 and welcome back to Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Mitch Ewan. And today on our show, we have four guests, a total of four guests, this is a world record, from the Hawaii State Energy Office, starting with Kirsten Turner, who's the Deputy Chief Energy Officer, and the American Corp VISTA interns, James McAllen, Vera Wood, and Parker Kishima. We will be discussing the HECO's new Community Engagement and Workforce Development Program. So welcome to the show, everyone. Aloha, thanks for having us. Great, so let's start off with each of you, introducing yourself and giving us your background of what got you interested in climate change, equity, and energy. So Kirsten, let's lead off with you. Tell us about the program, yourself and the program. Well, very briefly, I joined the Energy Office a little over a year ago. I was Scott Glenn, our new Hawaii State Clean Energy Officer, has led off the new organization of the State Energy Office after the enactment of Act 122 in 2019 that reorganized us and created an attached agency. So we're no longer a division within D-Bed, but we are a separate office. And as a result, he brought me on as a special advisor to help with the reorganization of the office and as mandated by the legislature. And I am now all the deputy energy officer. And I basically like the COO and I help with the organization and management and particularly the direction of and the strategy of the office to be able to orient us in a way that helps us move ever more quickly on towards our target of 100% clean energy by 2045. And my background very briefly is I worked for the last three years for Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard before I came to the Energy Office. And before that, I was years in the private sector working on renewable energy projects and including startup renewable energy companies. And in the 30 plus years of my career in Hawaii, I've been in and out of federal, state, county and private sector work. And I began my career in Washington, D.C. in the International Trade Administration working on trade aid and development projects with a specific focus on renewable energy. So that's it in a nutshell. I'd like our VISTA team, whom we don't refer to as interns because they're full-fledged members of our office. And we hired them for very specific capacity building positions within our office. So maybe Parker, you can begin and introduce yourself and tell us about what you're doing. All right, thank you, Kirsten. Aloha, Mitch, nice to see you and Aloha everyone. My name's Parker Kushima and I serve as the Transportation Affordability Specialist in the Climate-Ready Hawaii VISTA cohort as well as the Hawaii State Energy Office. So I'm a Kamehameha grad at kindergarten through high school, graduated in 2015 and then moved on to Princeton where I studied electrical engineering with a focus in sustainable energy and graduated in 2019. I did a few internships with Hawaii Energy and Kupu and Kamehameha. All kind of working towards my interest in sustainability and clean energy, specifically in Hawaii. And I knew that I wanted to move back home after college and a lot of things lined up nicely and I found a nice niche in the work that I'm doing now. So I'm really thankful for the opportunities that have been given to me and especially for this one now, working as an AmeriCorps VISTA and with the Energy Office. So yeah, I'm also born and raised in Ewa Beach. So it's nice and sunny now in the summer and it's a nice change from the East Coast for the past few years. Well, it's great to have an electrical engineer in the Hawaii State Energy Office. So nice meeting you. So how about Ravir? Tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah, hi, my name is Ravir Wood. I'm the Community Engagement and Communication Specialist. I graduated in June, height of the pandemic from the University of California Riverside with a Bachelor of Science in Sustainability Studies. As well, I ended up moving out here. My dad lives out here and I moved just trying to figure things out in the middle of this pandemic and I was so fortunate as well to apply and be given the position with the Energy Office and I see my role, you know, my background is not in energy but as a Community Engagement Specialist, I see that as a benefit in that I am also learning alongside the community members about what clean energy is. And I kind of see myself as the bridge between the specialists at the Energy Office and just the everyday people and hoping to inform everybody about what clean energy is and hopefully advance the clean energy goals of the state of Hawaii. Thank you. Yeah, well, it's great having you. Welcome to Hawaii. So James, how about giving us a little pitch on you yourself and your background and why you're here. Thanks, Mitch. My name is James McCallan and I serve as the Energy Affordability Specialist here within the Climate Ready Hawaii Vista cohort and within the Hawaii State Energy Office. My role focuses on equity issues involving energy efficiency, renewable energy and public education to help Hawaii achieve a clean, resilient energy economy. I am originally from Long Island, New York and I did my undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University where I studied biology and Chinese language and culture. I also have a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where I concentrated in Global Environmental Sustainability and Health. I first became interested in the climate crisis while serving as a Peaceful Volunteer in the South Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. This experience was deeply impactful to me as I witnessed firsthand just how serious the climate crisis is and how it's currently affecting some of the most vulnerable people in the world, especially those living in Pacific Island communities. And that is why this time so far within the Hawaii State Energy Office has been so great because it's been helping me to understand just how the energy sector plays its important role in the fight against climate change, especially through our specific lens of equity focusing on the most vulnerable communities in Hawaii. So thank you for having us and I look forward to sharing some of our work with you today. That's really great. What a great background and living out there in the South Pacific must have been one big adventure. Absolutely, yes. Great. So Parker, can you describe the climate ready Hawaii VISTA cohort mission? Yeah. So as we've mentioned, James Revere and I are three members of the inaugural Climate Ready Hawaii VISTA cohort. And the goal of this cohort is to address climate readiness and equity issues statewide that will help our most vulnerable communities thrive and be resilient in the face of climate change induced events and impact. And these goals were identified by the Hawaii Climate Commission and our work will help in the pursuit of a clean equitable and resilient Hawaii. And so the cohort is comprised of six AmeriCorps VISTA members, including the three of us distributed between the Hawaii State Energy Office, the Office of Planning, the Department of Health and the Department of Land and Natural Resources with one additional AmeriCorps CUPU member also at DLNR. And our cohort utilizes the various resources and support offered by these four key state offices to address climate related issues and from different angles and different lenses while also working to break down silos and pave the path for more collaboration between these offices. So I think our position is very unique and it allows for a lot of flexibility and being able to address, like I said, climate change in innovative and interesting ways. Okay, great. So Kirsten, how about describing the community engagement part of the program? Yeah, thank you, Mitch. And this is the main reason we wanted to bring to everyone's attention this terrific team that we have of our VISTA cohort, which as Parker mentioned, is part of the statewide Climate Ready Hawaii cohort. But we were lucky that we're engaging the lion's share of them because there's that much work to do in order to achieve our 100% clean energy transition in order to be able to particularly make sure that everyone has access to clean energy resources and that they're affordable and that they have a voice in how we get to that goal. It's really important that we have a more robust outreach and that we have the opportunity to engage folks on a level playing field where they have an understanding of what clean energy is about. What is the ecosystem that we are talking about that we need to create in order to get there? And one of the things that we've been hearing from our civic advisory group in particular and other community groups with whom we've engaged for the past year that I've been involved is that a lot of people just don't understand the intricacies of what's becoming an ever more complex energy industry and energy delivery systems. And so we need to raise the awareness level, help educate folks about what the ecosystem looks like of the future that we're progressing and trying to implement in Hawaii. And we also need to engage their perspectives and input in a more proactive way that is more accessible. And then finally, of course, with James's position is particularly to help folks be able to meet the costs of energy and understand that renewable energy costs are lowering quickly and empower them to be a part of using those resources. And Parker in particular with the transportation affordability is working on multimodal transportation and other things that he's gonna talk about that help people connect to be able to partake also in the clean transportation transformation that we're undergoing. And part of this community engagement and outreach program is HSEO, our offices push but it is always in partnership with our partner organizations, industry stakeholders and NGOs as well as very importantly, communities because the communities are the users and they are the ones who are gonna get us there take us all the way home in that if you bear with me to use a relay metaphor we're gonna pass the baton to them and that last push of that last mile of getting there. So they have to be fully empowered to do that with us. And then Revere's position as a community outreach and engagement specialist is bringing us a real tremendous perspective on the latest and greatest in more youthful perspective as well on how to reach out to their generation. Particularly we were arguing about this just yesterday or whether they belong to millennials or Gen Z, but we were hardly establishing me very clearly as a baby boomer. So we need to pass this baton on to the younger folk. And with that, I'll let you continue to grill them a little bit on their role. Well, let's talk about community outreach and engagement seeing as how it seems to be a key part of the program because I'm kind of interested in well, how do you actually engage with the community? I mean, you know, these are great words but what does that actually mean? And, you know, how do you interact with them? How do you get the data, you know and what kind of data you're looking for? So Revere- Thank you, I'll start off with that and then pass it on to them. But that we have a really robust program that we've been strategizing and planning in the energy office over the last year and we're now launching. And one of the first things that we need to do is make our communications much more user friendly and accessible. And so we're bringing on next week a communications consultant that's gonna help us rebuild our website to make it more accessible to create a dashboard that not just in the past we've always been giving out the energy data to others to be able to communicate. We wanna sync our data and metrics across the board, across the state as well as all the non-governmental organizations like Blue Planet and Boy Green Growth that is stepping up and doing more in the energy arena as well as Alohaina Economic Futures, Sierra Club and other great community-based organizations. And so we've brought on a data science management specialist from the University of Hawaii from the lava lab there from the Data Science Institute who's already served us tremendously in the legislature this year and you actually had him on your show to talk about the deep dive into understanding the state vehicle plate, for example in order to be able to see how we can most efficiently and cost-effectively transition our state plate. We're also bringing on data fellows. Currently, I just signed some of the paperwork to get them here with the help of HNEI, your institution whom we partner very closely with and we're really happy about that growing relationship that is helping us with the data side as you guys dive deep into the weeds with modeling and data analytics. And so we're making it more accessible by making it more portable, downloadable not having dead-end data that we can't trace the original facts and figures. And so I'll let the scientists and Parker has a unique interest in that talk more about it. But the other thing that we're doing is upgrading our communications or our messaging and we're gonna be rebranding the office this year and making sure that all of that has a communication message that is much more when we say accessible, it's more easily digestible and I'll let Raveer talk more about that those are just three elements of the work we're doing. But what about language barriers? I mean, not everybody, English isn't the first language for everybody, a lot of these communities don't speak English. So how do you get involved with them? Do you have translators or does some of the people here know how to speak the various languages out there in the Pacific? That is part of what our communications consultant is going to help us with. First, we have to get it right in English and that's the biggest part is basically building our infrastructure, our outreach infrastructure, our engagement infrastructure and our communications infrastructure. So that's the first step. But yes, that's a need. But as far as languages, I'll let each of them answer that for you. Well, I'm gonna start off with Raveer then. Talk about community outreach and engagements over here, you're on the hook. Thank you. I will also just echo what Kirsten was saying in that the HSEO also is ADA compliant. So our community outreach and communications that we submit to the public are like use active language and utilize language that could be understood from a fifth grade level. So while we are working to increase language access, we also make sure that even people, we don't wanna just be a boring bureaucracy. We really try to make sure that everybody can understand what we're talking about, especially with such technical information. To continue on what you were talking about earlier though, with just how do we even engage with the public, with the pandemic, we've been in a very interesting situation in that many of our normal avenues of communication were closed off because we couldn't directly engage with the public in a physical setting. So we've like everyone have transitioned to this virtual world. And part of my role is not only being in these virtual meetings with the civic engagement group, but also making sure that our social media platforms are up to date and provide the public with the information to really advance the clean energy goals. One of my personal projects I've been working on is building our Instagram page, which is at energy Hawaii Gov. And I've just been, it's kind of been my own personal journey with learning about energy as well. And just what don't I understand that I also feel that other people won't understand. And so I've been talking about the basics of renewable energy, like what is solar energy? How are we utilizing it in Hawaii? As well as geothermal energy was our most recent post. But also just talking about the infrastructure, like what is the grid? It's referenced so frequently, but what does that even mean? And how is Hawaii's grid, especially being such a unique state compared to the rest of the continental United States in that we don't have an interconnected grid. Each island has its own energy source that it has to rely on, which is so different from the continental United States. And so that project has really been to help inform the public about these intricacies in our energy ecosystem and how transitioning to clean energy can help achieve those goals. Another goal of my role and why Scott and Kirsten and the rest of the HSEO staff brought me on specifically and created this role for the future AmeriCorps VISTAs as well, is that they really were listening to the community members and understanding that there is a need for more education on what clean energy is and just more engagement with community members. They recognized the need to break the barrier between industry, the energy industry, between policy makers and community members, especially again on such a technical subject that isn't easily understood. So that's kind of what I've been doing primarily in a virtual setting, although hopefully soon we'll be able to go back into in-person. Oh, that was my question. That's one of my curiosity questions is, how do you actually engage with them? Because not everybody has a computer, not everybody knows how to go on to the internet. Do you actually go out to like a community and how do you word out that, hey, we're meeting the community center, we want to talk about energy? Or maybe not that far yet, I don't know, No, actually that's a great question, Mitch. One of the important things in building our infrastructure is making sure that we continue forward with the abilities of the internet and to use this wonderful technology that so many people have gotten used to going on to Zoom and participating in webinars and meetings that otherwise they would never be able to participate in. So we need to preserve that element that has really amplified access while at the same time reaching out in-person, COVID along protocols allowing, that we'll be doing a dual approach and we'll be using one to support the other and vice versa. And so getting the word out will be both through these means that Revere has talked about, but it's also through networks of community organizations and making sure that our newsletter, our three social media sites, Twitter, Instagram and the web as well as our own engagements with communities and invitations by communities. We really want community organizations and grassroots as well as the traditional NGOs to invite us out there to be a part of your meetings where appropriate and we can speak to your communities and the issues that are concerning to you. And we've been doing that so far as I mentioned, we've been invited to participate in a variety of the Kahuku Community Association, for example, is having a meeting, I think it's tomorrow night. It'll be the, we've been doing that quite regularly and the Sierra Club of course we partner with Blue Planet and the different industry organizations, but we invite community organizations to invite us. What about if you looked at leveraging the Department of Education? I mean, we have this whole network of schools with students and students all have parents. Absolutely. And they all do projects and they take them home to mom and dad. So, I just know that. Well, let me just mention that very quickly. We have basically a three tiered approach and the first contract to get out the door and we have now awarded it is with, this was a competitive bidding process was to do a K through 12 clean energy curriculum for both the classrooms and professional development for teachers with a special focus on Title I schools. And those are the schools that are in vulnerable communities that might be low income that particularly those are the schools that offer free meals at the schools. And so we felt that those hadn't had the same amount of attention. And that contract went to the Maui Economic Development Board. They have a tremendous experience and they're amplifying the work that they're doing with some of the directions and guidelines that we want or that will translate across the different work that we're doing. And so that's the first step. And that's a year long program. The second program is of course to build our outreach and engagement. And the third area is the infrastructure I talked about. And the third is actually implementing workshops in communities and those again will be dependent upon COVID protocols but those workshops will be virtual and or and hopefully both online and in person. And we're planning those out and the priority for those will be in communities that have planned renewable energy projects. Okay, great. So Parker, tell us about mobility hubs. All right, thanks Mitch. And thank you Kirsten and Riviere for opening with community engagement because I think it's a time thread through a lot of the projects that we're working on. So it gives great context for some of the other projects that we talk about. So my work in the energy office and in the cohort is focused on transportation affordability and equity. And the topic that I've come across that's kind of captured all of that is mobility hubs or multimodal mobility hubs. So basically multimodal mobility hubs are locations where you can co-locate multimodal with different forms of transportation to more equitably provide access to these different modes of transportation for communities. And in doing research for this and through collaboration with the Hawaii Climate Commission and the Hawaii Interagency Transit-Oriented Development Council, we've been working with the counties to kind of compile a list of future ongoing or potential mobility hub projects across the state along with some other mobility hub materials to demonstrate the potential for mobility hubs in Hawaii and to show how they can best serve the communities that they can be housed in. So again, I said that community engagement is relevant to all of our projects. So in the implementation of mobility hubs, the first step is really identifying the transportation needs and concerns of communities and then designing these hubs to best serve those needs. So as these hubs start to come online across the state, engaging respectfully with communities will be a huge part in pursuing that. That's great, mobility is near and dear to my heart because as you can see over my shoulder, that's my height over on the Big Island for public transportation, which I think is where we should be investing our money among all the other things we need to invest in. Anyway, well done. So we're marching along the timeline here. So I wanna call on James to talk about while we're talking about money, let's talk about financial assistance and what kind of resources are there available? Yeah, thank you, Mitch. So my position is the energy affordability specialist, which in its name, it's we're working to help to make energy more affordable. And so when discussing energy equity, I think it's important that we understand and discuss this idea of the energy burden, which describes the percentage of an individual or a household's total income that is being spent on their essential energy needs. And so the US Department of Energy, actually they report that low income households experience an energy burden three times higher than that experienced by higher income households. And this average is consistent in Hawaii as well. And so these households already dealing with high rent, childcare costs, high student loan debt, which are all interconnected and contribute to financial inequity and poverty. So for our equity work, we wanted to help HSEO to improve its capacity to address the energy burden and reduce these financial strains placed on Hawaii's low to moderate income communities. And so one solution we found is to leverage the existing federal, state and county financial assistance programs, subsidies and rebates that exist to kind of help offset the high energy expenses that are contributing. And so we developed a comprehensive guide of all the energy financial assistance programs that are available in Hawaii. And you can find this right on the homepage of HSEO's website by going to energy.hawaii.gov or you can go directly to this by following energy.hawaii.gov forward slash financial dash resources. And so this guide includes a bunch of information and it includes links to programs such as the low income home energy assistance program which can provide a one-time payment directly to cover an electric utility bill. There's also a bunch of information about rebates that are offered by Hawaii Energy to help reduce the cost to purchase more efficient energy efficient appliances for your home. And there's also various information about enrolling in a community-based renewable energy subscription which is an emerging alternative solution to accessing the benefits of renewable energy even if you are unable to install a solar photovoltaic system on your home. So there's a ton of resources out there and we're gonna be continued to promote this page on our social media. And we're also gonna ask that our partner organizations continue to spread this information just so we can get this out on the community and really get it to work. Wow, this sounds like a great program you guys. I mean, you know, you're covering all the bases here obviously well thought out. I'm sure Kirsten had something to do with all of this. So Kirsten, how about telling us a little bit about your Wayfinders program? Wayfinders program, absolutely. And I just wanna mention that we've had a lot of support from the Energy Equity Hui that we helped put together with Hawaii Energy on both this Wayfinders program and other elements of what James has been doing. He's been our lead with the Equity Hui but the whole team has been with them. There's about 12 members of that Hui so we're really excited to have their support. If you go ahead and queue up the slides I can walk you right through. The Wayfinders purpose is this is a program that we developed in response to COVID and a response to the call for creating more green jobs. And so while we're creating jobs with the VISTA program and certainly there's great examples of that across the state because all the state energy offices have been hosting them. Of course, the Office of Climate Change Stainability and Resiliency for the City and County of Honolulu has had a tremendous VISTA cohort supporting them. And we see that as a great example of how to prepare folks to have the resume they need to get the leadership jobs in clean energy and other fields. And so the Wayfinders program which was named by the Equity Hui and the VISTA team it was I had come up with a clean energy core when we first developed this last year. And so where we've gone from there I really credit that this VISTA team and the Energy Equity cohort and particularly Hui Energy and our partner also Kupu but creating jobs for this generation is a key part of it but it's also helping us to get to that 100% clean energy goal. And these Wayfinder the program will help community needs and concerns be identified and communicated address the inequities and vulnerable communities and establish that open communication that we need both virtually and in person. So next slide. When we talk about clean energy these are all the elements everything that these VISTAs are working on as well as everyone within our office and the other county energy focused offices. And that just I wanna make sure it includes active transportation as well as mobile mobility clean transportation. Next slide. These are our main partners that have been working together we started off with our office and Hui Energy as I mentioned and the Equity Hui and then we moved to working with Kupu because they have so much experience in this arena. And there is a bill also HP 1176 that would use some ARPA funding to fund Kupu's green jobs youth for program. It has a funny acronym and we're partnering to see how we can all work together and that with the energy focus on that. And of course the Hui is made up of many different groups as you see in the small blue box here about a dozen groups are represented. Next slide. The other potential partners that we see in this are of course industry. We've had HIKO already commit to in kind support of the program but there's many others and particularly the University of Hawaii System and the Department of Education as you mentioned. Next slide. The program strategy is to bring on 15 way finders and the way finders are the concept of them are very similar to the VISTA program and very similar to what is the name of the program? Parker in the Cornell University, navigators, right? The Clean Energy Navigators, yes. Clean Energy Navigators program. So we looked around to see across the country where there are other successful programs like this. There's was very different than ours though. We want to scale this up to a large group of people who are not just supplementing their university time but they're actually working in the field and the 15 way finders would be our pilot program to measure the performance and see how well this works. We were seeking funding from federal, state, county and private sector. Next slide. And we're hoping to get applicants from the communities that we want to serve. We may fund this through VISTA. We have an initial VISTA application for a whole new cohort in that area but we are also seeking funding from industry partners in particular that may want to support the communities that they're working in or the whole state. We're seeing the 15 member cohort going across the island. So we'd start with six on Oahu with the top row. You can see what the 15 spread would be in the yellow, sorry, the second to the top. And we would have more on Maui County because we'd want somebody on Lanai and Molo Ka'i even though Hawaii County has a greater population. And then we would scale up if you were going down the table and hopefully if this is a very successful program. So if you can, that's the end of the slides but talk a little bit more, James would you because he's really been spearheading the development of this proposal about the actual work of the wayfinders in the community. Yes, thanks Kirsten. So really the work that we're hoping that the wayfinders do is to really get directly into the communities and work on the concept of equity. And when we talk about equity, it's really understanding kind of the different intersectional identities and figuring out where the communities are. It's not just like a one size fits all solution. It's really getting in there and understanding their unique energy needs. So kind of going back to the financial assistance resources I had discussed, wayfinders could go in and kind of understand like what are the reasons that are inhibiting their financial security around the field of energy and connecting them to the appropriate resources. Another one would be to just kind of understand if the communities need a little more education or understanding on renewable energy and how it fits into the total energy equity ecosystem. So for example, a wayfinder might present what the opportunities are at a community organization's meeting or at a neighborhood board meeting if they're invited. And they then may be connected with a school teacher who's teaching a module on energy or a principal who wants to present to their teachers for professional development and understanding. There are myriad of ways in which the wayfinder can be integrated into the different community happenings so that they're seen as a resource to both understand the energy ecosystem and learn where they can plug in and how they can benefit more effectively with all that is happening in our transition to clean energy. Well, what a great program. And afraid we're gonna have to leave it there for a well out of time, but that's good. It's all good content. It'll be like a feature length movie, which is great. Got a great content, great presentation guys. I really enjoyed it and I'm sure our audience will like it too. So you've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we've been discussing the HSEO's new community engagement and workforce development program with Kirsten Turner, James McCallan, Revere Wood and Parker Kishima. So thank you all for appearing on the show. And appreciate the opportunity. Awesome. You're welcome. And thanks to our viewers for tuning in. I'm Michuan. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha.