public sector, these types of electric vehicle or transportation as a service, if you will, solutions. And so they have the ability, and I'm working with them on that just to be completely clear. I'm working with them to enable this to happen at greater scale is to work with the public sector, and allow them through what's called a statement of objective procurement mechanism to enable them to have a fleet transformation at the fleet level. So the individual sedans trucks, vans and so forth, but also at the transit level with regards to buses, for example, and then tied to all of that inherently, as you mentioned, Howard is the back end infrastructure. Right. Whether you're talking about a pantograph overhead charging for buses, or an individual charging station that has, you know, dual ports, right. So everything and in between, and how that comes together and importantly, economically how it works. So in the case of this, the biggest challenge that we've had even prior to the pandemic but certainly now that we're in the midst of the pandemic is lack of capital. Right. If we have to buy an electric bus that's over a million dollars in many cases. But what if we didn't have to buy the bus. What if the buses as well as the fleet didn't have to come from the coffers of the state or the city. And that's really where sustainability partners, and this statement of objectives, commitment comes into play, because that's where you can put in the infrastructure and provide the hardware and software and put it into a user fee. So you could you essentially translate cap x into up x and it can be managed a lot more predictable and you know what you're getting at the end of the day. And again, all goes towards a smart infrastructure that hopefully also enables in the not too distant future vehicle to grid. Right. You have grid integration technology opportunities where you have by directional flow of electrons from the battery on wheels to the stationary grid. Right. You as a consumer at your home or the fleet for the city and county of Honolulu or for the buses. Right. That's where it all kind of comes into play. And I have a couple more slides and just wanted to go through them briefly. The second to the last slide is really for anyone who watched the Super Bowl, you will remember that this is Will Ferrell's commercial from GM about EVs and how we're trying to challenge Norway right for the most EVs. But it's really, I think the importance of a lot of this discussion because what we've had here is a very serious discussion about serious issues, but we also have to remember the humor in life, and the importance of being able to laugh. And this is a good example of how we can drive change through humor to a certain extent and going directionally where we need to go. And the last slide again bring it back home here to oh right just a couple of weeks ago on Earth Day, the city and county of Honolulu to release their climate action plan right there, CAP. And in that were nine strategies and 47 actions. The fourth strategy is the electrification of transportation. Right. This is something that the folks at Department of Transportation Services. Mayor Blanchardi, obviously the CCSR or Climate Change Sustainability Resilience Office, everyone is aware of that transportation is a big part of our solution. And that's where again, if we have the policy in place with the right processes, and we understand our place here, we get the outcomes, we get the projects, and we get the people we want to work with. And that to me is that interconnection powered of what you asked for in the route. It's those five P's right. It's people place projects policies and processes. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah, thank you so much, Brendan, we are running out of time, but you know what you are evolving so rapidly that I bet if you become a guest in another six, eight months, we're going to be talking about this expanding. Yeah. Hopefully, yes. Yes, trees and EVs, we need more of them for sure. Yeah. And then, you know, we're just starting to talk about smart grid and that that incredible integration just just like the tree roots. Yeah, that requires us to bid on it you to Brandon, hi Yoshi, and to code green think tech Hawaii. See you next time and thank you so much. You enjoyed the heck out of it. Thanks.