 cold green on a beautiful sunny July 18, 2022 in Honolulu. Some of you probably thought about dabbling in politics, but who in the world ever thought of running for governor? Just a very, very, very select handful of you. And had you done that, you might have launched yourself on a glorious adventure learning new things every step on the way and to tell us about such an adventure is Tom Brent, a friend of many years ago. He used to be with Department of Business Economic Development as an economic analyst, and he is now a foresight and policy analyst. Sounds very, very distinguished. Tom Brent, welcome to the program. Long time no see. Look even more distinguished than ever. And launch us, please, on this glorious adventure of almost becoming a gubatorial candidate within a hair's breath you were. So take it away, Tom. So good to see you. We've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Well, briefly, Howard, as you know, some of this, I've been in Hawaii 43 years. I first came out to work and travel in industry management after being a journalism major on the mainland and working in that field, both train and broadcast, but got a chance to come out to Hawaii and work and travel on it. Sounded like fun. I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I grew up yet. And then I went back to UH in 1984, initially to get a master's degree, thinking I might want to be some sort of insulting foresight analyst. They had a program up there that offers masters and doctorate in something called Future Studies, which was a program started by a gentleman named Jim Dater, which I remember him well, yes. Jim's still alive and well, and you think he's 40 years younger. Long story short, during my master's program, which I did full time, that's when I kind of had the light bulb moment. Like, what am I going to do when I grow up? And I was like 30, 31 years old when this happened. So I was a late bloomer. But it occurred to me as my interest seemed to crystallize. And I said, nobody's going to pay me to think about this stuff unless I'm a college professor, right? That's the only place you can get paid to set your own agenda in terms of research and writing and so forth. So I finished my master's, but being in my early 30s, I wasn't wild about the idea of being a full time doctoral student, doctoral candidate, and building a mountain of student loan debt. So I literally had a job with the State Department of Business, Economic, and Development and Tourism fall into my lap, literally, how you were there before I was, and you're still there after I was. But my advisor, Jim Dater, again, I walked by his office some point time when I was finishing my master's in 86. So you still looking for a job? And I said, yeah, what do you got? Well, there's this guy at D-bed, Craig McDonald. He was then the branch chief for ocean resources. So I started there as an emergency hire for one year. Last year, the Arioshi administration. So I've worked for a half of OI's governors technically over my 20 years. But then I segue from ocean resources, which is just an attempt job to the state tourism office when it was still in office rather than authority as it is now. And worked for Muriel Anderson for a couple years. And then I segue to another job under a gentleman named Tom Smyth. I'm sure you remember. Primarily to run what was brand new state enterprise program, which was a paid position, but the state got the legislature to also create simultaneously a program to promote employee stock ownership and participation. ESOP's ESOP was the acronym. And there's been federal tax and stand-ups encouraging businesses to share ownership and profits with their employees ever since the 1970s. That just so happened to coincide with my crystallizing doctoral dissertation topic, which in the broadest sense, you might describe as economic democracy. And I was going to study the past, present, impossible futures of that subject and then apply that research and thinking to the state of Hawaii. And I've done that. I've been continuing to refine my thinking along those lines ever since, even long after my desire. I wanted to be a college professor. I was banking on a nationwide shortage, which predicted back in the 80s. The shortage of professors, even in the social sciences, was supposed to happen by the mid to late 90s. Well, those experts were wrong, dead wrong. So don't don't pay people to predict the future for you. So I ended up continuing to work at D-Bed. And then up until the early Langell administration, then I separated from them, eventually got a job with the USBA Natural Resources Conservation Service, where I worked for about five years until I retired about five years ago. So career-wise, that's it. So how did I get into politics? Well, I continued, as I said, my reading, writing and proselytizing about economic democracy and all that entails. And most recently, I wrote a paper in April, which was going to just be a guest op-ed in response to a couple of ads I'd read in the Star Advertiser. And before I submitted it, I circulated some people just for feedback. I wanted to get some other opinions on it before I finalized the final draft. And lo and behold, a woman from the Green Party, the Hawaii Green Party still exists, been around about 30 years now, called me up, said, would you like to run for governor? And I go, I had thought about it. I mean, I take my word for it. If you get masters and doctoral degrees of political science, it basically makes you even more cynical about politics than the average person. And the average person is pretty cynical about politics, right? But at first it sounded ridiculous, which reminded me of Jim Daters, famous dictum, any truly useful idea about the future should initially sound ridiculous. So I slept on it. I got up the next day, called her back, and I said, let's do it. She said, we got no money for you. We're not people who want to give you any volunteer help. But we have ballot access. So I don't know how easy it must be pretty easy to stay on the ballot because they are on the ballot. I think you have to qualify and then you're always on the ballot for 10 years or something before you have to re-qualify. But long story short, I decided to do it and get this. I told people, to people, but why are you running for office now? You always said you wanted to be a professor so you could get paid to complain about politics. That's true. But the shortage of professors never happened. So and I thought, you know, I nobody will think I can win. People will think I'll get 3% of the vote. I said, but it's not so much about how many of the votes I thought I could do quite well. Actually, I thought I could, if my plan worked out, the campaign plan I developed on my own, I thought I could get 30% of the vote, which would shock people that alone with it. But long story short, the main reason I ran was just to get a different voice. I mean, I have lots of ideas that some are old and forgotten. Some are new. Some are synthesis of old and new ideas that I think I've come up on my own, my own original thinking based on others, others, the thinking of people who have gone before me. But long story short, I wanted to try to change the conversation. And in the Green Party, I would have no primary opponent. So I would have been guaranteed to be in the finals, so to speak, the political finals, the general election in November and would have been me and whoever the Blue Party nominates and whoever the Red Party nominates. And me, although I do believe the Aloha Aina Party is going to run somebody, I just don't know who it is now. But anyway, I'll finish the governor, the quest for governor first before we chill at any other windows here. So long story short, I got off to a great start. Within two weeks, I've never run for office before, never wanted to run for office before. I had no resources, no help. I spent $700 of my own money over on spreading some materials, business cards and other stuff. But within two weeks, just based on my Facebook political activism, I got invited to the Big Island by two different small farm groups. One is probably more familiar to people who follow agriculture, the Hawaii Farmers Union. They were having their annual, excuse me, their annual conference back in May in Pahawa. And I was contacted by another group, which is probably less familiar, but it's even larger, called the Hawaii Farm, excuse me, Small Farm Hawaii. Combined, those two groups have about 12,000 members. And they asked me to come talk story, not to come over and be a politician and campaign, but just come over and talk story. I just went over in May to talk story the night before they had a potluck the night before their four day conference back in May. And it was going great. Then I came back. And after I returned from the Big Island, I had my first Zoom meeting with the full leadership team of the Hawaii Green Party, which consists of three, Wajine, and five older Howley guys. Long story short, I'm not going to name names, but there's one gentleman on a neighbor island who is from New York City, I believe, or from Big East Coast City, who's lived on Maui for 30 years. He's been involved with the Hawaii Green Party for 30 years. And long story short, he still is stuck in New York. I found him to be very bossy and rude. He talked down to me as if I was just a child or something. And later found out he's like two years older than me when he asked me to respect my elders. So I was thinking, maybe when he is two, if he memorized the encyclopedia Britannica, and I was zero years of age, I might have been impressed with that. But anyway, I didn't get 100% of the support of the Green Party membership. And to be honest, I don't even know still how many members they have statewide, I'd say 50 to 100 card carrying Green Party members at most. But they have a principle on how you might have some familiarity with their background. They believe strongly in consensus. So they literally said any candidate that runs as a green has to have 100% support from the entire party membership. So I had 90 or 95%, which in politics almost or in life anywhere is good enough, right? But for them, it was not good enough. So my quest to be the green party candidate for governor, but I believe me, what motivated me was not only just the grassroot stuff, but I don't like retail politics. But I found it. I enjoyed it more than I thought. I thought that I thought that would be the part of trying to be a politician, I would like the least, you know, the actual going out and meeting and reading and all that stuff. But it's funny when when you feel when you're motivated by something other than yourself for your own needs or ego or something, it changes a game a little bit. I mean, I suddenly become Mr. Mr. I don't know, Mr. Happy Warrior, I guess, but I really enjoyed it even I remember this is an aside and I'm getting too off track here. Please feel free to let me know. But I going to the just on the air, the Honolulu airport on my flight to Hilo, before I got on the plane, I went I had my business card saying I'm green party candidate, I went up to a woman, just a typical looking middle aged local woman. And I just went up to her and just start a conversation with her. And she turned out that she works for the cable access broadcasting group on kawaii, you know, all islands have their version of O'lello, which is what it is. And I think the show is going to be on a level among other outlets. But I said she and I just talked to her for five minutes before I got on the plane. She says you call me up and we'll get you on all all four counties will get you on their version of O'lello. So I'm not doing too bad, you know, I'm got invited to go to those neighborhoods to meet these two big groups. And on the way to the big island, I'm running this woman who wants to put me on TV. So I thought, this is not bad for a newbie for a green horn green candidate for government. So I'll stop and let you I'll catch my breath and let you get asked a question and maybe point me where you want to go back. Okay. So you mentioned, well, this is a fascinating tale. And I think anybody who wants to run for political office has has a teeny little smidgen. But what what it's like, it does have its ups and downs that that's for darn sure. Well, not I got asked, right? You know, not everybody just asked you out of the blue to run for something. So yeah, yeah, maybe we need more people who want it, you know, the people who have to be asked to serve and step up. I don't want to my home, but we're the kind we're doing it for the rest of us for us. Not because of political ambition. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I always wanted to be a politician. I would have ran 30 years ago. That ship is sale. Yeah. Yeah. So let us shift gears that that's a great, great tale. But you mentioned the fact that you are an idea person. And you are speaking the name of this program is cold green as in building energy codes. Yeah. And you have just one or two ideas about reforming Hawaiian electric and putting us on a path to 100% clean energy. And they were not the most conventional ideas in the world. No, no, it's like, again, again, eight or nine minutes. How many how much time do we have? We have about eight more minutes. Okay, okay. Yeah, that's a quote. Jim data. Once again, any truly useful idea about the future should initially sound ridiculous. And that's the reaction I got. 20 years ago is when you might recall after Kawhi had two hurricanes, 82, right? They were served. And I do not know the historical background of why Kawhi was never under he goes umbrella because he go is our utility, not by choice. It's just that's just the way it's been. This before the overthrow in 1893, actually. But Kawhi for some reason was left out of he goes coverage. And they were served at the in 1992, they were being their electricity was provided by a company called Citizens Utilities based in Connecticut. And I believe the backstory in a nutshell is after two hurricanes in 10 years, I think they had overwhelming repair bills, right? cost. And they couldn't make a go of it. They wanted out. So they were what they call a business they motivated seller. And they wanted out. And the late Senator Noe actually engineered a loan from the federal rural utility service for the entire purchase price. Now I remember haggling back then about all we overpaid for stuff. But I actually, the seller Citizens Utilities, they didn't play hardball because they just wanted somebody to bail them out. And that's what we did. So that's how we got to me that's how we got Kawhi Island utility cooperative KIUC, which unlike HECO is a locally owned customer owned non profit utility. Whereas HECO is a for profit monopoly protected by the government guaranteed a profit margin that can fluctuate but there's a floor and a ceiling on it. And they are almost completely absentee by that. I mean, the owners of HECO are not local except for a few mom and pop shareholders. The vast majority of HECO stock as far as I know still remains in the hands of huge institutional investors on Wall Street. So I 20 years ago that was my vision quest at that time I thought why can't HECO be locally owned and customer owned and non profit like KIUC and as you might know, however, there's up to 2000 rural electric cooperatives, nonprofits throughout the country. To the best of my recollection, they serve they provide the electricity for roughly a third of the nation, I think. So even though they're very numerous, the number of customers they serve collectively is not as big as the industry as we know was still dominated by the traditional top down centralized heavily centralized command and control utility model. And that goes into the predicted utility death spiral. I think it was Steven Chu, the federal energy secretary under Barack Obama. I think he popularized that term utility death spiral. I said, that's got to be at least 10 years ago whenever Obama left office. But that was quite the buzzword. And I kind of use that to piggy back on to the thinking I'd already put into how how could we get from where we're at now, where he goes a for profit monopoly owned by Wall Street investors primarily to something like Hawaii. And I thought about a lot of things eminent domain and using the public trust doctrine. But it's the kind of thing it's difficult to get anybody to willingly spend a lot of time and put a lot a lot of hard thought into. And there's a lot of pushback to even from people we know, both know, who are very progressive and are very much want to get to 100% local energy renewable self reliance as soon as possible. But a lot of them, and I won't name any I don't put it on the spot, but they just say Tom, you know, by the time we've got it done, figured out how to finance it and stuff, it just would be the cost of trying to make it happen would outweigh any benefits or so that's the kind of pushback I got. And that's very plausible that they might be right. But I still I just enjoyed the mental challenge, I guess, of trying to figure out how to get it done all the way up to the financing, how to what kind of you have to unlike Hawaii, which only took one relatively small federal loan, heco is a whole nother animal, right? It's like the underbound gorillas. So buying it out and converting it to local nonprofit customer ownership would be a much bigger task. Yeah, the heco owner can their clientele is 95% of the population of Yes, the heco has I said that's why I one of these days I think I'm going to now we have the computer and the Google machine we can find out these trivial facts much more quickly than we used to be able to but why Kawhi never was under heco's umbrella that'd be interesting historical tidbit to understand, right? But anyway, I I don't think that's my in the two minutes we have remaining my thinking is all turns out it's more like four minutes. Oh, okay. Okay, that's good. All right, when my thinking's evolved, since I first started thinking about this 20 years ago, how could we convert heco from for profit monopoly, absentee young to nonprofit customer local, local customer ownership. And and I because I think in part because of that concept of the utility death spiral that that I think was one of the catalyst that changed my thinking I'm thinking, why should we buy out a dying behemoth like heco? If the centralized top down 19th 20th century model of electricity generation and delivery is going to die natural death, because of technology advances we know decentralized or distributed energy and storage is becoming more and more cost effective all the time. But there's a lot of pushback when you have a huge business like heco that has hundreds of people with very comfortable jobs and lots of state shareholders who like the steady dividend income they get from heco stock, all that heco customer expense, of course, along with some help from Hawaii taxpayers. I just don't like corporate wealth. I don't like I'm almost libertarian in that sense. I don't like taxpayers propping up businesses, because you know, it's always the big businesses who are the best at manipulating the political system to max out tax taxpayer dollars when it's a little small businesses, they don't have the resources to play that. So they actually pay more than they should. So I guess it's my natural proclivities to root for underdogs that I also like to like, how can we take the big dog down? Right? And I don't mean to demonize them too much other people that I know people who work for they're not they're perfectly fine human being. But I think it's a matter it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when we transition from the old school, top down, command and control, heco names the tune and plays all the music to a different model and that segues into some things I dropped in my email to you, concept known as swarm electrification, which I understand based on what I think I know at this point is being used in areas that don't have a fully developed first world electric infrastructure, right? So they they're starting from scratch, right? They don't have the burden of this legacy utility that doesn't want anything to change like we and we can see that in the case of KIUC on Kauai. They are far ahead of heco in terms of the amount of renewables. They've I think they're close to like 70% of their base load comes from renewable and he goes still stuck at 3035. And you know what happened to rooftop solar? How do you know that first they loved it until it got to the point they claimed, oh, their circuits couldn't handle more rooftop? Perhaps there's some truth to that. But the real thing is heco only favors rooftop customer you know, self reliance. If it isn't he goes the best interest of he goes bottom line. I'm not going to share your code. I hope no lightning bolts. I hope they don't send any lightning bolts my way here in the next minute. And you've got about one minute left to attract lightning bolt. Okay. So what? Well, you want me to try and talk talk horse thing about? What would swarm actually look like? Well, in a nutshell, and again, I haven't read a lot about it, but I just came on my radar about a year ago. It's this idea of like, they don't have electricity, but they have all this new, incredible, increasingly more affordable, decentralized generation, you know, everything. And they're building up. I use the term local area network that comes from computing. And I just somebody else might have used that, but I kind of just made my own acronym with that electric local area networks, right? Elan, I call them. And I don't know if I coined that acronym or somebody else already used it, but I'm going to claim credit for now. Somebody tells me otherwise. But it's just an idea in a place where it doesn't have, you know, a fully fully built out electric infrastructure, like he go, they have more flexibility and freedom to try stuff like that. And they literally build a grid from the bottom up, where the generation of storage is highly decentralized, but they still connect if and when it's mutually beneficial to their neighbors, right? This spoke, there's some nodes or something, but I'm sure there's people in Hawaii who thought about this too, who also favored distributed and decentralized generation. But that's maybe something that other people have talked, talked to death, and we don't need to get into that in the last 30 seconds, even if that customer owned local. And my my ultimate goal, however, leave it for this, I think it's quite feasible as well as desirable for electricity to eventually be free, completely free of cost. In addition to 100% local renewable self reliance, I would add to that we need our goal should be to eventually make electricity to cheap to meter, as they used to stay in the old nuclear power. Well, believe it or not, Tom, you're not the first man to think about that or come up with that idea. There was a fellow named Nicholas Nicholas. Tesla. Yeah. Well, how he wanted to do it wirelessly through the air and the ground, right? That was definitely. Oh, God, what a concept. Whoever heard of that? But he died penniless and insane. That's probably my fate, too. Apparently a cheap New York hotel room. That's right. There's a fine line between genius and bad. So and but fortunately, you may be a genius, but you're not even angry. I'm not very sure. No, not a man. Here in the energy office, we see the future of electricity as being DER distributed energy generation where we combine the big solar farms, the wind farms, the mom and pop PV panels with a heck of a lot of storage because we make too much PV energy in the middle of the day today. Now we store it all up. We distribute it in the evening when we need it. And well, that's what we want to do. We're not really doing that as much as we could, right? Or should there's a little little entity called Department of Planning and permitting also. Yes, yeah, kind of like has to sign off on all this stuff. So, yeah, that's the direction we're heading it as as I like to say the new power plant will be distributed energy between thousands and thousands and thousands of renewable energy sources. Well, go ahead. Oh, no, no, you can have the final parting words here. As you say, from from our lips to the legislature's ears, right? And to the PUC's ears. That's what it takes. Our voices have to be louder than the HECO lobbyists, I think, to make this happen sooner rather than later. Well, thank goodness we have you around and you can run for a higher office in the next legislative cycle and just blow everybody away like a great big wind machine. Well, that's probably be done, but that would be my new nickname. He's the big hot air wind machine. Well, on that very, very cheery note, we do need to say bon adieu and great seeing you again. And this is Think Tech Hawaii Code Green, Tom Brandt. Who are you? Extraordinaire on Monday, July 18, 2022. See you next time. Thank you very much. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.