 We're back on a given Tuesday at 2 p.m. with a special show, Hawaii the State of Clean Energy. And we want to report about an event that took place in the state legislature this week. If you wondered about what kind of a session we're having there in the square building, this will help you understand what kind of a session we're having there in our democracy here in Hawaii. You know, there are people who are concerned about the quality of democratic government. People are concerned about whether the people we elect as our officials, our representative officials are actually listening to the public. This will help you understand whether they are. If you're worried about whether we have leadership at the executive branch and in the various agencies concerned with energy, this will help you understand where they are and what they're doing or perhaps better put, what they're not doing. And for this discussion, we have Marco Mangelsdorf. He's the president founder of ProVision Solar and Helo. He joins us every other Monday to talk about energy, and he's joining us special today. We are very appreciative for his appearance. Hi, Marco. Welcome. Welcome back to the show. Well, on the one you change with every new day, still I'm going to miss you, legislature. I'm not going to miss him. You know, no man's life, no man or woman's life or property is safe when the legislature is in session. If only we could pay them to stay home, we'd be better off. Who said that? Never mind. So the molded white guy said that centuries ago was prior to you and I today. I think so. We didn't make it up here. So talking about energy, a very important bill, a bill that has been batting around for three years with a lot of support in the energy community anyway and among the public, I think, SB 2100. So can you tell us the sad and tragic story of Senate bill 2100, Marco? I wish I didn't have to, Jay, it's painful just to undo so. So as we've been talking about these past months, Senate bill 2100, which was introduced by Senator's beginning of the session, way, way back in January, done two important things that would have started to ramp down the state renewable energy tax credit, which now reminds you and anybody who cares to be reminded that we've had a version of the solar tax credit in Hawaii for over 40 years, going back to at least 1976 when I graduated from high school. So this was an attempt to ramp down the solar tax credit, which is 35% so with no sunset date. And at the same time, create a new tax credit for adding energy storage homes and businesses who already have PV. And I had very high hopes that SB 2100 was going to get across the finish line. It came down to the wire with the conference committee meeting, I believe at least two or three times, starting on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and even into Friday evening of last week and ultimately the parties on the House and the Senate side and other parties who were part of the negotiations and discussions that could not come to a consensus. So much to my very deep disappointment and the frustration Senate bill 2100 did not come out of conference, therefore did not get voted on yesterday or today. Today's the last day of the legislature before it goes into recess until the next session. So, you know, very, very disappointing that this bill third time was not the charm, the third time was the failure like it was, second time like it was first time. And I'm rather dismayed to say the least that something that would have been so beneficial, so tangibly beneficial in the short term to I think many stakeholders and the state of Hawaii in general in terms of greater resiliency and backup as we should be deploying battery storage and a much more robust pace than we are now, you know, wait, wait again till next year. And it just doesn't doesn't take the sting out too much for me at this point, Jay. No, next year is a new legislature, at least a new house. And, you know, the problem is you have all these people are going to be coming into the house fresh. They may not know which end is up. And it's a whole new effort to try to educate them about what this all means. And there's no guarantee we'll be better off next year at the same time. You and I could be having the same conversation next year. I'm so sorry to say it moves in so strange and slow. Anyway, so, you know, let's talk about how it got this far. It got pretty far. It got down to the, you know, the ninth inning anyway. You had bills in both the House and the Senate, which were passed by both the House and the Senate's after lobbying and discussion and hearing and whatnot for all these months. And they were almost identical. What was the issue? I'd be happy to try to answer that, but just kind of give a little bit of historical context I've been reflecting in the past few days. You will recall something wonderful called net energy metering that was a boon for tens of thousands of Hawaii business owners and homeowners, Terry Fiat, back in October, 2015. And it had a long and glorious run of a little over 14 years. So net energy metering started in 2001. And it took year before the year before that and year before that for the bill to finally be passed in 2001 and get to the governor's desk. Back then it was the Ben Caetano. So the point simply being is that no matter how seemingly great the idea, beneficial, the idea, beneficial, the bill, historically, we can see in our state that it will fail the first, second, third or more times before finally getting across the finish line. And we finally became in 2001, I believe, the 38th state in the country, 38th state to get net energy metering. So what do you attribute that to? I mean, if it was right the fourth time, was it less right? The third time, the second time or the first time? I mean, what got more right about it after four tries? Was it that the legislature was was ill equipped or ignorant or unprepared or I mean, what happened that it took that long? I mean, I don't know, Jay. I, you know, to what extent it's kind of a learning and comfort process that even though, you know, in year one, it sounded like a great idea and we would have been the 32nd or 33rd or 34th state to do it. So it's not as if we were particularly blazing a new path. It just seems to be kind of like the proverbial every time you hit a nail into a piece of wood, it goes a little bit deeper. So every session that it takes up the bill, the nail goes deeper and somehow, you know, it kind of makes my metaphor here. Sometimes that becomes more comfortable as the nail is going in deeper, even though it's kind of a twisted metaphor. So yeah, we only say it's really sounds terribly, terribly inefficient. I mean, you present the merits and they should make a decision, not delay the decision. They should make the decision. They should have the wherewithal to make the decision. I think what happens is they want to see you come back over and over again. It's not, you know, they want to see if the people advancing the bill feels strong enough about it to, you know, renew their effort year after year after year. And only then, only after that renewal, having all these people go through the pain and agony of appearing there and filing testimony and spending their time genuflecting in front of the legislature. Only then do you begin to believe that the public really wants this. I find that really remarkable. And I think it happens a lot in this legislature in Hawaii. Well, I got to tell you, one of the lessons, painful lessons, I learned here in this particular example, J, the Senate Bill 2100, is that I read fairly carefully, both the House version, the HD2, House Draft 2 and the Senate Draft 2, SD2 and HD2. And I read them side by side and they were very, very, very stupid. And I thought foolishly in retrospect that based on the fact that they were so very close that this bill had an excellent chance of getting in and out of a conference committee. And what I learned, Mitty, is almost akin to after you've taken and you and I are of a vintage that we know what an etch-a-sketch is, right? You know what an etch-a-sketch is. I'm not old enough to know that, Marco. I don't believe you. Why don't you tell the people what it is? Well, so you spend, it's a very old-fashioned toy where you have a knob on the left and a knob on the right and you do a drawing manipulating the two knobs, OK? Yes, OK. Then when you finish the drawing, it's kind of like the Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala. They, you know, they'll spend hundreds of hours putting together a most elaborate, beautiful sand mandala of a scene of a Buddhist icon. And then they'll look at it for a few minutes and then they'll just take their broom and they'll mix it all up. It's an exercise of non-attachment. So in this sense, with an etch-a-sketch, you have all this effort going into the course of the session to come up with a bill. So you're working, you know, thinking of it as an etch-a-sketch over three or four months. So the conference committee, you have this beautiful etch-a-sketch drawing. But once you get to conference, you take the etch-a-sketch and you shake it vigorously. And then the drawing that you've been working for months on simply disappears and you start anew. So in the sense of a conference committee, regardless of what was agreed upon by the prior committees, Energy and Environment Committee, Energy and Transportation Committee and the money committees in the House and the Senate, regardless of what was agreed upon previously, the game starts anew at conference and you have legislative leaders who get involved. You have the chairpeople of the money committees get involved again. You have, perhaps, you know, Department of Taxation because they are looking at the fiscal responsibility that they hold in terms of making sure money and money out more or less equals up. So the less than I learned, Jay, it doesn't seem to make a width of difference that the two competing bills from the House and the Senate were so damn close that didn't make a difference from what I can tell. The game started anew at conference and they couldn't get it out of the ballpark. Well, the magic, you know, the magic is that had these bills been completely identical, I mean, not only similar but identical, then it would not have gone to the conference committee. It would have gone straight to the floor and it would have been passed and probably signed. So, you know, one little difference, one little lack of similarity and you have two separate bills that have to go to the conference and you really wonder, Marco, whether that's intentional. In other words, yeah, sure, we told the public we were going to pass this, but we're going to leave this little flaw in this, you know, there's a little difference between the one in the House and the one in the Senate. We'll let it go into the magic box, OK, and it'll fail and they won't even know why. Nobody will know why it failed. So we, you know, it's a sort of political distraction. They think we like it, but in fact, we have our other agenda and we kill it quietly in the conference committee, which leads me to, go ahead. From what I understand, conference committees, when they, you know, it's published on the legislative website when they meet, where they meet. So it is possible for the public to attend. That said, a lot of what goes on at conference takes place outside the conference committee when other individuals who are not part of the who are not conferees, strictly speaking, but other players who are discussing what's going on with the conferees. So I can only conclude that when it comes to conference committees, there's what goes on before the public, as I think you just alluded to in open conference. And there's also the real meat or tofu of the matter that goes on elsewhere beyond the gaze of the public. Yeah, it's the guys who have access, maybe the lobbyists, maybe some people have access because of political contributions or what have you, relationships. They can go talk to the conferees, and that's not on the record. You know, there have been efforts in the past to subject this process to sunshine, but they've always failed. And so a good part of the decision process, and this is not a good thing in the legislature, it takes place, you know, quietly in the back room. And so the result is you don't know why something was successful or not successful in conference. And we hear you and me sitting together evaluating this retrospectively. We cannot say what killed SB 2100, whatever happened to it. We don't know why. We don't know what was wrong or flawed. We don't know what the substance of the objection was or who made it. And this really troubles me from, you know, trying to find confidence and trust in government. This does not engender confidence and trust in government by anybody. I have to agree with you, my friend. And I think we should one of us should reach out to our friend, Chris Lee, who's the good man ahead of the House Energy and Environment Committee. And Chris was one of the two co-chairs along with Senator Lorena Noe. And it'd be great to get Chris on the show or on a show with you, Jay, and try to get the inside scoop from one of the main players. OK, I think it's a great idea, Marco. Let's take a minute and ruminate. Now we're going to take a break now. And when we come back, I'd like to talk about the implications of what happened here so we can figure out what, you know, for the lack of public policy in this state, what happens in the vacuum of public policy? What's going to happen right after this break with Marco Mangostorf? We'll be right back. Hey, Aloha, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech, Hawaii, where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy and transportation, energy and maritime, energy and aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii. Because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stan Energyman and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Good afternoon. My name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech, Hawaii. We show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Yeah, Hawaii, the state of clean energy sometimes. Let's not be deluded. Sometimes we lurch forward or lurch to the side. This is one of those days we're lurching backward with SB 2100. And Marco Mangelsdorf and I are talking about what happened in the conference committee on that bill, where it just died a day or two ago, really sad. And so, you know, one of the things that comes to mind is where exactly is the executive branch on this? You know, you can't have an effective legislature without effective leadership. And I don't know if there was leadership in the House or in the Senate that actually recognized the realities of our needs and the energy initiative. But it seems clear that there was no leadership at the executive level or in the agency level, where, for example, the State Energy Office would have actually gotten behind this and done something and twisted arm and generally made this bill happen. They were AWOL and that's a real problem when you're trying to get things done because it creates a kind of fragmentation and a failure of energy. Excuse the expression and a failure of motion forward. So I don't think the system worked very well on this bill. And this is only one bill. I think we could find other examples as well. But so, Marco, so now here we are. It failed for the third time. And I'm not sure what's going to happen next year. Nobody can be sure because next year is is another year, right? It's it's not the biennium anymore. New elections, new members of the House and some Senate and the bills don't survive. They can't be just pop right back in. They got to start from scratch because it's a new biennium. And so my question is, where are we? Where are we on this issue? I know it's not dead because everybody wanted it. But where are we? Thirty five percent renewable energy tax credit, which we've had for a number of years. It has no sunset date, which I got to believe is not something that our friends at the Department of Taxation necessarily wanted to see happen because that continues to, you know, no no sunset date means the thirty five percent without end and three attempts in the past three years to bring thirty five percent to start ramping it down over time, like the federal investment tax credit, which will start ramping down in twenty twenty. I mean, that's though tax certainly didn't get what they want. If, in fact, they wanted the tax credit to ramp down and lessen the the hit on the the state's general fund. So cynically, I guess I can say that at times there seems to be more interest in photo op than an actual legislation that will have a substantial impact on the near term. And what I'm referring to is that Public Agilities Commission to open a docket to establish to base rate making or performance based regulation, performance based metrics, performance based incentives, all of the above. And this is the fundamentally from the ground up change the business model for the investor and electric utilities in the state. And of course, there is only one. I'm actually there. There's one company, which is Hawaiian Electric Industries, which owns Hiko, Halko and Miko. And this bill signed by the governor, despite the fact that the docket on this exact subject was opened the prior week by the Public Utilities Commission. And Bob, it has its redundancy at the best characterization. Can you imagine why two initiatives are running through one to PUC, which is public, which is known, which is government, everyone in government should know what's going on in government and the legislature, which is pushing a bill through that says exactly the same thing. So in one week to PUC acts and in the next week, the legislature and the governor act, what are they doing? They're all doing the same thing. Is that like, you know, I mean it, I mean it, I mean it? What does that mean? It sounds like a waste of time to me. We pay salaries. We pay the expenses of operating both of those agencies. Why are they both doing precisely the same thing? Are we coordinated? It goes back to the question of leadership, doesn't it? It's I think it's inaccurate to say that they both are doing the same thing that the bill passed signed by the governor recently saying as the docket that was opened the week prior to that. I think that there are some differences now. I haven't sat them down, sat down and done, you know, a comparative read paragraph by paragraph or word by word. But I believe the folks such as Chris Lee and others who were behind this bill, very enthusiastic about this bill, would make the point that our teeth in it or had stronger provisions. Again, that's hearsay. OK, so I can't comment on on the details, but whatever, however this plays out, however it plays out, Jay, it's going to take place over years. It's going to take place over a considerable period of time with many, many participants, many stakeholders who knows how many interveners the PUC is going to allow. And again, I'll hark back to the fact that they allowed over 25 for the HCI next era docket. I wouldn't be surprised if it be a couple dozen as well for this particular docket. So it's going to be a real free for all for a period of time. And how that's going to affect Hawaiian Electric, how it's going to affect their credit rating amongst the investor class in New York, how it's going to affect shareholder value. And keep in mind, there's no shortage of Hawaii residents who own stock in Hawaiian Electric Industries really remains to be seen. So this is going to be playing out over a considerable period of time. And I'm not necessarily opposed to it by any means. I think it's the necessary and a good thing to discover and see what improvements can be made in terms of changing utility practices. But again, I hark back to this. It's really just sounding like a broken CD, a bill and a bill 2100, which would have had near term tangible benefits, not just narrow mindedly for companies like mine, but also for homeowners, business owners in the state, we're at large. So to wrap up this monologue, Jay, what I see is that we seem to be at times long on atmospheric, whether it's Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, whether it's the pitch that we're going to be completely 100 percent renewable and power generation by 2045, whether it's we're going to completely turn upside down Hawaiian Electric's business model. I mean, there's a feel good public business and we get picked up by the national media. We have Green Tech Media writes about a utility dive, writes about it sometimes that even gets into larger publication. So it's the glitzy stuff is the atmospheric is the photo op that seem to get the biggest splash to the detriment of near term real world action, the legislature and the executive could take to get progress being made in a much shorter time frame. I'll go further than that and say that just as next era, you know, darkened the horizon and complicated and distracted us from any meaningful attention to the Clean Energy Initiative for 18 months at least and more like two years. This this new docket is going to distract us from the business of reaching clean energy. It's going to taste. He's going to suck all the oxygen out. All those interveners are going to want to have their say the public and the press can be all fascinated with how that works and what goes on and it will be the center of attraction not to clean energy initiative. At the same time, this legislature has dropped out of one of the most important technological advances that we can possibly deal with and that is storage. Everyone agrees that storage is the next step forward. That storage will make it happen. That storage is the way to get 100 percent and here we have failed to give the necessary tax credit to it, even after three years of trying. So on the one hand, we have the photo ops going on in that duplication of effort between the PUC and the governor and the legislature. And on the other hand, we have failed to recognize the value of storage tax credits. This actually is very distracting and those who would say that Hawaii has this beautiful arc to be number one in building clean energy. This is not really what's happening. I think we have to recognize that these things do get in the way and that we're no longer number one, if we ever were. And that other places are moving, which with much greater alacrity than we are. Just look at what happened in the legislature this season. We could be moving so much faster, so much more efficient than we are. Who's watching the store, Marco? Well, and, you know, to me, again, as a small business owner who's been in PV for decades, and I can tell you because I've got the data. It's not just that perfectly on my part that the PV industry, the local PV industry across the state of Hawaii last year had the worst year that we had in the past 10 years, last year, in terms of new sales and new PV permits. Now there are a number of reasons for that and the reasons are important, of course, but it just shows that with all the high-faluting words that we're getting from those folks who are kind of cloud-based, so to speak, and looking at it from the macro level and, you know, organizing conferences and talks and and more nice photo op, is that the reality on the ground is something very, very, very different. 100 is a way of beginning to reverse that or have us bottom out. Hopefully we bottomed out last year as a PV industry. In terms of rooftop solar and that we're going to be the solar coasters, hopefully, on the way up this year. And then the first four months of the year, we're seeing some positive signs. At least my company is and others as well. And this bill would have been a very tangible benefit. You know, Meena and I and you could continue to debate whether yet another tax credit for typically upper end is in the public interest. That's the discussion I welcome. You know, we there's just this disconnect, Jay. There's this disconnect. Everybody seems to agree that we need a lot more rooftop solar. And yet what tangible measures has this legislature and this governor done to try to guarantee and to assure the well-being and the robustness of this industry that is the one providing these rooftop solar systems. So I hope this plays out in the election somehow. For those who are running, especially those who are not incumbent, this should be a political platform point for them, don't you think? And I hope we hear more about it. I hope it doesn't end here. Well, anyway, Marco, thank you for a discussion of this point. And I hope that people find out what happened soon about SB 2100. And I hope it doesn't happen again. I hope we do better next time. But actually, I say that every year. Say goodbye to the folks, Marco. Say goodbye to the folks and goodbye to you, Jay. And next Monday, we're on with the commissioner, Jenny Potter. So look forward to that. Looking forward. Thank you, Marco Mangos. Thank you.