 Welcome to our fourth episode of Energy Justice in Hawaii. I'm your host, Ali Andrews. I also run a community solar company called Shake Energy Collaborative. And I have the honor of being joined today by two guests. One guest is Todd Yamashita, the president of Hoahu Energy Cooperative Molokai, which I have the great honor of working with on a CDRE project, a community-based renewable energy project. First, community-owned, community solar project on Molokai, maybe in the state. And our second guest is Sebastian Szilard, who is a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the Department of Urban Planning, getting his master's. Also, a community energy planner at Shake Energy Collaborative. And today we have the honor of hearing from both of them about this really cool new concept around holistic evaluation of renewable energy projects. I'm not just looking at the bottom line of what's the absolute cheapest, but when we get for the fewest dollars per watt, let's plug it in, let's go. But give Amora a holistic view of what is this project cost, both our environment, our society, communities outside of our state, like what are the holistic benefits beyond just dollars saved, but jobs created, empowered communities, generational wealth, cultural alignment. That's a little preview of what we're going to talk about today, but I want to get into hearing from our guests. So I'm going to start with Sebastian first. Sebastian, can you give us a little bit of an intro about you beyond what I just shared? And then tell us a little bit about your research team and what you guys were looking to do in your class last semester. Yeah, thank you so much, Ali. So my origins, I suppose, are here on Oahu. I call Kaneohe home. I did my undergraduate studies in electrical mechanical engineering, knowing that I wanted to make renewable energy my research focus. But coming out of college, I also had the opportunity to become a Peace Corps volunteer. And really from start to finish, there was this growing realization that our climate mitigation and adaptation strategies are really going to be rooted in the community. And so when COVID came along and I got evacuated for my Peace Corps service and found myself back home on Oahu and started taking courses at UH Manoa. I got inspired by some feminist energy systems research, which is a research framework that looks at how do we do a clean and just energy transformation, but with particular attention to systems of power systems of oppression, and how energy benefits and burdens are being distributed across our society. And to the benefit of myself and my research partner, Leila Keelolu, a PhD student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UH. Together we had the great fortune of meeting up with you and Todd and the others at the Oahu Energy Cooperative Molokai to really hone in on, you know, how do we make this transition a reality. Thanks, Sebastian. Yeah, that was a really exciting time to hear from you and Leila. And here you guys approach the co-op and wanted to do a research project in collaboration and then my benefit the co-op. And to Todd, Todd, can you tell us a little bit about like what you guys were thinking about when you, when you first, I remember there was a lot of like brainstorming of ideas of what, what could we ask this cool research group to do. How did you guys, what kind of ideas did you come up with and how did you focus on this particular idea that you wanted them to look at? Sure. So, you know, for us, you know, and just to kind of reiterate where we're coming from here on Molokai, you know, I'm not an energy expert by any means and taking on this project, this community solar project is something that we're doing on behalf of our people. It's something that I have to do in order to survive. And, and so lucky us, you know, we are surrounded by energy experts such as each of you and what you guys have been able to bring to the table for us. And, you know, getting to meet with Sebastian and his team, you know, here on Molokai we take all we can get. And not for once did we think, oh, you know, these are just, you know, a couple of university students and, you know, what can they do for us right away. It was a two-way conversation. It wasn't about necessarily what we wanted specifically. But it was more of a conversation on where are things now? What is the status quo in terms of energy projects? How do we understand them? How do we make sense of the details? And then as a community, you know, how can we interact, you know, with these projects that are obviously going to be built in and around our communities, increasingly so as we continue our renewable energy build out. And so that was the beginning of our conversation that we started with Sebastian. And like you had mentioned, Sebastian, about the feminist energy structure and whatnot. What we realized is that, you know, being an indigenous people on Molokai and really being on the fringes of this new energy revolution that we're seeing and not really getting a good taste of it. We needed to understand what this was in terms of who we are as a people out here on Molokai. And so Sebastian was, and his team have been great help and had been great help in helping us understand that. And we're continuing to work together and have even more things to share about. Thanks, Todd. Yeah, I think that was a, I think, in particular, in my perspective, coming from, as you said, an indigenous people looking at not only just receiving project proposals from the outside but actually submitting a project proposal, a grassroots project proposal and being evaluated on the outside, some of these larger external projects that have kind of, sometimes an expected nature to them, looking at the evaluation, like how those projects are selected, how we value them, creating a new framework for that feels really important. Like in thinking about creating this new system in which communities are evaluated, community-led projects are evaluated alongside some more external and sometimes more corporate fueling, expected fueling projects. What were some of the things that you remember, like asking Sebastian to look at in terms of this new evaluation? Sure. So, you know, just real basically, just look at equipment, for instance. The cheapest battery isn't necessarily the best battery. Here on Molokai, you know, we take our environmental, you know, our environment really seriously. It's bad enough that we're importing diesel all day every day to burn to make electricity here. And the fact that this project requires batteries, you know, we really wanted to be sensitive to our people, to our environment in terms of, you know, what these batteries are made of. And really, one of the things we found out right away was that, you know, everything is geared towards building these projects fast and cheap. And, you know, as a community on the other side of things, we often face with fast and cheap isn't always the best. A lot of times the fast and cheap doesn't come with consent. And so we end up with these energy projects that while they might be really new and technologically amazing, they might not necessarily be the best fit. And so what I was thinking was, you know, we look at these requests for proposals. We look at the metrics by which they're measured. And what we realized was that, you know, these projects are being kind of created a little bit in a silo. They're being created for energy experts, and they're being created for energy developers. And so, you know, we kind of want to break into this, like is there a way to help the everyday person, like people on Molokai, to understand what these projects are, to understand what's in these batteries. And just like we're able to, you know, look at a scorecard in terms of the technological aspects, right, all of the different things that the batteries do and whatnot. Why can't we see something just as simple that tells us where they come from and what their impacts are. And overall, in a bigger idea, it's the same thing with these RFPs, you know, you have a 500 to 800 page just bunch of paperwork that for the average person, you know, this is, it's Greek. And if renewable energy is something that we all want to embrace, if it's something that we need to get excited about in order to get behind it and do it, this is something that we need to understand. So I'm hoping that my work with Sebastian, we've got a couple of different ideas but you know everything from infographics to different types of scorecards. And even down to the criteria by which these projects are judged by, you know that are given points by that, you know that these projects are passed by. You know, let's look at different metrics are our communities need to be heard, they need to be upfront in these processes. And so when you see metrics for these projects that talk about, you know, community engagement and whatnot. Like let's dig deep into that like what does that mean does that mean that we had a zoom call once 10 years ago and we talked about electricity. We wanted to find that you know we, I know our group has engaged probably over 1000 hours in different types of, you know, community meetings and educational kinds of stuff and, you know, so that's, we're looking for real commitments, you know, real metrics. Yeah, I just really excited about some of the ideas that have come out of that and one of the things we found out is not easy to find out what these metrics should be because it's kind of new new area it's new territory. And so, you know, I like to say that, you know, with all the ingenuity that's being done. You know, an engineering in this renewable energy space is a lot of geeky exciting amazing stuff. However, I think the real ingenuity needs to be applied so that I guess the rest of us can can feel like we can understand what renewable energy is, so that we know who it's for, we know who's benefiting and I think that in understanding that process, you'll find that these communities will begin hopefully building equity for themselves like our communities, you know, trying to get into some of these projects trying to win some of these projects. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a really great goal post. I want to get back up a little bit for some of our viewers might not be as savvy with how energy, how the energy industry decides and builds infrastructure. We kind of dove right into the meat. I forgot to back up with what is an RFP. A quick explanation for those on the call who are not familiar with that acronym, a request for proposals is how the utility Hawaiian Electric procures select which projects that they will buy power from. They're usually a pretty formal rigid process with very specific criteria, as Todd mentioned super long sets of documents that you have to follow all the details in and you're kind of rated to this really objective, objective, yes, objective set of metric. It often has to be a lot with price but there are a few other things that they consider in there as well. And then the co-op, who are who Todd and his guys asked Sebastian and his team to look at that kind of rethink it what does it look like to create different metrics in there, as well as all the other things I've just talked about. So Sebastian, tell us like how did you feel when you first got that direction from the co-op and what did you learn what surprised you along the way digging into that material. Yeah, I think our team initially looked towards United Nations and how they were trying to approach, you know, a holistic understanding of sustainable development. And so the United Nations has 17 sustainable development goals that lays kind of like a base, a baseline for a certain metrics to be gathered. And then Hawaii Green Growth here in Hawaii created the Aloha Plus Challenge, which was a kind of retranslation of the SDG, the sustainable development goals into a Hawaii context. And so what myself, Layla and our third teammate Ryan Neville, who just graduated with his master's in electrical engineering. What we came up with was a scorecard that was even more specific to Molokai. And we did some work to get some initial metrics into that scorecard. But we soon realized that the issue was not so much into what we knew, but what we didn't know. And so a variety of cultural metrics from, you know, how people related to energy development in terms of cultural and natural resource management to the ecological health of the coral reefs. Kind of a whole spectrum of what energy development means for a community here in Hawaii. So there's an indigenous aspect. There's a lot of cultural and spiritual values that are intertwined with land use. And so really I think knowledge is power and the decision makers on the state side and the private side and the civil society side. They're all doing great work, but kind of operating on different wavelengths a lot of the time. And so hopefully this evolving scorecard, this evolution of metrics will improve everyone's capacity to work together and collaborate despite cross epistemological boundaries or cross, you know, prioritization around different cash flows, for example. And, and then there's just like that technological aspect and so I think that's the main thing that we learned is that this energy discussion is usually dominated about how is the technology evolving how are the economics evolving. But what we found is that the solution will the reality and solutions to how this transformation towards clean and just energy systems. These solutions can be found on the ground. And it really has its roots in addressing the human rights aspect of development. And ultimately getting that community buy in. I think is quintessential to actual sustainable outcomes for renewable energy. As we move forward. I'm curious coming from, like, formal education in a more like traditional engineering. And academic silo, maybe not a silo, maybe more academic was more open minded. I'm curious with anything surprising hearing input from the community about how they wanted to value projects or, or see project built with anything feel particularly hard to incorporate into like a scorecard of that variety. I don't think anything was terribly surprising. I think our team went into this with a pretty good sense of of how the current energy system wasn't was deficient in some ways, especially in considering more, you know nuanced aspects of this development effort. But one thing that I think is going to continue to be challenging is really capturing the non human value, perhaps spiritual value or just like intrinsic value in terms that can really show its significance in the health of the broader ecosystem. It's significant in the overall health and well being of the society that lives in that place. Because I truly believe that those, you know, perhaps perhaps ineffable even factors do play a significant role in, you know, a thriving society and communities. So capturing externalities of the power system in a way that is being expressed in a language that is pragmatic and useful for folks who maybe need to operate with dollar signs. But also, in a way that doesn't betray the true essence of what we're trying to protect ultimately. And there's also this train of thought of where if you put a dollar sign, you know, on something sacred that could mean that okay now we know its value and we can protect it but it also means that someone who has enough money can buy it out and then owns permission to destroy that sacred thing. Right, so there's a lot of different things to consider when designing good metrics so that they don't. So they don't get kind of like co-opt and abused down the line. Yeah. Yeah, I have a huge challenge and super commend you guys for digging into that challenge. Todd, I'm curious. Now that you know the first phase of their project they produce a draft holistic energy scorecard. How do you feel about like how that kind of evaluation might be used how could that impact the equitable outcomes for energy on more high how do you how do you hope that that will go forward in the world. I think if anytime that you have your local population that can understand something that's really complex in an easy way. That's access that's access to information and information is power. And, you know, I'm excited that our community, you know through this process. I just understand what these projects are. But, but the other way around to that, that the rest of why you will understand a little bit more about Molokai, you know what what it is that Molokai treasures what's important to us in that process and that being said, you know what we're doing here on Molokai is is for us here on Molokai we're, we have connected to people and why and I, people in Kohoku and elsewhere in Hawaii. We have an ongoing conversation like we're having here about energy justice. And these other communities are really excited about these metrics to you know this, this is something that I think all of us in Hawaii if you're a community member has has really been dealing with, you know forever is these really large projects and then I'm not just talking about energy it could be landfills that you know any other big kind of dominating, you know environmentally effect, you know affecting projects like this. It's always been really difficult to understand how these interact with the community and a lot of the time the community is left at the very end. You know there's a little bit of consultation saying hey this is what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. So here we asked, is this okay, do we have permission, you know, have we created a project that that helps to satisfy the needs of your community. Have we reduced the impacts to your community as much as possible. You know, if you're hiding the community towards the very end of that process it's going it's not going to be good. I think we've seen examples of that over and over again so yes this is exciting for us here on Molokai but it's also exciting, I think for the rest of Hawaii and, you know I had that just got and I just want to kind of like put it in a nutshell you know the idea is that the sun shines on on everybody. And I love that because you know energy justice is it should be the same way there should be no difference between how any one of us has access to energy receives energy understands energy. You know, I think we need to kind of level that playing field a little bit and I just really excited that this is this is what's happening and Sebastian thank you for making that those these things happen. I feel I feel the same way kind of feel like that was a great wrap up I was going to ask you to take away so you just nailed it and Sebastian in 30 seconds, can you tell us where you're headed next with this work. Sure. So I think, you know, there's many different ongoing directions that are that's progressing this work forward. One, as Todd mentioned is how can we bring energy justice to Oahu and communities, you know, across the state and hopefully one day across the world who who really want to take ownership and alleviate the pains around energy. But another effort is really digging down into how these different energy stakeholders and actors are communicating. There's channels of communication and how can we improve those, especially now in a climate that seems very ready for those kinds of changes. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing can't wait to follow that work as it progresses. Todd and Sebastian. Thank you so much for joining us on energy justice in Hawaii and super great to hear from you guys.