 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is NG8080 Cutting Edge here on a given Monday, and we are joined by our regular contributor, Marco Manglestor, who joins us from somewhere far away. Where are you, Marco? Saratoga, California, in the South Bay Area, next to San Jose and Los Gatos. Okay, good to hear that. I hope things are safe for you. So this is this and that, which I think that's a really interesting way of looking at energy. This is the Hawaii energy stew, if you will. And we're looking at several issues. We're trying to get a handle on where it all goes. You know, it's like it goes in generations, doesn't it? And you can identify a period of years to say, you know, this was the period of years that we did this and focused on this. And this is the period of years focused on that. And it changes from time to time. And it's not the same. You know, you have generations of people and, you know, business donors and government officials coming in and leaving. It's all kind of a sine curve or rotation, a generational shift, if you will. So my first question to you, Marco, is, in what generation are we now? Oh, man, talking about a curveball question, Jay. First, let me let me say something about the stew and the stew metaphor. Okay. It's actually, it's an outtake from our beloved Israel Kamakaviva Ole, who left this way too soon back in 1995. And I have all his music. And one of the outtakes was, you know, he recognized, you know, in his 30s, he was morbidly obese. He had lost a number of relatives to obesity. And, you know, having that much strain on the body, of course, can cause the body to wear out faster. And he was saying, you know, you know, no need to fear death. No need to fear death. I'll be there. I'll be there keeping the stew warm for you, you know. And so that's where I got the stew metaphor for today's Hawaiian stew for his from brother, Israel Kamakaviva Ole. You know, what generation we're in right now? I think we're generation question mark. At least that's the way I feel right now on so many different levels. And, you know, as far as the energy scene in Hawaii goes, I think that there are more question marks that I've ever had before. And the decades I've been in the energy arena in Hawaii, and we seem to be moving forward at a fast clip in this area, and less fast in another area. And it just seems to be getting more and more kind of Kapakahi to use another favorite Hawaiian word of mine. And so our generation question mark has my answer to your question, my friend. Okay. I think implicit in that is the notion of where in between, we're in between something. And we have yet to realize the outlines, the sharp outlines, if you will, the sharper outlines of the generation emerging. And by the way, it's a double entendre. It's not just a generation of businessmen and public officials, the generation of the public of the kids of the ones who are going to operate Hawaii in the future, the ones who are going to be around when we are supposed to meet our target goals. You know, that's really, I hope they're watching and thinking about this because we are relying on them, take the reins at some point. Anyway, so let's connect the dots. Let's find some dots to connect. Let's look at the stew, if you will, and talk about, you know, this and that. What do you got? This and that. Well, there was a piece of this and that in the New York Times yesterday by my friend Ivan Penn. He's a LA based journalist for the New York Times, kind of an increasing my circle of New York Times friends and relatives. I got my cousin Hannah in Bangkok and I got Ivan in Los Angeles. And he and Clifford Cross did a good piece on the kind of the new energy landscape on the mainland, which is, you know, especially under the Biden administration, but this was going on even before Biden under Trump and Obama, where these big, big, big, big gigawatt power plants of wind and solar are going up. And they're going up especially, you know, as you might think or believe in windy places like Texas and the Plain States and sunny places like SoCal or Arizona. Now, the issue is oftentimes these windy areas where you have these 400 foot turbines where you have acres and acres and acres of solar are not really near per population areas where the population is where they use the most power, right? So the question is how do you get power from one dot to the other? The one dot be a wind farm hundreds of miles away from Dallas or Houston, or a solar farm hundreds of miles away from the Bay Area from Los Angeles. And the infrastructure of transmitting grid power across state lines and across the continent is rather age it, right? Hence, amongst other things, Biden is a big push for an infrastructure bill of a trillion or more dollars to redo the nation's infrastructure, including power. So it kind of got me thinking, that's an interesting and it's not not as I had never heard that before on the mainland, but I got to thinking, you know, what about here in Hawaii? Well, no, I'm not here in Hawaii now, but what about our home in Hawaii? And, you know, we're not going to have underwater power cables in my lifetime, your lifetime, Jay, I feel very confident in saying that it's not going to happen. So we've got these isolated island grids, and we don't have copious amounts of land available, especially in Oahu, where land use issues, land use debates, land use antipathy, or negative juju, in terms of what to do with land, is at a peak right now, whether it's a wind farm at Kahuku or, you know, a possible wind farm on the view plane there in the ocean. We're not dealing with transmission difficulties over thousands of miles, like the mainland, we're dealing with land use issues, the lack of adequate land, contentious land, especially in Oahu, and we're kind of taking, we've got different problems, different challenges in Hawaii when it comes to energy. It's whose backyard is it going to go in? Is it equitable to be on the North Shore that already has big, tall wind turbines? Does it make more sense to double down on distributed energy resources, also known as distributed generation, or is Hawaiian Electric is calling it customer energy resources, D-E-R-C-E-R, B-F-G, you know, all kinds of acronyms that we can come up with. So it's just a very fertile time right now. In the mainland, they need more power, they need to retire fossil fuel burning, power plants, especially coal. Nat gas is a stop gap measure that is really stepped up to offset declining coal and oil. And in Hawaii, we've just got a different stew that we're tending to. Let me give you some thoughts about what you've said. It really reminds me of the whole issue about the undersea cable. I mean, there's a lot of activist issues where activists want. And you're right, they're winning on the NIMBY issue. And it's become more and more difficult to generate electricity using substantial community resources in Oahu. I would not favor this distributed thing, because I think favors people who have the money to participate, it does not favor the rest of us. And that's a problem. So at the end of the day, you really have to have common resources. But our possibilities for common resources are narrowing because people don't want it in their backyards. This is very troubling because at the end of the day, just like Biden says, we need a grid that goes around the country with what happened in Texas. That was the failure of national thinking, of interstate grid thinking. And we don't have that because we gave up and you say it's during your lifetime and mine, we won't have an undersea cable. But why not? What was the problem? This is sort of like the super ferry. We don't want to connect the islands. And there's people out there who have very self-interested reasons for not connecting the islands. But at the end of the day, if we have more resources, say, in the Hawaii Island, we want to bring those resources for the benefit of Hawaii Island and Oahu, then we should do that. The technology is not that complicated. Even the cost is not that complicated. But it's a philosophical, ideological thing where people don't want the islands connected. My island, not your island. And that's a really problematic direction that has already taken. But at the end of the day, wouldn't it be better, Marco, to have a statewide grid? Wouldn't it be more sustainable, more resilient to have other options instead of options that run into NIMBY all the time? Well, my dear friend Jay, and the best of all worlds, there would be unicorns that would be multicolored and there would be pigs, some of them that would be flying, right? I mean, wouldn't it be better if, in the words of that great philosopher Rodney King, can't we just all get along better? Sure. But I beg to differ, my friend, in terms of the cost of an inter-island deep sea cable that would connect all the islands. I mean, we're talking billions, right? And I've never even seen an estimate over the decades of what cost would be to connect all the islands. The only estimates I've seen is essentially Molokai, Lanai, Maui to Oahu. And that's the slam dunk compared to getting cable to the big island. So I think cost is a big, big deal. When you're talking billions, there's no longer a Daniel Keanoi in Washington, who was so instrumental in bringing pork, speaking of pigs, pork home to the state. Where are the billions going to come from? That's true, but remember, as we go forward, lack of an interstate grid, an intrastate grid is going to cost us. Who is to say how much? Right now, as we have both agreed, we're sort of in an interim. We don't know exactly how we're going to meet our goals. We know a lot of resistance and challenge points, which also will cost a lot of money. When I think of putting in 10, maybe 15, maybe even 20 billion from rail into an undersea cable, it's an easy choice. Granted, we don't have a lot of spare cash right now. COVID costs us a lot. Our economy is still limping along. But bottom line is, over time, my view, and we can differ on logistics, but my view is that we're going to have to do this because Oahu is simply going to run out of what do you want to call it, legal space. We're running out of legal space. There we go on that issue. Let's go to another issue. I always ask you for the next issue, and you take me to a surprise place. You want me to take you to the surprise place? You're going to take me to the surprise place. No, you always take me to a surprise place. I never know where you're going. Go for it. Oh, boy. Well, I'm not going to let that previous issue go right now because, philosophically, I just don't see the political will, the backing of the citizenry of the so-called neighbor islands where some people refer to over the years as the outer islands. We people who live in the neighbor islands sure don't like that outer island moniker. I just don't see the will being there and the people of Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, Maui, the big island to have wind turbines or monster solar plants to feed Oahu. That to me is a political dead end. It's a non-starter. I'm not talking about political. I'm talking about sustainability and resilience and technology and the reality of it. Forget political for a moment because political in Hawaii is often, may I say this, often irrational. I don't want to be the one to break this to you, Brother Che, but political is a big part of our reality in Hawaii. I'm sorry if that's too much of a blow on this Monday, but it is in fact true. Well, on the other hand, political changes. It changes for those generations we mentioned. It does. It changes with the physical realities. If I tell you that it's going to cost more and more in Oahu for energy that's renewable under our mandate to give up coal, for example, and the governor is ruling that there will be no LNG here and we have to go renewables and we don't have the space for it. Those things are going to change the way it works. They're going to change, may I say, they're going to change the political. You can say that right now it's not a good political climate for this and it may stay that way for a while. At the end of the day, there's going to be some young folks that get into the legislature or into elected office that say, wait a minute, we really need to have a statewide system. My view and it is philosophical is the islands should be connected. I met a woman on the street not too long ago and I said, did you know that the islands are drifting away from each other? I said that we have a phenomenon which I refer to as insular drift and part of it is the difficulty of getting around. We don't have the ferry and the planes are still very expensive and it's hard to travel even see your family and I feel there is an identifiable phenomenon in insular drift. The islands are drifting away and she said to me, no, they're not there. They're not drifting. Islands do not drift. That's when I said, I think I got to go now. That's the same type of response and you go to a restaurant and your server, male or female, kind of on the younger side, you say thank you and they'll say, no worries. I wasn't really worrying. It's the interesting things that some of our younger folks say sometimes. Moving along, you referred to the super ferry on a consistent basis. I'm wondering if for your Christmas gift maybe I should find you a scale model of the beloved super ferry that was sent packing after it left Hawaii. Do you think that's something that would find a place on your mantle? No, but I'll tell you what would. Somebody has to write a book about super ferry from the beginning to the end. This is like January 6th. We get it from the newspapers, but nobody really makes an investigative report which is authoritative, which has all the details, all the considerations, all the players and all the implications. The press that wrote it up on January 6th and 7th and 8th and thereafter didn't really cover it as broad a spectrum of issues and considerations as we might want. That's why I'm personally frustrated about the lack of a commission. Maybe that'll happen. Maybe not. But in the case of super ferry, we only have it from the press at the time. We don't have all the implications. We don't have all the players. We don't know what really happened. And we only know that in terms of the development of the state, it was a crude disaster. Somebody has to write it up. It's not like Michener's Hawaii or Land and Power or some of those other books that define the history of Hawaii. This is a very important point. Why? I'll tell you why, because it covers in Tiller Drift. That's why, which is the phenomenon that we should not ignore. Anyway, on my Christmas mantle, Marco, if you don't mind, I know you can do this, a nice book, maybe 500 pages worth of what happened in super ferry. I did have a pleasant photo op with Linda Lingle once, and I actually met her after a small parade when she was running for office against the Maisie Hirono, which she lost, a small parade in downtown Kanaka Kai. So maybe I'll go to Linda Lingle and see whether she could be preyed upon for an autobiography with the whole, at least a chapter or two on super ferry. So I don't know if I could promise the whole book, but maybe a chapter or two. I will see what I can do about that. That's something like having Rudy Giuliani write a history of January 6th. It's not the same thing. Don't talk to me about lawyers who've had their law licenses suspended. That just gets my go. But moving right along. So who ho knew her? Who ho knew her? We had our friend Jay Griffin on two weeks ago, and he is, when we talked about who I know, he said, stay tuned, stay tuned. Well, I've stayed tuned. And since then, the commission has reopened the docket as they were told to do by the Hawaii Supreme Court. And there's now a schedule. And the schedule has the much anticipated evidentiary hearing scheduled for drum roll January of next year. And my prediction is, as I've said before, the commission will rule essentially the same that they ruled before, after they've had the evidentiary hearing and will be appealed. It will be reviewed by the Supreme Court. It'll be appealed by Jenny Johnson and her crew at who ho knew her. They may sue. So Marco's prediction is that this zombie power plant will not finally, for once and for all, be put out of its misery until sometime second half of 2022. That's my prediction. Why will the result you think be different on this iteration in the Supreme Court? No, I have, oh, in the Supreme Court, well, because the court said to the commission, oh, you guys, you two, Leo and Jenny and Jay did not follow. Did not follow what we told you to do, which is have the evidentiary hearing. So now they're following through with the evidentiary hearing, giving the commission specific bullet points essentially must, thou shall take into account this and that and this and that and this and that, which they will take into account in their ruling and their D and O, and they will pay homage to the points from the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court will say, yes, yes, well done. Yes, you did what we told you to do, which will not be a different outcome from the first iteration. And like I said, we'll get pushed back from who on new and maybe another lawsuit, maybe a lawsuit in federal court. And it'll pop pot along throughout much of 2022. Well, I think you're right. I think you're right on all those points. But I also hear implicitly in what you're saying is that you hope it drives up and blows away. Which you actually have been fairly candid about that in the past, Marko. But my question to you is as a matter of policy, in this in this Netherlands in which we are presently navigating, why is it better that who knew a blow up and dry away? It's very simple. A couple, a couple reasons, Jay. One is that we can and must, especially in the big island of the state in general, we must do better. We can do better. We absolutely can do better than cutting down living, breathing trees and combusting them for the generation of power at a ridiculously high rate that would be locked in, paid through the nose to the Helco rate payer for 30 years. That's my first point. Absolutely can and must do better. And the second point is the same as the first and the same as the third. And everything else pales, in my view, by that we can and must do better. And we absolutely have the means to do it better and cheaper than cutting down trees and burning them in that power plant. And as a cod of silted that are as an addendum to that, there are so many other options on the big island where we're not constrained like Oahu is by room. These new utilities. They're coming around to support my program of an undersea cable now. Please don't put me on your ask list in terms of donations on that because I'm going to be rude not respond. But we could have this conversation again. So at the end of the day, you have a company that argues that it lost to $300 million. And you have Wall Street. This is my question. You have Wall Street looking looking at Hawaii and thinking of all the projects were including Superfairy by the way, who lost to $300 million. And you're wondering whether you would ever want to invest in what amounts to a state supporter initiative again ever. Well Jay, you know the interesting twist and I think our friend Henry Curtis for staying on top of this is he does stay on top of so many important things that in the Superior Court right now in San Francisco, California after delay after delay after delay, there is now a case moving forward that's going to be long lengthy and complicated apparently between one Jenny Johnson, who is the kind of one of the successors of Franklin Templeton and who's kind of top of the pyramid chain for Hujo Nua amongst other things and a couple of DBA. I don't want to get too far out on the limb here, but different companies that she set up or that her group set up to do Hujo Nua. She's being sued by a former business intimate not intimate. Well, I don't know about what degree of intimacy, but someone who was close in the circle there, Harold Robinson, I believe is his name, who is suing Jenny for bokeh box. And it's Jenny Johnson's position in this suit because she's she's the defendant that the prospects for Hujo Nua were always rather sketchy were always rather questionable. So it's an interesting kabuki dance that she's doing apparently on one side she's saying, according to the suit that well, Hujo Nua was always the success of who Hujo Nua was always going to be kind of up in the air, right, according to the suit. And yet this same entity the same individual the same team deemed it okay to spend by their own accounting $500 million on a supposedly rather sketchy project sketchy in terms of the prospects for success. I can't really circle that square, can you? Is that your answer to my question? That is the answer to your question. Maybe you should move on for more surprises. Okay, PGV. Tuna geothermal venture near and dear to my heart there was an article in today's white tribune Harold by Stephanie summons looking at PGV and Mike Calachini who's the general manager there said they're now up to 25 megawatts. So kudos to Mike and the crew there for getting closer and closer to the previous 38 megs and the the revised and amended power purchase agreement is still in limbo land right now because as Jay tried to explain to us last week in a little context here so PGV there was an environmental impact statement or report 34 years ago Jay 34 years ago was done in 1987 with the prospect that this plant was going to have maybe 25 or plus year lifetime right so now it's 34 years later the plant is still operational right so the commission is saying hey we need to move forward we need to have an environmental impact statement environmental statement here in order for us to decide whether this revised PPA which would be in the benefit of Hawaii ratepayers and also increase PGV output by eight megawatts whether it's in the public interest and the the the ludicrous part of the story is essentially okay PGV is the party that needs to commission i.e. do the environmental statement right okay i got that my brain can can wrap myself around that okay so they do the statement they do the report and then they got to give it to somebody right uh who are they going to give it to well uh Suzanne Kase of the DLNR Department of Land and Natural Resources said whoa not us we're not taking that we it's not our purview to do that and right now we have the big islands uh the county of Hawaii Mitch Roth and his crew which are hmm yeah we're we're trying to figure out whether we can take that uh because the commission can't take it because they don't have the resources of the commission to make a judgment really whether the EIS uh is adequate and because that's that's not their purview at least it hasn't been but interestingly environmental issues are becoming more and more the purview of the commission for a whole bunch of reasons legislative judicial right so it's just okay environmental impact statement PGV does it who are we going to give it to what's the address we mail it to guys and gals to which the answer is hmm well not sure yet in the meantime the price of oil is now 75 bucks to barrel as high as it has been in several years the cut the avoided cost of the so-called avoided cost rate of electricity on the big island is 14 cents a kilowatt hour which is four cents more than it was the same time last year which was 10 cents what's what does that mean that means that big island rate payers are continuing to pay through the nose for avoided cost pricing that hawaii electric light company aka hawaii electric is paying for the first 25 megawatts which is now fully online voila from PGV so as this bureaucratic kabuki dance what the blank is going on with the environmental impact statement who's going to take it price of oil goes up the price of electricity to why repairs goes up and we wait we wait we wait we wait well PGV must be you know happy with that because they don't have you know to go into the new agreement yet they make more money they make more money for as long as this is delayed they make more money yeah which is really too bad they're my understanding is they're willing to go they negotiated it it took them a while but they negotiated with the elbow and now they're ready but this is a sort of a bureaucratic snafu but let me you know let me ask you you know chapter 343 of the white rice statutes the hawaii environmental protection act which generated this whole thing about EIS for hawaii state EIS right um has existed for 40 years 40 years and so is this the first time this has come up where everybody looks around and vacuously and wonders who will look at my EIS why why now I have never heard of this kind of problem before have you you know I'm going to respond to that this way Jay the original Supreme Court decision that was in response to Henry Curtis's and life of the land lawsuit against the approved PPA between Helco and Hu Ho Nua gave the Hawaii Supreme Court a chance to rule on the validity the arguments of Henry's case right you know that and the major ruling the importance of that ruling five to nothing was that in such decisions as a as approving a PPA for a tree burning power plant thou shalt take into account environmental quality and environmental well-being that was explicit in the court decision and I believe that that's has set a precedent over the past several years where this commission and others are more acutely aware of the environmental effects and impacts of projects like this that's my answer to that well I think in her and what you just said is is there a little concern that whatever they do they're operating under these new rules the Supreme Court has that and they they run the risk of you know of an appeal of their decision which is to let this EIS you know take root pass be accepted and so forth well maybe the Supreme Court decision in Hu Ho Nua has made them a little skittish would you agree made who's skittish people who might step forward and be the recipients of the EIS report yeah and and just to kind of take it to the other end of the island chain on the island of kawaii uh k i u c and a s the a s being the company that also has been operating the coal power plant interestingly on oahu that will shut down september next year a k i u c and a s have been working on a pumped hydro project that's w k s west kawaii energy storage which you know put simply is you take water from one elevation you pump it up to another and then when you need the power you have the water run down and you spin it through a turbine right so as long as you have water it's almost kind of perpetual motion machine except of course you'll never get the same energy out from the water coming down as you took you to pump it up and still and and one of the important factors in this evaluation project for the public utilities commission they have made this explicit is environmental concerns so all eyes right now for a number of us looking at this particular docket before the commission a s is looking at very carefully okay she's looking at it very carefully we're all looking at folks like isaac moriwaki and earth justice is involved as well for one of the one of the interveners on the docket or one of the participants on the docket and you know my concern is I mean I'm an environmentalist at heart I got my first degree in environmental studies 40 years ago uh and at the same time uh I'm seeing environmental concerns possibly swinging a bit too much uh to the point of the the what is it the perfect being the enemy of the good that you can't you know they're always going to be trade-offs right life is about trade-offs so I'm not taking this particular position on on west kawai energy storage but I mean I am concerned that especially some of these environmental organizations seem more kind of hell bent on saying no no no no no rather than yes yes yes yes yes yes yeah that reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody from the Sierra Club back when I said what do what do you guys do and he said we stop things we stop things yeah we stop things and that's true and it's not just the Sierra Club it's a number of activist organizations and they go out for funding on that basis they are paid their salaries on that basis they hire staff and do research on that basis they take positions in court on that they never come up with their own initiatives no programs no developments they just stop things and we have an enormous environmental activism industry that's out there to stop things and you know the problem is the government is the government is concerned that once they see an activist attack on one of their projects they react you know to not circle the wagons but they become very cautious and so what you have is projects that get to be very cautious now the problem with that is we do have goals that we do have at least theoretically the notion of doing renewables and trying to go green but these objections stand in the way and it goes it goes back to you know what we were saying at the very beginning a lot of projects have gone down the tubes over this and in my view increasingly are going down the tubes and unlikely to continue to go down the tubes and we're not going to reach our goals because everything's got to be tested by these controversies which is regrettable and stands in the way of a progressive approach to energy you don't have to agree well actually you do nod your head yes or no uh you know one of the the follow-ons from this uh as I think about a j is that if if a big project whether it's a huho noa whether it's a e g v whether it's a west kawaii energy storage which is whether it's capolei energy storage is you've got larger sums of money involved and larger possible losses right if the if the endeavor the project does not come to fruition there's more at stake right more risk whereas if you do it on a more distributed basis by every rooftop at a time with storage then perhaps is less risk and you know I don't know much time we have left here but I mean back again six years ago I feel like I'm playing this violin over and over again uh Mike Gabbard the center Mike Gabbard was successful in getting a bill called community based renewable energy signed into law by egay six years ago and this was supposed to democratize the use of solar and allow people to benefit from it who didn't have their own roof couldn't afford it and so forth and now six years later there as of by last check there were 298 kilowatts total of cvre on two islands uh across the Hawaiian electric uh five service territories so in principle cvre has the potential to really bridge that gap between solar halves and solar have knots and that's one of the documents I'm playing paying particularly the close attention to and I believe that uh all three of the puc commissioners now you know have this close to their head and close to their heart because they see the potential to democratize the benefits of solar in a in a more dramatic and cost cost effective fashion and my view is the solar industry ought to get behind that and the bill ought to be tuned up obviously has not been successful but the bottom line there was an article in today's paper about how we have a lot of people now losing food stamps a lot of people who are taking you know government assistance uh increasing number of people in the state of Hawaii um we have um you know we have a great divide on on economic wealth and this is a problem so we have to be thinking of democratization all the time and for me as I mentioned earlier I would like to see energy democratized I don't want to be distributed solar only on the rooftops of people who could afford to put the money in I want to see it everywhere and I agree with you about community solar the legislature order would address that in order to make it possible for and encourage encourage but tax means or otherwise make it possible for more of that in order to democratize solar going forward wow we have covered a lot of stuff Marco and you know um actually it didn't surprise me that much but I sure appreciate it um I hope you're back by the next time and uh if you have a guest fine otherwise we'll continue this conversation this is much more to discuss thank you very much Marco thank you thank you Jay pleasure as always