 Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. Do I have a special guest for you today? Yes. He's... Oh, he's right here. It's me. I'm going to fly solo today because at all modesty I do have some specialties and I don't know anybody in the island who is as specialized as I about 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour. Wait a minute. Kilowatt hours cost 25 cents. Something's going on here. So we're going to take a bit of a ride today. But first let me tell you about a major company that works on Honolulu Harbor. And they called me in and asked me to do a walkthrough and do recommendations for reducing their energy use. And I did. And I found that they had a lot of outdoor lighting because they've got acres and acres and acres of property. And it has to be high security, so it's all lit at night. And I went through the building. I couldn't find anything equal in savings to that outdoor lighting. So I said, why don't you just snap off the fixtures off the top of the pole, put in better lighting fixtures that would reduce the wattage by about 50% and get better safer light down on the pavement and last a lot longer. That was my recommendation that I wrote to the CEO of the company. Didn't hear back, didn't hear back. And later I read that they had installed PVs, photovoltaic systems on the roof. And if they spent say $20,000 after tax deductions on that, after about 20 years they may save a grand total of $40,000. So two to one savings. What I was recommending to them would have cost a lot less than that and generated two or three times as much savings over the life of the property. Why did they make this decision? For the same reason that thousands of people across Hawaii have made the same decision to go with photovoltaics. Why? Because they are bright, shiny objects. If we could have the first slide please. How is that for a slide? PV, oh my goodness. And note who those little creatures are going around. They flame. Why do I call it that? Well let me explain. Howard Wiggs anthropomorphic explanation. When we, our distant ancestors came down from the trees, they were teeny little weak slow creatures. We know that you can't move on two legs nearly as fast as you can move on four legs. How in the world did our ancestors survive? My theory is that they develop special senses including visual senses which were super super geared toward survival. Let me give an example. Caveman A goes out from his cave to get a breath of fresh air and he is super super alert. He is constantly looking around him for any sign of danger and sure enough out of the corner of his eye he sees a saber toothed tiger peeking around the corner. And he scoots back in the cave and he lives another day to propagate more. His neighbor Caveman B is much more reflective type. He goes out to get a breath of fresh air and thinks, you know, my mate, when she's cooking our meal, the flames, the heat goes all over the cave where we don't need it. And we have a heck of a time finding firewood. What if I got a bunch of flat stones and put them in a circle and we built the fire in there? Then the heat would reflect off the stones and we'd only need half as much firewood and we'd cook more quickly. And as he's thinking these deep thoughts, the frustrated saber toothed tiger comes and visits him, peeks around the corner. He's too busy thinking. The long range hominid is gone forever. That is why we have become attracted to bright shiny objects the way infants. You show them bright shiny objects and they look and they go and they go and they get all excited. What's our other examples of our bright shiny objects? The family needs a new car. Ooh, that SUV, big, powerful, prestigious, that gets spent instead of spending, say, on children's education. Or politicians, a new building, bright, shiny building. What happens to all the existing buildings which need all that boring maintenance? A new building gets built. You can see where there's a bit of a problem here. So here's family A and they're offered a PV system after the tax credits for, say, $15,000. And it's going to save them $30,000 over a period of 20 years. Or they can spend about $7,000, get a solar hot water heating system, LED lights, energy star appliances, energy efficient faucets and shower heads. And that's going to save them $50,000 over the same period. So 15 yields, 37 yields, 50, which do they choose? The PV system because it's a bright, shiny object. So let's go now to some Hawaii slides. And this, let's stay with this graph for a minute. This is produced by Hawaiian Electric when they were still getting courted by next era. And over on the left is the current year. Over on the right is 2045 when we're supposed to have 100% clean energy. And the different colors are different types of fuels. The light blue is a liquefied natural gas, which was to be the fuel. But note that the total curve is going up instead of down. That's demand for electricity. So efficiency was not accounted for here. Now, see that line, straight black line going across? That is my projection of what would have happened to that demand if the energy building code had been passed today. That is the easiest, quickest form of energy efficiency. All new buildings, all new homes, retrofits get retrofitted with this super efficient equipment. You can see already it would have a considerable impact. Now, energy codes don't stay still. They get better and better. So if we go to the next slide, here's what would happen by the year 2024 with improved energy codes. And energy codes are cumulative. The savings keep accumulating more and more and more and more and more every year. Now that's a pretty big chunk. But we go to the next slide, 20, 30 better codes. The initial codes are still working year after year after year. We've cut about half of our demand out. And finally, we go to the final slide and look at what we've done easily. Two thirds of all of the way that we get to clean energy has been done, not just by codes actually, but by energy efficiency. So why haven't we done it? Well, again, the bright, shiny object theory. But before I wrap up and make the really strong case for energy efficiency, let me say that all those nice renewable energy projects that we're in, or technologies that we're looking at also, they too have a bright future. And what's his name? Moniz. Even Moniz, the head of U.S. Department of Energy, just released a series of futuristic slides. Let's see if we can go to the first one here. This is what's called distributed PV, photovoltaic. And those are the systems that are on everybody's roofs and home roofs and warehouses and so forth. The blue bars indicate decreasing costs between 2008 and 2015. The upward brown line, that is the increase, increase, increase in the number of distributed PV systems. You see, it's got a nice future, much more cost effective. If we took that out some years, that same trend would prevail. And then we go to the next slide. And this is what's called utility scale PV. These are the great big photovoltaic farms that we see. Kauai has a large farm, even the island of Linais, getting a lot of its energy from a PV farm. Same trend, cost goes down per kilowatt hour and capacity goes up. And if we go to the next slide, batteries. We are, as you realize, Hawaiian electrics having a lot of problems with the excess of PV systems that we have now. So the way to alleviate that is through storage batteries which suck up the energy in the middle of the day when we have too much and then deliver it at night when we don't have any and we have our peak demand. Same trend, costs down, oh wait a minute, oh I take this back, this is EV. This is electric vehicles. The cost of those batteries for electric vehicles going down. The sales of electric vehicles going up. And incidentally those EV batteries can also serve as storage batteries for the utility. And if we go to the next slide, wind. Wind is coming on very big. Texas is producing more wind energy than oil energy and its cost is way, way, way down. So look at how wind energy is going up, up, up, up, up, costs down, down, down. So in all of these technologies we have a very, very bright future here. And we go to a final slide I believe. My favorite LEDs, light bulbs. Look at these little guys. Back in 2008 they were horrendously expensive and there was virtually none on the market. Look at this now. That's 200 million LED lamps out there and I know that's a very conservative figure already. You can buy in a big box store, you can buy a LED lamp that looks like your standard old incandescent lamp for about $5 because Hawaii energy subsidizes that cost. And we, I could extol the virtues of LEDs all day long. But we won't, instead we will take a break and get into the grand finale of 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour Howard Wigg cold green back in a moment. I'm Stan Energy Man and I want you to be here every Friday. Noon, thinktechhawaii.com, watch the show. Be there. I pity the fool who ate. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii. Stacey to the rescue. See you then. Welcome to A-Show in B-Wheel. Looking forward to see you next month on October 13, Thursday at 11 o'clock. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hi, I'm Jay Fidel. That's Ted Ralston. You know, Ted is the host of Where the Road Leads. It shows every Friday from 4 to 5 p.m. It's about technology. It's about how people collaborate and solve problems with modern technology. It's where the road leads. We all know that. We should all be listening. Join us there. 4 to 5 p.m. every Friday. Now, what about that you agree with? All of it. I knew we'd say that. Aloha. Say aloha. Aloha. Good. Okay. Good afternoon again. Welcome back. Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. Now we're going to get to the really exciting stuff. Look at this. Oh, my goodness. Public Utilities Commission report to the 2014 legislature on Hawaii's energy efficiency portfolio standard, the stuff of cocktail parties everywhere. Well, I consider it very exciting. Anyway, and let me quote extensively from this. What they are doing with this report is looking at the potential of energy efficiency. I've defined it a long time ago. Doing more with less. You trade in a 1985 Oldsmobile that gets 12 miles of the gallon for a hybrid that gets 45 miles of the gallon. You've increased your efficiency, your gasoline efficiency by 40. And it's still getting you very effectively from point A to point B. In fact, much more enjoyably. So that's efficiency. So that's what this report is looking at. And this is the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission, very powerful organization. And I quote, findings and conclusions. The commission is aggressively pursuing energy efficiency is a valuable and underutilized resource that underutilized plenty of potential out there. As a performance of Hawaii energy and Hawaii energy is one of the sponsors of this program. They're the people who take a little portion of your electricity bill and put that back in the form of energy efficiency incentives. You buy an energy star refrigerator. Hawaii energy might give you $150 just to encourage you to buy energy instead of a lesser refrigerator. As a performance of Hawaii energy demonstrates demand side resources where you're decreasing the demand in your home or your building can provide significant benefits to taxpayers and far exceed the cost of providing the programs and services, meaning it's really, really cost effective. Furthermore, the 2013 energy efficiency potential study indicates that there is substantial untapped energy resource efficiency throughout the state. In addition, there's more. Energy efficiency provides many other benefits, including reduction in the utilization of the grid. What that means is there would be less juice flowing through Hawaiian electric lines. What is the benefit of that? The less something is pushed, the more, the longer it lasts, the lower the maintenance. Think if you had been driving your car for 12,000 miles a year, you reduce that to 6,000 miles a year. Of course, the car is going to last longer. The tire is going to last longer. Fewer tune-ups, the whole business. Same with the Hawaiian electric lines. The more efficiency there is, the less juice flowing through and the less maintenance and energy savings that persist for many years. Now, you buy an Energy Star refrigerator. It saves, you know, it saves as much as 1,000 kilowatt hours a year in an extreme case. That's year one. Year two again. Year three again and again and again and again for, say, 12 years. This is a gift that keeps on giving energy efficiency. So you look down the road at your savings year after year after year and reduction in the cost of compliance with environmental regulations. The best example I can give of that is there's a lot of talk about big offshore wind power farms. Great idea would generate huge amounts of electricity. But think about it. As soon as talk got serious about it, somebody would find a reason to object and there would be protests. The process goes on for years. As the environmental impact statement goes on for years, finally you get that resolved now. You've, I assume, you've got to put these huge concrete blocks down there. That's not going to be easy then. This huge structure going up. This is years and years and years and a lot of environmental controversy and a lot of environmental studies going on. With efficiency, you take out, say, a large building, an old beat up air conditioning system, put a new super efficient one in. There's no environmental impact statement needed for that because actually it benefits the environment because you're burning less oil at Hawaii Electric. Hence, our error is cleaner. And finally, Hawaii Energy has geared itself to provide for low income families also. These are the underserved families. They're too busy with survival day to day to be able to study these issues but Hawaii Energy gets right in there and helps them reduce their electricity bills. Everybody benefits from that. But let's go to the next slide, my grand finale type of slides. Oh, this is battery storage. The prices keep falling. If we're going to make full use of all the PV systems we have out there, we're going to have to couple with batteries. As I said before, we absorb that excess electrical energy during the peak of the day and then we can feed it into the evening peak. And the cost of batteries is falling like a rock. Look at this. So there's great potential for the future here. And if we do the next slide, the grand summation, everything, all of these alternate sources are going down, down, down in costs. And we see that most obviously with the LED lamps as I described. You can buy one in a big box store now for as little as $5. Next slide, please. Now, what in the world is all this about? This is the comparative cost to produce a kilowatt hour for different systems. Nuclear, coal, biomass, PV, another technology, wind and what's over there in green energy efficiency. And look at that between about two cents and four cents a kilowatt hour. I want to remind us that here in Hawaii we pay on this island about 25 cents a kilowatt hour. On the neighbor islands, we pay about 30 cents or even more per kilowatt hour. Look at that cost down there. Next slide, please. Okay. The slide on the left comes from the Pacific Northwest Natural Labs up in Seattle. And they're looking at their energy future. And we have wind, blue up on top. Oh, this is savings. This is the projected energy savings that can come from these different sources. Geothermal. Oh, the wind is barely anything. Geothermal is the natural gas is the big one there. But what is that huge green area there? Energy efficiency. And this is put out by some of the brightest minds in the entire nation. And then we go to the right part of the slide. What in the world is this? This is Hawaii specific. And the gray bars on the left are the oil fired kilowatt hours that are generated. And this is the, what it costs the utility to produce these. And naturally they have to add to the cost to pay for maintenance, pay for all the nice employees there and everything. And if you generate by wind, right now, wind is costing 17.7 cents a kilowatt hour. Geothermal. In that purplish 6.2 offshore wind, you can get it. This is totally a projection. 6.4 and so forth. And then you get to the renewable energies in the orange and we get 14, 15, 19 cents. And then finally we get purple on the right. 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour. Where does that number come from? It comes from the report that I just read from the public utilities commission, a very, very credible source. So what can we do to increase the amount of energy efficiency we're doing? One thing is my personal, whoops, my personal Kuliana is the Hawaii energy code. I hope, I hope to get it tasked in the next few months both by the counties and by the state. And that means that new homes and new buildings will need to be built to a certain efficiency standard. The windows must be efficient. The roofs must be efficient. Air conditioning, lighting, the whole business. The exterior and the interior of the buildings are built to consume as little as, say, 60% and even 50% as much energy as would otherwise be the case if the builders were not conforming to this new building code. That said, even though different building managers have gone to a large extent to reduce their energy use, somebody like myself and his dozens out in the field can walk through most buildings and certainly into most homes and we can reduce the energy use in those homes and buildings by as much as 50% just by energy efficiency. Let me give you the example of the Energy Star refrigerator. Not only will the wattage go way down but there will be less heat produced by that refrigerator that benefits all homes in Hawaii. Likewise, LED lamps, they produce almost no heat. Remember those old incandescent lamps? I hope they're not in your home anymore. They produced up to 450 degrees. And on that very, very cheery note, I hope I have demonstrated to you that 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour is within the realm of possibility, the immediate realm. This is Howard Wigg, Code Green Think Tech Hawaii, giving you a fun farewell till the next time.