 Welcome back to Energy 808, the cutting-edge of Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Jay Fiedel. Today in the show, we'll be discussing the Aloha State Energy Roundup with our guest, Marco Manglestor, guest and host and contributor. Welcome, Marco. Let's start with what you mean by an Aloha State Energy Roundup. Well, you know, run them up little doggies, right? Remember back to our far west days and, you know, cowboy incarnation, where you get these stray cattle and they would go out and have to round up little stray doggies. So there are no shortage of stray doggies that you and I, because this is the first time that Tua and Moa, you and I have been back together again, just the two of us. So it feels very, very intimate, very sweet, very, very nice to be just back the two of us. Not that I don't appreciate our other guests, they're all fantastic. You know, when all is said and done, it really comes down to Jay and Marco. So thank you for having me on. Thank you, Marco. We get great information. We keep current on things that are happening in energy in Hawaii, which we need to do. This is the place to keep current on energy in Hawaii. Well, the first thing on our long list, and it's a long list we're moving on, is an update from the legislature. For example, there's a bill in play to reduce the state's solar back credit. And that's being advanced by Senator Splenwick High and Don Van Deller Cruz. What's the bill? And is it good? No, it's not. You know, well, from my perspective, Jay, you know, my selfish parochial perspective, right? And, you know, what's interesting is there was, when this legislature started in January, right, there was great concern about this massive gap between expenses, you know, expenditures, right, and money coming in. And then lo and behold, the American Recovery Plan was passed by Biden and the Democrats in the House and the Senate in Washington. And as if everybody, so many people across the country, you know, what a relief, right, especially municipal government, state government. So we're getting a bunch of money. Hawaii's getting a bunch of federal money, right? They can print money. They can send it to us. So there's much less of a squeeze from what I can tell compared to a few months ago, right, much less of a squeeze. That said, there is the bill on the Senate side that would reduce the amount of tax credits for film production, as you probably know, that we've been pandering to film crews to come over here and film and giving them tax breaks and all sorts of other wonderful benefits, right? Because anytime you see whether it's Megan and PI, Hawaii 5.0, fill in the blank, fill in the blank, stuff, fill in the Hawaii, it brings more tourists in, right? So part of this bill... And they tend to spend a ton of money when they come here. Correct, correct. So let's give them a little bit of the money back after they spend a bunch, right? And then the other part of this particular bill would also reduce the renewable energy technologies in investment tax credit. I'm going to stumble on that. It's renewable energy investment, renewable energy tax credit. Okay, I give up. I think we got the idea. We've had a form of this solar tax credit now for, excuse me, at least 45 years, 45 years. And that has allowed Hawaii to become the most polarized state in the country on a per capita basis. And it's not even close to any other states on the US mainland. So from time to time, they're at first to cut down on the tax credits. So lo and behold, now we're well into the session. The session is about a month or so to go. Two senators, Wakai and Dela Cruz, have put this bill into play, which would reduce these two tax credits for motion, for film and for solar. So interestingly, our friend or my friend representative, Nicole Lohan, who's in the state house and who represents the part of the west side of the Big Island, she hasn't even seen this bill. I mean, she's seen it, but it's never gone through her committee. Why? Because it started on the Senate side. So Nicole, I think, is going to do whatever she can, said that this bill does not pass as is. The number of it being essentially that you've got some individuals in our legislature, in this case, senators Wakai and Dela Cruz, who are pushing a bill, who are favoring a bill which would turn the investment tax credit for solar in half. It would cut it in half. I don't recall the timing in terms of when that would be. But it goes to the fundamental question, really. Number one, is a renewable energy solar tax credit still necessary in this state? To which I would answer yes, given the fact that we're still 80%, J80%, dependent on imported fuels. And second, if you buy my answer for question one, is still the good thing to do, then the question is, do we tinker with it? Do we leave it as is, or do we reduce it? Do we ramp it down over time? And it's my opinion, and I think in the industry in general, is that now is not the time to ramp it down. Now is not the time to start bringing down that tax credit. There's another consideration too, Marco, and that is that the more money that people spend on solar, the more economic activity there is in the state, and the more that builds the solar industry. And I say that because I think it's important in these days, these trying to get out of COVID days, that we incentivize the development of our economy. Both of these things do that. And so to knock down the credits knocks down the incentive effect on both of these credits. And that's really too bad. By the way, Nicole Lowen's going to be on the show in a few days. Excellent, excellent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's really interesting. But why would senators advance bills like this? What reason would they have? Is this to save money when we don't need to save money? I can't speak definitively for either Dela Cruz or Wakai. I don't know either of the gentlemen personally. The hit I've got from Wakai after kind of tuning into him over the past couple of years, and he, by the way, is the chair of the Senate Energy Committee. So I used to be my friend, Senator Lorena Noe, but she's now transportation. So you have Wakai who's chair of that committee. And my impression is that Wakai represents the line of thinking, which I understand. I've been hearing it on and off for a number of years. In fact, our friend, Nina Morita, is also kind of of this line, which is that by and large, these tax credits tend to favor and tend to benefit the more higher income earners and also companies from out of state who are able to somehow monetize the tax credit and that it is not fair and equitable and doesn't necessarily benefit the lower ends of the economic strata. And therefore, if it is more of a tax credit, a tax benny for the more affluent, then it has that kind of populist, progressive feel to it. Well, let's go after tax credits that you don't really need because it's mostly rich people who benefit from them. So I may be kind of oversimplifying, but I think my hit is that Wakai has some of that energy, that attitude within him. Well, you talked about Nina Morita. You know, the view that she's expressed a number of times is that, you know, if the economy wanted to have solar, it would, solar would develop. If the way to develop solar is organically, that is as a natural process rather than with government incentives. I personally don't agree with that. I think if you wanna change people's conduct, if the economy is not developing in a way that you want as a matter of policy and planning, then you can, you can nip and tuck it. You can incentivize or de-incentivize certain activities and presto, you can change those activities. It's only a question of, you know, being clever in the incentive. Well, Jay, I mean, the risk of sending like a broken scratch CD, you know, I've been saying for years and I'll say it again, there's no such thing as a level playing field when it comes to energy in terms of subsidies. And I noticed with great satisfaction that President Biden's infrastructure package, which is still, of course, a big work in progress and will continue to be a work in progress for a while, that it, according to some of the reports I read, it would ramp down the incentives, the tax incentives, the federal tax incentives to fossil fuel, let's call it dirty fuel sources of energy. And I think that's nothing short of fantastic because if you look at the actual numbers, Jay, the actual numbers going over decades, the large preponderance of subsidized, taxpayer subsidized incentives, whether tax credits, whether other parts of the tax code, heavily, heavily, heavily have heavily favored all oil, coal, net gas and nuclear with solar and renewables being a manini percentage of what I just said. So the notion that, oh, well, I mean, solar should survive on its own. Yeah, sure, take away all the subsidies to all energy forms, I'm 100% down with that. Once they all go away, once the others go away, the ones for solar should go away. But in the meantime, it's not competitive for solar as long as big oil, big coal, big net gas, continue to get the subsidies that they have received over decades. Oh, that's a gross flaw in the way things have worked over decades. They don't really need incentives. They don't need subsidies, but they have the power of big capital and lobbying and they have achieved that and they hold onto it and they spend a lot of money holding onto it every year. So I agree that those, I didn't do the right thing. It's doing the right thing. Hope he can get it done as well. Let's move on. Just to riff on that for one more moment, purposefully, nobody in the Biden administration that I can tell is calling it anything like a Green New Deal, right? Oh, that's too AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right? No, no, no, it's not a Green New Deal. But if it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck. It sounds pretty New Deal-ish to me so far. Whatever you call it, so. And a number of opinion writers have made that exact conclusion. That it may not be called the New Green Deal, but it has many of the elements that AOC was asking for a year ago. It's a Biden. I mean, he's achieving important things to improve the energy picture in our country, among other things. So, okay, let's talk about who honed or one of our favorite topics. Oral arguments to schedule the Supreme Court on April 22nd. What's at stake and what's the likelihood? What's at stake? Well, and thank you Henry Curtis for bringing this to our attention. It just, is it coincidental that the Hawaii Supreme Court scheduled the oral arguments on birthday, which goes back to, I think, is 1970 and one of your original birthday founders, the guy by the name of Dennis Hayes, I actually know Dennis. And it's just amazing that now, what 50 years later, we're still celebrating Earth Day. So, interesting that it's being argued on Earth Day. And what's at stake is whether who honed, which would burn biomass at a ridiculously exorbitant price to Helco of 22 somewhat cents a kilowatt hour over a 30-year power purchase agreement, whether that plant is dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, finally dead, never coming back dead, or whether the Supreme Court were to rule, were to rule against the Hawaii PUC and said that the PUC ruled in error to reject who honed new as proceeding to want to move forward with the power plant. So what's at stake is a Hawaii Supreme Court, five justices who will decide whether a state agency with quasi-judicial powers, the substantial amount of power and prerogative discretion, whether the Hawaii PUC was incorrect in rejecting the project by saying and what they hung their hat on was the commission hung their hat on last year, was that this PPA is essentially null and void, which was agreed, passed by Randy Awase's PUC several years prior, is null and void because of a lack of competitive bidding. That was where they hung their hat, legally hung their hat. So my prediction is that, okay, we'll go out on a little limb here, I'll mangle them, is that the court will rule four to one or five to nothing. I'm gonna go five to zero, five to zero in favor of the PUC correctly deciding and that that will be the end, at least in the state court system of Jenny Johnson, Franklin Tableton, who knew his efforts to bring on board this abomination of a biomass burning power plant, not that many miles from where I'm sitting right now. And why is this sound like a point spread thing? I think you're probably right within a point of one or two, but let me offer this thought and see your response to it. Some would say, and I'm sure who would say, look, we got into this, we spent, last time I looked 95% of our budget on it, it was hundreds of millions, sorry, spent. We relied on the permit we had. Now you're effectively pulling the rug out from under us. We're gonna take a terrible loss on this. And anyone watching from the mainland, from the investment community, sees this kind of thing happening. It doesn't matter whether what the policy point is on energy, it's the policy point on investment, offshore investment coming to Hawaii. And if they see the experience we've had, they will never invest in Hawaii. We'll lose unnamed, unnameable investments going forward because of what happened here. Similar to so many other projects that think of the ferry, for example, that got caught up in something and ended with a dull side. What's your answer to that, Marco? I'm sympathetic to that line of reasoning, Jay. In fact, on the solar side, although this doesn't happen to me particular, or my company, is that there have been a number of solar companies, small, medium and large, who have pursued million, multimillion dollar projects on different islands and who have been stymied for a number of reasons along the way after having spent millions and essentially being forced to pull out. And I'm not gonna get into finger-pointing in terms of is this person's fault or that utility's fault. But I mean, the principle is the same where you have outside capital, outside developers who wanna do something, anywhere from Manini size to big and bold and dramatic, right? And hey, welcome to the real world. I mean, it's the cost to do in business. You pursue some projects, you get them, you pursue some projects, you don't get them. And I mean, who, Honua is trying their best, has been trying their best to try to move this, this investment forward so they'll get a payoff for their reported $500 million investment or something along those lines. But I mean, I go back to our fundamental question, Jay, which is quite simply, is a biomass burning power plant on the big island of Hawaii, part of the Hawaiian island chain in the best interests of the people of this island, in the best interests of the people of the state, in the best interests of the people of the planet, and the resounding answer to those three questions is no, no, no. Everything else falls along the wayside. I guess so at the end of the day, that policy, the policy of what we're doing here with renewables could prevail. It's just really regrettable that the course of action, steering through the channel on this, as it were, it's been so difficult for them and it's resulted or may well now in April 22nd and thereafter resulted in the loss of all those. Well, and here's another twist for you, Jay. I just learned it this last week or so. So the Huanua folks apparently are still working the Hawaii legislature. They haven't given up. And they were trying to, they're working on a bill, either past or present, okay? Working on a bill where the legislature would chime in on the notion of whether burning biomass, in this case, trees, right? Burning biomass, it contributes to greenhouse gases. In other words, don't put- Isn't that a scientific fact? Well, let me just finish the line of thinking here. So they're thinking, if we could get this bill passed, if we could get the governor to sign it, maybe this is gonna be the life ring for our power plant, Huanua, that if somehow we could get this legislature and this governor to recognize that carbon dioxide and other GHGs that come from burning biomass are not in the same categories, not in the same category as burning oil or burning coal. That is what they're arguing, okay? Now there is a line of argument out there that essentially you have trees that are captioning, capturing CO2, right? That's what trees do amongst other things, right? So by capturing CO2, they become CO2 sinks, right? So when you release that CO2, which has been captured over time by the trees as it goes into the atmosphere, it's essentially a net wash. That is my crude, maybe incorrect interpretation of the argument that maybe they can make that burning biomass is not in the same category as burning oil or burning net gas or coal, but I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I don't think it's gonna go anywhere in the ledge, but it's the power of commitment and money from in this case, this mainland group based in San Francisco who over the years have been the most tenacious, the most persistent of any developer that I've seen in my 21 years in being in the trenches out here. I've never seen any company that has just refused to say, we're done, we walk away. Look at what next year I did. Next year on July 15th, 2016, they got the answer from the PUC, two to nothing decision rejecting their desire, their plan to buy point like to get in the streets. Three days later, open a business on the East Coast on the 18th of July. Next year it says, we're done, we're out. So interesting contrast between one company that says, you said no, we're gone to Hohonoa, which is we don't take no for an answer. We're gonna continue to fight and to fight and to push. Interesting, huh? I'm not sympathetic to that approach. So Hohonoa approach, I rather like what next year I did. And it's really too bad because it leaves everything in the kind of suspended animation while they're playing their cards. This also demonstrates an incredible disparity between the ordinary developer and the guys with the really deep pockets that were determined to keep on pushing no matter what. Even though it seems clear to me that as a scientific fact, this is as much carbon as other carbon. Reminds me of all carbon is created equal. Some, but some carbon is more equal than other carbon. It's all carbon, man. Sorry. I liked that the fact that you're channeling the pigs in animal farm there with that line. Yeah, that's just, I recognize that. Thank you. Of course. Okay, let's move on. Oh, so exciting. PGV, Puna, the geothermal update. What's happening? They're not still stuck, right? Well, yes and no. Oh, man. So, PGV, Puna's Geothermal Adventure was offline for more than two years. More than two years, right? From May, 2018 to November, they started 2020, okay? And now they're about 20 megawatts according to our friend Mike Alakini who's the general manager. They're operating. They're operating. The power to the bigger island grid. Okay, good. They're operating. They're operating under a power purchase agreement which is now 35 years old by my account. 35 years old, okay? PPA that goes back to 1986 with some revisions back in, I think it was 2011, okay? So it is an old PPA. And they proposed to the commission December, they submitted this December, 2019. So it's a while. Well, a revised and modified PPA that they agreed to with Hawaii Electric Light Company, Helco. And that would have, it would, would, would have. It would have turned the entire output of PGV into a fixed contract at a knowable price from day one to the end of the contract. Now, for the first 25 megawatts, the Helco is required to pay PGV or mat at the so-called avoided cost rate, the avoided cost rate, which is variable depending on the price of oil that Hawaiian Electric is paying for oil, right? And FYI, we burn more oil for power here than we do in the rest of the United States combined, okay? So as the price of oil goes up and goes down, it affects the avoided cost. So as the price of oil goes up, which it is on an upward swing, Helco is paying more to PGV. Therefore, ratepayers are paying more to PGV. So this new PPA, which is submitted December, 2019, would have removed the avoided cost aspect. So by and large, it would be beneficial to more beneficial to ratepayers. So bringing the commission- There was a lot of pressure for this. This has been something in discussion since, since the eruption. And, you know, when they went down, everybody said, well, you know, they've been, they've been getting too much, the old PPA is paying them too much. We have to use this as a, what do you want to call it, a pivotal point to equalize, to reduce the amount that they're paid for their 21 hours. And I thought that was the right argument at the time. They were making too much as against costs for other renewables, other sources. And I guess they acceded to that pressure, the pressure of that argument and the political pressure that went along with it. And I guess the vinyl electric was happy enough to see that that happened because it reduces their cost and thus the cost to consumers. But, you know, what I'm getting here, though, is that because everybody wanted to do this and change the old rates to a new and more progressive rate to the benefit of the people, that triggered the EIS. Oh my God, that triggered the EIS. So, you know, I'm sure they, they regret it at some level. Well, Jay, there were a number of parties, including your former host, wonderful host, Senator Russell Ruderman, now former Senator Russell Ruderman. He's a very good friend of mine and business owner here who's been living in Puna for decades. Russell and a number of other parties in Puna essentially challenged, I've been challenging PGV in terms of safety and emissions and the possibility of a runaway leak, essentially a blowout for years and years, right? So they said, look, you know, the last EIR, Environmental Impact Report, is decades and decades old. There needs to be a new one. There needs to be a new one. And effectively the commission said, there needs to be a new one. There needs to be a new EIR. There needs to be an accepting agency who's going to perform the EIR, where there's DLNR, Department of Land and Natural Resources or some other agency. There needs to be a new EIR. And in the meantime, we are suspending the docket that would consider the new PPA. So the bottom line here is, Jay, that for the foreseeable future, the PGV will continue to operate and go up to as many as 38 megawatts. They're now about 20 megs. By the end of the year, Mike says they'll be up to full capacity that their power continues to be generated and sold to Helco. So it's business as usual under- That means the rates are established under the old existing PPA then. Correct. Correct. Then the consumers are not paying less. They're paying under that 35 year old PPA. Right. That's at least temporarily, that's not a good result. No, but it's telling to me, Jay, it's telling to me that, this commission in particular with our friends, Jay Griffin, Jenny Potter, Leo Estuncion. You know, from my perspective, this commission is more in viral, more green, sensitive and oriented than any other commission that I've been aware of in the years I've been in the field. Oh, I totally agree. That's clear. There's no question about it. Every move they make is in that direction and kudos to them for it. How long is it gonna take though to get this new environmental impact report together and get it straight away, straightened away so that the new PPA can be approved? Well, my impression is that you can't just Google, find me an EIR and find, you know, 10 candidates that you can call and say, would you please do one next week? I mean, this is an involved process. It's a long process. You can't find them off the internet and this is gonna push things out, not months, but a year or longer. I could be widely off base, but that is my impression. EARs don't happen in a quick, quick, wiki-wiki vacuum. No, they never have. And then there's people who are gonna jump on this as back in the 90s, right? And they're gonna repose geothermal in general. They're gonna say that the environmental implications of having PGV in that location, you know, and people have moved into Puna and they're closer now to PGV than they were before. Those people, now the neighbors, you know, weren't the neighbors before, now the neighbors are gonna be out there joining into the fray and before you know it, there'll be opposition in general, geothermal in Hawaii, don't you think? Isn't that ever any happening? Well, I mean, there was discussions about geothermal going back to the 1980s and they talked, they talked, they talked, they talked. And finally, there were protests, there were blocking of the roads, there was claims to desecration of Pele and the plan finally did go online in 1992, if I'm not mistaken, after years and years of talk, talk, years and years. There was a lawsuit there by the Sierra Club in the middle of the 90s that stopped them all together and they kind of gave it up until the ORMAC came around and bought the place and started it up again. But it was so controversial, gee whiz for a long time, still. I mean, there's no shortage, Jay, of people I like a lot, you know, dear friends, whether it's Richard Ha, Hank Rogers and others here and elsewhere who are big geothermal proponents, you know, and see the possibility. We can do so much geothermal on this island, we can supply the whole state with geothermal. Well, yeah, maybe in concept, but you know, the political headwinds, the environmental headwinds of drilling anywhere for test boards, essentially, or even passive sonar, whether it's Long Saddle Road, whether it's the slopes of Hula-Lie, whether it's Haleakala, I just see the correlation of forces in old Soviet Union term, the correlation of forces against new geothermal in the state on this island, I think, are so strong. I don't think any new geothermal is gonna happen in my lifetime on this island. I think there are easier, cheaper, less, more benign renewable energy sources, and I'm not poo-pooing baseload, providing baseload with what we have from PGV, but you know, as a political scientist, I just, I put my finger in the wind, I just don't see the adequate support on the pro-geothermal side to weather the firestorm of opposition. I don't see it. Some of the opposition back in the 90s was nothing short of sabotage, and there were death threats and the like, and a lot of people, and it was cultural, a lot of people didn't want that project to happen at all. Then it kind of died down, and they got up to 38 megawatts, although they could have gone much further than that. And still could. The question I put to you though is, but you know, what does this contention mean? Is it still alive? The contention is still alive just as it was in the 90s, and this is an opportunity for those who would oppose the project, who would oppose PGV in general. You know, thermal in general, you know, to take a whack at it in the context of this PUC proceeding. Query, and this is the question, is PGV here to stay, or is the end game on this the end of PGV? I like the way you phrased that. Is PGV here to stay? I don't think their operation has threatened imminently. You know, in terms of the fact that it's been operating now for several decades, has given it legitimacy, you know, that the sky hasn't fallen, there hasn't been toxic clouds across all of lower Puna. And I don't want to, you know, make light of the possibility of releases of sulfur dioxide or other nasty stuff. But I mean, we've had, you know, close to 30 years worth of geothermal, and by and large, by and large, I think it's been good. It's been an overall net positive, is my view. Now that said, if there were to be serious talk and efforts to have new geothermal, then I think that would probably elicit a ramped up opposition. And you look at, and here's an illustrative example, JC, whether you buy this or not, for decades we've had telescopes on Mauna Kea, right? Decades. And there's been, you know, some unhappiness amongst native Hawaiians and others about the telescopes being there. I respect that. But little did we know, or little did I know that it took TMT, the 30 meter telescope to start actually being possible in terms of construction to bring about a response, an opposition, a pushback, that surprised the heck out of a bunch of people, including me. So here you had all these telescopes there for decades and you had talked about building a new one, whoa. So here to go back to PGV, we've had PGV for decades, talk about building a new one on Saddle Road or Hula Lai, I think that would probably bring about a very powerful counter-response similar to what we saw with, or seeing, I've seen with TMT. On the other side of it, you know, there is an argument to be made for having a diversified portfolio and that seemed to be settled that geothermal was part of that portfolio. You never know what fragileness you can find, especially in the advent of unpredictable weather or predictably extreme weather on any of these renewable sources. And so you like to have more than one egg in your basket, that was, you know, I would still make that argument. I would still hold to the fact that we need to do diversified renewables. And this one is completely dispatchable. In other words, you don't really need batteries, it's 24 by seven, it's anytime you want it. This is, there's a great value in having it. I would not undermine it, I would let it go, but right now, I mean, let it operate, but right now, I guess if nothing happened, and if it takes a long time for the EIR, they'll be okay, they're covered. They'll continue to operate. Well, and I'll just cite this quick stat. I mean, it was Colton Ching, Senior VP at Hoan Electric, who noted in a public forum not too long ago that with the first full year of PGV at close to 50 megawatts, which is where they could go under a new PPA, okay? 48 megawatts, I think. First full year at a enlarged PGV, Hawaii Electric Light Company could be somewhere around, would be somewhere around 80% today, 80% renewable in its generation, 80% which would put us on par with Kauai, where Kauai and Dave Bislac, yeah, you see are gonna be within a short amount of time. So someone who's been living and breathing renewable energy for more than 40 years, I don't take that lightly. I think that's very impressive and that the higher percentages we hit sooner, the more better we're gonna be. So I'm of a mixed mind and mixed Marco mind on geothermal. Triple M, triple M. Let me add one other point is if they go down because of objections and protests, and which would be rooted largely as they have been all these years in social considerations, you have another superfairy kind of result where Wall Street says, we've let these guys hundreds of millions to beef it up and fix it up after the eruption. And now we've lost that. Hawaii is not the kind of place you wanna invest your money, even if it seems to be a worthy impact investment. Because it's so unpredictable in terms of the regulatory and community response kind of process. I mean, look at, we can talk about TMT some other time, but that's a good example there. Anyway, last item, but today anyway, the AES coal plant retirement supposed to be September 22nd and how tight the reserve march will be. This was a discussed at the PUC meeting in which Hawaiian Electric showed up. Bolton Ching was there and that was the subject of our last discussion with Jay Griffin. So what's the status of that? Well, as Scott Glenn head of the State Energy Office noted during our talk two weeks ago, I mean, lo and behold, the governor has established a task force to watch over such things, right? So not only do we have the Public Utilities Commission, now we have a task force appointed by the governor to watch over what's going on, which will be going on, especially on Oahu. So there are a lot of eyes on what's going on here and there's a lot of concern. And in Colton's own words, a tight margin, a tight reserve margin is anticipated when AES goes down. So it's kind of, you know, in naval terms and you're more familiar with the naval terms than I am and it is an all hands on deck, right? And it's gonna be, you know, work unfolding. Now there are a number of, I think it was two of the larger utility scale, stage one or phase one PV plus storage were both pressed by the commission, prepared by Helco or Wine Electric as well. Can you meet, can you speed up your schedule? Can you go online sooner than you originally told us? And I think two of them said yes, they could by a few months. So maybe it's a lot of, you know, handy penny the sky is gonna fall, you know, too much hand wringing right now, but at the same time, you know, the thought of, you know, to use Jay Griffin's language, the thought of kids having coal in their stockings and dark houses in Christmas time, 2022, you know, got his attention, right? Got his and Jay and Leo's attention and, you know, ringing the alarm bell. So, you know, it's nobody knows for sure, Jay. What we do know is that large power plant is gonna go offline sometime in September and, you know, there has to be something to back it up whether it's a battery, about an expensive battery that's gonna be charged by fossil fuels, which, you know, it's clear that Jay and Jenny and Leo do not like that idea whatsoever. So, you know, it's the grand experiment unfolding. And one of the things that you show the operators do not like is to have a type reserve margin. That's the less room for error, right? And, you know, the doomsday stuff for them is the grid goes down, rolling blackouts, system wide shut down. And, you know, we don't need to look any farther than Ircott and Texas, which was calamitous after the freeze that they had. And now there are lawsuits galore and, you know, these humongous utility bills that are gonna push people into insolvency and so forth. Yeah, there's real risk here. There's real risk. Yeah, yeah, there is. But you know, it's, I think the position taken by Jay and the PUC in general is right, it's correct because that plant will close. That's a statute. It's a statute requiring it to close. So, you really have to prepare for that. And there are demands that, you know, that there be robust preparations. That's a good thing. And their act in bringing Scott Glenn and the energy office in, that was a good thing. And for that matter, theoretically anyway, the task force, creation of the task force is a good thing. I just hope that it doesn't, you know, go the way so many task forces you and I have seen go, which is, you know, onto the dusty shelf somewhere. We should follow it, Marco. We should take a look at it and see that that is happening because otherwise it means too great a risk. If you have a high reserve margin, you have a much greater risk than, you know, one Texas. We do not want Texas. Am I right? Well, considering my beloved paternal grandmother was the Texas Bell from Amorella and Lubbock. I don't want to be too down, you know, on the Lone Star State because I got some Texas twang and some Texas blood in me, brother. But we do not want to be Texas in terms of what happened with their utility company or the company that oversaw the utilities within the geographical confines of the Great Lone Star State. No, we don't want to go in that direction. Okay, I think we're probably out of time here. We have to leave it. Thank you very much, Marco. You've been watching Energy 808, The Cutting Edge. I think tech Hawaii. We've been discussing the Aloha State Energy Roundup with Marco Mangostore. Thanks to our viewers for watching. I'm Jay Fidel. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Energy 808, The Cutting Edge. Aloha, and thanks. Round them up, little doggies. Thank you, Jay. Always a pleasure.