 Aloha! Welcome to ThinkTack Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campana. Mahalo for joining us. We have spent the past several months discussing our educational system, its programs, and what is needed to provide a better future for our cakey. This continues to be of primary importance, especially with the Every Student Succeeds Act Summit and ongoing community meetings. We really do have the opportunity to make a real substantive change right now, so I encourage you to attend the meetings and let your voices be heard. That being said, there are other areas that should be explored, such as housing and homelessness, adult and cakey foster care, procurement and permitting, prison and criminal justice reform, and energy and food security. It is my intention to bring these topics to life through a series of conversations in the coming episodes. I hope you will join us as we dive into each issue. Today's show is about sustainability. So what is sustainability? The dictionary definition of sustainability is, in general terms, the endurance of systems and processes over time. Ecologically speaking, sustainability is the capacity for life to endure over time. To help us with this topic, I would like to welcome our guest, Ms. Joelle Simone Piatri, Biofuels Subject Matter Expert. Please correct me where I am wrong throughout this whole conversation. Okay, welcome to the show. You're never wrong. Oh, no, no, no. I have ideas, but they need to be guided and shaped. So no, thank you for coming on the show. Sure. Welcome. So, okay, first of all, what's your thought on sustainability? What does sustainability mean to you? Well, I actually have the fortunate opportunity to actually get a master's degree in business sustainability, which is a program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and actually the reason why I elected to go to that particular school. So business sustainability is defined as the triple bottom line, social improvement, environmental improvement, and profits, economic profits. And it was a little bit of a while ago that I got that degree. Very much enjoyed my time at Dartmouth and at Tuck, and a shout out to the Dartmouth Club of Hawaii, who had an admitted students celebration just a couple of days ago on North Shore. And so with business sustainability, examples of that across corporate America, for example, are, Walmart ended up rolling out its business sustainability program with the triple bottom line. And what a lot of, they followed in the footsteps of much smaller companies like Patagonia that had had it as a core mission from the beginning. But the triple bottom line, social improvement, environmental improvement, and economic profitability, what a lot of those companies ended up learning from the business case is that you actually can be more profitable if you structure your organization to be a high performing one that does the right thing socially and does the right thing for employees and does the right thing for the environment. And so you end up actually improving your actual economic bottom line for the corporation. That's been proven over and over again by social venture capital funds and that kind of thing. Which brings us back to the idea of enabling the entity to endure over time in a greater capacity to thrive for a longer period of time is the goal there. Okay. So companies that actually have a sustainability as a core part of their operations, not just a person sort of assigned to one department that tries to do their best but is one individual. When it's actually folded into core operations, and we'll get to biofuels eventually because done right, it's done using this triple bottom line concept, then what you end up getting is a economic balance sheet, a company that is better able to weather downturns. For example, like very low petroleum prices now, which is a windfall for some, like the tourist economy, and very adverse economic times for, for example, those in the fossil energy in business right now. Okay. All right. So I do want to jump to biofuels, but first question I want to ask is, so before we go into more about biofuels question, because you being a subject matter expert, we're hoping to learn a lot. So jumping from your degree in business sustainability, what guided you into biofuels then? Well, the most literal version, it was my first job after I graduated. But again, I got another great opportunity to go to Waste Management Corporation, which is headquartered in Houston. So yes, it is the trash company. I've been talking trash ever since. And what the company was doing was rolling out a corporate venture fund to figure out how to invest some of the excess cash that the company had on its balance sheet into more sustainable initiatives. And so I actually focused, I actually had a few projects that focused that area towards fuels, in part because Waste Management has a very large vehicle fleet for ground transportation. But and a lot of really interesting lessons learned from say landfill gas use in their vehicle fleets. And so it was kind of just a good adjacent square. But biofuels for me personally is because I have an education in biology. So it's an area I'm comfortable in, the biology and chemistry aspect of it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we've had conversations before where that's been made very clear. And you and my wife would have a very good conversation about biology while I sit in the background and drinking coffee listening. That sounds like another episode, Carl. Actually, I think it would be. So another thing you mentioned from business sustainability perspective, my brother-in-law spent years, I don't think he's doing it now, but he spent years as the business sustainability or business efficiency manager. And what that meant was, he was the one who would go from business entity to business entity, and basically figure out who and how many people he can lay off. Yeah, that's not the bottom line sustainability. I don't think you'll find that one in the dictionary. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I wanted there to be a separation with those thoughts. You know, when you talk about sustainability within Hawaii, in certain communities, sustainability equates subsistence and, you know, self-supporting living. So it's the, you know, it's the growing, growing your own food, farming your own fish, that kind of sort of microcosm sustainability. Which is the same basic concept. There's nothing wrong with it either, but in Hawaii, you know, sustainability conversations do end up getting sort of pulled between those various definitions. You know, are we talking about sort of Hawaiian cultural sustainability? Are we talking about business sustainability? Are we talking about surviving through downturn sustainability? And ultimately, we need to be talking about all of those. Yes. And they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. No, they're not. In fact, if, with some thought, maybe it's all tied together. That's what I think. Okay. So going into biofuels now a little deeper, let's first of all set the scene here a little bit with, let's talk about a barrel of oil. We have thousands of barrels of oil that come to us every day, actually. How much of each of those imported barrels of oil is for electricity? And how much is for transportation fuels? Well, the easiest way to think of it is as a pie. And so if you, you know, take your circular pie chart, it, you know, year over year ends, averaging out to be basically cut into thirds. So your nice big pizza slice is for electricity. Your next third pizza slice is for ground transportation, and the remaining part is for air transportation. There end up being some kind of movements around the margins there. When the economy is good and there's more tourist arrivals, the air fraction goes up. And then the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative and the Energy Efficiency Initiatives that the state has embarked on have actually started to have their effect on the electricity portion. So the electricity portion has shrunk in most recent numbers to actually be about 27, 28 percent of the petroleum consumed in the state. So 27, 28 percent will even cap it at 30 percent and say 30 percent at most any given year of the petroleum that is imported, of the fossil fuels that are imported, is used for electricity. Which means around about 70 percent is used for transportation. What you didn't mention in transportation, you said ground and air, what about marine? Yeah, marine's about five to eight percent kind of depends on how you count it, whether it depends where you count the military's consumption, which is a different kind of marine fuel from the commercial consumption. But, you know, still a third, a third, a third. And the marine ends up being that depends on how you want to do the numbers today. But in either case we're talking about a third of it being electricity and two-thirds of it at least being transportation fuels. So that's an important piece of the puzzle that hasn't really been talked about and we don't really have guidelines for at the moment. Well, the conversation about it has tended to stop with the, we don't know how to address, for example, renewable transportation. Electricity is much easier to grasp. It's a regulated market. There is a public utilities commission. It is much easier to conceive. You know, a lot of people have houses or a place where they live. And so, you know, you can put photovoltaic on the roof. It's easy to see that. But when you get to transportation, you're really getting a lot closer to petroleum. And that's a worldwide, fungible commodity. It's subject to global markets. And it's not a regulated monopoly, except in some very limited cases, like a Hawaii gas gas is regulated in Hawaii for their sort of propane provisions to commercial customers in the state, commercial and residential customers in the state. But on the transportation side, the regulation is very limited. It's, for example, like the rates for inter-island barge, you know, cargo rates that is regulated. But, you know, your regular ground and air transportation actually can't be regulated. And air transportation is subject to interstate commerce law. So that makes it complicated. Yes. Got it. Okay. All right, let's jump back a little bit and say, okay, as far as Hawaii's transportation fuel usage, how much, so if we're going to say that the two thirds, how much of that two thirds makes up the total Hawaii's total fuel usage? Is it 80%, 90%? I thought the number was 90% or above of the fuels that are actually used come from this fossil fuel petroleum imported for a barrel. Oh, so if I understand your question, what you're trying to ask is what percentage of transportation fuel is petroleum based? Yes. As opposed to others? Yes. I think, and I wish I could have, you know, Kelly or Bob from Pacific Biodiesel who I know have been on ThinkTech shows many times here to correct me, but the out of the total, it's something like less than 2% of the transportation fuel in the state is renewable. Less than 2%. So now we're closer to 98% then of fuel usage is petroleum based. Yeah. So if I had a napkin here and I would be sketching on the fly live on TV, it would be roughly 10% of the gasoline and gasoline is about, you know, 40%, 50% of the ground transportation fuel. Now we're including marine again. So 10% of the gasoline of course has ethanol blended into it and then from year to year, the amount of fuel that Pacific Biodiesel, which is the sole supplier of transportation biofuels in the state currently, the amount that they sell into the diesel market makes up the balance. But last time I tried to get those numbers that ended up being even worse, it ended up being less than 1% of the transportation fuel in the state. Wow. So basically it's a big topic with significant usage. Getting the numbers is something maybe we can have Bob come in. It would be great to have him come in and we can ask him about this as well. But significant amount of our usage, 98% plus perhaps of our usage comes from fossil fuel, comes from the imported oil that comes in and this is just for our fuels, for transportation needs. So that's a topic that needs to be addressed. Okay, we have to take a quick break. So stay with us and we'll be back in one minute. And again, thank you for joining us. It's Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I'm your host Carl Kampania and this is again, Mr. Welsam on PHD. Thank you. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts six live talk shows from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday and then streams earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hey, Standard Energy Man here. Make sure you tune in on my lunch hour every Friday from noon until 12 30 at least. Maybe I'll go a little long if you got good stuff to share with you. But we'll talk about energy, all kinds of energy. My favorite is hydrogen and my favorite other favorites transportation and hydrogen. But we'll talk about all kinds of energy. Be with us every Friday at noon, Standard Energy Man. Aloha. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Once again, we have with us our guest today is Joel Simone Piatri, biofuels subject matter expert. Okay, so we're going to learn a little bit more about renewable energy. But when we're talking about renewable energy here, we're talking about fossil fuels. We're talking about fuels, transportation fuels. And with Joel, we're specifically talking about biofuels. So leading back in from what we were last saying, 98% plus of the transportation fuels that we consume are fossil fuel petroleum imported. Correct? Yes. Okay. Close enough. Close enough. In that range. A lot. Most. Significantly. All right. So with that, there are effects. So what would you say are some of the effects of being so tied to one source specifically that is also, you know, one single source of fuel that is also a fossil fuel? Well, it ends up being a bit, you know, kind of subject to definition when you talk about one source. Because yes, while it is all petroleum fuel, the actual petroleum refineries that are refining that into the fuel will actually, you know, purchase their crude from all over the globe. It's coming to Hawaii from the Middle East, from Southeast Asia, from South America, from Canada. So it's coming from a lot of different places, and the actual mix will change, you know, on a daily and monthly basis. But as far as the varieties of potential fuel sources, it's one material from multiple locations, but it's one material, maybe that's a better way of stating it. We are almost entirely bound to one material source, one material of multiple sources for our fuels. So some of the impacts for that. So because as a result of that, we're subject to whatever the market dictates with that word. So that includes price shocks, that includes reliability. Do we actually have enough, right? And what happens if there isn't enough? And we see that goes on and on, back and forth, almost on the schedule, it seems, let alone the environmental impacts. You know, a lot of people talk about clean energy. And I want to get your thought on this real quick. Clean energy. People say, well, we want liquid natural gas as cleaner. Is liquid natural gas cleaner? Or is it, I mean, when they say that, it burns cleaners, what they mean, right? Yes. So if you were to compare liquid natural gas in say a fixed power plant compared to a coal natural gas, hands down, or sorry, to a coal power plant, you know, you know, pretty much unequivocally, the liquefied natural gas power plant would be cleaner in terms of its emissions, less carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced, for example. When you're talking about, when you get to transportation, that also tends to be the case. But you get into a lot of different, you know, you're talking about say like a hydrogen combustion or a compressed natural gas, you end up getting into a lot of technology differences. So it's a lot harder to make sort of, you know, gross generalizations when you get into transportation. What is easy is that when it comes to aviation, natural gas is still not an option, unless you are converting it into a fuel through like a, you know, an advanced refining technique that actually takes the gas and stitches it together into liquids. Okay. So, all right, so then basically it's different technologies. Right. Now that the gas to liquids technologies can be used for biogases. So if you have methane sources, and so there is a consortium of companies actually looking at doing this on Oahu, of methane gas sources like from wastewater treatment plants on Oahu, and actually doing that reformation to turn it into, through a gas to liquids technique, actually turn it into transportation fuel. So that might actually be one of the first aviation ready biofuel production options relevant to the state of Hawaii. That leads to my next question perfectly. What is needed for a biofuel to be an acceptable replacement? Well, there's technical acceptance. And so I should probably pause for kind of like a biofuels 101. Which is exactly where we are. So what is the process of generating a biofuel? And that's part of that. So that was my next question. Yeah. So let's spend a little bit of time on syntax. And, you know, this is where it probably would have been good to have some eye candy to show you other than the lovely Honolulu skyline. Which is beautiful. But, you know, picture, you know, biofuels as an umbrella term. And within biofuels that broad umbrella term you'll have things that most of your, you know, watchers have probably heard of before like ethanol, which I already mentioned, biodiesel is another example. And then it will also include things like biogas. You know, you compress, you know, a biogas and it becomes like a compressed natural gas that can go into, you know, some of those modified trucks like I mentioned earlier. Then there's also this other category, which is called third generation fuels. And that is where you end up getting a jet fuel, a gasoline, a diesel, transportation fuel. But it is not refined from petroleum crude. It's refined from a green crude, like some kind of like vegetable oil, fats, you know, grease trap waste. Or in really advanced techniques, actually from a woody material like wood chips or sugarcane bagasse. Okay. Or like eucalyptus. Yeah. So biofuel is that big umbrella. And generally, you know, what I'm working on is what's called the third generation category, which is actually where the oxygen is removed from the fuels. So that's where you actually get to a pure hydrocarbon like a jet fuel that actually doesn't have, that doesn't have any performance differences at a commercial scale. There's some really interesting work that the Air Force is doing that is actually showing that you can actually get performance improvements with some of the biofuels, especially the jet fuels and missile fuels. Performance improvements to that refining process. But you won't see it in Hawaii and, you know, the commercial transportation market. Why? Why is it because of the blends, but also just because of the economics, you know, a commercial aircraft does not need to break the sound barrier or fly at 70,000 feet. And those are the kinds of performance improvements that you can get from a biofuel or a synthetic fuel that are harder to get from a petroleum based fuel. So we don't want our commercial aircraft to have to do either of those flying into and out of Honolulu Airport. Okay. But we do want to shift a larger percentage of our usage to more sustainable biofuel products in general. But some can be more specific for military usage, others for more commercial or daily usage. Yeah. And generally, you know, anytime you try and add sort of a performance enhancement, you end up adding cost. And so then, you know, having to do that and still be able to compete against petroleum, especially at current petroleum prices, you know, the prices of the past three, four, five years compared to the peaks in 2006. Which is also a time frame. It's not a fair thing either because of the oil subsidies, the petroleum oil subsidies that are out there that help balance that out that the biofuels don't currently get to enjoy. I think it's fair to say that there's not a level playing field when it comes to the production economics. Exactly. Okay. Alrighty. So one of the other things that we didn't get to here, and I'm going to jump into my last little piece here is the part that we know that we're really talking about the supply chain. Supply chain of where the biofuels come from, how they get converted, and then how they become part of the integrated process and distribution network so that it can be more readily available. And we understand that that is at this point, correct me if I'm wrong, that isn't really ready yet. It's not as mature in its process. It's not as mature in its timeline at the moment that it could be. And it needs a bit more time, bit more effort, bit more money to try to get it to the point where we have those operational volumes. That'd be correct. For Hawaii, certainly. Because while advanced biofuels is now commercial on the mainland, it is using feedstocks that are more commercially available on the mainland. So pulp and paper residue, large volumes of separated food waste out of municipal solid waste, for example. So the kind of food waste that you get from cafeterias and restaurants, large municipalities, we're talking about the city of Los Angeles, you know, the city of Houston. Those kinds of, that front end of the supply chain is more commercially feasible on the mainland. Now here in Hawaii, there are really interesting opportunities in smaller, more varied streams, agricultural wastes, you know, bring up Pacific Biodiesel again, but they've been doing some really interesting research into what happens with all the waste papaya grown in Hilo. It's about 10 million pounds a year of papaya thrown away in Hilo actually into a former rock quarry and just fermenting there. Well, fermented papaya is just a simple way of saying ethanol, and ethanol can go into gasoline. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, okay. Alrighty, so it's a big topic, and what I want to do is I want to invite you back again so we can do a deeper dive into... With pictures. With pictures. A deeper dive into biofuels in Hawaii. What we can actually do, where are we with biofuels in Hawaii, what is needed, and how can we help shape that. So as soon as we can have you come back, I'd love to have that conversation. So, okay. Alrighty, let's see. I don't know. We can try to see if I can get my closing piece in here. So in closing, let me restate. Sustainability is the capacity for systems and life to endure over time. So how does this apply to our daily lives? Every day, we live and hopefully thrive within a series of systems facilitated through process. This, the systems of our day begin with a morning routine or process that includes some sequential combination of showers, shaving, breakfast, toothbrushing, dressing, getting kids ready into school and then arriving to work so we can receive a paycheck, pay rent and buy food, etc. All according to a preferred timeline and hopefully repeatable from day to day to month. This includes the stable pricing of consumables such as food and fuel. As long as nothing shocking or unusual happens, our days proceed like this over and over again, happily. In order to maintain efficiency, each step in the process is reliant on the previous step being achieved as expected. But what happens if you or your child wakes up sick? Or what if the electricity goes out? Or the water does not flow through the faucet? Or you forget to put fuel in your car and so you run out of gas along the way? Or when you arrive at the gas station to refuel, you find that your car does not work and you have no cash? Or what happens if the barges filled with food or the oil tank ships filled with fuel slow or stop? Very quickly we see how our systems break down and how we are forced to modify and adapt. If we do not or cannot adapt quickly enough, the consequence is worse. Here in Hawaii, if the barges and tank ships stopped or even slowed, we would very quickly begin hoarding and then turn on each other to obtain and control the needed resources. Prices would rise, more and more people would become homeless, and business and commerce would eventually stop, including the internet and cell phone availability. Those with money would flee the islands, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves without electricity, communications, fuel, or sufficient food supply. The remaining people would starve until the carrying capacity of food that is grown in Hawaii equals the demand of the decimated population. Sorry to sound so grim, but I hope the point is made. Sustainability is necessary to ensure our quality of life over time and through hardships. Also, that there is a direct cost of living impact. But here is the opportunity. We can define and implement a renewable fuels portfolio standard to include air, marine, and ground transportation, much like we did with the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative. We can reach our diversification and sustainability goal. This portfolio would be driven by the opportunities available in each county and extrapolated upward to the statewide goal. This would require new and revised policy as well as investment, both through carbon, credits, and tax incentives, and private investment from venture capital groups. Over time, we would have a thriving new sustainable markets. The benefits could include a significant growth in local farming, revitalizing currently fallow agricultural land for food and feedstock, as well as the creation of a manufacturing sector to process the food and fuel, and of course, create the operational amounts of fuel needed to commercialize and distribute. In addition to jobs, this could be a significant amount of money within Hawaii that stays within Hawaii rather than sending it out via imported fossil fuel. So in the last second that we have, do you have any thoughts on that? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Well, we'll set aside the dystopic view and move on to the clean grain future. Yes, excellent. It is possible. There are low hanging fruit in Hawaii. Some of them are highest rotting on the ground, and that can be turned into fuel. I'm very sorry that we do have to stop. Thank you so much for joining us. Really do appreciate it. Hope you see us next week. I believe we have Senator Chun Oklin, Senator Susie Chun Oklin joining us next week. Hope to see you then. Thank you. Bye-bye.