 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's Wednesday, 4 p.m. And you know what that means. It's a way the state of clean energy, okay, where Mitch Ewan and I, we explore the frontiers of energy in our state, especially clean energy in our state. So we have Mitch Ewan, and today we have Scott Glenn, the state energy officer. And we have Maria Tome, who has been with ThinkTech since 1297. That's a year. And we enjoy her every time. And she is joining us because she is with the Hawaii State Energy Office. This is very important for everybody in the state. So Mitch, can you give us a handle on the scope of the show today with Scott and Maria? Yes, first of all, we're going to talk about the new format of the Energy Office. And then we're going to talk about COVID-19 and how the Energy Office is supporting that. And we're going to look at some challenges. And then finally, we're going to talk about big projects on the horizon and how those can support the economy and get us working again. It gives me a chance to get a plug-in for hydrogen, even. Of course it does. So Scott, you know, we taped your presentation in the middle of January, just around the opening of legislature. That was your welcome. Welcome to the legislature, to the government. And so it was very nice. And we had the tape to prove it, as a matter of fact. But welcome, okay? We're a little late on this, but welcome. And it's great to have you in the Energy Office. And it's even better to have you in the newly formatted, newly organized, reorganized Energy Office. Can you talk about what that is, the new Energy Office under Act 122? Yes, thank you, Jay and Mitch for having us here, Maria and me today. So I joined the Energy Office in October of 2019. And about a year ago, in summer of 2019, Governor signed the legislation that created the new Hawaii State Energy Office. And so that legislation is called Act 122. And if you look at it, it actually establishes a new mission statement. But one of the things about the Energy Office in the past was it was a subunit of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. And for government wonks, when you're a part of a department, that's one thing. And then when you become an attached agency to a department, that's another thing. And what Act 122 did fundamentally was it pulled the Energy Office out of D-Bed, created it as an attached agency to D-Bed, and then gave it an explicit mission. And so that mission is to promote energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean transportation to help achieve a resilient clean energy economy. And I've got a picture of it. If you don't mind showing it. So people Oh, yeah, let's take a look at that. Here we have a statement of the mission as in Act 122, but it goes further than that, right? It does. It does. And so it's been codified in the Hawaii Revised Statutes now in section 71. So that's what that is at the beginning of the slide. And so that's the core mission. So it's made it quite clear that we need to focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, clean transportation, which is a new and a clarification of responsibility among all the state agencies. And then that what we're trying to achieve is a resilient clean energy economy. And there's an extra word that we often will put in there. That's not per se in the statute. But sometimes we'll say a resilient, clean energy, decarbonized economy, because we also have a lot of responsibilities focused on decarbonization. And we don't want to omit that, even though the explicit purpose statement doesn't necessarily include that word. So that's that's the gist of what we do. And as an attached agency, one of the, I think one of the reasons the legislature had for doing this was energy is such an important part of the economy. And having it as a standalone agency gives it the prominence within state government to take on and have the visibility, as well as the responsibility and responsiveness to the legislature and the public on this matter. And so the chief energy officer position is a governor appointed position, instead of a administrative position like it used to be. And Governor Ege has decided to make the chief energy officer a cabinet level position within his administration. And so as in this role, I'm able to work directly with the department's directors and deputy directors and the heads of other agencies across state government to advance these various clean energy goals. That is so much better than the arrangement before, Mitch. So I was wondering about your level of authority. You touched on it when you just gave us this explanation. In the past, the head of the energy office had to go through DBED director to get anything passed. And there was, you know, a lot of political pressure or whatever. Does this give you a lot more autonomy? So for example, if there's a bill going through the legislature, and the energy office has an opinion on that, does that give you the authority to form your own opinion and write your own testimony without having having it cleared by a bunch of other levels of the bureaucracy? Mitch, that's right. We do have the authority and the autonomy to directly share our policy expertise with the legislature through testimony or with other folks. I would say though that under this administration for for Governor Ege, the departments do work together quite well. And I do work closely with Mike McCartney, the DBED director, as well as other department directors. And there is a very strong alignment on energy policy among the different departments. Okay, so I have one other question that I'll let Jay jump in there. But I also want to talk about the money part. So as part of this, did you get your own budget? For example, I mean, I guess you have budget for your administration staff, but you have budget for like, R&D projects or development projects that you can allocate. I mean, go out with RFPs that that you manage a budget is like, for example, we used to have the hydrogen fund, and we still have it still on the books, no money left in it. But you know, that you can administer these funds and promote business. Is that something that you have under your leadership? Very good question. Now, this might be a transition point as well. But given COVID, let's let's caveat a lot of this about actual budget. But on the books, the way the legislature changed the office prior, it was mainly funded through the Energy Security Special Fund, which is a portion of the barrel tax that would get put in this plan that would then pay for all the activities of the energy office. So staff, operations, and then any projects the office would do. Under the new arrangement, we are generally funded for our operations and for our salary. And there are there is funds in there that we are able to contract out to do projects. The Energy Security Special Fund was changed, though, so it went from 15 cents to five cents. And the other 10 cents that used to go to the Energy Security Special Fund, now go to the general fund. And then the legislature also told the energy office that instead of us having say a spending ceiling where we can just use the fund to do things, instead, we have to propose uses of the fund to the legislature, and then they appropriate it and authorize us to do those things. So at the beginning of session, for example, we proposed the use of the Energy Security Special Fund to do a waste stream study of renewable energy technology. There's a lot of concern about the rising number of solar panels, wind turbine blades, and other types of technology that don't necessarily easily fit into our current waste disposal system. And so community members are reaching out to us saying we need to start looking ahead to when every roof is covered with solar. And we have all of these technologies in all of our neighborhoods. How do we manage this waste stream? So that was something we had proposed to the legislature. Please authorize us to use the Energy Security Special Fund to contract to do a study like this. Now with COVID, a lot of priorities have changed. And so those types of proposals are probably not going to move forward this session. There's still needs and we'll hope to get to them at some point. But those are the types of situations and requests that we can do with the Special Fund. So I wanted to ask about your kit bag. Your kit bag is what kinds of things can you do, you know, in this office in order to get stuff done. So one would be engaged with the legislature, including engaging with them on budget issues like that. Two is engaged with the governor who, you know, means your go-to guy in terms of authority. And I suppose engaged with all the departments, especially including D-bed because you're attached to D-bed and Mike and all that. And I suppose you're also in a position to engage with the public and teach them and form them, educate them about energy and the industry. And then, of course, I'm seeing you as the hub of a wheel. Then, of course, is the PUC and other agencies that may have and the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, of course. So it's really a matter of dealing at the center of things, bringing them together, creating projects and making those projects happen. And I said, ultimately, you have to have the budget for it and ultimately have to have the staff to do research and implementation. So how far off am I when I make that list of what's in your kit bag? You're dead on as well as a whole host of other things as well. HRS 19672 is our smorgasbord of things we've been tasked to do, authorized to do, and in some cases funded and others, you know, we have to figure it out. But one of the one of the new things that the Energy Office has is I think we we're no longer a neutral party in the energy world in a certain sense. A lot of times, you know, government agencies will say, you know, we have to balance everyone. And the statute very clearly puts its thumb on the scale in favor of clean renewable energy that our job is to advocate for those things. Oh, that's so important. That's so important. So Maria, let's talk for a minute about the kind of human resources that are available. Okay, you know, to Scott, I mean, I know three people around you, I'm probably missing a few, but there's Maria, there's Kirsten Turner. There's Alan Yonin, who was a fabulous guy who helps. I know that he's in your aura there's in your periphery somewhere. But who else and what sort of resources do you have? I'm really talking to Maria. What sort of resources resources are available to Scott with the organization that he has around him? Can you talk about it? Yeah, so we've got, you know, the energy efficiency and the renewable energy program folks that you you may have come across some of their work over the years and we've got the energy systems and planning folks and of course the public affairs people who are very good at turning the complicated engineers speak into language that people understand and appreciate and also we're developing more of an outreach and listening capability as well. So once we can convene again, I think we're going to appreciate being able to hear from folks directly. But at the moment, for example, this this show, you know, we really appreciate being able to get the word out and also to hear what other folks have to say. Now, there is a lot of concern, of course, over budget, over COVID, you know, a lot of the things that are going on in the various spheres. So the most important thing about our office is how well we communicate and understand and work together even remotely. So, you know, I appreciate the Zoom thing that you have here. I mean, we've been having a lot of the discussions that way and, fortunately, we're familiar with it from, you know, having been on this show as well. Sure. But we do, you know, Scott can talk about the staff and the organization, but from my perspective, we have an extremely strong team, very dedicated, you know, we're really trying to address the challenges that face us as quickly and effectively as possible. There's a huge irony which I mentioned before the show, Scott, is that you get into this job and it looks like this, sort of lined up, looks like this. And just as soon as you get into the job, well, within 60 days anyway, all of a sudden we have a crisis and you're in the middle of it. Because, well, for a lot of reasons, you A, it affects you, it affects the operation of your office, it affects the economy, the state, it affects the state government, the state budget, everything is all of a sudden upside down. Welcome, you know, welcome, Cotter. I mean, the other thing is that you find yourself in this remarkable position, and I would like to talk about it, of trying to deal with COVID, you know, and the implications of the shutdown and then the reopening. Because you're in a business place and that means you're in the reopening and you can have an effect on the reopening. Can you talk about that? It's really important. Before getting into the reopening side, maybe just to focus on the first part of your question on the COVID and the response. If you're not familiar, we have Mark Want in our office who's our energy assurance lead, and he lives and breathes emergency response. He's been involved in all the haima exercises and he's the guy. If something is, there's an oil spill or some type of energy related accident. Mark is there and, you know, credit to him and to my predecessor, Caroline Shon, when Mark identified an operational need that, hey, we're responsible for energy supply and energy security during hurricanes, we need to be able to work remotely. And so Caroline had authorized the purchase of laptops and the conversion to laptops for the office. And so when I came in in October, most of the staff already had switched to using a laptop instead of a desktop. And that was the key feature that led us switched to teleworking in this COVID environment. We were ready to go. We had a few people that were still on desktop that we were able to switch over, maybe took a week or two working with our d-bed IT team, but we were able to do it very quickly. And in fact, we were teleworking as an office prior to the stay at home order. So we had already made the switch because of the preparation that the Energy Office had done with its responsibility. And is that where you are now? Are you working at home? Is the organization working at home? Well, most of us are. Some of us are coming in now. We're under the act with care phase of the reopening. And so we are, at least with the Energy Office, I've asked staff, if you want to come in, you're welcome to. If you want to keep working at home, you're welcome to. But the most amazing finding of this whole experience has been that we have not had a drop in productivity. I feel that people are just as engaged or even more engaged in some cases on a variety of topics across not just their branch or their segment of energy world, but across the spectrum of things. And it's really been amazing to watch this team come together, working from home, but actually working more closely together. Yeah, we have visible proof of that with Maria, actually, right here on the show. Very clear. So, okay, can we move now to my question about reopening and how the State Energy Office gets involved in helping the state reopen? Sure, yes. Well, there's a couple different different ways we're approaching it. Maybe the first thing to just underline for folks is that what we're experiencing with the economy right now is this absence of tourism, right? So it's created a lot of ripples and tsunamis throughout the economy. One of them I just want to point out is the actual fossil fuel situation. So prior to COVID, if you take a barrel of oil and you break it up by how much of it goes to which portion, I think we have a slide for that, the picture we can show you, basically one third of a barrel of oil went to jet fuel. And then another chunk of it went to vehicles, so diesel or gasoline, things like that. Another chunk of it went to electricity. So it's kind of the stuff that goes to the power plant and gets burned. And then a bunch of other things that are important, but smaller proportions of it. And the disappearance of jet travel by shutting down the islands created a whole bunch of ripple effects throughout the energy ecosystem that we're still experiencing and discovering today. And so that's been a pretty dramatic effect of COVID that we didn't really anticipate. And so there is the fossil fuel side of the economy that we're keeping an eye on. And then there's the renewable energy side as well. And one thing to point out is that during this whole time, the energy industry has been working. So unlike restaurants or hotels, for example, energy is designated a critical infrastructure. And so most of the energy workers were able to go to work and to do work. But instead, what was mostly affecting them was the level of demand to purchase the products because people weren't driving, people weren't flying, people weren't staying in hotels. And so that was the effect we were seeing because we're now switching to the reopening side and trying to help people get to work, either back to work and the jobs they had or if they're out of work and they want to try to get into the energy industry, we're trying to map out some different ways to do that. And I think one of the most important options that opportunities we have is solar. And we have a slide that we can show you from the previous the previous recession. And what we saw was over the course of about four or five years, solar went from 2% of all construction expenditures to 26%. And that's an enormous ramp up that's fast and big. And you can see on that chart, the bars are the growth and solar as a percentage. And yes, of course, total construction spending went down, but you can see that the growth in solar was higher and faster than the decrease in the construction expenditures. And so what this tells me, and what I think is important for other folks to take away is that solar is the proven to be a leading edge economic recovery activity and it deserves support. And there's a lot we can do with that and things have changed since then. We're in a different regulatory environment, a different tax environment and different technology because now a lot of it is solar plus storage, right? It's not just solar panels anymore. People are installing battery storage so that they can and they have EV's so they can they can have their their total complete system. Well, I think the solar industry is a bit of a pickle these days. Sales have gone down, I think. And I guess the question is what do you do to incentivize the reopening of that industry? There's a lot of work there still. And I think people would be interested in doing it as long as the installers kept their distance and wore masks when they were serious around the house. But but but query, what can you do about that? For example, there has been legislation stuck in the legislature for three or four years about battery batteries, credits for the installing batteries stuck. And for reasons not clear that that has never gotten out of legislation. I don't know what the status is this year. I think a lot of things this year are sort of in abeyance. But query, is this something you would you would address would you advocate on this? Would you try to get legislation passed in order to incentivize the reopening of that industry? I think for the most part, the energy and the solar guys having having the economy closed down affected them too. And they probably shed a lot of jobs. And I think there is the concern about sales and installation that residents will have. Also, residents maybe are concerned about spending money right now when they're a little uncertain about their own situation. But I think what we can do is help incentivize that both through legislation, through financial vehicles, but also through good policy. And we're starting to see that the public utilities commission issued a call for ideas to help with economic recovery. One of those was something that didn't necessarily require spending money. It was working out an agreement between HECO and the solar guys to revise how they do interconnections just how they connect solar panels to the grid. And prior to this revised agreement, I think it was a six-month estimate or even longer. And now it's a couple months, maybe two months, to get you. Oh, that's definitely a step ahead. Mitch, I feel that you have a question here. Really, the other thing I was mentioning before we started this is looking at workforce development. I'm not sure that actually employs people because they're either taking a course, but what it does prepares them to enter these new industries. So for example, working with a Hawaii community college to develop workforce development for electric vehicles, generally, not just my favorite hydrogen, which is also an electric vehicle, but the whole industry of surrounding battery electric and hydrogen electric vehicles. So that when these things start building up quickly, we have a trained workforce that, A, knows what to do so they don't electrocute themselves in the event of an accident or B, if they're a first responder, they don't electrocute a victim who's in a rolled over electric car. And so HCC is being very proactive in this. And so this is one of the areas that we can do. It's like, when people are unemployed, let's train them to do something that will support that midterm and future economy that we were talking about so that we can really leverage, A, the human talent and what scarce funds we do have to get these people ready to go. As soon as we have good projects, we have a trained workforce. Maria, I don't know if you remember, but back a few years Dwight Nakamini was the labor, the director of the Department of Labor. And he organized for Sharon Moriwaki and the energy policy forum, he organized a tour of various union shops, union training facilities. And their mission was to and they all coordinated on this a number of unions. Their mission was to train a workforce who could make career out of solar installation. And I was so impressed they had the equipment, they had the training equipment, they had the teachers and they had students who were just so happy. Union members, of course, but students who were so happy to be involved. So I think that's you know, a recurrence waiting to happen just like Sharon and Dwight organized it on that particular tour. And I think the unions would be very interested in doing that with you guys again, just a thought, just a thought. Yeah. And we are, you know, I think Scott has another slide. You know, we've been looking at the projects, you know, Scott talked about the rooftop solar. We're also looking at a huge number of large projects coming up that will require a workforce. And what we're trying to do actually is reach out to the project developers and their contractors to see to what extent we can have local folks fill those jobs and figure out what the sequence is going to be. And so we are trying to get a handle on that. It's several thousand jobs now. Some of the construction jobs will be at one site for several months and or a year or a year and a half, whatever it is. And then move, you know, there's going to be another project because we've got eight phase one projects. And we've got 16 phase two projects. We've got projects, you know, on Kauai. We've got projects that were started before the phase one or phase two project announcements. And so there is a lot happening in the energy area in addition to the energy efficiency work that we're discussing. So that could probably do a whole other show. Well, I hope you will. I hope you will. We're here for you. We're here as a platform for you. But Scott, you know, what stands in the way between, you know, where we are right now where we have a lot of projects in the pipeline, as Maria says, Hawaiian Electric has come on the show a number of times and talk about those projects. I don't know what, you know, what obstacles they have right now, today. By also know you have authority possibly to expedite those projects somehow. What stands in the way and how can you help expedite those projects? So we have the men in the field and women to actually constructing those projects safely and helping to rebuild our economy. I'm glad you stuck the word women in there. It's something that Maria and I have top of mind is to make sure that this economic recovery in the energy sector does create more equity opportunities within the energy world. Very much top of mind for us. In terms of expediting and helping things, we are, we do have, we have the power of the pulpit, if you will, rather than the power of the permit. We're not necessarily a permitting authority, but we have actual statutory direction to go advocate for projects that have been approved and are in alignment with the state's clean energy goals. So what does that mean twisting arms, rubbing elbows? What does that mean? You're making the phone and say, hey, you guys, you've got to go ahead with this right now. Is that what you do? Well, we prefer the the good government process approach. Okay. It does mean that, you know, if there is an important project or it has a hearing that, you know, we're ready to submit comments and in highlight that something is important to achieving the goals in the state. And we've done that before already where a project might have an important hearing before a board. And we've written a letter on behalf of that project to the board to say, hey, this project is has, you know, this contribution to our state goal and without your approval, these are the consequences and how it will affect our state goal and then be able to answer those questions to the board members from that neutral point of view. And I think that's part of the value that we bring as well. We're not a for-profit voice in the conversation. So we're out of time or almost such. And I want to ask you one last question before we try to summarize the conversation. And that is, where do you see all of this going? I mean, as I said before, you come on the job and you find the job has changed dramatically around you. The state, the state fiscal policy has changed around you. And now you've got to develop a new and perhaps innovative view of the future. What is the, what is your view of the future? Where are you going to take this? Since you said we're almost out of time, we'll just try to keep it really short. We're going to take it in the direction of getting local people into good jobs that in the next year or two, get them back to work or help them get into the energy industry. As Maria mentioned, the intermediate phase of trying to get folks into these phase one, phase two, into training programs, into the community colleges to get the kind of skills like Mitch referenced. And then the third thing we're going to try to work on is pushing those deep transformational projects that take five years, seven years, even 10 years to pay off, like hydrogen and direct air capture, which we need to fight climate change and other types of really innovative technology that we got to start laying the ground, we're planting the seeds now because otherwise we won't have it ready to go in five years or seven years when we need them. It's all about tracking in the technology, everything changes. So Mitch, we're at that point where I know you're bursting with the summary and I would sure like to hear that in order to sort of put all this together. Yeah, I'll do it really quickly because we're out almost out of time. You know, what we heard today was we have a new energy office that's been reorganized with clear missions, with clear authorities and a clear plan and the strategy with good people implementing it. And they've already started and the COVID situation has helped everybody focus on the immediate term, work smarter, work more productively and I'm very encouraged by what we hear and I think all our viewers should be very encouraged that we have a really good plan for going forward. I'm going to leave it at that. So yeah, we're in a tough time but we're in a great place. Well, thank you guys. Thank you, Maria Tomei. Thank you, Scott Glenn. Thank you, Mitch. You and I appreciate your efforts here on ThinkDeck and in the job and what you are doing for the state. We really appreciate your coming on. I hope we can do it again soon. Thank you.