 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart-Törner and this is Sustainable Hawai'i, streaming live every Tuesday at noon from the Think Tech Hawai'i studio in downtown Honolulu. This week, we continue our focus on sustainable transportation in Hawai'i with a look at electrification opportunities, including EVs, electric vehicles, public transportation and of course the rail system that's currently under construction. I've invited as our guest today local expert, Shem Lawler, who two years ago became Blue Planet Foundation's clean transportation director. Previously he spent six and a half years as a transit-oriented development planner with the city and county of Honolulu. While at the city and county, he focused on promoting smart growth, land use policies, affordable housing and multimodal transportation. His efforts working with public and private sector stakeholders were critical to the founding of Bike Share Hawai'i, the non-profit organization currently working to implement Bike Share throughout the state. Shem is a graduate of the University of Hawai'i with a BA in political science and a master's in urban and regional planning. Mahalo for joining us, Shem. Kirsten, it's good to be here. You are a very willing participant with the conversations at Think Tech. We're always appreciative. This time we're going to focus your efforts on electrification of transportation. So how is Hawai'i electrifying transportation? Right now the primary means by which we're electrifying transportation is through electric vehicles, through consumer vehicles. We're doing quite well. We're about third in the nation in terms of electric vehicles registered per capita. We have just over 4,700 taxable registered electric vehicles, so there are some vehicles that are not taxable, maybe they're owned by the state or the counties. We have about 1,000 more than we did at last year at this time and we expect to get just over 5,000 before the end of 2016. Well it's interesting because I know that we have approximately one car per person in this state, which means about a million cars. So 4,700 EVs is actually close to not even half percent. What is the target goal or when EVs were rolled out and we looked at where we needed to have our charging stations and how many charging stations per stalls? What was the original goal for EVs and by when? So I don't believe there's ever been a specific goal set for the number of EVs or charging infrastructure. Back when the original Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative was established, they did have a goal to reduce the amount of petroleum used for transportation by 30 percent or 230 percent of what it was, but they never really set any concrete goals and they didn't pick any specific technologies, electric versus hydrogen versus biofuels. Well how does 1,000 more in a year compare to other places? And the follow-up question is, are we keeping up with the charging stations so that that's made an easier opportunity for folks? Well that's a good question. So in terms of public charging stations, we're actually second in the nation in charging stations per capita. The only state ahead of us is Vermont and also District of Columbia is ahead of us so we're kind of third. We actually have, the reason we have kind of a high ratio is there's a couple things. We have a law that was passed several years ago that requires lots with over 100 parking stalls that are publicly available to have at least one charging station or one stall with a charging station. There's never been any compliance or penalties for non-compliance, but that law kind of spurred a lot of public charging stations. So in that respect, we're kind of actually doing okay relative to other places. But the other thing that kind of feeds into that is we have, particularly in Honolulu, we have a high percentage of our population who live in multi-family housing or rental properties. And so typically with single-family homes or cities where a higher percentage of the population lives in single-family homes, it's quite a bit easier to install charging at home, which is the primary location people charge. And so the public charging stations are not quite as necessary. In Honolulu, particularly in the urban areas where the majority of the population lives in multi-family housing, those public charging stations are actually pretty critical. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And so we are running up against that. That is one of the biggest barriers to higher levels of EV adoption in Hawaii. Is there any legislation afoot to require more charging stations per stall, like maybe every 75 stalls? So it's a really difficult issue to, it's a complex issue. So the issue with charging and parking structures is that a lot of the buildings that were built decades ago, the transformer capacities can only handle a certain number of charging stations. So you may be able to put in two or three charging stations, but if you had about a fourth or a fifth, you might have to upgrade the entire transformer capacity for that building, which could be several hundred thousand dollars. And so we actually had a working group last year, late last year, that reported to the legislature some kind of guidelines or strategies or recommendations about how to increase charging in particularly multi-family units. Not so much the office spaces, the commercial buildings, but in the residential buildings. We looked at some ways to actually help create funding to help buildings pay for it, essentially to subsidize the cost. Kind of more of a carrot than a stick. This year, we're looking at, we're actually going to do a study this year to look at how many properties in the state would actually trigger that hundred stall, the parking requirement, the charging requirement and look at compliance, what percentage of properties are actually complying and what are not. And we're going to use that study to craft legislation that would perhaps change the law, maybe increase the number or maybe create some incentives or some maybe best practices, some standards. Because it is a big challenge and as the number of EVs increases, it's going to become more and more of a challenge. And is there any requirement going to be put upon the commercial establishments or are they actually the ones who are leading the way? So the commercial establishments are typically the ones that are required to have charging now, if you have over a hundred stalls. It's not quite as complex as residential properties because residential you have assigned stalls versus unassigned. So it's a little bit more simple. What are we going to be requiring more of them? So that's the question we're going to try to answer when we do the study is look at what would the public charging map look like if everybody actually did follow the law and what would be the costs, those kind of things. Typically, it's a lot harder to get legislation passed if it's a requirement. It's typically, politically easier to pass things if it's a carrot, but then you have to find a way to pay for it. So those are the challenges we're going to have to work. A number of groups that are working on these issues together, we actually are working with HIKO and the Hawaiian Electric Company. Right. And also their parent company, Hawaii Electric Industries, and the State Energy Office, and Ulupono Initiative, and other stakeholders, Department of Transportation. How about the Automobile Dealers Association? They're not quite involved in this group. This group we've founded is called the Electric Drive Hawaii. And we're just in the formulation stage of creating a kind of a collaborative group that's looking at policy issues and setting an aggressive vision for electrification for Hawaii in the future. So in this vision for electrification, what would the role of EVs be in, for example, meeting the 100% renewable energy target by 2045? So that's a really good question. There's, on the surface, a lot of people would say, you know, if we had a lot of electric vehicles, that's going to increase the electricity demand. And so that might be a negative impact on the environment. But actually what we're doing is we're shifting energy from imported petroleum to the electricity sector, where we can actually create that energy from a number of different sources. We have the 100% renewable portfolio, as you mentioned, by 2045. And so we're already on a track to, by 2045, all of our electricity will be renewable. And so anything we can shift away from petroleum vehicles to the electricity sector is going to be a net improvement in the long term. So we could imagine in the future, and maybe not too distant, where the electric vehicles are being powered by different renewable energies. Some that we've talked about often on this show is hydrogen. We know that that power production is getting rolled out now in a much more concentrated way. We, of course, have the power from solar from people's rooftops. What are some other scenarios for how the EVs might get their power source? Well, I mean, that's the beauty of electrification, is that it really can come from anywhere. So there's, you know, there's wind, there's solar, there's wave energy, there's any number of sources that we could... Do you see any of those as a major contributor in the near future? Oh, yeah, they're all, I mean, we have wind farms, we have a lot of solar. But it's still, the wind is still a relatively low percentage. And we know hydrogen can also be produced for electricity. How about the potential for hydrogen other than hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen combustion, hydrogen for electrification? Right, so hydrogen is essentially a form of a battery. So the advantage of hydrogen is that, let's say we install wind farms offshore, where it's far from land, or even solar anywhere, essentially... And as we increase the percentage of renewable energy sources on our grid, we expect there's going to be an increased demand for what we call curtailment, where there's too much energy that the grid can't handle at all. So typically right now we just basically cut, pull the plug, and that energy is wasted. The beauty of hydrogen is you can actually take that energy that would be curtailed and thrown in the garbage, and you can create hydrogen that can then be used to create electricity, re-convert it back to electricity later. Kind of like a battery. Yeah, so that is the trajectory for hydrogen's contribution is looking at storage, energy storage. How about people often talk about the EV being the actual storage battery. What do you think of that? How would that work? Well, that's a major contribution. So as we increase the percentage of renewable sources on the grid, particularly solar, we're going to have excess energy during the daytime. The beauty of electric vehicles is that they can store a lot of energy. And if we have 100,000 or 200,000 electric vehicles on the road in the state, that's a lot of storage capacity. So for our viewers who may not be very conversant in the renewable energy field, basically what those EVs are doing is drawing the power into their vehicle, into their car battery, and they're using that and or storing it at the household. So when we talk about storage, we don't mean it's just stationary. It means it's stored in all those cars that are driving around. Right, and there's actually kind of two components to it. There's the component of when we have excess energy, we can actually use it at that time. So planning when you charge your vehicle based on pricing or the utility companies can actually price electricity differently at different times of the day to incentivize people to charge when we have excess energy. Right, but most people are going to charge at the peak hours when they come home from work overnight if they're on the level two charger like I am and take off in the morning. So how would they take advantage of the different pricing? So the pricing would help incentivize that. So yeah, people might charge, if it's five cents more during the four to seven PM hour, they might wait. And a lot of that's going to be technology that you can go home and plug in and there'll be software they'll say, actually let's hold off. We can charge it this time because it's cheaper and this is when. And there's synergies where the utilities can actually communicate with the electric vehicle. So that kind of technology is all in the development stages now. We don't have enough electric vehicles right now that it's a huge demand for that right now, but in the future we are going to have that. And we can actually, there's what's called vehicle to grid technologies where you can actually store energy in the electric vehicles and actually drop back out when there's a need for more electricity. Is that in development? Yeah, there's been studies. But it's nowhere near commercial then? Well, there have been commercial pilot projects in different parts of the country. So- I want it as soon as it's out. Right, and actually BMW and Nissan both have programs where you can take your old battery from your BMW i3 or your Nissan Leaf and convert it into home storage. And you can kind of have this intermediate storage between your vehicle and your house. Well, our Nissan dealer isn't advertising that, so I guess I have to do some research. It's coming down the road. I don't know that a lot of people know about it now, but it's one of the technologies that electric vehicles kind of enable. Okay, well, one of the things I want to talk about is how else we're electrifying Hawaii's transportation system. And so we're going to take a break and come back and talk about other opportunities in addition to electric vehicles. We'll be right back. Good afternoon. Howard Wiig, CodeGreenSyncTechHawaii.com. I appear on Mondays at three o'clock. And my gig is energy efficiency doing more with less. So most cost effective way that we in Hawaii are going to achieve 100% clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha. I'm Stan Energyman, and I want you to be here every Friday. Noon, thinktechawaii.com, watch the show. Be there. I'm hitting the full weight. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you get 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 thinktechawaii. Aloha, we're back with Sustainable Hawaii and our expert in electrification. Well, all things transportation, Sham Lawlor from Blue Planet Foundation. And Blue Planet's been doing tremendous work in the energy field. Before we go on to my next burning question, which is additional things to electric vehicles, just tell us a little bit about the general program at Blue Planet for supporting energy and how you fit within that. Sure. So Blue Planet Foundation was founded in 2007. Our vision, our mission is essentially to get Hawaii off of fossil fuels, both for environmental reasons, but also economic and social equity issues. Specifically, my program, the Clean Transportation Program, we have a coalition called the Sustainable Transportation Coalition of Hawaii, or STICH. It formerly was known as Honolulu Clean Cities. It's part of the US Department of Energy's Clean Cities program. So there's about 90 coalitions around the country that are working to reduce petroleum use in the transportation sector. Well, that's really exciting. Who are the other members in the coalition? So we work with fleets. So we work with a number of the county vehicle fleet managers, also private fleets to help them take advantage of clean transportation options. We also work with the State Energy Office, Bike Share Hawaii, Pacific biodiesel, basically just to promote clean transportation in all of its forms. Terrific. Well, one of the things that we're all wondering is, how else can we electrify transportation in Hawaii? So just give us, rattle off a few of the other opportunities. Well, I think the big next segment that's going to be coming up is public transit. So in most US cities, we haven't had very robust rail, but obviously we're really in a rail system here. That's a huge potential opportunity to electrify a lot of transportation. In a way, the future is coming back to the past, and that we did have, like many, many cities, an electric trolley system. Correct. Why was that done away with? And are we really going to recreate those? Were they the best cutting edge? How much time do we have? OK. Just a synopsis. So essentially, from the 1940s onward, we, as a country, implemented a lot of policies that favored the automobile over public transit. And we know that's because of cheap gasoline. I'm just pulling your tail. Right. So with regard to the rail system, how can that system be utilized to give us all kinds of opportunities for electrifying transportation, in addition to the rail? Right. Some things that have been mentioned as plugging in, your EVs at the station, and you mentioned, right before the break, using the EV as a storage battery, basically. Tell our viewers how all those things will work. Well, first of all, electric trains are more energy efficient than a car. So a typical car will use about 5,000 BTUs per passenger mile. Or if you have multiple passengers, about 3,000. I know that doesn't make sense, but in terms of comparison, the train that we're building here with the anticipated ridership numbers will be about 1,700 BTUs per passenger mile. Our bus gets about 2,000 BTUs per passenger mile. And if you have a really efficient train system with a lot of ridership, like Tokyo or Vancouver, you can get 600 or 400 BTUs per passenger mile. So just in terms of how much energy they use to move people, they're more efficient. Secondarily, it's energy pulled from the grid, so it's electric, so it can be produced by any number of sources. That means we don't have to import as much petroleum. The third way that it really helps is that even though it's more efficient in terms of energy use per mile moved, people who use public transportation tend to move much fewer miles. And the reason is, is because you get off the train, you're going to maybe run errands, you're going to grab a coffee, or go to a grocery store, or maybe go to the gym or something. You're going to go to places where you can walk to. Whereas if you drove, you might go to a gym way over here, or rest are clear over here. So people tend to reduce the amount that they actually travel. So you're drawing on your experience with transit-oriented development. How are we making sure that that actually happens around the rail system? And I know that would be another show. But just give us one example or two. Well, the city for several years has been doing transit-oriented development planning. Essentially, that term is a kind of a made-up American term to describe what we used to do and what many other countries really do. And it's really. It's how Europe was formed naturally. Right. And so basically what we've been doing here is looking at our zoning codes, our parking requirements, and saying, are there obstacles in there that are preventing what would naturally happen when you create a rail station? So people would get off the rail station. Businesses are going to know that's where the customers are. So the most important thing we're doing is clearing the way. Exactly. Making it easy for developers to take advantage of the market that the rail is providing. Correct. Terrific. So how about plugging in those EVs at the stations? Are there plans for many charging stations? And you mentioned the opportunity in the household through the dealerships to pull back that energy out of your car. Can the rail pull it back? It's a really interesting idea. One of the things that is kind of a best practice that's being discussed a lot in terms of a need is what we call workplace charging. Essentially, we anticipate a lot of excess solar energy during the day. So that's when we want to be charging the vehicles. But if people are driving, if people charge only at home and they drive to work, then they can't charge during the day. So one way to do that is to install charging at work. Another way to do that is, like you mentioned, if you have a lot of parking ride lots to have people charge there. So that's one thing we've actually talked with Hart a little bit about potentially developing. Hart being the Hawaii Rapid Transfer Authority for Rapid Transportation. Oh, thank you. Right, right. So we've talked about they have four planned parking rides that would have several thousand parking stalls. And so that would be a very great project in terms of allowing for workplace charging or daytime charging, but also reducing the total amount of miles that people need to drive. So they don't actually need to juice up as much. So that might be an opportunity to install what we call level one charging, or basically your regular plug-in. Because if they're going to be parked there for eight, nine, 10 hours a day, they don't need to charge very quickly. Plus if they're not driving all the way into work, they may not need as much energy overall. I imagine though it's really challenging given our island has a very limited space. So are you finding opportunities for putting in those extra charging stations and the parking rides themselves? Right. So well, with the parking rides, it's also an issue of we don't want people to drive to the rail station. We want, in terms of cost to the city for providing infrastructure, providing parking spaces is by far the most expensive. So we'd prefer that the city would prefer that most people arrive by walking, biking, or by a bus. But obviously some of them are going to drive, and some of you may have made those other alternatives may not be convenient for them. And so you want to have some park and ride, but you don't want to over-incend the lines driving to the rail stations. One of the interesting issues has been, and it was brought up by our producer today, is why don't we have electric buses, and why aren't we rolling out more buses to complement, or many people believe instead of the rail? How are those going to be integrated, and why not electric buses? So the answer is we are, and yes. Oh, good. So a lot of people don't know this because we haven't seen it locally yet, but the next wave of electrification is gonna be in public transit buses, and it's already starting to happen. So within the last year or two, the cost of batteries and the technology for electric buses has reached a point where it's actually cheaper for a transit agency to buy a fully electric bus than to buy a hybrid or a diesel bus over the long term. Even though the cost of the electric bus is a little bit more expensive, the cost of electricity versus the diesel fuel and the maintenance savings is much cheaper over the long run. So basically over the next five years, you'll see pretty much every transit agency in the country make that transition to purchasing electric buses. So it's actually, it's cheaper than the diesel fuel, but what about the hydrogen buses that we have here in Honolulu, is it cheaper than those? So hydrogen buses are quite a bit more expensive. You're looking at about, for a standard diesel bus, is about a half a million dollars. For the fully electric bus, it's about 800,000. For a fully hydrogen bus, you're looking at about $2 million. So you're not gonna get quite the same cost savings over the long term. It's gonna be quite a bit more expensive right now to buy a hydrogen bus. What about other alternatives for electrification of transportation? Not just in Hawaii, but broadly. Are there other examples of electric buses? I think you brought a couple of slides. Yeah, so the, and I mentioned the move to electric buses. So there's two major companies that are kind of risen to the forefront of this technology. One is Protera, the other is BYD. This is the Protera. That's the Protera bus. The other one is BYD, which is a Chinese company, Build Your Dreams. Is this in China? This is actually Long Beach, California. They bought a number of the BYD fully electric buses. And the other one was located, it looked like Europe. Protera is actually based in California. They also produce in South Carolina. So it's an American company. Actually, a lot of their initial employees came from Tesla, and a lot of their product development was from out of the technology that Tesla developed for their electric vehicles. Well, in the last minute that we have, and I'm asking you to do a herculean effort in a little space of time, but what are a couple of the other things we ought to be looking at coming down the pipeline for other mobility alternatives? So the, we're kind of on the precipice of a major change in transportation. And that is the issue of automation and sharing. So for the last 50, 60 years, the norm has been every person, every family buys an individual car for themselves and they drive everywhere they go. That's kind of already been shifting. There's been car sharing. There's been the Uber and Lyft and other mobility options, bike share. And so it's becoming less necessary to own your own car. In the future as automated vehicles come online, it's gonna become even more convenient and cheaper. And you'll see fleets of fully electric automated vehicles basically shuttling people around. So the need to actually own a car is gonna be reduced quite a bit. That's incredible. I look forward to being able to have one of those. Thank you, Shem, for joining us. I know you'll be back to keep us updated maybe with one of those automated cars. Right. This has been Sustainable Hawaii. We'll see you next Tuesday at noon. Aloha.