 And welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy, Wednesday again, where did the week go? But here we are in Hawaii, look at this background, isn't that a great scene, I have to put up with this every day, it's just terrible, I can't stand it, all my classmates in Canada, look at this in the middle of December and eat your hearts out, or hop on a plane and come to Hawaii, we'll have a nice reunion here. So anyway, Hawaii, the state of clean energy, we're sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and the forum is in turn funded by the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute who I worked for during my normal day. As the name implies, the policy forum was formed to enact smart policies to help decarbonize our energy infrastructure. And so we look at what's out there and where we see a gap, we will try to formulate legislation, get consensus from all our members and then submit this legislation. And where we see good legislation coming down the pike at the legislature by somebody else, we will support that if we have a consensus from our members and we will provide testimony in support of that. So for example, this year, we had some really great legislation come out of the Big Island with Riley Sado, the transportation services bill legislation, it's like transportation services contract, which allows the counties to enter into partnerships with private companies who would buy all their transportation infrastructure, the vehicles, the fueling systems, everything, and then charge the county just a fee on some kind of a basis, for example, for buses, for passenger miles, travel. And in that way, the counties can afford to purchase new equipment, keep it up to scratch, not get to the state where we were on the Big Island where we only have nine buses out of 65 operating. So that's something that the policy forum supported. The other one, which is legislation I submitted was to equate hydrogen and electric vehicles, same as a battery electric vehicle. They're all electric vehicles and have the same market support benefits that a battery electric vehicle does, like traveling in an HOV lane, parking, all those things that our market pull and make people want to buy electric vehicles, nothing against battery electric vehicles. In fact, all fuel cell electric vehicles have a battery in them. So we are essentially battery and hydrogen electric vehicles. That's some of the good work that the energy policy forum does. And we meet fairly regularly, and we're always looking for new legislation. So if you think of something we need, a gap, just contact me, care of ThinkTech Hawaii, and let me know, and I'll present that to our forum. So today I'm speaking about energy. I want to talk a little bit about the energy system generically, not only just in Hawaii, but wherever. So I want to talk about that. It's kind of like in the little educational program today. And I hope to come back with follow on presentations that continue to develop that further. And of course, being a hydrogen guy, I'm going to use my bully pulpit to talk a lot about hydrogen in this show and other shows. And if anybody else wants to get there or in, please volunteer and come on the show. I'd be happy to have you as my guest. And you can talk about what you think about the energy system. So let's roll on to some of these slides. And we have this new way of showing slides, which are one of our texts came up with just now, like moments ago, where you have the slide beside me, I got my beach behind me. And then I can look at the slide and talk to it without having to look down with my head down on the table. So, which is really good. So Robert, thanks very much. That's great. Great, great deal. So okay, so here we go. We're going to talk about energy solutions for Hawaii. And, you know, it's really helpful. An old friend of mine from 20 years ago educated me Dr. David Scott. He's Dr. Hydrogen in Canada came up with these simple ways of looking at an energy system. And I think if people can understand what, you know, because it's so complicated, you know, you think about, well, what's our energy system? And how do I fit? And what can we do? It really helps if you have a basic understanding of how the energy system works. What's the, how's it formatted? And me being like, I like systems engineering and logic. This really works well for me. And I hope it works well for the viewers out there, too. So I'm going to all said, I'm going to focus on how it will solve our energy problems, how we can decarbonize our energy system. So let's roll to the next slide. So here you go. This is the energy system, a really simple diagram explaining a really kind of complicated system, but you can break it down into the various buckets. It starts off at the top, where we have our primary energy sources. So what do we mean by that? That's like crude oil, coal on the fossil fuel side, which we want to get rid of eventually. And then we have sunlight, wind, geothermal, wave energy, all the renewable energy sources that we have here in Hawaii. And so those are primary energy sources. Some of them can be used just directly, like PV. Sunlight makes electricity, you can almost make it directly. You have conversion technologies. So a chunk of crude oil coming out of the ground, you can't run it in your car, you have to make gasoline out of it because your car engine would never run on crude oil. It would poke up in no time. So we have things like are called refineries. We have two of them here in Hawaii on the west side of Oahu. And they take that crude oil and they take all the light stuff out of it to make gasoline and diesel fuel. And then all the really heavy stuff goes into our fossil fuel electric plant. It's almost like tar. And then you go down even further into that barrel and you get stuff that you make asphalt and mix it up with stuff to make our roads. And so basically we use the whole barrel, but we use refineries to do that. And then we have things like I said PV, which takes that sunlight and converts it into electricity. So it's something that we can use. And that's something is we call that an energy currency. It allows an energy transaction to take place. So gasoline is an energy currency. It allows you to power your engine or fuel your internal combustion engine and the engine explodes and goes up and down, makes motion. And so it gets used up. The same with electricity is also an energy currency. It allows you to run your TV, your computer, light your light bulbs at night, your stove, hot water heaters, a whole variety of things. So it's an energy currency. And the same is with hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy currency. On its own it's just like gasoline or electricity, but it allows you to make an energy transaction. So if you look at the next little lump, no, no, no, no, no, no, not the next slide. I'm still working my way through the system. No worries. Then we have energy currencies, conversion. You made your energy currency using your conversion technologies. You have your gasoline. How do you convert that into something useful? We use an engine to do that. Or in the case of hydrogen, you use electrochemically, you use a fuel cell. Of course, hydrogen is so much better than using an engine because you have no emissions except hot water from the fuel cell, whereas the engine's throwing off all sorts of terrible emissions, including knocks and carbon stuff, get into your lungs. It doesn't smell very good. You're looking through a haze all the time. So our beautiful vegetation looks kind of dull. Certainly it does in Houston. Whenever I get off the plane here in Hawaii, I'm amazed because we do have pretty clean air at how bright all our vegetation looks and our flowers look, whereas in Houston it's all through this brown haze. So it doesn't look as great as it does here. Then you have your end uses. That's the ultimate where we want to get to where you start off with your primary energy sources and your work your way down the ladder to the end uses. And that's things like transportation. That's getting from A to B, from your house to the store, from your house to where you work. Running your air conditioning, that's an end use service or cooking or anything like that. And so these energy currencies, both electricity and gasoline and hydrogen, don't forget hydrogen, all allow you to do something for an end use. That's the ultimate thing. That's what you see the most of. You don't see all the other stuff that made up that energy currency. You're just, you know, the general public is just interested in the actual end use. What can I do with it? What does this empower me to do? So now we'll go to the next slide. So just a little more development on the energy currencies theme. You know, it's like kind of like money. You know, you use it for financial transactions. Well, energy currencies allow you to make energy transactions. So look at it as that. It's really important. So when we get in these conversations about, you know, converting from fossil fuels or decarbonizing our energy system, it's kind of useful to see, you know, how all this works. And so energy currency or sources can be harvested to manufacture your energy currencies. So for example, on the fossil fuel side, you know, the sources that you produce are, or the currencies you produce are gasoline, propane, SNG, and jet fuel. So we can get to the mainland, get to Las Vegas, and maybe hit the big time if you get the right one. I would only put either on the black or the red. I'm not that brave. And then the renewable sources are things like hydrogen and electricity. The problem with electricity is you can't save it very effectively. You can in batteries, but you have to have monster batteries to save a lot of it. Hydrogen is a much better method, currency. Let's stick to the terminology here, Mitch. There's a much better currency for saving gobs and gobs of energy that you normally would throw away. Electricity pretty well have to use it right away. It's gone. I mean, it's like on demand. It doesn't hang around unless you have a battery. And batteries, like I said, are really expensive. Next slide. So we've said that hydrogen, electricity, or energy currencies, and they don't really compete against each other. It's not, gee, only electricity or only hydrogen. I know I say that I'm a hydrogen guy, but they compete, they don't compete. They complement each other. So you can use hydrogen to make electricity, and you can use electricity to make hydrogen. So they're like interactive. And the beauty of it is when you make a hydrogen out of water and electricity, there's no, if you're using an electrolyzer, there's no harmful emissions at all. And then when you take the hydrogen and make it back into electricity, all you get out of it is hot water. So it's a perfect, it's a perfect cycle. It's like the ideal solution and why we don't grasp that and run with it. I don't know, but that's why I'm here is to help you do that. So this is what we want to do. And this is why almost 30 years ago, I had my big aha moment when I saw my first fuel cell and I went, my exact word was, wow. And next three or four words is, I want to be part of this because this is this is the future. And it is, and we've come a long way in the last 30 years. Next slide, please. Okay. So electricity, you know, here are the advantages that can be made from a variety of energy sources. And it's clean, fast and safe when handled properly. You know, electricity came in at the turn of the last century. And you know, before that, we were using, for example, gas lanterns, you know, our kerosene lanterns, the light your homes. Well, you know, it was a poorer quality of light. It made all sorts of carbon which got on the walls, you had to trim the wick, you had to fill it, it was just basically a pain to use. And then when suddenly we introduced electricity, and it was clean, fast, safe, click the switch, instant lights, mom didn't have to go around being sexist. But in the old days, it was mom that did this. They go around, trim the wicks, fill the lamp, you know, clean, clean the lamp the whole nine yards. So it caught on very quickly. People loved it. It was a real winner. Disadvantage, as I said in the previously is it can't be effectively stored. By that, I mean, you can store it in the battery. But as you saw in Stan the Energy Man last week, in the little animation he had, you have to have this monster battery. It's really heavy, and it's really expensive. So that's the disadvantage. I just want to talk quickly about the fossil fuel age. If you really look at it, I love this graph. This is a really old one, an old picture. You look at how we came from way back in the caveman days to where we are now. I mean, like in the Roman days, they cut wood. They had to go around the world looking for wood to chop down for building their boats, making charcoal, the whole nine yards, and they processed doing that. They kind of leveled all the forests, and they had to keep on going out now, conquering more lands to get more wood. Then they, I won't go through the whole thing, but then we had coal, oil, and gas, which is the fossil fuel age. You see how quickly we're going through that. It's only been like 250 years we've had fossil fuels other than wood, and we're going through that pretty quickly, and we're already bumping out to the next second solar generation, and that's where we're going to be going. I think we have to stop for a break now and give you a chance to contemplate on what I've just been talking about, and we'll be back with more on the energy system. Aloha, I'm Stan Osserman, Stan the Energy Man, every Friday here on Think Tech, Hawaii. If you're really interested in finding out what's going on in energy, especially here in Hawaii, but also all the way around the world, and especially if it has to do with hydrogen, look into Stan the Energy Man every Friday, 12 o'clock, Think Tech, Hawaii. Either. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch, host of Out and About. It's a show that we have every other Monday on Think Tech Live here. We explore a variety of topics that are really interesting. We have four organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. We've got some amazing guests on here, like all the shows at Think Tech, so if you want to catch up on stuff, tune into my show every other Monday and other shows here on Think Tech Live. It's a great place to learn about stuff, to be informed, and if you have some ideas, come on my show. Let's talk about it. See you later, and Aloha. Here we are, back after the break. I made a quick walk out to the beach just to get my feet wet, and the water is really nice and ready to go after this show. So here we're back. We're talking about the energy system to kind of break it down into its components so it becomes more understandable to everybody, and so that you can be informed when you start hearing some of these things, you know, when you're watching TV and reading in the newspaper and hearing the latest and greatest about hydrogen, and as you'll hear more and more as we're coming along. So anyway, let's roll with the next slide. So I love this slide. I think it came from Planet of the Apes or whatever. It's, you know, what happens when the oil runs out? Well, believe it or not, we do have solutions to that, and it's hydrogen. Well, one of the things. I mean, we have battery-electric vehicles, too, but we might not have to go to this extreme to get across. I think they did this in Hawaii, too, because it's all the lava fields in the background. Next slide. So just a few more words about hydrogen. On the right, you'll see an artist's depiction of a molecule. It's a simplest molecule. It's number one in the periodic table for all you scientists out there. It's got one electron going around in orbit around a proton in the middle. So a very simple molecule. It's actually the most plentiful element in the universe. I have to, you know, tongue-tie that one. The sun is a big mass of hydrogen and it's continually fusing. That's where we get our light and our heat from. Simplest, dense central nucleus, and it's like a planet orbiting the sun. And so what we have to do is capture the magic there of that hydrogen atom. So the biggest compound having hydrogen in it is water. So here in Hawaii, we look out over the Pacific Ocean. That's all hydrogen oxide out there. So the issue is that hydrogen is always joined to another atom. In order to, it doesn't occur freely. You can't go and drill a hole and out comes hydrogen like if you drill a hole, out comes oil. It doesn't work that way. So what we have to do is we have to break those electrochemical bonds. And if we go to the next slide, so those bonds, it takes energy to break those bonds. So we can use a variety of sources to make it. Including fossils and renewables. So like a fossil fuel has a lot of hydrogen in it. And natural gas is our most, that's what they use today. The majority of our hydrogen is made with natural gas. But when they make it, they have to break that bond and it produces carbon dioxide, which then vents off in the atmosphere. So what the heck? We're not really getting the full advantage out of the hydrogen part because of the CO2 that's given off when we make it. But hydrogen is easily transported. And here's a really key element. It can be stored for really long periods of time. It's not like a battery that self-discharges. I mean, as long as your valves don't leak, it'll last forever. So I've got tanks that I filled up 10 years ago. And I go out and check the valve and the hydrogen still there hasn't gone anywhere. So you can store it for long periods of time. Completely renewable. And here you go in red when it's spent. The byproduct is pure water. You make it from water with electricity. You use it to make electricity and it converts back to water. I mean, how awesome is that? I mean, nature gave us that. This is a gift. So we need to be using it. Next slide. So we talked about it not occurring naturally. You know, the Hindenburg has done us a lot of damage in the hydrogen community. Everybody talks about the Hindenburg. It used to be every night at half past midnight, two o'clock in the morning, we'd see some grainy old black and white movie about the Hindenburg disaster without fail. And everybody still brings that up. I mean, a lot of people walked away from that. And it was proven that the fire, that's not a hydrogen fire. That was the rocket fuel aluminum powder they used to coat the outside of the balloon. And that's what's burning. And people were actually able to get away from it. If you're in a plane crash, you would just, you know, spear in and that would be it. You'd be in history. But a lot of people were able to walk away from that. People, the public has that perception. But you know, hydrogen is a fuel. It's like gasoline or natural gas or the stuff, you know, in your barbecue tank, you have to treat it with respect. You can't just willy-nilly let it loose and expect that it's going to be totally benign. You have to be smart about it. So the real issue is the we need hydrogen infrastructure on a massive scale. So up till now, we've been doing kind of like projects, lab projects, a little pilot project. But we haven't really ramped it up. I mean, the technology hasn't been ready before. It's ready now. I mean, we have huge electrolyzers that can be now used to make massive amounts of hydrogen. We have a way to store hydrogen. There's a variety of ways to do it. But H&I is working on some of those. And so we need to be at our infrastructure in place. If you look at our infrastructure now, it's all geared for fossil fuels, taking like 120 years to develop this infrastructure. There's a huge investment in the existing infrastructure. So obviously, we want to get as much time out of it as possible. But we've got to start putting in the infrastructure. So at H&I, we're working on infrastructure projects to test it out, try it out, see if the guy who sold you the goods was lying when he sold you this bill of goods. Like, you said it would do this much and it's only doing this much. You said it wouldn't rust and look at it. It's all rusting, falling apart. We're ironing all that stuff out. So we're like the scouts ahead of the wagon train. But you know what? We're there. I mean, it's we're ready to go. We've got a brand new hydrogen station going in at the Nelha facility in the Big Island. We're going to support three hydrogen buses for the county of Hawaii, you know, Helion bus service. And so that's all part of getting this infrastructure up and going. So next slide. So I said we have to break the bond. You know, we have to apply energy the next slide, please. The way you do it with fossil fuels, as I said, is you're using energy to break it with natural gas. It emits the pollutants and you're consuming, you know, a lot of non-renewable fuels, whereas hydrogen is totally renewable. And next slide, I think, is my last slide. Okay, this is what, yeah, this is what I mean by hydrogen at scale. Look at the size of those electrolyzers compared to the guys, they're as high, you know, in diameter as the guy is high. And like, they have a whole row of these things out there. That's the scale. When we talk about hydrogen at scale, that's what we mean. Like if I look at my electrolyzers I have on the Big Island, my stacks are like about that high by about that round. They're not man sized like these are. But there are companies out there that are obviously, because they're there making these like, now hydrogen makes those and they just bought proton onsite which makes the PEM or proton exchange membrane electrolyzers. It's like a solid state electrolyzer whereas the one you see there is an alkaline electrolyzer. It's liquid, has a liquid electrolyte. They've been around since 1929 and they started out in Norway when they were making hydrogen to make ammonia for the fertilizer industry. They had this massive hydro plant with like a huge row of these massive electrolyzers there and they were making hydrogen to make ammonia. That's my phone dinging. So that's what I mean by hydrogen at scale. It takes a lot of input energy to do that and we have sources here in Hawaii. We can use geothermal power for example. It's the best power we have for making hydrogen because it's 24 seven and it's at megawatt scale and we have a lot of it. So why aren't we need to be using that? The other thing is obviously sunlight. Not so much here on Oahu. We're kind of running out of land but on the Big Island they've got lots of land. So you know if you have like multi megawatt PV arrays that's another good way to make it although you know the sun only shines for you know five and a half to six hours a day and you get cloud and you get all sorts of other stuff. So it's not like continue 24 seven. That's why I really like the geothermal side. Wind is the same thing. It usually turbines run at night and once again but it's intermittent and you can go for you know two or three or four days without serious wind. It's very gusty so it's not the ideal but you know we have a lot of wind. Not here on Oahu. I think our last wind farm is planned to go in at Barber's Point and there's no really other obvious place on Oahu to put in a wind farm but once again on the Big Island and like in the saddle and places like that it's got excellent wind resources there and so that's where we should be looking at generating a lot of hydrogen and also solar there as well. You have all this land to be used to be making hydrogen. That's it for my little blurb on the energy system. I hope you got something out of it. Next time I will get up here and pontificate by myself. I'm going to have another set of slides which talks more about the hydrogen applications and what we're doing here in Hawaii and what we can do and what we should be doing. So until our next show next Wednesday I'd like to say hello hi everybody. I got to get back to the beach.