 Okay, we're back. We're live. This is think-tech. This is Hawaii the state of clean energy with the energy policy forum Wow, our flagship show on energy. We have meet a marita my co-host. Hi Mina. I do Yeah, we we we we can't go on like this people will start to talk We have Dave Ralph our principal guest a Hawaii automobile deals association and a ferocious moderate Thank you know you wear your heart on your coach leave. What can I say? ferocious moderate neutral is the Easter Bunny Don't fix eyes And I was telling you that I woke up on May 1st and it was extraordinary My wife pushed me out of bed and she said Jade don't you know that this is building code safety month? Indeed it is that's right. It's brown energy Energy engineers gonna tell us about that well we take for granted the importance of the safety and resilience of our buildings And so I'm here to spread the word that the month of May is building code safety month I mean it's important for the safety of our communities, but also our economic growth and with that I want to say thank you to the governor David E. Gay for officially proclaiming May building code safety month believe it or not and We're joining other states great states in our union here with this movement We brought a short video to show our viewers and let's check it out. Yeah, let's see what we got is an honor for me Along with lieutenant governor Shansu Tsui to proclaim May 2017 as building safety month all are from the state Building codes are meant for two purposes. One is to protect the public For lack of a better term fools who don't know any better how to do things and the other one is to protect the general public from Crooks who want to try and take advantage of them. So building codes are minimum standards to achieve these Two goals only energy is a part of the state building code council because with our march towards 100% clean energy The quickest and cheapest way for us to get there is through energy efficiency And one way to do that is to make sure our buildings are specified with the latest and greatest technologies that aren't the only cost Effective but also save his energy and really helps us get to our goal a lot faster I Mentioned the community safety before the video started and building codes apply to new construction as well as major renovations And while buildings are only a small percentage new buildings are a small percentage of the energy impact They'll last for the next 30 40 50 years as long as this building is around So it's most cost-effective to go in at the beginning make it as energy efficient and as safe as possible rather than coming back in retrofitting Until that's why we're at the state building code council You know if you talk to Howard Wade He'll tell you that energy codes is the way to go save you a lot of money save the state a lot of money in the future And it also save us a lot of energy which is where I come in and we get to encourage positive economic growth We get to help people make smarter energy decisions about their energy management while construction Projects are still in the drawing board really. Yeah. Yeah, so how is this? This is implementation of a better code. Yes, first you have to adopt the code I know how it works on that a lot out of T-bed And then once you adopt the code you've got to make sure that people are following it So how do you how do you do that? What role does Hawaii energy play in all of that? Significant role in compliance really with the code We like to free up Howard to go and look at the next iteration of the code 2018 version while we Do a lot of outreach and training a lot of education even industry specific training So we get all of the HVAC the air conditioning folks in one building all the lighting folks in one building and show them the difference between the previous code and how the new Controls and operations will affect their industry and how they can meet the new code really to to ensure compliance is there It's an ongoing process to it's not just one static impression as we always every day better every code better Oh, we try to put good provisions better provisions in the code Yeah, so I'd like to be on your show and have a web show and videos I can continually update the industry and a lot of these guys are working hard during the day And then if we can give them a five-minute clip at the end of the day that they can watch to learn a little more about the code That would be I think we've received feedback that that would be more helpful than having people come in during the middle of a Workday for a four-hour training. Yeah, absolutely. You can watch online. Yeah, especially the Millennials. Yeah, especially those We'll walk around like this and they'll get educated about energy code and maybe transportation, too Thank You Ramsey Ramsey Brown Hawaii energy energy engineer. Thanks. Really appreciate you coming down. Yeah, we're gonna take a short break and swap out And we'll be right back for more with Dave Rolf Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink rap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too Aloha Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host of eyes on Hawaii Make sure you stay to know on Hawaii join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then Aloha Freedom is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea at dive heart? We believe freedom is all of these and more regardless of your ability dive heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and Defy gravity since 2001 dive heart has helped children adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before Dive heart has helped them transition to their new normal search dive heart.org and share our mission with others And in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives to Bingo, we're back. I'm Jay Fidel. This is think tech This is Hawaii the state of clean energy and today we're talking with Dave Ralph about energy and transportation My co-host Mina Marina. Mina. Can you introduce the scope of our discussion? Sure, so This month the Hawaii energy policy forum is focusing on legislative issues and we divided up the program into kind of three segments the watchers the doers and The makers so the watchers being people like Dave who are at the legislator watching particular measures that they're interested in The makers of course the lawmakers and the doers the people that have to implement So it was our discussion last week was really interesting we were looking at at it from one perspective and it was mainly the Renewable energy advocates and one bill that surfaced is house bill 1580 which Setting benchmarks for reaching a hundred percent renewable energy goal in the transportation sector and so We thought we'd have a different perspective today as Dave watched the progress of this bill and while Some of the renewable energy advocates have Sort of intimated that this bill was killed in the waning hours of conference committee due to big business You know, that's one perspective You know, this was a pretty complicated bill and and I think the implementation was going to be Challenging so we'd like to hear from Dave on your perspective of this bill Well, they say that for every complicated problem. There's a simple solution. That's wrong So I was one of the watchers down there But I represented a group that's the doers because they're the ones that are I've ardently pursued trying to reach the Y-Clean energy initiative goals. I mean the auto dealers I work in representing them and this bill 1580 Set a goal of I compared it to me doing a 15-foot high jump But I mean it it just would be impossible for me to hit a goal that high The big business representative that you mentioned that Gary Sloven had an even more interesting Metaphor he said that he plays tennis and he said if he went to his tennis coach and said, you know I want to play Wimbledon coach me up to Wimbledon his coach would say get a different coach But if you said, you know, I want you to improve my backhand that they could do and so I guess I thought that was such a beautiful metaphor and I said Gary a metaphors be with you. It's sort of a You know, I said that that's a good point. What could we do? You know, how could we move the process forward? So that's what we worked on Yeah, well, I think one of the difficult things or one of the challenge challenging things about a bill like this is most this market is pretty this sector is pretty much market driven and Not regulated where you know, these kinds of goals in the electricity sector may be a Little bit more doable because you're talking about regulated industries For example the electric utilities, so how well that's such a perfect distinction because you with the PUC You have a regulated in the industry with regard to the utility and the electric company And so you could set down a bunch of regulations that would be needed to be required There were carrots and we can't tell the customers to purchase the vehicles that has there has to be a Benefit formula that works and and with gasoline, you know cheaper than water I mean, I know so when you think about it it's going to be cheaper than water for as far as the eye can see and that was one of the driving factors moving people over to the Electric vehicle and when gasoline prices went down the barrel price of barrel of oil went down That dramatically changed the formula for the adoption of electric vehicles I started changing my charts and so I think a lot of the manufacturers are trying to wonder about that too So it used to be there were about 50% Cars and 50% trucks vans and SUVs right and now it's 60 40 with you know cars are down at 40% And the SUVs pick up trucks and vans which use more gasoline But they have more attributes they can carry more and they can haul and have other capabilities People are buying those instead of the car And so that's a big factor that's changing the adoption rate the price of gas changing the adoption rate All sorts of things and then the hydrogen cars coming up on the turn So a lot of stuff and the driverless cars coming on the turn faster than lights be when I think the other challenge here, too Is you know cars have anywhere from a 20-year lifespan? So the the change out of of cars and old cars never go away. They Live on and on and on So it's beautiful that you said that I've never heard anyone point that out that there's about a lifespan of about 20 years on a vehicle. So we sell about 50,000 new cars a year But you know about 50,000 go off to the crusher after 20 years So they kind of go out the back end after 20 years and they come in the front end You know imported into the islands because there's no manufacturing here So the number of cars on the roadway over the past 20 years multiply that times 50 And you get an even million cars and trucks and that's about what's going to stay on the roadways all the way through 2030 and I've just done a chart that says that'll say never will stay on all the way through about 2045 because people will be walking commuting more with electronics and I mean doing electronic commuting from home on computers And and they'll be you know located more closer to their work And and you're just not going to have the growth of cars that you've had over the past few years And they're gonna just gonna remain pretty constant. So is this a good time to bring up that I think we have a slide Yeah, we have a chart that Dave brought. Can we see that chart? This is a call the golden let's take a look at it golden Golden Gate Bridge chart. We call it and Okay, how about a shot of this? Yeah, it's a call the Golden Gate Bridge chart because it resembles that famous bridge there in San Francisco And and this is surprisingly enough the rhythm of car sales They they go down to about 35,000 they climb all the way up to about 70,000 and down to about 30,000 35,000 Up to about 70,000 and down and up down and up and it looks like the Golden Gate Bridge and So what drives it? It has to do with the price of housing as as your house price continues to go up People use the house as an ATM and they pull out the money from the house and use it for the down payment by that new car and all Is going up in the house in the car industry on the housing industry together when the housing industry levels off People start to wonder who I wonder how my savings are gonna hold out and everything And so the number of car sales starts to drop off and it comes down Very directly related more than any other single big expenditures in your life. That's two big ones Yeah, yeah, but let me ask you this David We you know so the the measure did not pass and it's not clear that we have political will sufficient to actually get there with transportation Transportation is is a real challenge for clean energy and indeed Transportation last I knew was we were paying out six billion dollars a year Running out of the state for oil it comes from Indonesia and the like well to 2 billion for the ground transportation sector Okay, which was the other thing goes for air air 2 billion as we count. Yeah, well marine is another. I hope we do another show on marine. That's another issue But anyway, it's in the billions and it'd be better at home It'd be better for circle fuel or anything else or electric and so, you know, it's not it's not just an exercise to say We want to get into electric or hydrogen cars But people love their cars. I mean people. I know would never give up their cars They would always buy a fossil fuel car unless the price is just astronomical and they would buy a big one a truck an SUV as you said So government has to step in if we're going to do this government has to step in Government has got to make an incentive and disincentive combination of things to actually change the way the community people You know spend their lives in their money and if we want to you know have clean energy and transportation Government has to ask so my question to you is what exactly should government do? leadership Good management. Good leadership is the art of making solutions and problems rather so interesting that people would want to Participate in solving that and having the fun of doing it So if you've made that problem so interesting and and cool to kind of work together to solve I send a bunch of people a Million periods because there's a million people Million cars and in the islands and there's also a million people on Oahu Well, if you page through a million periods on on paper You just are paging and paging and paging and paging paging That's all the cars there are and to change them all to electric vehicles by 2045 It's almost mathematically 20 years is the useful life because the rotation out doesn't allow so hard to get rid of them It's what happens that's what if I said look you want to have a fossil fuel car It's going to cost you 500 bucks a year and that's our way of telling you You know that the government has a policy here and you better get rid of it We're going to keep on doing it and furthermore after 10 years or five years You know it's going to be double that and the longer you keep it the more it's going to cost you all of a sudden You have it in the center that maybe means something. Well, you have a market disruption That's what you have and those things okay as long as you get to your goal Well, if if the if the goal was participated in with everyone equally and Felder was fair to everyone But if you start penalizing people because they had larger families or penalizing them because they had to have a truck And all that all things to work there's a great deal of unfairness involved in that whole thing So we've said don't let market disruption come in with things like that We've even opposed subsidies when when they said let's put a bunch of subsidies on the electric car to get people to buy them We said no, let's let the electric car, you know live on its merits And and I thought you know when I came aboard with the auto dealers association I set a goal of saving each dealer About 40,000 dollars and I was it took me a number of years But each year I can show the policies that we put in that saved them about 40,000 per year in various policies One was eliminating a scrap tire tax at one point that after the scrap tires were cleaned up I mean so the tax has to go away and mean it was involved in that and did a wonderful job as you know The chair of the committee in those days Anyway, bottom line was if you can show people if you could hand them and say here's four thousand dollars But I think you can have because you won't have to buy gasoline I think that because you're gonna have an economy that's so happy for robust Yes, that's so that you could now get no get four thousand dollars from the whole Making a change that would benefit you through moving to a variety of different ways of transportation Why that I talked about the energy credit or I mean rather the Government Street I like that because it's it's free market I mean it's free market. I think you're in the same place free market 4,000 Let me suggest to you that hmm, it's not likely to work. Is this what's called dead air Defend that Their fossil fuel cars we haven't Go back to government mandates, you know There's a transition going on here, you know, and are we jumping to renewable fuels are or are we Transitioning and you know part of that transition is you know cars are a lot more fuel efficient In in the last decade. I mean we're we're we're moving in a different direction with cars and and technology is is Just Bearing down on us really quickly You know one of my personal concerns is that you know, we're focusing on a really small piece We're not setting the stage for Transportation transformation You know, what is the role of autonomous cars in the future? I mean are we opening up the door for that too? So there's there's a lot of changes happening every interesting point we and you and I have talked about that before I said I said to me No, and one of our guests. I think I said Autonomous cars will bring a hundred percent electric because an autonomous car is a highly computerized You know machine and therefore it's only likely is most likely a hundred percent likely that the autonomous car Electric phenomenon will be an electric car and you whether you or somebody else have you not necessarily Jay Because fossil cars are you know the very high-tech too and you could have an autonomous car that is a fossil car I wonder how you and for that matter the dealers feel about this. Well, excuse me But I think it was with the difference I'm seeing an awful lot of car companies coming out with that electric vehicle aspect of it But it has a gasoline vehicle backup range extenders So it kind of the answer is both ways and by the way that a driverless car is going to be here You know I can throw them on a poor from here to hit the date the date It's it's 2020 19 car makers are coming out with autonomous cars driverless cars by 2020 now We already had them at the auto show I mean we had a level one and level two and so there's five different levels of autonomy The first one is well the zero level is that they're warning lights and things that you have just on the dash But level one of autonomy is that it'll it'll have cruise control, but you still have your hands on that wheel So it's hands on then level two is hands off and it'll change lanes and to do a number of other things actually will park itself So that's level two level three is eyes off You can actually watch a movie during level three level four is I can be in the backseat asleep Mind off and level five is a robot taxi. I'm not even in the car. There's no wheel There's no brakes and it's just runs around five levels. I'm number five I have this image you want to send something a gift maybe to your friend your family You put it in the car have the car drive and take it there. You don't have to be in the car at all so before we run out of time, you know my question today is Okay, so we're at the early stages of getting a whole bunch of different interests at the table at the legislature and Discussing a vehicle. What's the next step? Do you think to come up with good policy that moves us forward? moves us forward and What do you how do you see that happening? Thank you You know to any hunter knows that to hit a duck in flight yet shoot ahead of the duck So we're all sitting out here to say let's shoot ahead of the duck and here's what we have to do First of all, you have to get control of the whole rail thing that that that that sucks a lot of oxygen out of the room It takes away a lot of our opportunities because money's fungible And if it's all sitting over here in this pile trying to solve that one point to point situation I think that'll help a lot with development of housing and development of jobs and all sorts of things That's what it's supposed to do the solving traffic and solving all the other things that we have to do That'll have to come with cars and probably autonomous cars and eventually electric and hydrogen cars And so we have plans that shows how to do that. I actually did the chart all the way up to 2045 I didn't put in the flying car which has now come across that my desk faster than I ever anticipated I was an able aviator, but you know, I was an able aviator But you know, I there's our chart that shows you know the the rise and fall the golden gate of Adoption and you could see I said there would be 300 electric vehicles brought into 11 Well, I couldn't get it could get them here because we didn't have them in the island So I I phoned a Nissan and they said yeah, we'll make you the rollout market And so most of those were you know leaves and then the next year was 675 the next year We hit those numbers, but when we got to the 2016 and 17 We said we'd have to have a real push up to keep this going and it would be a big education push And we thought three million dollars from Hawaii energy, which is you know Just sat here momentarily before you could have this massive amount of information about the pile of benefits that comes to all of us as a Society when we join in this gigantic effort to keep the money flowing in the islands. Well, education. Is that it? That's the driver. We don't incentivize or de-incentivize we don't tax or give credits We educate you educate and everything then the market stays smooth Otherwise you get like what happens with solar or the rooftop solar thing It had all sorts of credits when they dropped it all of a sudden people were unemployed They were the great disruption in the marketplace and we've seen countless situations where there's big tax credits and everything taken away And people are just left high and dry without jobs Mina we're gonna leave on this high point Where it's not clear exactly what exact policy or implementation, but can you summarize this discussion? Where are we, you know after talking with Dave? Where are we? Well, I think talking with Dave today. We've learned a little bit more about what the Auto dealers are up against and we have a little bit more information about the car situation in Hawaii and you know what we Can look forward to in the future what what the trajectory is for the future So I think we have to be a little bit more realistic on how we approach and that we approach in facts and always with Our mindset on how we create the best market solution Moving forward in this sector Yeah, this is an interesting moment even a tipping point moment and somehow, you know that 1580 the failure of that bill You know creates a challenge for everyone I wouldn't say it's a failure. I wouldn't say that either. I think it was good. We have that discussion Yeah, and the discussion has to happen But we have to be more aware of the challenges moving forward and really using fact-based Information as we develop the policy and understand the market Yeah, that's key here and deal with the deal with the distractions which are as you said Dave rail We've got to get we've got to get that what do you say under control has to be under control I mean and probably brought down on the ground and finished and so that you know we can move on I just don't see how it can be finished with the dollars that are out there It takes so many dollars away from all the other things like charging stations and like hydrogen fueling stations and all the Infrastructure and I'll tell you when the autonomous car comes in it puts in those little small wave transmitters That all has to go in on the on the utility poles So oh my goodness, I mean that's there's a lot of infrastructure that has to go in for the driverless car Yeah, and yeah, well if you had the five ten billion dollars you could you put a lot of charging stations out there Well, and I think you know again This is another area where large investments have to be made to have that supporting infrastructure and and so what we need right now is certainty You know you can't be changing policies every election cycle. Yeah, you know these are These are long-term investments that need to be made and I sound like a broken record But um, that's that's why it's so difficult Well, thank you mean a marita mean marita former chair of the PUC former legislator And now a blog writer with and a consultant with energy dynamics wonderful to have you here as co-host I'll see you again next week and Dave Roth. It's always great to talk to you Dave The bar to Bishop Street is so important for us to understand the nature of transportation in Hawaii. Thank you, Jay. Aloha