 and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm your host, Maturen. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and this is a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So I'm really, really pleased to have my good friend, Richard Ha, today is our guest. Richard is a successful farmer, a thought leader, a man of action, and he makes things happen. Today we're gonna be talking story about the Rubba Slippa Revolution, and the need for speed in converting to a non-fossil fuel economy. Richard, welcome to the show. Hey, how's it going? It's going good. Yeah, it's great to have you. So just to get into the overall subject, I wanna ask you a question and to kick this off. You know, you're a really successful farmer. You know, you're top of the game. You had happy employees, you were making money, you know, farmers farm when farmers make money. That's what you're, one of your famous saying, but then something happened and you gave it all up. So what happened to make you change your whole business and get out of the business and move on? So tell us, there was some significant thing that happened that made you take this action. Well, the thing that started it off was we had to make a decision, whether to refinance into the farming, continue farming. So we looked down the road and said, you know what? What things are, the way things are going right now, the oil prices going up, fossil fuel is declining. And we got to, we should get out now or we can't. And that's the real reason why we got out. The pluses weren't going to exceed the minuses. And how we came to that decision was basically, you know, at our website, we have, I wrote this book and I tell stories and not I tell stories, pop to stories as we were growing up when I was 10 years old. And those values lasted for 10 years. And that is really how I, you know, lead my whole life. You know, I didn't realize until much later that that's where it came from. But it came down to generations. And that's basically- So, so pop was your dad, right? Just so everybody understands the lingo here in Hawaii. And I want to point out that by doing this and looking down the road, white water coming, what are you going to do? We're going to talk about that as part of our slideshow is that, you know, basically, instead of waiting for it to all the bad stuff to happen and go out of business and, you know, fight all that, he was able to get out at a good time and give his employees really important, give his employees a soft landing so that they weren't stressed out and they could either go to other jobs, you know, like I said, a soft landing, it wasn't a total catastrophe for them and their families. And that's the kind of guy that Richard is. And that's kind of looking ahead. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's something I understand your pops taught you to do. Yeah. You know, and he wasn't teaching it, he was just saying it, he just came down through generations at the end of it. Okay. Well, let's go to the first slide. And in my slide deck, and so I was able to find this great picture of all these rabba slippers on a clothesline. So I had to throw that in, but if you look down on the left-hand corner, you'll see the logo for the rabba slip-up group that Richard put together. I'm really impressed with that logo, Richard. It's really great. Are there any special things that we don't see in there by looking at that? You have like two slippers, what's kind of the meaning there? Well, you know, what we're talking about is the regular people, yeah? Right. And that's why, you know, when you see the spelling and you see how it's described, automatically you know who we're talking about. We're talking about just the average person. Right. So, why did you start at Richard? What was the driver for putting together the rabba slip-up? Let's talk about the group first, which is the organization. We can talk about the quote revolution as we go along through the show. But what drove you to start? And it's pretty recent. So what's the, when did you start it and why and how do you see it going? Well, you know, this started a long time ago when I went to the first peak-all conference in 2007 and wait before that. But back then, when I came back and found out what was going on with peak-all, we started to think, okay, what should we be doing? What can we be doing to set ourselves up for to be at a better place? And that's why I helped to form the Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce. And then after that, we formed the Sustainable Energy Hawaii. Then I turned down and then now I'm doing this. So it didn't happen just yesterday. It was a long-term thing. Okay. Okay. So let's go to the next slide, slide two. So you wrote a really great little book called What Would Our Kapuna Do? So first of all, for the non-Hawaii residents, what is a kapuna anyway? What is that? It's the older people. You know the people with white hair? Yes, I know some of those. The white hair you get the more, you get the kapuna. It stands for wisdom, you know? Having been alive for a long time and seen a lot of things, that's what it is. Well, I guess I'm a kapuna too, though I'm not sure if I have the wisdom part nailed down yet. So I see it's free, you say, and how do I get it? Yeah, so you get on the website and you just click that book and then the audio book pops up and that's free. And the reason I did that was although it's on Amazon and Kindle and available at basically Books and Heel, I wanted to make this free for the rubber circle folks so that they could go in and just not have to pay anything, they could get it. So that's what that's about. So what's in the book? Just give us kind of an overview of what it is and why we should read it. Well, you know, it talks about how I grew up, how I was influenced by a values pop, talked about and traced some of the things that happened along the way to get to here. So it was just that description of why my life turned out the way it did. Right? Yeah, so basically that's what it is. You know, it's kind of entertaining I think because we did a lot of things that were pretty stupid but still we learned pretty quickly. Well, your pops was a pretty smart guy as it turned out and had a lot of wisdom and I guess he passed that on to you because you certainly have a lot of wisdom. You know, my pop only went to the fifth grade and he wasn't at all teaching us anything. He was just telling us stories and the stories were so connected to the place, you know, Family Land in Mahu Damit, Kuna that we, 10 years old, I could understand exactly what he was saying and what it was like and he didn't say much more than that and it just lasted all my life. All right, so let's go to the next slide, slide three. Opening our minds to possibility, we can become the change. So that's on, I grabbed that from your website. So what do you mean by that, Richard? Can you tell us what that means? I mean, we hear politicians talk about that. We can become the change, but what does this really mean to you in your mind? You know, so pop always encourage, tell stories about looking into where you wanna go into the future and advance, you know, what to anticipate situations arising. So that's basically what it is, is trying to look ahead, understanding what the situation is today and trying to look ahead and trying to figure out where we wanna be in 10 years, one generation, you know, a thousand years, that kind of thing. Yeah, so part of the challenge is, you know, you can think about looking ahead and we produce all these great plans. Like I wrote a plan for the state about hydrogen about 12 years ago now and nothing ever happened. We have these plans, but you gotta take action to make these plans happen and make your future happen and not just sit back being passive and thinking, oh gee, you know, everything is gonna be okay. It's not necessarily gonna be okay unless you take that action. So do you ever care to comment on that? Well, you know, I think you gotta be practical too. So you plan where you wanna be in the future and be flexible enough to make the moves that you gotta make so that you, it's not a straight line. You go back and forth and, you know, and you get to, of course, the change to get to where you need to go. So, and like I said, you gotta be practical. So there's no point in trying to grab five, 10 different subjects, you know, so for, in my case, I just looked at myself and said, okay, what can I actually do and what space should I occupy? And just, I'm not an expert in a whole bunch of things, but I do have some expertise in these two areas. So that's what I've done for a long time. Okay. So let's, I pull up the next slide because that carries on with this theme of getting things done. So tell us about your mission and you spent a lot of time talking about cakey, 25 years ahead, looking ahead 25 years. Let's talk about that. And I was able to snag this great picture, you see up here on the right-hand side of baby's feet, you know, and having a world, you know, you know how babies play in a crib, you know, so I thought that was really cool. I also have just to point it out in case the audience doesn't pick it up because it took a bit of time to figure this out is you have a globe and then we have a, a sand timer, what you call a glass, showing that the sands of time are running down here, guys. And how much time have we really got left to sit around and talk before we do it? And then of course, this picture here, I got to point this all over, Richard. So this picture shows us handing it from one generation to the other. You like, okay, to the cakey 25 years from now and of course we want to solve the CO2 program. So now I have me having talked the act about this, Richard, talk about the mission. Yeah, you know, so let's talk about geothermal. It's a resource that we have and only 1% in the world has this resource. And the thing about this resource is that it'll last for a million to two million years. So anything you base on that is a relatively safe bet. So that's one of the two things that we push it out mission. The other one is the culture center of the cloud, which is a separate subject, but I can talk about that if that's appropriate. So let's pull up slide five, which kind of illustrates what Richard was talking about. So let's talk about these two things that we have, Richard. Yeah, so when I went through these peak oil conferences, the thing that I realized early on was that the world had been using twice as much oil as it had been finding and that was happening for 20 years. So it was pretty obvious, you know, I look around the room and say, oh, it's small. I'm the only person from Hawaii here listening to this thing. And if that is true, how do I share that with the people in Hawaii? So I already had that in my mind. And then as time started to think about it, one of the major resources we have is geothermal. The other infinite resource we have is the skies above us. We're not talking about geothermal, we're talking about the skies. So those two resources will last forever. And if fossil fuel is a declining resource, that will decouple us from and make us safer as we go further, you know what I mean? Generations after generations. Okay, let's pull up slide six, next slide. So this slide talks a little bit about energy and our dependence on oil. So Richard, would you like to comment on how we're so dependent on oil and what our electricity costs are doing to us? Yeah, you're going back to what I picked up at the Peacock Conference was that the energy in one barrel of oil used to get us a hundred barrels back in the 1930s. Today, the energy in one barrel of oil gets us 10. Now that trend is scary. So we know we got to get off of oil and we don't really have much time because we see what's happening in Ukraine. You know, that's Russia weaponizing our fossil fuel. And so that's one side. The other side, not the other side, but another way of looking at it is there is a direct relationship between world fossil fuel production and world GDP. So as long as oil is cheap and increasing, everything's fine. We're just happy, you know, like how we are today. But then when we hit the peak inside coming down the other side, the thing to remember is that fossil fuel only makes up 6.5% of GDP. So in other words, every time, every 1% decline is equal to a 15% shrinkage in GDP. Now that's scary. That means there's all kinds of implications to that. And who's going to catch it? It's going to be the rubber slipper folks. Yeah, I mean, you demonstrated that yourself through your ag, you know, from what you're farming days, where you, like you said, you looked ahead, you saw the costs were going up and you just found, you know, you realize that in the fullness of time, you couldn't make a living out of it. And so, you know, you chose the time to get out of the business while it was good. But you know, here we are in Hawaii, you know, our prices are continuing to mount, you know, our energy costs are not going down at all. And that's driving people away from Hawaii. I was reading a statistic where we've lost in the last few years, we've lost about 16% of our population because it can't make ends meet here in Hawaii. So what do they do? They go to the mainland where, you know, electricity is about a third of the cost. I think in Texas, we pay about 10 cents a kilowatt hour, whereas here, it's 47 cents, actually at the Nelha site from our hydrogen plant. My last bill was paying 49 cents for a kilowatt hour of electricity and it's been going up, up, up, it's never goes down. So that's driving people away and it's gonna drive our cakey away. They're gonna go to, you know, where they can make a living and it's really hard to make a living here and it's unsustainable here in so many ways. So basically, you know, one thing I got, we're kind of sleep walking through our lives here in Hawaii just hoping that something is gonna happen that's gonna be good and slow walking it. How about, what do you think about that? And that's why we're here and that's why we're starting the rubber slip of revolution right now. Yeah, right. So what is the rubber slip of revolution? Yeah, so what we're about is we have this narrative about Kyoki and Malio who are toddlers today and we're asking the question, one generation from now when they're 25 years old, what can we do now with the knowledge we have to make life better for them at that time? And I took a long time trying to think of how I was going to message this thing, but you know what? When you message it like that, everybody loves kids. So when you have discussion, you're not yelling at each other anymore. You can ask the question, what do you folks think we should do for Kyoki and Malio? And that whole discussion changes and then all of a sudden we're all looking in the same direction into the future. Well, the next slide shows one of those kids with the bright idea, let's throw it up. So let's talk a little bit more about the energy solutions we have here, Richard. Yeah, so it's not rocket science, you know. So we have geothermal and from geothermal, we can make green electricity and if we run green electricity through water, we can make green hydrogen. Why that's important is because the high heat of hydrogen can take you to ammonia and ammonia is where we really wanna go because ammonia in each three is nitrogen fertilizer. So farmers are real concerned about that fertilizer and ammonia is a better carrier of hydrogen than hydrogen itself because you don't have to spend all that money squeezing it down, compressing it and doing all that stuff and using the product. And the third thing of ammonia, which is pretty amazing is that it's a fuel, you know, right now, there are people, the cancer initiative, they're trying to decarbonize the whole maritime industry with ammonia and can we position ourselves to be a player in that field? Because then we can increase our manufacturing base, we can bring in money into the economy and we can hopefully keep our kiki over here. Home. Yeah, exactly. And also, I just like to focus a little bit about the use of ammonia as a fertilizer. I mean, ammonia was developed at math scale back in the 1920s, I think, or earlier than that, 1910 or so. And what it did, it quadrupled the production capacity of our land. And that's why we're able to produce so much food now is because of ammonia being able to develop, you know, you can produce four times the crop you could in the old days when they just spread manure on the fields. So that's a good thing. And now we see that ammonia is now pretty well made from natural gas. And now with the Ukrainian situation where natural gas has really exploded in, so wrong expression, I don't want you to explode, has really gone up in cost. I mean, significantly, almost exponentially. And that's really killing the ammonia and the cost of ammonia. And also it's going to be not very good for our farmers. So there's a perfect example of how we could produce ammonia ourselves for our own consumption. And, you know, we've got such a great resource here, we can probably export it. I hear people are looking at shipping for actual ships are using it as a fuel for ships. And we could be a depot here or a bunker where we supply fuel to these ships coming off from all over the world. So we have the resources. We have water, we have a geothermal energy which is a base load. So we can actually make a geomonia fairly easily. Yes. And, you know, looking into the future and understanding the size of our market, which is our state, we cannot do the Haber-Bosch process. The Haber-Bosch process is so huge. It's too big for us. So we've got to look at other alternatives to that will be compatible with the scale of the island. So basically what people are experimenting with and a little bit more than experimenting, they're looking at ways to make ammonia without going through the Haber-Bosch process. Like, for example, you know, you run electricity to water, you get hydrogen and oxygen. Then if you do the same kind of process, using air and pull the nitrogen out of air, you get ammonia. But like I said, not the Haber-Bosch process. So if people come in and say, well, this is wonderful, we want to go to Hawaii and do the Haber-Bosch process. No, I'm sorry, get out of here. We're not talking that. We're talking something appropriate to our scale. All right, exactly. So let's pull up slide eight. So we're on the downward slope here on the show. So we got about four minutes to go, Richard, four and a half minutes to go. So anyway, I found this in my list of pictures I had two snails running to a goal line. So I want to emphasize the need for speed. And, you know, we have an opportunity to be leaders and it starts today and we just can't sit around and talk about it. So that's part of the rubber slip-up revolution that we've been talking about. So comment on that if you care too. Yeah, so we got to go. We got to get into the hydrogen economy. What is the fastest way to do that? And that is to set up a five station hydrogen refueling station that's what we've been talking about now. What do they require? They require 10 cents a kilowatt hour cost, you know? For the electricity. Yeah, for the electricity. Yes. So, you know, the cost of geothermal when it's food production, you know, 46 megawatts is only about six and a half cents. So there's a margin in there. So the utility can be a little bit of a margin from doing stuff that they otherwise wouldn't, you know, like diesel trucks and that kind of thing. So that is really important that we get that point. Because once we get that going we can tell the whole world, listen, we are in the hydrogen economy now. And then people will look around, who are these folks? Let's go over there and do some test projects. Yeah, build it and they will come. Yes. I'm seeing that now with my hydrogen station over at Nellaw. You know, we've got one major oil company coming to visit us in December because they heard about the station and they want to check it out. So, and then we had another group that comes and they want to test out their fuel cells. So exactly what you said, we're like kind of a living laboratory here in Hawaii. And now once you have the basics in place then people are going to start coming here. So I like to throw up the next slide, slide nine. And I think this is a video that I'm not sure who produced it, Richard, is that one of your productions or what's tell us about this? Yeah, these videos are, we made it ourselves, you know, iPhone and me. Oh, really? Yeah, and I did this with Alexey Kackle. He's really a talented guy and he has a big world vision, you know, so I worked really good with it. He taught me how to talk. Cause I would be built a monitor, you know, like that. Oh yeah, yeah. You know that book I wrote? We put it all on, I narrated the whole thing. That's how come it's an audio copy. And these videos are all the same, we put together. So where can we get this video on geothermal? Is that on the... It's on the website. This rubber slipper group website. There it is. There's how you can get it. And oh, I want to point out this picture of the geothermal, the lava flowing in the ocean. We took that when we did a tour with Captain Lava. It was getting near sunset and it was fantastic. Watching the lava flowing in the ocean and actually when it hits the water, it turns into rock but it's porous so it floats for a while. So you're out there in the middle of all these floating rocks and all the steam and everything else like that but that's the raw power that we're talking about for geothermal and like Richard said, we have a lot of it, not just on one island, there's potential on all islands and that's what we've got to get after. So we've got about a minute, well even less than a minute to go. So let's go to the last slide, which talks about how you can join the movement. So let's talk about the movement, the revolution and whatever you want to call it, Richard. Tell us about that and what your thoughts are on it. Well, you know, I've been asked to give talks here. So I've given several talks, Rotary Clubs, Chambers and stuff like that. And the response is incredible. Everybody knows that something ain't right, we got to do something. So it's gaining momentum but I wanted to say one thing and, you know, I've been going to Kikui Halao Ohia, Kikui Keali Kanakaule. And I wanted to make sure that I said that everything that I'm saying has a basis in Hawaiian thought processes and that's how the knowledge that I have came down, it came down to generations. And it's a pretty amazing thing for me to finally realize and I didn't even realize until the last year. You know, so I just wanted to put that out there. Oh, that's great. So you can, if you access the Rubber Slipper group website, you have a spot, you have a click where you can click on and join the group. There it is. That little thing right in there. And just put in your email and then you can be a part of the group and get information as it comes up and updates. Is that correct? That's how it works. Okay, so we're gonna have to leave. Oh, sorry, go ahead. We're not really asking for a lot of participation but moral support and coming together when it's important. Yeah, so if there's a bill that's coming up, you know, can you folks support this or that, yeah? Okay, so it's a chance to talk story and talk about the problems and the solutions. Is that a good way of putting it? Oh yeah, absolutely, yes. Okay, so we're gonna have to leave it there. You've been watching Hawaii State of Clean Energy on Think Tech Hawaii and talking story with Richard Ha, founder and leader of the Rubba Slipo Group. Today we've been talking about the need for speed in transitioning to a fossil of free economy. Thank you so much, Richard, for all your leadership and for all the things you do for Hawaii. And thanks to our viewers. Thank you so much. You're so welcome and thanks to all our viewers tuning in and if you like what you see, make sure your friends and family and everything about your network here is about it. So this is Mitchell and I'll see you in about two weeks. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.