 Okay, here we are Wednesday in Aloha and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm your host, Mitchell and our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And this is a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So I'm really pleased to have two of my friends as I guess. Here's Sternlich again, and Noel Marin from Sustainable Energy Hawaii. And we're going to be talking story today about spaceship Earth. And last week we talked about problems and today we're going to be talking about solutions. So to kick it off. I'd like Noel to tell us a little bit about sustainable energy Hawaii. Thank you. Thank you, Mitch. By the way, it's Marin. Thank you very much for having us again here. It's been a pleasure to to be part of your, your, your program in the past and glad we're here again. I just wanted to share a little bit about sustainable energy Hawaii where a local organization that is advocating for affordable clean renewable energy for Hawaii Island. And I'm also happy that fellow board member Peter is is with us today. If we get if we can go to slide one, I can quickly socialize our, our mission. And essentially, our end in mind is sustainably produced energy, utilizing our abundant renewable resources here on the island. We're striving to utilize this to improve the quality of life for our people for residents here and not just in the in the in the current, but also in for future generations. And we believe that the benefit will come in the form of affordable energy that as you know will affect almost every facet of life here. This will also enable the creation of a green hydrogen economy and all the downstream products. You know, we talk about ammonia will hydrogen ammonia aviation fuels, etc. And these will play a critical role for difficult use cases that we have, you know, to deal with not just here but abroad. Examples are, you know, Trans Oceanic Marine and air transport and even grid storage. So, we're all about facilitating this change here on Hawaii Island, working of course with many, many different organizations and leaders to facilitate the change. Tell us a little bit about your membership, who are these, who are your members, what kind of cross section do we have there. Our leadership is comprised of a number of individuals and while I say leadership, but also the folks that we collaborate with are who we. So, we have folks from the university. Dr. Thomas, Dr. Lao see we have folks from the government. We frequently engage with the county county officials. On the board, we have people who are native Hawaiian leaders. We have the folks in the energy space, Stan Osterman. We have a number of individuals that represent many different facets of community, not just energy. And we recognize that this is a really important, important thing to have because as we go through this journey, it's going to be really important for us to do so in a way that's embraced by many different levels of different sectors of community. Peter, feel free to add. Yeah, Peter chime in. Yeah, I mean the collaboration in order to make a difference in order to be able to successfully develop this. The future of this hydrogen economy. It really does require working with the entire community. So it, it's government. It is industry. And it's also an especially the community. So there needs to be a, you know, a sense of ownership that that that permeates through every, you know, the entire, you know, array of people that live on this island. Yeah, I've actually had the honor of the privilege of sitting in on some of your meetings and you have a really real wealth of talent on the in the organization with really good ideas and other thinkers. And we're working on solutions. So, talking about problems on spaceship Earth. We, on our last meeting, you let off Peter and talked about the challenges that we have on spaceship Earth, and we don't have a planet planet B. I want to just catch us up on that first episode when we talked about we, we define what the problem was. And now we're going to talk about solutions but tell us about the problem. Sure, so the cliff notes version of this is essentially that our species has entered into a space where we can, where we can say that we have, we're in a condition of overshoot. We're in a position where we're able for the amount of resources that we have here on this planet. We're consuming them at a massive rate. We, I mean, just in the last 100 years we've added 6 billion people to the planet, all of whom want to live really really nicely and well. We're really at a point where in I saw in a question that I think went out to the audience, where we need to be mindful of what we're consuming, because we live on a finite planet, and, and what we take for granted today is is finite it's not it's not necessarily going to be available at either the quantities or at the, at the prices that we've grown to be accustomed to. In the last show you talked about how we're an extractive economy rather than a sustainable economy. Give us a few your ideas on that. I think it's really important to, to define the concept of sustainability sustainability is being able to, to create systems whole systems that can, that can, that are efficient, that can work today, that can satisfy our needs today, but will also be used in the future. And that's a distinctly different thing than renewable energy because there you're just talking about the energy. So sustainability is a full system view of how we're going to utilize these renewable sources of energy. Yeah, we're kind of a throwaway economy I mean I get stuff all the time is single use and I should out. So we're basically using the earth as a garbage dump. Both our land their landfills and everything like that we don't recycle very much. And also our atmosphere is a dump for CO2 and all the harmful emissions we pump in. And, you know, basically can only take so much before it's overloaded so we've got to change the, change the paradigm here and have a paradigm shift and start thought with changing the culture. So, one of the solutions of course is enter is becoming more efficient on the energy side. And also, as you pointed out when we're planning for the show, hand in hand with efficiency is conservation. We have to be conservative and not, you know, store things for a rainy day so let's pull up the next slide and, and talk about efficiency and Noel how'd you, you please take a lead on defining efficiency and what it really means. Yeah, so. Well, the first things first it's actually the cheapest energy solution. Right. And it's not as sexy as things like clean fuels and renewable energy and geothermal and all these different things that are really, really important. And, but it's not as sexy. So it's often overlooked and underutilized underappreciated. And this is really important unfortunate actually because it represents a very important step in our journey to a clean clean energy future. And it's also a very easy first step. And, you know, when I guess importantly, if we don't first focus on efficiency and maximizing the, you know, the, the efficiency of a process, meaning find ways to maximize energy utilization, minimize waste, etc. We actually risk optimizing the wrong things. And that is going to result in unnecessary cost right and in consequences that we obviously want to avoid. There is this idiom waste not want not. And it's really powerful because it suggests that we have the opportunity to reduce the scope of our transition to a clean energy future by reducing the need for it energy to in the first place. Right. So, this means that it'll help us achieve our goals more aggressively, meaning we can compress the time frame and also deal with less resources. So, so that's the opportunity if we if we go to slide three. You know, we, I hope we can see that there. Yeah, so there are these interesting, you know, I guess the interesting thing about about efficiency is that it applies to most everything in our economy in our society. Anything that consumes energy. Anything that requires energy to produce or operate is a candidate for energy efficiency measures. We see that in our homes in our buildings and transportation in the stuff we consume we buy. And as we dive into each of the details and the details for this will start to see the opportunities that we have to optimize if we go to the next slide. There are a few things that I've jotted down here. I'm pretty sure I may have missed a few things, but I think these are worthy of conversation. I think the very first one is, is what Peter you had mentioned earlier or suggested earlier. So, the first one is behavior modification, and this is a really interesting one, but it's also because it's, it's very impactful, but it's also very difficult to change, right, or to effect because we're dealing with habits. We're dealing with people having done things, you know, a certain way for a long period of time. We have organizations that have operated a, you know, a certain way for a long period of time and changing the behaviors means changing the habits that have been formed. By individuals and organizations, and it could be as simple as, you know, making sure you turn off the, you know, the lights when you leave the room to, you know, checking the tire pressure for your, you know, your cars to, you know, driving more calmly. You know, all these different things they're really small. And, but they're driven by habit. And if you change them. It can actually affect a lot of efficiency and savings. So that would be one area. The other one that we really talk about a lot is technology. And this is obviously a very important part. And we're seeing constant innovation in many different areas here. We're seeing this in household appliances in H facts and heating and vehicles and more. And the idea is that as technology evolves, you have devices that are becoming more and more frugal in terms of the energy. Inputs that are required for they, for them to operate and the, and the, the challenge is making sure that the consumers. Individuals and huge entities are aware of these. Unfortunately, we are aware because there's a lot of big focus on this, right? We have a lot of incentives, things like that. The other one is mode shifting. I call this, this is where we shift to a solution that may not be really apparent. You know, a good one is instead of just optimizing the vehicles. The personal vehicles, you know, making them more efficient. We may actually say, you know, maybe we can do without a personal car, right? We shift to, we shift to mass transit. We shift to multimodal transport. We shift to us, you know, micro mobility, right? Electric bicycles and so on and so forth. This mode shift is also represents a big opportunity for us because sometimes the solutions that we end up doing are going to be very efficient, more efficient than what we're currently using today. Even if that whatever that is, like a car is shipped, it's changed to an electric car, for example, it's still more efficient to move into the other modes of transport. And then, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to comment on mindfulness, because you have to actually think about what you're doing all the time. In fact, there was a previous show on think tech Hawaii, all about mindfulness. And, you know, it really struck home to me that, you know, we go through the day we don't think about what what the heck we're doing where we are. And on the energy side, we should be thinking about what we're doing. It's like you say we're, we just do it because it's been habit for all these years. And like you say, should I use my car or can I take the bus? But in order to do that, apart from having personal mindfulness, we have to have like systemic mindfulness, including our infrastructure has to be mindfully created. So that your first choice is always going to be public transportation to use that as an example. And as long as the bus is easy, and I don't have to stand in the rain, and it shows up on time, and I can operate my cell phone on it and, you know, get on to the internet, yada, yada, yada, I'm going to use it. Now I lived in England for two years, well a year in London, right downtown. I went to a postgraduate school there. And I didn't have a car, but the, the transportation grid was so good there I could walk to a tube station was only like a 10 minute walk, and get on the tube and go somewhere else and go all over London without ever needing a car for a whole year. It was, it was kind of interesting. Going through that experience. So Peter, what are your thoughts on, we talked about both the personal mindfulness and systematic systemic mindfulness, like getting our political class mindful. Yeah, and just to kind of just kind of cap off the last topic that you were talking about in terms of mass mass transit. It's also a cultural thing it's it's it's a it's a mindset and a mindfulness that that an entire community has it's normal to do that in certain places so for us. We, I mean, it's going to it changes hard for people. So, we've got our work cut out for us. What was your question that you had just wanted to talk. I wanted to shift from just being personally mindful to being systemic. Oh, right. Mindful. Well, so that the people that build these systems are mindful about what we're trying to actually do. I mean, like we're doing now on the big island I got to say the mass transit agency and the county are really thinking this through about what, what do people want what do they need, as opposed to just assuming what they need, and not even talking to them about what they need and then you build a system that nobody uses. So, how, how inefficient is that if you have a bus that drives around with a driver and everything else like that it's maintained and nobody gets on it because it's either late, or, you know, it's, it's not on it doesn't have the amenities you want to be able to use. Or, or, or it's a, you know, it's we're trying to implement a change within a system, a community in this case, that is not optimized for it. Right. And that's one of one of the points that I have on the slide, which is a careful planning of communities. So in the situation that we talked about you just raised with the Hawaii Island. The mass transit folks are looking at things like first and last mile. Right. So how do people get to the bus stop. Now, if, if there isn't a solution for that, they may as well just get in a car and drive to where they need to go. Right. And when they reach a terminus of their, you know, of the mass trans, you know, the bus ride. They need to figure out how to get from that bus stop to where they need to go right so there's this first mile and last mile solution that needs to be part of it. But the more important thing, and I think it's part of it makes this challenge, especially an important one for the US in general is that we've built our society around the personal car. Right. You've got, you've got the job centers. You've got the burbs out here where people have to commute. You've got essentially a society that has been built around the personal car. And as we move forward, we can change that. So if new communities and cities and towns and, you know, even just a development is created. And the developers look into what will the community members there need to be able to maximize their, you know, reduce their need for transportation. Then they'll talk about, okay, we need shopping. You need, we need healthcare. You know, we need government services. And if that's all self contained or even just, you know, co located, minimizing the need to travel, then you, you can utilize shared mobility, you can utilize mass transit. So there's this thing about developing with that end in mind and trying to change our systems without looking at the overall system and also affecting change in the overall system is going to make it really hard to move forward. So anyway, that was my thought about the system dimension to it. And there's, there's one, one of the things I want to raise and that is this area around waste. You know, we talked about you, you raised this earlier. We're in a society where there is where products are designed to fail. Right. There's like, there's planned obsolescence with a product, you buy it and it's expected to last only so long. And then it's going to be fail. It's going to fail. And then you're going to have to buy another one. So we've got to change that. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of how to make products last, how to make them repairable, how to ensure they're upcycling and recycling and reuse. And the same thing goes for food. There's a lot of food waste that occurs today. A lot of energy that goes into producing food. A lot of energy that goes into throwing away and disposing of food. We should be able to make, you know, minimize that as well. So it's everywhere. It's food. It's hard goods. It's soft goods. It's transportation. There's so much opportunity in this space of efficiency. Yeah, well, so looking at it in my own personal life is I was looking at my bottle of olive oil, and it was a massive glass bottle, and it was a beautiful bottle. And, and when it was empty, I said, Jesus, a real shame just to throw this pitch it out in the garbage and, and the amount of energy that goes into making glass is enormous. So I thought, well, how can I use this? And I thought, well, you know what, that would look like a nice wine bottle. And so I repurposed it and bought a box of wine instead of bottles of wine. So right away I'm saving on glass. And decanted like four of these bottles out of this one box to get from Costco, a box of wine. So like a box of wine, if you took it as a guest when it seemed really tacky, like, oh, gee, it's bringing me boxed wine and not a bottle. That's, that's, you know, I'm a screw cap, no less, you know. Nothing but the best. But there's, there's, there's a fundamental problem to achieving that end, which and I know, I mean, it's, I mean, you get the nail on the head. We have an economic system that incentivizes a, a throw away society because shareholders are constantly going more and more and more profit profit grow grow grow grow grow grow. And it, I mean, for instance, my, my wife's father, we finally got him to get a new refrigerator after the one he had had for 50 years. Wow. Yeah. You know, was it still worked, but it was consuming so much electricity and the efficiencies, but he had a refrigerator for 50 years and he, he just, I don't need to do I've got one that works. He still was using the same, you know, appliances that belong to his mother. And this was when he was in his 70s. So they used to make things that way and quality was an issue. Now price has become the over money has become the idea. I can do five shows on this, but there's, there is a cultural thing that needs to change so that these things that you're talking about know well can be easier to do it became become socially more acceptable. So, yeah, that's my two sets. Look at the way, look at the way we work. Okay. Now this coven thing was awful. No question about it. But it's changed our whole way we do work. Yes. So instead of having to commute to the office, you have to have the car, and you got to fill it up with gas and you got to drive and take an hour one way or depending on how far away you are and then park it and all that kind of stuff. Heck, you can get up, have a cup of coffee and you can be on task, assuming you have the right kind of a job. You know, right. And you're far more efficient. I mean, I've only been in the office like three or four days in the last few years and I'm getting a heck of a lot more work done. Working from home because I have exactly the same setup in my office at work, except they don't have windows and I don't have a refrigerator. It was not a good thing because it was too easy to go and have, you know, snacks all the time. So I put on the COVID-19, which now I'm trying desperately to lose, but look how it's changed the whole way we operate. So like some organizations said, oh, you got all the comeback and people were revolting against it. You know, what's the point. And I even heard that some companies were docking people pay, because they said well now that you're not coming into the office we don't have to pay you as much because we don't have to cover your community expenses and all this kind of stuff. It really changed everything. And okay, so how do we support that? I mean, maybe that's a good thing for people in the knowledge industry, you know, not necessarily like in the university environment. I mean, guys still have their labs and they still have to go and do their experiments. They can't do that from home. So they have to go in. But other people don't have to do that. And, you know, they're using their computers and all this kind of stuff. So what we have to have to help that out on the systemic approach, systemic mindfulness, is we have to put in a awesome communication system. So like if you're living out in some of the the burbs on the big island, you know, in the outlying subdivisions, you have like wonderful internet access like during COVID the kids had allows, maybe I'm overstating it but in some of the areas they have terrible internet connections. In fact, they didn't have them. And I know sustainable energy Hawaii took the lead on trying to build little satellite Wi-Fi spots or hotspots in these local communities. Okay, so we learn from that, I hope. So let's get in there and build a Rolls Royce communication system so that maybe our kids don't have to go to school every day. You know, they can do their homework online or whatever or their, or their parents don't have to go, you know, drive 50 miles and to get to work and back because they can do the job. It's not about where you are. Yeah. What's the job I have to do. What do I have to accomplish. And what's the most efficient way I can do that. What do you guys have to say about that. I guess I got a prompt that we have three minutes left so I just want to say just to tag on to that because what you just described is so critical and the last slide I had was just talking about two general areas and a big area is education. Right. Especially the things that are behavioral in nature if people know that if they do x, they're going to save why it's going to be a motivation, especially this in this time, right, where, you know, economics are really critical. So, there's a lot of education that we need to do, and that's a big part of it. And then the other area, I know we're out of time here, the other areas policy, there are certain things that we can do to effect. You know, the changes that need to happen in the form of incentives in the form of requirements that force, you know, buildings to be more efficient, that sort of thing. So those are, you know, I'm sure there are other other things out there we need to talk through, but I want to emphasize the importance of awareness and education, you know, so that we can have my own mindfulness. There you go. Well, that's exactly what the follow on episodes of this series of shows going to be, you know, Planet Earth here, Spaceship Earth, and we're going to be talking at all the various different areas we can be more energy efficient. And, and what we can actually do as an individual and systemic what we want our politicals to do. So actually we have two slides left to go I'm going to give my little pitch I like to give all the time, which is our world is fragile, our future energy needs are great. And it's time for those of political power and financial strength we've got a lot of billionaires on the big island that make a difference. So all you guys who might dial in maybe a billionaire is not going to dial into our little show. But get out there and make a difference and do something. So we'll come up to the next slide is how we can talk to sustainable energy Hawaii and there's their website or your connection to their link to their website and also of course, our host today. The Hawaii energy policy form, because we're going to be out there looking at what kind of policies can we put in place to make ourselves more efficient and more energy efficient going forward. So last words to, I'll give something to well. You have anything you'd like to close up with. Yeah, I just again ways not one not this is the cheapest form of energy solution we have out there and it's something that we definitely must invest in. Yeah, be aware of the fact that we're that that that are our supplies are limited treat them with care and and realize that they're not going to necessarily be here forever at this price. So be mindful. Right, be mindful. Yeah, be mindful of our time. We're going to leave it there you've been watching Hawaii the state of clean energy on think tech Hawaii and we've been talking story about spaceship Earth and our broken sustainability system with Peter Sternlich and Noel Moran, Marin, Marin. I got it right. I'm sure I just know you as Noel. I'm sure there are insights on solutions and our follow on shows will be discussing other solutions so thank you. Peter and Noel for joining us and helping us out with this and I know you worked to the midnight hour last night to helping put these slides together know well so thank you so much I want to acknowledge that I also want to acknowledge Haley and the think tech team who are actually up at midnight last night when I sent them the slides and they were right on it which is really unbelievable. So thank you very much to I think tech staff and most of all thanks to our viewers for tuning in and I met you and we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on video. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechHawaii.com. Mahalo.