 to you all and thanks for attending Code Green from the Hawaii State Energy Office where our goal is 100% clean energy by the year 2045 which is not that far away. One way we're approaching getting that to that goal is by having new energy codes but that doesn't cover everybody by any means because it's only about 1% of the total building population. What's a bigger population is sold homes sold by real estate agents. Could they be a fertile ground for helping Hawaii reach 100% clean energy by 2045? Absolutely positively if every real estate broker and agent were like. The honorable Judy Sobin who is our guest today. Welcome to the show Judy. Thank you so much for joining us and you are a certified green real estate agent. You've gone through training and I happen to know that yours green is a four leaf clover because we first met longer than we would care to admit. Yes many years ago when you were running for office I think it was State House and you almost won. You had a really good campaign didn't quite make it but I got to know you as a very very green person and was delighted when you went into the real estate agents. See so welcome Judy and thank you and begin by telling us why you're so gosh darn green again you were running for office as a greenie and now you're a greenie real estate broker. I am learning every day and it's so it's not that I know everything about being green or making making our homes greener but I did take a wonderful two-day course that was that the National Association of Realtors offered it was wonderful I learned a lot but it's mostly life experience and working in the community that has really I think helped me to help others when I can and Howard you were one of the first people that I knew who helped you know when we first talked about LED lights and now that's you know many of our homes including my owner are filled with them and so simple things like that have helped to make me realize that we can do things pretty easily if we want to. So that's what happened so now I am certified because I took this class because I passed it and learning more every day. Well you know that was let's not admit to any more than 20 years ago when you went for office and we were talking about LEDs way back then. That's right. Yes what has happened to the LED industry since then it was just kind of a pioneering very efficient industry back then today it is the giant among the lighting industries and it's overtaking us like a wonderful green tsunami. Yes LEDs are way way way above. Any other lighting source. Reason why I one of the reasons why I ran for office it was for city council at that time was and I and I and I still believe it that the city has so much control over so much of what we do and how we do it because it's the infrastructure that the city has the sewer the water that that you know make us who we are and hopefully we work together to preserve the elements that that that make our community green including our parks and our recreational activities etc etc because when I when I think of the whole concept of of keeping our community strong green I think three things one is that we want to save operational costs because that helps everybody everywhere we want to provide a comfortable environment in the home and a healthy environment in the home and and all of that I believe has to do with the energy savings and and the outdoors and it's not all or nothing to me we some you can't do everything every day but we can do a little something each day and that's that's kind of that's my theory on this whole thing pretty good pretty good and you'll be delighted to know that since maybe it was your influence but since you ran for office all the successive mayors have been green to one extent or another maybe the major example is converting all of our street lights to LEDs and some of us lobbied hard to get the lighting color down from I think it was 4,000 degrees Kelvin to 3,000 degrees Kelvin because there was a lot of complaints the higher the degrees Kelvin the more blue there is in lights and the harsher the lighting environment is and you want that for certain environments but not for your residential street we got very efficient lights down but at a much more comfortable degrees Kelvin which makes it much gentler type type of light with beautiful visibility now you mentioned comfort homes is energy efficiency and comfort in homes have any correlation between one one and another absolutely you know what one of the things and this is perhaps not the easiest thing to do for homes but one of the things that we can do while we're remodeling or building home is to put more efficient insulation in and and in Hawaii we don't even we often don't think of insulation I know my own home which was built in 1970 does not have any insulation because we thought well it's you know as we don't need it it's warm here but insulation is is also for the to keep the warmth out and to keep the home cool and so we don't need as much artificial air or air conditioning and that's I think that's really something that I it took a while to learn and when we were remodeling a bit we asked our contractor to you know please put insulation in whatever was the most the greenest insulation we could find and he would look at us a scan so he said you don't need insulation so we we insisted on it luckily he's a friend and he took it well and it made a degree at least a five degree difference in the rooms the ceiling areas where we put it it isn't in the side of the house because we didn't remove a wall on the side and anyway it's something that that we don't talk about much but it keeps the place comfortable it keeps our our energy bills more at a lower price because we don't have to use our air conditioning as much as global warming takes over and and that's it so I it's something it's it's something that can be done in new homes and in remodeling well beast and we first wrote the residential energy code back in 1997 when you were probably still in grade school and we did that because the the the building boom and he ever planes was just beginning and there was insulation and the homes were so hot that when people came home at the end of the day they had to open up all the doors and windows and just let the trade winds through blowing the hot air out and some of them took their dinners outside and with a tv set and sat outside for a while to let the home cool down so that's when we got insulation as a mandatory building measure into our residences way way back then but of course a lot of the homes were built without insulation years being a prime example now let me point out another way to keep the home exterior cool number one with cool roofs and that just involves having a lighter color on the roof exterior so that when the sun's heat hits it instead of being absorbed and going in it reflects back and very recently we helped establish the cool wall rating council which is now built getting to be built in the building codes the more reflective your wall exterior the more heat that you get buried back rather than absorbed into the the home and that's a very low-cost easy way of keeping that naturally cool you're if you are a good painter you can you can get the material it's it's not the least expensive kind of paint to put on but i have several wonderful clients who have done it it makes a huge difference on the roof even with an old house yeah well especially with an old house because those may be the most uh we we talk about absorptive surfaces meaning the sun's heat hits and boom it gets absorbed right through there and it goes into the building interior where we don't want it so i'm very uh you're you're a great sales lady if you persuaded some of the clients to uh the statue that's good um i guess one of the other um kind of least expensive and really efficient things to do is is solar water um because it's uh it's you know it's it's it's one of the our water the cost of heating water at least in in our home and i think in most homes is about 30 to 40 percent of our our bill and um oftentimes when people think of solar they don't think of water they think of you know there are other other things in the home and i and i really think that's something that you know it's it's one of the oldest things that can be done like on our i think was the late 70s when we got our first one wasn't the most efficient one but it worked and now we've updated on the home we live in and um and and actually ours i believe were installed actually before we bought the house in the 80s and when we bought the house which was only about 10 years ago um the owner said oh you have solar but it doesn't work that was kind of odd yeah so we called the solar water company uh solar company and they came in they flushed out the system they cleaned it and for i i don't think it was more than a couple hundred dollars we had solar water again so yeah so i i think that to me that's one of the areas that um is is very valuable to the homeowner and it's valuable when selling a home too because it's a teachable moment let me give you a very happy statistic way back when when you were first thinking about buying your home and so forth the average consumption for a typical hawaii home was about 1000 kilowatt hours a month and now with all the bills and whistles that we have including air conditioning if you have kids they've got every electronic gadget known to man and lord knows what other things you have electrically consuming in the home our typical bill is now 600 kilowatt hours a month down from 1000 the prime reason being that there are over 100 000 solar water haters in our on our roofs and this is a teeny little state 100 000 is a very significant number so from 1600 because of solar water heating and let's put you to the test duty are there any tax credits for solar water heating yes i'm not sure what they are now what you're going to have to give me that there there are both federal tax credits state tax credits and hawaii energy will give you a rebate such that your the initial cost is now around $7 000 to install a new solar water heating system and with after all the tax credits rebates it comes down to more like 3000 great and if as a result you're saving say just as little as $100 a month 3000 that's 30 month payback exactly it is the best payback of of anything in fact i'm thinking about i think it was about that amount when we maybe couldn't probably wasn't that much but when we initially installed it years ago so that's great that's that's good to know yep and when we're on the subject solar water heaters last forever but like us they do show the signs of age sometimes and there is such a thing as a solar tuna yes yes certified solar dealer gets up on the roof and says oh this needs repairing this needs repairing this needs repairing the panels need to be all nice and clean again and it costs a few hundred dollars but hawaii energy boom instantly rebates you two hundred dollars see yeah yeah we probably do for one now so that's a good that's a good point and it does there are some solar water heater does need to be replaced just like a regular water heater at some point in time so so there are additional things that go on but it's it's not a you know not a big difference in terms of the infrastructure that's great to know very good and when you're advising your clients on you know making the home more efficient before selling do you invoke the name hawaii energy much you know not until recently and i'll tell you why when people after people purchase a home is when i've had been able to assist more in terms of what they can do for the future right before selling a home putting in a solar water heater or a photovoltaic panels doesn't really change the sale of the home that much it's the use of it as you're going now now what i do have to say that three years ago appraisers did not even give credit for having photovoltaic and that has changed maybe it was four years ago and you know it was a kind of a very upsetting thing but now they are now when they do an appraisal they will they will give credit for the for the photovoltaic or solar water but not to the extent that they would for say a remodeled kitchen it's an interesting thing so it's a learning process all around and you know i think it's getting better and better as far as placing a value on that on the uh energy efficiency are you good so you're you're are you kind of bugging the uh i'm one of the people that bumps them on i think there are many agents that do is not just me but it's it's one of those things because almost everybody asks now when they purchase home oh does it is it photovoltaic and are they owned or are they leased that's sort of the the question that comes up they're almost every time and um so but not the appraisers will you have to let them know by the way it does have photovoltaic and it is valuable to these to these buyers so it's it's it's a learning process and it's getting better and better very good and i'm sure that you are a spark plug a catalyst or or or pain somewhere because there there is a checklist that appraises go through as they're appraising a home and i believe that there are several energy efficiency rated or related items that are on that checklist like for instance uh oh well just an anecdote i had my home appraised maybe six years ago and i was sitting down with the appraiser and i said uh by the way i've i've got a solar water heater on my roof oh you do i said yeah you want to get up on the letter and see it oh no no no no but it was a total total total afterthought exactly exactly now it's gotten better now they do they do ask and and they they want to know yeah that that's thanks to to people like you who keep on uh being a pain who have been bugging about that and um you know one one of the areas and i don't know that i've seen any real statistics and i'm sure you have on this are the energy star appliances i was hoping you to say that i always encourage and i always look for myself etc but i don't really know you know what you know how much i'm saving with them or if i'm doing anything very positive i know it always has a it always has a kilowatt hour on that and i don't know if it's real or it's real because these are um required by nima the national electrical manufacturers association and they they have very strict uh testing procedures for every manufacturer so it's kind of baked in before the these items reach the retail floor and i'll just give a the statistic i'm most like is regarding refrigerators if you have an old 20 25 year old refrigerator it's going to consume about 1400 kilowatt hours a year you replace it with the same size new refrigerator energy star with all the bells and whistles in it and starting with the icemaker and lord knows what other features 450 kilowatt hours a year you're reducing you're improving all of these features in the machine and saving 1000 kilowatt hours a year that that's just a prime example of the the magic of energy efficiency oh that's exactly well good and then um i think the other one of the other things that i'm often asked about and i and i have some knowledge but i'm sure you have more is as as things warm up around us more more people are looking at um air conditioning in their homes even though we have our trade winds they're not always there when we want them and um so i know there's the it seems to me and what we've done is these the ductless mini split air seem to be the most efficient but maybe not the most attractive but uh perhaps you could you know give us a little bit more back yeah the the ductless were when you know some years ago when you wanted a small air conditioner you put in what was called a window unit which was this clunky thing in the wall and then it stuck out to the outdoors those were not very efficient at all they did not have long lives and they were noisy and this is one of these deals where efficiency technology efficiency just improves improves and makes life better for us the split systems are much smaller totally quiet and they are outrageously efficient yes and the advantage of split systems these are just little units that you put in the wall not you you better get a professional to do it and there's generally one unit for each room for the kitchen living room tv room and then for the bedrooms and the advantage here is that say the whole family is they say it's a two-story home the whole family is downstairs for the early evening and then as people begin to tutel up to their bedrooms then they turn on their split systems it has been off this whole time and then gradually everybody leaves the first floor all those systems there are off so that you're using these units only when you need them great beauty in that and of course everything can be remotely controlled now so if you know you're going to get home and say five in the afternoon you can remotely turn on the split systems on the ground floor a half hour in advance so you walk in to a nice cool room and again they're very efficient but in terms of keeping spaces cool I would be very emiss remiss if I did not mention ceiling fans ceiling fans consume a teeny teeny little fraction of what even the split systems do and in our mild climate they do a beautiful job of keeping us cool it's true we have both in our house and usually we're using the ceiling fans for 90 percent of the time very good and how many on those days I think you need it so um the other thing you know I know in today's paper there was a big story front page story about from HECO or Hawaiian Electric talking about different the different time schedules for using electric because you know they're talking about less expensive times and you know using doing what you can to use electricity during that time which which we do in our household because we we can we have flexible schedules so we can use the daytime for charging the car the electric car etc you have an EV also another we've got a hybrid EV then you don't have to worry about charging exactly so anyway but I and we do that and I don't know why it was a big story because Hawaiian Electric has done has that different pricing for in any case maybe it's good because more people know about it so we're not actually using less electric but we are lowering our bill because we're really good yeah this is called time of day pricing yes and the deal is that we have so many solar panels on so many roofs that we produce way more electricity than we need in the middle of the day so we have to have storage batteries to store it up so we can use it in the evening when there's no more sun and when the use goes up but another thing you can do is put timers now on your washer and your dryer and your dishwasher such that say one goes on at 11 another goes on at 12 another goes on at one so you're using up that cheap electricity right when there's a surplus of it and then you don't have to bother with it when the electricity is more expensive and you're doing all of us a favor by that and speaking of favors we're about to get the hook duties oh my god that was so much fun talking to you oh do you have any parting words of wisdom I get I know I think we I think we were able to cover quite a few and I thank you and and I thank think tech for doing this for the last 22 years it was it's great for the okay well on that very very cheery note thank you judy sobangreen realtor this has been cold green thank you so much for attending and see you next time 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 and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii.com mahalo