 Okay, energy 808, the cutting edge here on Monday. Monday at noon, wow, with Marco Mangostorf. He joins us from Hilo, from Provision Solar. Hi, Marco. Good to be back with you, my friend, in the words of the mamas and the papas. Monday, Monday, what would it be without Jay? I didn't know you had a voice. This is a whole new world. We have to do more music together, you know, because energy in a funny way is music. It's music to your ears. Music to the world. Music to society in general. But let's talk about the music we've heard. Our harmonies, I think, would turn the world on us here, Jay. We'll leave that for further definition, what that means. So what is the solar prognosis, Doctor, is the title of our show, but we have much more to cover than that. So the first item I'd like to cover with you is energy politics in the 808 building on solar and on prime ag land. Prime ag land, that is very interesting. So what is happening in the square building on prime ag land this session? Well, I don't want to leave any viewers with being too anxious of a state in terms of the prognosis. So what's the solar prognosis, Doctor, question mark? And I've given this some thought and it's guarded. It's guarded. Okay, so I'll just put that out there for now we can come back to it. In terms of recent activity there at that beautiful capital building regarding the question, I believe it goes from A to E, I'm not mistaken, with A being the best of the best, and E being the not so good of the good, that there was an effort on the part of Hanwha, Hanwha is a South Korean-based company. That was behind installing a utility scale, I believe 50 megawatt, commercial solar utility scale, solar project on prime ag land, A grade ag land on Oahu. And there was a building that was built in the 808 building, a utility scale solar project on prime ag land, A grade ag land on Oahu. And there was a bill that was making its way through the ledge that would have essentially allowed that to happen because the way the law stands now you cannot put solar, commercial utility, industrial grade solar on prime ag land. And fortunately, I'm relieved even though there are some disagreements and differing opinions between my view and my friend Richard Ha, who's the co-director of the Hawaii Energy Cooperative. There were some folks on the ag side who wanted to see that happen. And there was some talk of well you can combine solar and you can combine ag on the same property. But ultimately the legislature deferred indefinitely which effectively kills the bill. So Hanwa is moving on and they said, well, we've junked that idea anyway and we're going to move on to a different proposed piece of land to do that. So as I think we've talked about before, there's no doubt in my mind that food security is just as important as energy security. So when there's plenty of other parcels out there that are B grade and less in terms of ag land, I see no compelling reason whatsoever to start sacrificing prime ag land even though agriculture in terms of growing food and crops and other ways of making its food more food secure, even though that's become quite a hard push in terms of the economics. I think the last thing we want to do is just start encroaching on the best ag lands that we have and essentially kind of cannibalize from the inside out and devote that to renewable energy. So they made the right call. Yeah, but suppose it was grade Z agricultural lands and it was not prime. How would you feel about that? I'm okay with that and I think it's already been happening. I mean the law states that again, I don't know the law inside and out but I'm pretty sure that the only ag land that is not zoned or permitted for solar parks so to speak today's commercial solar utility scale solar is grade A. I think everything from B below I believe is fair game. Well, a couple of thoughts about that. I remember a project which is operating now was out in the Kapolei area which had been a dump. It was contaminated materials. You know, EPA, you know, a qualified dump of contaminated materials. And Line Electric and I forget the name of the organization that was doing it might have been Hoku, might have been Hoku. Anyway, these guys built a solar farm on that land and they didn't want to penetrate the land, penetrate the soil because there were contaminants just below that. So they made a membrane on the land and then they sort of put the structural members of the solar system on the membrane. It was actually removable. I mean they could take it apart too and they could move it somewhere else. And I thought that was a pretty good idea because using land that you couldn't use for anything else certainly could not use this land or agriculture. And nobody, you know, they'd have to go through an EPA process to use it for anything else really. But they could use it for solar. And it was, you know, it was a substantial parcel. I thought what a great way to handle, you know, the EPA contaminated land. And that somehow relates to this. We have a lot of land, we can't use it all for agriculture, for any kind of agriculture. Why can't we use that? The sun shines the same way on all of it. And I don't know why we have to consider either prime agricultural land or any other kind. That's one factor. The other factor is, you know, I mean this is all kind of ironic because we're not really incentivizing a diversified agriculture in this state. We have precious little of it. You know, since the days of the plantations, the amount of land that's dedicated to, that's being used in economically, you know, profitable agriculture in the state is really manini. So yes, certainly we should be careful about taking land out of agriculture. But the fact is that it's only theoretical because we're not incentivizing agriculture. How do you feel about that? You kind of lost me a little bit in the run-up to the question, Jay, sorry to be so dense. I'm just reacting to the whole set of circumstances. I'm reacting in two ways. One is you don't have to use agricultural land at all because there's lots of other kind of land that isn't agriculture. And in fact, it's contaminated land that can't be used for agriculture or anything. And my second reaction is, which is not necessarily in the same direction, my second reaction is, see, what are we so concerned about agricultural land? The fact is we're not incentivizing it. So in a perfect world, in a perfect world, A, we wouldn't use any agricultural land for solar. There's so many other parcels available that are easier to use and that would be beneficial without affecting agriculture. And B, we should be incentivizing agriculture. We're not doing that. So there's a grand plan that should be made here and it's not. I couldn't agree more with especially the latter part of what you said in terms of the effective relative demise of ag across the state of Hawaii. I mean, you can look back on the decades and decades of sugarcane, so it's monocrop. I mean, the state was not adequately diversified in that we were doing sugarcane for decades. We were doing pineapples for decades and both of those, of course, have largely more or less completely gone away. And the reality is, of course, is that the whole state is very, very, very dependent on those barges coming in day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out, with perishables from far, far away that keep the food on the shelves in the stores, right? So that is seen by many, many people in UNI included as being a great vulnerability, just as much of a vulnerability as we are to the supply lines and the oil that traverses thousands and thousands of miles from east and from westerly directions. So what can and should be done to incentivize ag? I mean, this is not something I've taken a deep dive into, but I'm actually convinced that more needs to be done. And again, I'll go back and look at my friend Richard Hopp, who, if he had on his farm just north in Pepe Keio area, northwest going up Hamakua Coast, not far from Hilo, Richard was a banana and tomato farmer for a decade. And he first gave up tomatoes because the cost of refurbishing his greenhouses and so forth went up high enough that he didn't see enough of a payoff to spend a substantial amount of money to continue to grow tomatoes to give up on tomatoes. And then, sadly, he felt he needed to get out of doing bananas, which he'd done for decades and decades. So I see people like Richard Hopp and a whole bunch of others who dedicated their lives to farming and who got out because of financial concerns and constraints. So what can the state do to incentivize more farming? I don't know because, again, I haven't taken that deep dive into the subject matter, but there's no doubt in my mind that there should be a heck of a lot more motivation and incentive to be able to support. Yeah. Well, my point is, you know, on the one hand, we have solar and clean energy. On the other hand, we have farming, and there's no reason why the farmers and the ranchers can't be friends. You can have both of them. There's no question we can have both of them. So if it's a matter of policy, we decide that to be sustainable, this state needs farming and ranching. It needs solar and it needs diversified agriculture both. And if you and I sat in a room for a little while, Marco, I am sure we could figure out how to incentivize both of them. And that's the mission. These are very important things going forward. We're going to have storms, we're going to have disruptions. We have to make ourselves sustainable, and frankly, we're not doing that. But that's another story. Let's go on to HP 307 and the application of the famous gut and replace technique. Tell us what's happening in the square building about that one. The square building. I like the way you put that. So there was a bill that was introduced on the House side at the beginning of the session, which is mid-January, that was House Bill 307. And House Bill 307 was to get into the definition of what constitutes renewable energy. And you think, well, renewable energy should be a fairly easy slam dunk, Mr. President. Right? What does renewable energy mean? But there was a number of legislature, legislative tours decided that the state's definition of, quote, renewable energy was too narrow to account for what they described as some technological innovations that produced renewable energy resources. Well, I guess that sounds all well and good. But they wanted to try to push the envelope some, I guess. And there was some discussion about whether nuclear was renewable energy in a sense. And in FYI, you probably know, it specifically states in the Hawaii's Constitution, no nukes, no nukes, no nukes, no nukes. What it says in the Constitution is you can't have a nuclear permit, a nuclear facility, without having a three-quarter vote of both houses of the legislature, which is not likely to happen. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, that's an important one. It also wanted to address the, I don't know how to describe, this kind of quasi-energy source of cool commercial seawater air conditioning, commercial seawater air conditioning, which involves taking substantial amounts of water from substantial depths. Because once you go below X number of hundreds of feet, let alone thousands of feet, you get a pretty constant water temperature somewhere in the 50s. So if you can pump up a lot of water, pump it up and circulate it round and around and around and around, and you use that as a means of cooling the air for office building and hotels and condos and so forth, then that makes sense, apparently, as opposed to burning coal in the AES power plant or oil and other HECO power plants to produce electricity to run compression air conditioning systems. So it was an effort to look at what energy sources can be legitimately defined as renewable energy. That's the reasonable thing to do. Plus, it's being pushed by those commercial seawater air conditioning proponents who see the possibility of selling more of their products because they've been more incentivized, let's say, through the Renewable Energy Technologies Investment Tax Credit. So a reasonable thing to do. But because another bill, Senate Bill 1163, if I remember correctly, died in the Senate that would have redone the Renewable Energy Tax Credit and essentially put sunset dates on it because right now the solar tax credit, the wind tax credit, have no sunset date, and it's 35% with certain caps. So that particular bill, 1163 died in the House this past week, and the folks behind Senate Bill 1163, Senator Glenn Wachai for one, and others decided that they didn't want to just let that die, and they used their gut and replaced magic to turn HB307 from a strictly-speaking, defined renewable energy bill and add on to that what would in effect be the ramp down, the ramp down of the Renewable Energy Technologies Investment Tax Credit. So that is what was heard, HB307 was heard by three committees, count them, three committees last week, three committees at once because time is a running short. Well, that is extraordinary. Three committees in one week, huh? Extraordinary. Yeah, it was a tribe committee meeting. It wasn't one committee, two committees, three committees, you know, sequentially it was all three of them at once. They're running out of time. So they passed HB307, Senate draft one or SD one out of those three committees, all senators except one, J, all senators except one either voted yes, weren't there, and just one voted no, and that was my good friend Russell Ruderman, who covers the Puna and South part of the island district. Russell voted against it, so I applaud him for doing that. And what would SD one do? Well, it would specifically outlaw, well, no, not outlaw, but it's the other self-replenishing non-fossil fuel, non-nuclear resources. So it specifically takes nuclear out of the picture. There was a bunch of pushback on anything having to do with nuclear, and it starts to ramp down of the tax credits, the solar renewable energy technologies and investment tax credit, that's a mouthful I always stumble over when I say it. So it would keep the existing tax credit at 35% with various caps up until the end of 2023 and then starting January 1st, 2024, it would start a drop down to 20% and start essentially reducing that incentive. So this will be voted on by the Senate writ large, and I assume it's going to pass, and then it will go to the so-called conference committee because HB 307 that was voted on by the houses will be different than HB 307 Senate draft one, that was voted on by the Senate, and it will go to a conference committee where you'll have a rep from Nicole Lohan from the connoisseur who's chair of the energy environment committee on the House side and the House of Glen Wakai who's chair of the energy blah, blah, blah committee on the Senate side and a number of other participants who will see whether some type of compromise between the two different versions is possible. And if it's not possible, then it will die in conference, as similar bills have died in conference last year and the year before and the year before. You haven't mentioned the storage provision, the provision that allows a tax credit or storage that is added on to an existing solar facility. Is that in this bill? Well, that's a very, very sore subject for me, my friend, and no it's not. That didn't make it past the first committee, and what you're referring to is expanding the renewable energy technologies investment tax credit to include a provision to allow for a state tax credit of, let's say, 25% with CAPS to support the addition of storage to existing renewable energy systems. And why that's the case or why that was taken out is unclear to me. My impression is that there is a greater concern this year compared to last year in terms of the state's finances and the hits on the general fund. And that the Department of Taxation takes, in my opinion, a rather worst case scenario, planning in terms of, well, how much would this particular new tax credit possibly take out of the state's general fund? And then, you know, they're trying to guard the taxpayers' dollars and cents I get that. I find the lack of prioritizing of adding storage to existing systems, renewable systems, both on the utility side of the meter and the customer side of the meter, to be incredibly short-sighted and incredibly lamentable that this is not seen as a priority because, as I've told you a number of times, and I really do believe this, that we are living on borrowed time in the state, that it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. One of our islands, or more of our islands, will be hit by a Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricane, and then the hand-ringing and, oh, what was that? Why didn't we do more to fortify our grids to make them more micro-griddish when we could to be able to have a more robust and resilient grid that could take hurricane hits without getting Puerto Rico eyes as we witnessed a couple years ago and in that area of the world. Well, we can still refer to Puerto Rico because it's still having huge problems. It is really beyond belief how little the federal government is done to help Puerto Rico. And so, you know, we're wondering, you know, I'm wondering in a storm, everybody thinks that, oh, the military will come in, the federal government will come in, FEMA will come in. No, we have living proof that it may not come in. And so we're not in a sustainable, you know, position at all. And so it's really too bad that we don't have a real goal here in terms of renewables, we don't have a real plan. Critical policy issues are going to be left for the conference committee on this. That's not the way to do it. The way to do it is to have a plan. And that takes us to the second part of our show, Marco. The Senate passed six Energy and Agricultural and Current Resolutions, SCR, introduced by Senator Dela Cruz, who's the chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. But they're resolutions, they're not bills. Can we talk about those? Sure, sure. I'm always, you know, passing a resolution is to me kind of a feel-good thing to do because they certainly don't have the same oath as a bill does, which could conceivably be signed into law by the governor. And it's more kind of a sense of the body, a sense of the senator, sense of the house. So I just kind of, and this is again thanks to Henry Curtis, who keeps up on a regular daily basis in terms of energy and environment. So kudos to Henry for continuing his good work. One of those resolutions was requesting the governor to prioritize the planting of four million trees along streets and roadways within the next four years to help address climate change and make complete streets statewide. So I mean, who can be against planting a bunch more trees? Well, it's like motherhood. It's like motherhood, but it's a resolution, not a bill. There's no money attached to it. The governor has no budget for it. He's not going to do it. Four million trees cost a lot of money. This is pie in the sky. Do you agree with me? I do, and kind of the next Senate resolution urges the governor in coordination with the DELNR, Department of Land and Natural Resources, to establish and implement a tree planting program who would be against establishing a tree planting program. Is this going to prompt the governor to go ahead and establish and implement a tree planting program? Well, the answer is no, there's no money for it. It's not a statute. It's a resolution. It's wishful thinking. I don't think either of these resolutions we've talked about are going to mean anything. But I guess it feels good, and if you put it in the newspaper, there'll be people out there that think, oh, we're going to have four million trees. We're going to have a tree planting program. All beautiful. And it is beautiful. They're going to be wrong. We definitely should do this. We should do it as part of a plan that has teeth that actually goes forward. That's funded, that has departmental responsibility. These resolutions don't have any of that. What else? Well, another one is requesting the Department of Agriculture designate areas in each county for dairy operations and develop incentives to increase dairy operations in the state. And you probably know, Jay, that not too long ago, there were dozens of farm, there were dozens of dairies across the state producing locally produced milk and cheese products. And now there are, I think that we have one, one left, one or two left in the whole state. And Ulupono tried for years and spent substantial amount of money trying to establish a dairy operation on Kauai. And ultimately, they threw up their hands after spending probably easily millions and millions of bucks because the pushback from folks on Kauai, nimbyism to the max, amongst other reasons, pushed back, pushed back, pushed back. So Ulupono threw up their hands and gave up. So, yeah, it felt well and good to say, well, let's have agriculture promote dairy operations. But you look in the real world and what, you know, Ulupono tried to do on Kauai and who in their right mind after looking at what happened on Kauai is going to say, yeah, I'm willing to spend millions of bucks to try to get dairy going. So again, there's a disconnect here. Now it's all well and good to say, oh, let's do more dairy operations. But the real world is, the terrain is treacherous, terribly treacherous out there. Yeah, well, this actually reminds me of Superferry. Superferry was a great idea and to the extent that it did get anywhere. I mean, by private industry, by Wall Street, you know, it was a remarkable improvement to the transportation system in the state. But there were activists who opposed it and they killed it. And, you know, it's a tribute to their activism, but it doesn't help the people and it's radioactive. And I'm not referring back to nuclear now, I'm referring to radioactive political. And so what happened is nobody will touch, nobody will touch Superferry or any ferry again. Wall Street's not going to touch it and state government's not going to touch it. You know, our lifetimes and our lifetimes I don't think there'll be a ferry of any kind in the state of Hawaii. Very sad story. And likewise, what happened in Kauai was tragic. You're right, it was nimbyism by Kondo and, you know, recently arrived land buyers and by the hotels, the hotel was there. We don't like the smell of the cows and they generated a whole big opposition. And in the end of the day, there was so much pressure on the county of Kauai and the state that a dairy was impossible. And so we don't have that dairy. We could have had that dairy. It was well-intentioned by the era of meteority. It did sink a lot of money into it, but he never was able to bring in cow one. And the message to the people, to weather investors, to Wall Street, what have you, to entrepreneurs who might consider it dairies, don't try this, this is radioactive politically. And so I think this resolution doesn't go anywhere because nobody is going to try it after that. I agree with you totally. What else do you have? Another one for you here, Jay. Yeah. SCR 157 requesting the Department of Agriculture to develop a sustainable food security strategic plan. Food security, sustainable food security strategic plan. Who in the world could be against that? Where's the money going to come from to do that? Well, you know, we have a planning office in D-bed. I mean, my first reaction to seeing this one is, don't we already have a plan? What is the planning office doing? You know, this is central planning at the center of the state's interest. And, you know, we absolutely need a plan like this. And then now we have a resolution, not a bill, not an act. We have a resolution, wishful thinking, that we should have a plan. And let's see, who's supposed to do it? The state energy office, that's within D-bed. But, you know, this isn't going to go anywhere either. You have to fund it. You have to have staff. I'm not sure we need planners from out of state. I think that particular approach has not really worked. But at least we could develop an organization within D-bed that could actually make a plan. I mean, or take the existing planning office or take the existing energy office and actually have them sit down and write a plan. And then it could be approved by, you know, whatever agencies are involved or by the legislature. And then we have something to follow. And so when you get into, you know, any given session, people can look to that plan and say, yeah, we got a plan. We should implement the plan with legislation. But that's not going to happen here either, is it? Well, speaking of plans, it's kind of a good segue talking about D-bed, which is that I heard when I was at the Energy Conference, the Hawaii Energy Conference, not Maui Energy Conference, the Hawaii Energy Conference on Maui a couple weeks ago, that the D-bed folks in the energy office, Carol and Sean and Chris Younger, who are two of the fine employees there, that the report that the legislature did fund several years ago of a million dollars in change to look at utility, electric utility ownership models in the state, that that report, which was received by D-bed sometime in January, that the public has yet to lay its eyes on because it has yet to be released, that report should be coming out fairly soon as in mid-April. And now, by my calendar, we're the 8th of April, so we're a week or so away from mid, precisely mid-April. And that is an example of not just the resolution, but a bill that was passed and signed by the governor to appropriate state fund money to look at utility ownership models. So it's going to be very interesting to see what comes out of this blended economics international report that they've been considered by them a time and effort and obviously state money to do a report on looking at utility ownership models. So that's something which I'm really hoping will be forthcoming very soon. Well, you know, I'll tell you the truth, but it's too little, too late. That report was initiated more than two years ago. We never heard boo about what it says or does. And it was done by somebody outside the state. I really wonder how useful that is because Hawaii is unique in the way it's organized and it's politics and it's social structure. And for that matter, it's energy structure. So I'll be interested to see what happens, but I doubt it's going to go anywhere. And finally, it's this thing that the last, the last, what is it, Senate current resolution, concurrent resolution, 126, urging the governor, the Department of Agriculture, the University of Hawaii, and all right-thinking individuals and the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. I'm never sure why human resources involved in the College of Tropical Agriculture and other related entities not named to take action to expand agriculture in our state. You know, Marco, you and me, we've been following this whole sustainability thing and the term agriculture has been in play for 20 years at least, maybe 30, maybe 40. And we're going to expand it now. It was always a good idea, but it has had precious little expansion in all these years. There was an aquaculture coordinator at the university, he's gone. There has been really no initiative of moving aquaculture forward and I'm really sad to say that this is again too little too late. What do you think? Uh, yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, there's so many competing priorities, you know, to state kind of the obvious. And I wonder sometimes, I mean homelessness certainly is a screaming priority, it's very visible, it's very painful for obviously the people who don't have homes and it's painful for businesses who are impacted, individuals who are impacted by people sleeping near or near, on or near sidewalks. So it just seems to be so much to do, so little time relatively, you know, inadequate resources and of course my, you know, my axe to grind is on the energy side and I completely respect others who are toiling away for food security, toiling away for rights of homeless folks and so forth. And it just seems like we could, there's always more that we can do in a more timely fashion and just another little tidbit I'll share with you before we go is the Senate voted in favor of Leo Asuncion who will be taking his place along with Dr. Jay Griffin and Jenny Potter at the Public Tillies Commission as of I believe he comes on board in the first day or two of May. So we'll be back up to full strength after five months of Randy Oase's retirement late last year with Jay and Jenny and Leo. So I'm hoping for great things from our commission and hopefully, you know, the addition of Leo will add positively to the commission. That's great, that's good news and the PUC is in good shape but it remains that we need a larger plan, we need to focus on where the state is going in terms of sustainability and the economy. I was happy to see that that was a community foundation gave or a substantial grant to Civil Beat to examine diversification of the economy and it's reporting on that for a year I think with a sort of deep study about diversification of the economy. I'd like to add that is merely a reportage. That is merely an inquiry by the press. The fact is that there's nothing going on about diversification of the economy at D-Bed. So I hope maybe they see a handwriting on the wall the need to do something. I hope Civil Beat encourages D-Bed to do something about diversifying the economy. We spent the first ten years of this century I say we, I mean the tech industry are trying to sell diversification into technology and I would say we did not succeed in that regard. Act 221, correct? Act 221, correct. Yeah, it was a huge failure. It was a situation where the Kaitano administration came up with a pretty good bill and then the Lingle administration pulled a rug out from under it and in so many ways that by 2010 it was gone, gone, gone. And not only gone but radioactive again. So what we have is no planning and we have small efforts at good things that become somehow radioactive and nobody tries them again and then it's time for another election with a new generation of legislators. So there you have it, there you have it, Marco. Say goodbye to the people, Marco. Goodbye to the people, Marco. Great discussion. So we're able to have these conversations with you, Marco. I hope it stirs a little interest somewhere, I think. You always rock my Monday and then some, my friend. We'll talk again soon. Thank you, Marco. Mahalo.