 Howard Wigg, I think Tecawaii Code Green gives me huge pleasure this afternoon to have as my guest, Melissa Miyashiro, Chief of Staff Blue Planet Foundation. I'm sure that the audience is so enlightened that they have an in-depth understanding of Blue Planet Foundation, but we're going to give you an even deeper understanding. So welcome and thanks for joining me here, Melissa. Thank you so much, Howard. It's a pleasure to be here. And before we get started with you, I was watching Matt Geo, the television program just a few nights ago and it was about the 80s, the transformative decade of the 80s and they went in chronological progression and as they got towards the late 80s and the Soviet empire was beginning to fall apart, here comes this name, Hank Rogers. And I say, what? And it turns out that the video game, remember Tetris was really, really, really big worldwide and Hank was a video game connoisseur, I guess one of the leading video gamers in the world and it turned out that Tetris did not have a patent. Why? Because it was conceived in the Soviet Union and I guess Soviet Union doesn't believe in patents or something. So Hank got a tourist visa to Moscow, made his way to this high-tech building in Moscow where the inventor of Tetris was housed and somehow talked his way in to this highly secure building as an American and met the Tetris founder and they got along absolutely perfectly because finally the founder could talk to somebody intelligently about game creation and he agreed to let Hank take the patent out and they just made enormous amounts of money. And the founder got 50% of the accrual but that's how Hank made his money and the reason he was on this Nat Geo program is it was the first really high-level big bucks agreement between the Soviet Union and America who were still officially very much in the Cold War. I think to something like ping-pong diplomacy where Nixon arranged for ping-pong games between communist China and America. So you didn't know it but Hank very probably helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Yeah, I definitely didn't know all of that story. But I think that's an example of how Hank has really been a visionary his whole life and as he sits on the board he's on our board of directors as the chair of our board of directors and he brings that vision and you know that forward-thinking thought into strategy for the organization along with our other board members as well. And how often does the board meet once a month or? Our board meets quarterly so we have more meetings a year. Okay and I won't ask who's on us probably a bunch of very, very, very highly qualified people. Yeah and it's really you know well-rounded so we have a lot of great expertise across all different industries. Former Governor George Ariyoshi sits on our board and Christine Kemp, Crystal Rose. We have yeah we have 11 members total now. Very good. Yeah. Okay so on that very cheery note why don't we start by you're giving sort of an overview of what Blue Planet Foundation is all about. Sure so we are going to be coming up on our 10-year anniversary. Oh I had no idea. Yeah in 2018 we're going to be celebrating all year long our 10-year anniversary. So we are a 501c3 non-profit organization and therefore people who write checks are it's deductible. Yep it's a we're a public charity so it's contributions are tax deductible and we really rely on those contributions to support the work that we do. Our mission is to clear the path for 100% clean energy and we do that in a number of ways. We aim for bold advocacy so adopting smart energy policies that are really going to help us you know get off of fossil fuels and move to 100% clean energy future. We also do community awareness campaigns so we educate students and educate members of the community about ways that they can be smarter about their energy use. And we'll be seeing a great slideshow very quickly about that education effort. Yeah and that's becoming an increasingly large piece of the work that we do. And then we also try to do community action campaigns and we're actually helping people lower their electric bills and actually getting out there and helping people learn how to be more energy efficient. And that warms the cockles of my heart because as a state employee I am if there's a hard core efficiency person within the Hawaii State Energy Office it's myself. And everybody always talks PV panels PV panels PV panels and I say no no no that PV panels are the bright shiny object and yes they're making a huge impact on clean energy but the other side of the coin is energy efficiency where you simply bring down down down down down down down the amount of energy used in the first place. And incidentally even with all the high rises going up in Kakaako and all the new buildings coming in on the Everplanes electricity use is still going down. Yeah quite quite the miracle there. Yeah we definitely recognize the importance of energy efficiency and always keep that in as a piece of our portfolio and the programs that we deliver because it is so important and you know as we try to get to 100% clean energy that's you know fewer fossil fuels that we're going to need on the path to get there. And the other thing that we really love about energy efficiency is that really anybody can be a part of that and there are actions that individuals individual businesses individual residents can take to help us create a cleaner future for everyone. And we are it sounds impossible and certainly when Governor Ighe signed the document people said that's outlandish but it's we're very carefully tracking it and we're actually ahead of schedule. Yeah. Yeah and we but we can't talk about those broad things why don't why don't we get into a couple of very of your pet projects here. Number one I think is education. Yeah yeah so I mentioned that Blue Planet Foundation has been kind of growing our education our programs and the portfolio of efforts that we do in the education area. Maybe we should bring up the first slide. Sure yeah so one of the ways we do that is through our Student Energy Summit and we have been hosting this event this is our third year we just had our third annual Student Energy Summit a few weeks ago. And on the next slide we'll see some look at those happy kids wow. Yeah so so we had close to 200 students from all across the state so we had it was middle and high school students and we had close to 50 schools represented and that includes students from the neighbor islands so thanks to sponsors and donors we're able to provide the summit free for students including neighbor island students so we rely on sponsorships to be able to pay for their travel and they're lodging so that they so the neighbor island students are incorporated into the conversation. Yeah because generally on the neighbor islands they're kind of isolated and small now we're getting into the big picture here that that's great for them yeah and then they I mean it's really important that their voices are incorporated into the conversation about you know what's our 100% clean energy future going to look like. And how did you select these students? We so we had worked on we have a number of partnerships with teachers in schools across the state so we you know reached out to our teacher contacts and those that had participated in past summits and we tried something different this year and had the students enter as teams so they came as a team of four to five students from their individual school and then we also did something new this year and had two different tracks the middle school track and a high school track. Yeah very very intelligent I've been involved in a lot of student education things you I was going to separate the middle from from the high school kids it's amazing what what differences there are. Yeah and I think it worked out really well there's another slide here that shows some of the the workshops that they did but first shout out to our sponsors yeah so we were fortunate to link up with some really great sponsors that made the student energy summit possible so NRG also junior dev league who works on coding so they teach they deliver coding workshops to students and show the power of using coding and web development to solve the world's challenges and then we also had a gracious host this year the Mililani High School so they hosted us and they they were they were wonderful hosts and it was great to bring the summit out into that community because that's a community that's you know impacted by some of the clean energy projects that are happening. Absolutely wow that's great yeah yeah really great host and the reason that we do this work is because these students are the ones that are going to inherit the consequences of our choices today so that's why Blue Planet Foundation has seen the need to really you know devote more of its time and resources. And this generation of kids is probably much much much better prepared for this message than was my generation I mean we actually toss things out in color windows and things like that and the first environmental initiative was don't litter it's just part of the culture now and then recycle I hope found the Hawaii recycling association in 1987 and it was a revolutionary idea at the time and now everybody recycles and the kids just grew up with this yeah so they have this solid environmental foundation already and now you're building on it. Yeah and when I was growing up at the issues of the time were recycling and also deforestation of you know rainforest rainforest abroad so these students this is the issue that they're going to grow up learning about and need to be equipped with the skills and resources to be able to to tackle this enormous challenge and it'll probably get them thinking about what they want to major in in college also yeah yeah exactly so some of the missions that we had there's another slide that shows some of the pictures of the students actually doing the missions so we divided the students into middle school and high school tracks and they had different lessons or interactive exercises that they worked through on the first day so they did things like comparing clean charge clean transportation options so battery electric cars versus hydrogen cars versus biking they also looked at cooling their classrooms so what what are some clean energy alternatives to cooling overheated classrooms topic right topic hopefully a cool topic with my one of my pet passions is get cool moves on on those schools yeah the students actually had constructed houses and then explore different ways to kind of cool and insulate which is something that I know you you know lots about so it's really neat to see the students kind of exploring that and playing with that and then let me do a shout out for ceiling fans instead of air conditioning in the classroom ceiling fans consume about five percent as much energy as do air conditioners now yeah yeah so they you know the students need to be aware of these different options and they you know they're empowered to either advocate for for different changes in their their schools and their communities on the high school side they explored legislative advocacy so helping the youth get more engaged in that process and feeling empowered to you know reach out to their legislators and really be involved in shaping that process even though you're a kid even though you can't vote the legislators still they'd be gratified to hear from from kids yeah yeah exactly and then there's another slide of what we did on day two so this was a two-day summit so they got they they worked hard all weekend it was a holiday weekend so these are really enthusiastic students and so we tried to bring it down to a local level on the second day so their task for the second day was developing community-based campaigns so they worked with their school team and identified either an energy efficiency issue or a clean energy issue that impacted their school or their community and we had them workshop that idea wow and and they all presented at the end yeah to different to their different school groups and so it was really neat to see the just the things that they come up with so possible follow-up for them yeah yeah yeah and we hope that you know we had some students that this was their third time attending the summit their veterans yeah yeah yeah that continuation and they could help bring along the newcomer type of students yeah yeah and then another neat feature that we had maybe we'll pull up the last slide yeah we better you know what we better why don't you go go through this and then we'll do it yeah just really quickly another new feature that we had at this year's summit is we offered a workshop for teachers so we partnered with up Tara and Hawaii energy to deliver a professional development training for teachers that were attending with their students so we were you know working on the helping educators as well yeah and then they can pull that into their curriculum because I'm sure there's not a principal in the state of Hawaii who would not say no you can't do that yes yes yes yes yes we need this for the kids we need this for the kids exactly wow inspiring stuff so on that very cheery note we will take a break back in one minute think take Hawaii Code Green Melissa Mayor Shiro of Blue Planet Foundation back in a minute this is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness oh I am John why he a long time host of talk story with John why he a think tech Hawaii is important to our community because it gives people the opportunity to voice their opinions and to take an active part in our development for the first time think tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000 give tanks to think tech will run only doing the month of November and you can help please donate what you can so that think tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine I've already made my donation and I look forward to your please send in your tax deductible contribution by going to this website thanks with think tech dot cause Vox dot com on behalf of the community enriched by think tech Hawaii's 30 weekly shows mahalo for your generosity good afternoon again Howard Wigg code green think tech Hawaii I have as my guest Melissa Mayor Shiro the chief strategist no chief of staff chief of staff for Blue Planet Foundation and we just heard this incredible tale of reaching out to kids and teachers and they are really really ripe for the message because there's been a whole culture shift since since I was a kid but now we have an even more exciting program I think where we literally Hawaii is going nationwide reaching out to legislatures so what in the world is how come a teeny little state isolated make a nationwide impact like this what's going on here yeah well all eyes are on Hawaii and everyone's watching very closely what we do and it's in you know our setting a target for 100% renewable energy is really inspiring we were the first state to do that we're the first state and currently still the only state that has that law but there are folks that want to follow Hawaii's lead and see how how it's changed the conversation and really got many things going in motion that you know probably wouldn't be in motion if it weren't for the law so we this is a new project so it's kind of just just up and running it's called project repower and it's a partnership with the National Caucus of environmental legislators and they're a group that supports legislators from across the country so they legislators that's the these are our partners so they support legislators from across the country in passing and introducing legislation various types of environmental legislation and they had heard from their legislators that they work with that they were interested in doing what Hawaii had done and passing 100% renewable energy target so we got approach done kind of how how can we share Hawaii's story and how can we help other places do the same thing that Hawaii's doing so that is the the genesis of the project another partner for the project is Rocky Mountain Institute sure so we had participated in their elab accelerator program so we had this big idea asked and you know in CEL the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators but we weren't really sure how best to kind of bring that into into action so we went through their kind of like a boot camp where you workshop so you actually traveled the Colorado and got training there it was in Sundance Utah so it was great and then so we had a really great team that we compiled a core team to really figure out okay what is it that legislators in other states need what do they feel like that you know what resources do they feel like they they don't have in new in order to be able to do something like that so was this a confluence of many many states then it was so it was just kind of an idea in our minds as is initial phase so there's a couple phases that we we walked through so the first was participating in elab the elab accelerator program it was I was a representative from Blue Planet Foundation we had two former legislators and one sitting legislator and then we had an energy analyst from NREL weighing in so all this core team kind of shaped the strategy going forward and what we decided on and what we came up with as a group is developing a toolkit for legislators and then there's a slide that outlines kind of the various elements of that toolkit if we can get that up yeah so this is the kind of strategy that we work through so first was that elab accelerator that I mentioned and then we introduced this project in this comp this concept to over a hundred and twenty legislators from all different states in August to kind of get an initial interest and then now in just next week actually we're bringing legislators from eight different states who are really interested in introducing legislation in this next coming session so they're gonna be coming here learning the Hawaii you know what Hawaii did and then really developing that pure pure network of legislators and I saw reference I see see reference to Big Island will they be meeting on Hanks Ranch or anything or yeah they're gonna be meeting at and the reason we wanted to have the meeting there is to really inspire people about the possibilities for renewable energy so you know at at the ranch they have they're doing research on hydrogen it's off the grid so it's a really great illustrative example of what's possible so we wanted the setting to really you know we wanted to kind of bring them out of their their everyday setting and really think about what's possible because it's a really big it's a big bold goal right and and for virtually anybody from the mainland this is going to be a really exotic sitting up in the North North Kohala lush green warm by their standard I was wondering it's been it's been a little bit chilly so I wonder and then up there it's it's even chillier I'm not sure if they're what they're expecting but I think the people coming from Minnesota will appreciate it yeah I know right it's December so yeah it'll be December when we do the workshop wow that's that's exciting stuff yeah so we're gonna be again sharing always 100% story you know what we did so not only how did the the law get passed but also what's happened since the law was passed and then also what pieces of that story are applicable to other places precisely yeah because each state has its own you know its own challenges its own opportunities its own networks its own stakeholders so it's not we're not really trying to create something that's like a formula for places it's really about developing that network and in providing yeah and the exchange cards and I imagine you'll put up the follow-up report on that and give everybody's email address it and so forth so yeah it will be a network and say how did you do this how did you do that and I have had the pleasure of being with Governor Iggy twice in the last six weeks or so and he really really is proud of the his 100% clean energy initiative yeah that's one of his accomplishments yeah and then you know Hawaii really stepped out there and is really setting the example and you know other states if you look at California they had legislation this past session to set a target for 100% renewable energy by 2045 so the same date as as Hawaii so really you know we as a state we really did wow that an example yeah that's that's the most moving the elephant yeah yeah yeah hmm yeah so we're hoping that even long-term so after this strategy session we want to learn more about you know what resources the legislators need and then hopefully you know long-term in in the project we can you know develop even in a bigger bigger support network wow this is gonna take some coordination because there's this is probably very imaginative people who are gonna be there and the ideas are gonna be flying around like mad and yeah who's gonna keep track of all that makes sense is that gonna be you well I'm tasked with facilitating that and the legislators are a very passionate group of people and you know really love talking story and sharing their ideas so it'll be it'll be a very dynamic yeah I hope you can heard the cats or at least yeah because of report that would come out of that it just be lots of ideas that need to be categorized and yeah distilled yeah and then really base you know place-based and then it's really relevant to their particular states and again not trying to do this global platform or formula and then our partners I mentioned Rocky Mountain Institute so they're very still very much involved in helping with the agenda design so they are experts in facilitation yeah they have so many exciting huge conferences yeah and that would they be there in person also they will be there in person but I've been working with them directly leading up to the agenda design will be using and implementing the ideas that they have for incredible facilitation yeah little old Hawaii yeah is there any other sites here because we're there I had a slide yeah this is the core team that I mentioned so some pretty this is the team that met at elab accelerator so you'll see Fran Pavley former senator in California and she was really instrumental in introducing a number and passing a number of landmark and environmental bills and then what is in cell even I don't know the national caucus of environmental those are our partners there and then there's another slide I mentioned the toolkit although I didn't dive into too many of the details but we're really structuring it in tiers based on a legislator's level of commitment so we really we really want to find legislators that are committed to actually doing this they will self-select exactly yeah yeah yeah so we you know the team that's meeting next week in Hawaii is kind of in this tier two so they'll get kind of additional resources it's all about identifying and working with legislators that are really committed and again I can just imagine the networking that'll go on yeah will they all be staying at one place overnight they will yeah so it's a workshop of two days so they'll be staying together networking together and they can you imagine the dinner party and talk to other conversations that are gonna go out wow yeah and then one thing that we've learned is that they really you know those that network of legislators is really important because they're you know lobby to all of the time so to have that network of peers is really important and in that feeling of support also exactly yeah and I'm not a voice in the world in this with everybody calling me a blankety-black tree and all that yeah and just the challenges that they face over the course of a session and they're working on so many different issues so to be able to have this you know support network and then we have some faculty members and experts coming to support the conversation as well well on that really really cheery note we have to wrap it up ourselves it says think take away cold green Howard Wig Melissa may as she wrote chief of staff Blue Planet Foundation thank you so much this has been a really inspiring session Melissa thank you so much for having me Howard this was a lot of fun yeah yeah