Hi, Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, here on the given Monday morning. I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, and a fellow on the other end of the phone is Marco Mangelstorff. Hi, Marco. Again, Jay, great to be back with you from the island. One of the principal restaurants in Molokai Close, how does that affect you? Which is one of the relatively few restos in Holden Island. Okay, all right, I'll expect you to. Let's talk about some energy things. What do you think? This is Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, and let's cut some edge. How about discussing first the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision on Hu Honua. This is a sort of groundbreaking decision, don't you think? It is of February, excuse me, 10th of May, a Supreme Court-ruled land in his law to approve a power purchase agreement between Hawaii Electric Light Company, Helco, and the Hu Honua power plant up in Pepticay, a little bit up along the Hamakua Coast from Hilo, or any type of state Supreme Court. State's goal of reducing greenhouse gases, which is required under state law. And you're working pretty much full-time for the past 20 years, and involved in Hawaii for over 40 Supreme Courts, effectively overturned the court would do, and that they probably be not until late this year, I'm going to guess, maybe early into next year, where what does it mean plant 20 plus megawatts worth is that, so I think, gone before. Well, some thoughts about that.  Don't you think they considered that? They're just as- I'd have to go back two years ago, and Randy, for Randy Wasser was the chair of the commission, from the part of commission two years ago, that it was insufficient, obviously insufficient as far as our court is concerned in terms of putting that in the mix, as far as- Well, now you said that the court remanded it to the commission, because it did not explicitly indicate the, you know, the effect, the environmental effect of this burning. But isn't it entirely possible that they had their reasons, and they just wrote a decision that didn't, for some reason, include a paragraph on that subject? I mean, was there anything in the Supreme Court opinion indicated that they wanted it remanded for further evidence, or could the commission, you know, simply say, yeah, we consider that. That is absolutely part of our reasoning, and here is our reasoning. They had a paragraph back in, end of story, problem solved. Isn't that a logical possibility? Theoretically, yes. Is it a logical possibility or a practical possibility? I don't- Do you think that this opinion by the Supreme Court requires them to take evidence? Yes, I do. I do. And you've got, of course, a new makeup on the court. I mean, Jay Griffin was just starting his term mid-2017 under Randy. Randy, of course, is a retired mission member, so I believe it's a new dynamic, and of course, bring different perspectives. So all that's said and done will be found to be not in the public interest, because my position when it comes to bringing new power generation online, not just in the state or on the big island, but in the world at large, we just have to do better. A different path, if we have the choice of burning something to produce power or not burning something to produce power, in virtually all cases, I would argue strongly that it has to be in the direction of not burning things to use to produce power. Well, let's assume they went out and looked for evidence that it wasn't a public interest on an environmental basis and that the burning was somehow consistent with the goal of achieving 100% renewables. Is there evidence they could find, or is that a dry hole anyway? I'm sorry, evidence to what effect, please? Evidence that it was consistent with the target of clean energy, 100% renewables, our state target, our state goal and mission. Is it possible that there is evidence out there? I mean, assuming for a moment that they need to go and look at that evidence, this is really an interesting position for new commissioners. Is it possible that there's evidence out there that would support that? We'll speak to that, but I think you're missing an important point here if I may be so bold, which is that the course decision makes explicit the value the court puts on environmental quality. And that, of course, goes beyond just meeting certain RPS or renewable portfolio standards or percentages, goals that are targets for 2030 or 2035, 2045 and so forth. So in my view, the courts is simply in terms of greenhouse gas and percentages of renewables by such and such a time, but looks at the broader environmental impact, which is Curtis and Life of the Land was arguing in terms of pursuing that case. Well, let me say that you can go out. I mean, there are different views on this, I think. You could go out and find somebody, maybe Hu Honua, to say that, no, no, we intended to put a cap on the smoke, that there's new technology out there that would seriously limit the smoke that would come out of this. So the burning is going to be condensed. I remember I visited a gas burning facility, which exists today in Kauai, and they have technology there that limits the amount of carbon that comes out of the burning. Well, they can do that kind of thing. Maybe it's even further advanced now in Hu Honua. You wouldn't even see the smoke. It would all be condensed into carbon blocks, which could be sold and used for other productive things. So it's not a fit to complete, is it? The project these guys have in mind is by necessity going to have carbon and smoke coming out into the atmosphere, and thus affecting our environment, right?  You can do carbon sequestration. You could put scrubbers on. You can scrub it to 90x percent in terms of stuff not going to the atmosphere. But as far as I know, there's no way to get to 100%. I mean, burning any type of organic material is going to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and there's no way of getting around that. So I just remain firmly committed that we must, and we can, we must do better than burning anything when it comes to producing new power generation. And let me also bring up another point, which I think is also very important. This PPA was going to be enforced for 30 years, 30 years, at a remuneration rate of somewhere over 20 cents a kilowatt hour for burning not just the results of specific provisions in that PPA, but only to bring trees or other organic from wherever they so chose in order to... 20 cents. 20 cents is too high. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it was an atrocious deal from the get-go, and the Hula Nule folks said, well, we're going to be planting saplings, and that's going to offset, or more than offset the trees we're cutting down.  And since we're a family-oriented show here, we won't get into profanity, but that's a bit hard to swallow, that the notion that saplings in the near term are going to take the place in terms of carbon consumption that we said are decades old. I mean, that just to me is absurd on its face. Well, let me give you another logical possibility. I'm loaded with logical possibilities. And that is the, you know, the PUC has newly constituted effectively since then. Reads this opinion, and they say, hmm, you know, this wasn't, this didn't work out. We're going to take a fresh look at this, you know, right on its face, and we're going to say, hey, times have changed. We are more concerned about the environment, perhaps than we were at the time the PUC wrote this, thanks to the Supreme Court for reminding us. And yes, that is the law, there's nothing in the record, and we're not going to waste any more time on this. And furthermore, you know, to us, this is too high a price. So we're going to, we're going to, you know, what, disapprove it right now. End of story. You know, one page per curium decision, end of case, no approval. Isn't that a logical possibility? I can't speak to that panel exactly what the commission is going to do in the months to come, Jay, but I would think that it's going to be more than just a one or two page quick and, you know, kind of down a dirty decision. I think it's going to be substantially more, more pros up with justification for, for whatever decision that they're going to make. Yeah, here we go. In the meantime, I take it that a whole new is not doing anything. No, I mean, they would be rather foolish to, I mean, they've been trying to convince Helco these past months to please let us start selling you power, to which Helco said, no, we're not going to do that. So, you know, by their own account, they've got somewhere around 200 million plus dollars sunk into that facility. Already.  So, you know, one, one other question just to clarify. So you have the PUC makes this ruling a couple of years ago.  Who brought it up to the Supreme Court? Who appealed the ruling? It wasn't who knew it. Was it Henry Curtis? I give full kudos and respect and great admiration to our friend Henry Curtis at Life's Bland for, for decades now being kind of a, I'm sure, you know, by Henry's admission, he's lost his fair share of battles as well. He prevailed spectacularly. Now a great amount of appreciation for Henry for doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. That's a clear win for him and for others who take similar positions going forward. We're going to take a short break, Marco. When we come back, I want to talk about PGV, Pune Geothermal Venture and see where that is, given, you know, the work that's being done to try to restore Pune. We'll be right back. Aloha. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Tim Appachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in, and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there, and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Energy 808. We're here. We're live with Marco Mangostoff. He joins us from Molokai. And now we're going to talk about PGV, another big issue on the Big Island, having to do a geothermal. So what's the status, Marco? Let me do a little kind of preamble to kind of set the stage. So a geothermal venture has been a power plant operating in the lower Puna, east Puna for going back to 1992-1990 through a successful run in terms of producing a substantial amount of renewable energy for a quarter of a century. If they were setting PGV down, I would have said no, no. That doesn't make sense. It's an operating power plant. I may have some issues with it on a number of levels in terms of pricing, some risks involved, but I was not one of these people who was anti-geothermal from the get-go. Then, of course, May typically comes after April and the calendar sequence and the beginning of May of last year. 24 fishers I think we ended up with, with the power plant back online. This is even after the plant was physically isolated from road access due to the lava flow. This is after a number of wells were overrun by lava. After several thousand gallons of eruption because there was a fear of the plant being completely inundated and that pentane going up in a fireball with people saying both yes it is, including our friend Mike Calachini, who's the general manager there, other people who approach geothermal, and then on the opposite side of the fence are people like Senator Russell Ruderman. They put a point on the line area in a geothermal plant, at least. So reconstructed power poles back in place, which are required to bring the power plant back online, including the Department of Health, including the Department of Land and Natural Resources, entities and more and more people in the public interest for it to come back online. Horses like this and just, I'll say one more thing before I stop talking for now. One of the more recent letters from there was a so-called emergency event that took place recently at the power plant. I believe it was four wooden power poles on PGV property become toasted because of so-called activity in that part of the island. I have three reactions to that. One is there's a purchase power agreement out there, and I guess that's really not standing in the way. PGV is entitled to resume under the purchase power agreement. Two is you said that they have successfully delivered power to the big island for 25 years, but there's always been resistance all the way through. And including now, and sometimes at some points in the 90s, that resistance was humongous.  So there's always been a fuming fight about this all the way through. And the third is, well, gee whiz. Yeah, there's still some volcanic action going on, but that doesn't mean that what happened a year ago is going to happen all the time. They managed to get through 25 years without a problem, I mean, volcanically. So I'm not sure that a couple of poles with residual heat are an indicator that this is an ongoing volcanic problem. The likelihood, the probability is it's going to be OK, at least for a long time. There are two questions that come out of that, though. One is, is the cultural fight over? No, it's not over. And maybe this all reflects, like with Senator Ruderman. Is he still the Senator? Russell Ruderman? Yes, he is. With Senator Ruderman, you know, he's reflecting community concerns and they are largely cultural, and that's a reality. That's not the law, simply not, but that's a reality. And the other reality is that the cost of delivering electrical power from PGV is also probably too high, like who, who know? You know, you've got to get back to a more current marketplace type value, and we don't have that under the, you know, under the reality of the purchase power agreement. And these are practical points, not necessarily legally one, legal ones, or scientific ones. And that's what's standing in the way of this. I mean, I think you had the cultural thing standing away, and although it's unspoken, you have the high price standing in the way. And that's what we're really dealing with. So, yeah, there's so much resistance. You know, I'm afraid to say that PGV may be history, but not for the reasons that are specifically, you know, legally indicated. What do you think? Well, let me respond a couple of ways. One is, if you had asked all the bright minds at the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S.GS, and I don't mean to disparage them in any way you should perform, if you'd asked those people April 1st of last year, okay, April Fool's Day, tell us what the likelihood is within 30 or so days' time. There's going to be the largest eruption in the Lower East Rift Zone that we've seen for more than a hundred years. How do you think they would have responded? I don't think you would have found one of them that would have said, yes, I think that probability is extremely high. My point being is that mother nature, Madam Pele, is by their very nature, or her very nature, destined to be surprising and to be unpredictable. Oh, absolutely, Marco, but let me add that we are in a time of climate change, the kind of climate change that could bite us all in no time, any time. In fact, it is predictable. This is an El Nino year. These islands have managed to escape severe weather, I mean really severe weather for a long time, but it's on the way, it's coming. And we could, you know, and that's different, of course, because of volcanic action. That's the kind of weather that would tear apart any solar structure and who knows what else in the grid. So, you know, I'm harkening back to the thought about diversity and having a portfolio that includes many diverse sources. So wouldn't diversity be good? Because we have unpredictable things happening as a result of climate change that we can't, we can predict them actually. We know they're going to happen. We just don't know exactly when. I'm certainly not arguing, and I wouldn't argue against diversity per se. What I'm arguing for is that there are better alternatives, cheaper alternatives, safer alternatives than bringing that plant back online. And you mentioned costs, that's an important factor. So let me address that for a moment. We have heard for months that Helco and PGV have been negotiating the possibility of a lower price for the first 25 megawatts from that power plant, which since 1992-93 when that power plant first came online, the first 25 megawatts have been compensated at the so-called avoided cost rate, which tracks the price of petroleum. Okay, so as oil goes up, and it's been around 60 bucks a barrel for a number of months, as oil goes up more likely than going down over time, essentially you've got power plant operators like PGV and ORMAT, which are making windfall profits because their expenses don't go up commensurably as they get rewarded more handsomely. Back in 2010 and 2011, as Helco and PGV were negotiating for an additional 13-14 megawatts on top of the 25 megawatts, the 13 or so megawatts, the new megawatts we'll call them, were at a fixed price, seemed more advantageous and also mandated by law by a legislative act signed by the governor or Lingle back in 2006 that banned avoided cost contracts all together across the state. Back in 2010 and 2011, ORMAT could have agreed to have the entire output of that power plant at a fixed to lower cost. They chose not to. They chose to keep the first 25 megawatts at avoided cost. Because it was more profitable for them to do so. Would you change your mind on this? Would it soften your position if they came forward and said that they would change it now? They would reduce the price now? That's a great question. My answer is not to the point of me saying, well, I guess it's okay because they're willing to sell it cheaper. I'd still fall back on we can do better. We must do better. This is inherently not a safe bet when there are better alternatives in that solar and storage is coming down. House come down significantly in the past several years alone. And yet, even though it is not considered 100% base load for power, we are getting there. We are getting there. And renewables that don't drill into the earth in a highly hot active seismic lava zone, we can do better than we're doing those. Everybody was so hot about geothermal now. It's not really happening. So what I get out of this is that ORMAT has spent a lot of money trying to rebuild its system, trying to get back online. I think they actually put in money for a roadway. They've been as ardent as they could be, I think, aside from changing the price to get back online. But they're not back online. And now the government is going to be looking at some multiple points of view and delaying, again, delaying the possibility of them getting back online. So it could be just by, you know, the facto delay, it could be the end for ORMAT. If I were in New York Bank, I'm not so sure I'd invest a lot of money right now. They've already spent a lot of money getting to where they are. But they're going to have to spend a lot more money after that to get back online. When you say they, I'm not privy to this confidential information, but there's no doubt in my mind that their insurance company or companies have ponied up substantial amounts of money in the millions and millions range most likely for business interruption, which obviously for the past year they haven't been able to sell any power, which my rough calculation is somewhere in the two to three million dollars a month in terms of what they sell to Helco. How much of it is coming out of ORMAT's pocket versus the insurance pocket? We don't know. That's, you know, private information. But, you know, insurance companies typically don't like to keep on paying and paying and paying with no one in sight. So, you know, the juicy question for me is how long instead of insurance companies going to continue to pay these millions of dollars for trying to bring the plant back online? I'm sure that's a matter of contract. Yeah, whatever it is, that's going to be what's in the insurance policy, which as you said, we don't know. Marco, it's time to say goodbye. I'd like to hand the honors to you. Could you say goodbye to our viewers and listeners? Well, I don't want to say goodbye, Jay. We didn't get to public benefits regulation, which is so hot and juicy, but hopefully we'll be able to get one of our PUC friends on next time or the time after that or we can take a dive into PBR, which is lots of good stuff. So, thanks so much for having me on. It's been great to be back with you. Yeah, next time, Performance Space Regulation. We'll go into that in detail. Marco Manglestorf, Energy 808, The Cutting Edge. Thank you so much, Marco. Talk soon. You rock, my friend. Thank you. Aloha.


Yeah, we're back. We're live for The Noon Show. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is ThinkTech. More specifically, this is Community Matters because community does matter. We're talking to Pro Service, Janina Abiles. Again, we talked to her in April. We want to update what Pro Service is finding and doing and recommending. They're an important service organization, and we are looking at how the workplace has changed. And Janina told us about how it had changed up to April 24th. We want to find out how it has changed after April 24th and what's happened with them and the workplace and see where we're going. So important when you're trying so hard to reopen. Hi, Janina. Hi, Jay. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, great to see you again. So very important that we have a window. I really appreciate that. Into the workplace, into the reopening, because as we discussed last time, it's not easy. It's like which end do you tack down first? Where do you start rebuilding an economy? You know, it took hundreds of years to build the economy such as it was. You can't just snap your fingers and make a comeback together so you have to be as smart as you possibly can be. So since April 24th, what have you noticed in the workplace? Well, it's definitely complex. So, you know, it's hard to believe that we spoke last time April 24th because it certainly seems longer than that. What's I think been happening from our perspective and with our clients is the first thing that happened is many of our clients took out and applied for and received the PPP funds, which you're probably familiar with, so the paycheck protection program that was funded through the SBA and through many of the local banks. That gave many of our clients the cash to stay afloat for several more weeks, even though essentially their doors were shuttered. So we have many clients whose businesses I think honestly probably survived on the back of those loans and are now with, you know, I think end of May was when some of the retailers were able to start opening. Forget what the date was, but somewhere around May 14th or so, May 20th. So retailers started opening, then I think it was June 3rd was sort of that next phase of restaurants and other businesses with limited capacity. So we started to see that reopening process slowly happening and it still continues.  Well, I think at the end of the day, an economy and for that matter, a marketplace is only dependent on public confidence. And people have to be confident that when they go to a particular business, especially one that involves proximity and, you know, close distancing, they got to be confident that place isn't going to infect them. And they got to be confident that that organization is paying appropriate attention to protecting them. And if they're not completely convinced, they're just not going to go back. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, one of the things, and that's a really great point, one of the things we've been trying to do as we've been helping in trying to guide our clients through this reopening process is giving them, you know, appropriate guidance based on their industry for that, I guess, disinfection and patient and hygiene type of process, everything from how you're assuring that your employees are healthy to come to work and that they haven't been exposed, self certification type of process to having the appropriate signage to follow. Of course, the government mandates on the six foot rules and the limited group gatherings. But also to your point, that confidence level, I think in many cases comes from just visibly people cleaning. So, you know, when I think about the pre COVID world, you oftentimes had cleaning crews coming in during the nighttime in many businesses, grocery stores, restaurants, etc. And nobody saw them. It just happened. And now people want to see a person with a cleaning badge or a vest. True. Yeah. They want to physically see things being disinfected. That's a really good point. Yeah.  Well, you know, it strikes me that you talk about certification. You know, a couple of three years ago, maybe it was four or five, the Department of Health initiated a restaurant certification program. You know, this is this one is passed and this one is not passed. I actually think I actually think that's a clumsy program. They want to revise the whole program. It doesn't tell you enough, you know, to know where the Department of Health really stands on this. And whether a given restaurant is really all that clean or good or healthy. But seems to me that the notion of a third party coming in, we've talked about this with other people on the show. And I know that it doesn't exist right now.  And having having the various businesses try to get a better rating and then publicizing that, what do you think? Yeah, yeah. And you know, there are even, and this isn't so much about certification, but just in terms of services available, there are third party companies that are now providing things like onsite rapid testing or even just doing the certification process of temperature taking and having people sign waivers. There are parties that are now offering that almost as you would have like a security guard at your door, but in a health security type of setting and not just for healthcare companies. I've heard of organizations that are doing it if you want it for your restaurant or your hotel or your office building. Yeah, what about waivers now? What is that? So I guess maybe waiver isn't the right term, but we are, you know, advising our clients that having their employees, and it doesn't have to necessarily be in writing, but it certainly could be if they want it to be self certified, basically following a checklist to say, hey, before I'm walking in the door at this office, this, you know, dental office, this healthcare facility, this restaurant to work, I am sort of self certifying, if you will, that I don't have any of the following symptoms. I haven't had temperature. I don't believe I've been exposed. I haven't left the state in the last 14 days, like that type of almost, you know, just your your commitment to showing up healthy and staying home if you're not healthy or if there's any risk. Yeah, well, you know, this funny thing is that this is the kind of thing I think should be done, not by government, but by business, this certification idea. And you know what just occurs to me, we haven't discussed this before, but pro service is a perfect organization to do that, because you're going to show them, you're going to study it. You're going to work with them. At the same time, you could probably give them a grade.  We do no shopping. We only go for medical appointments when we need to. That's it. And somebody is going to have to convince us. Well, I tell you the truth. If if you said that restaurant A had had met your requirements, you know, you can't promise, but at least they've checked off all the boxes and you're satisfied. That would that would push me a long way to going to that place. Now I know it may not work. It could be you have certified restaurants that actually made people sick, in which case all this has to be re re re re imagined. But it probably would boost public confidence for a while. I'm just throwing this at you in the middle of our show. Just make a note. Make a note. I think pro service would be a great organization. But let's let's talk about, let's talk about what you are doing, you know, to educate yourself and to educate others about what's in the kit bag. What a given business has available to it to make things safer than, you know, a free market. Yeah, you know, reimagining is exactly a great word for it. You do have to sort of reimagine the workplace. I mean, it's it's changing. And I think from from the beginning, we were looking at things like, you know, remote working, right? So how do you create a remote work plan? We are still guiding clients as they look to reopening. Do you have to bring everybody physically back into your workspace? If you have somebody, you know, let's say, for example, that works in a dental office that just does billing and they don't normally interact with clients, do they have to come physically to the workplace? Or can they do that from home?  But it's different for every single business and every single industry. So in addition to, you know, we've created certainly some guidance that's generally guidance on how do you we're calling it, how do you make a comeback, right? Like how do you you don't just reopen your doors and everything works the same. You have to give people confidence, you have to entice them to come back in some cases, especially if your service isn't a necessity, like you've got to go to the dentist at some point, but you don't have to go buy those new shoes, right? So in addition to that sort of reopening guidance for general businesses, we're also providing it to clients into the general public by industry. So if you're in healthcare, if you're in education, if you're in retail, if you're in restaurant, if you're in construction, what does it look like? I mean, you work in, for example, a construction site, maybe you didn't think before about sharing tools or wiping down your tools, because you're already in maybe a kind of a dirty dusty outdoor environment, you might not have thought about those things before, where folks that work in healthcare are used to taking extraordinary precaution, because they're used to managing around viruses and bloodborne illnesses and all those kinds of things. But every industry has to make adaptations and adjustments. And the term new normal has come up many times and I roll my eyes when I hear it now because it's this phrase that everybody's using, but the world is a different place now. So we do have to take all those precautions as individuals in the community and also as business owners. Yeah, and I would add to that that we don't know when, if at all, we're going to be able to beat this per se. We don't know if we'll have therapeutics. We don't know if we'll have vaccines. We don't know when or whether. And this may be the new condition, get used to it, or a horrible thought, but we have to adapt because we're survival means being adaptable and recognizing the change. And you guys are at the forefront of that. So, you know, the thing about it is that we have to go back. But it has to be measured going back because the more you go back, the quicker you go back, the riskier it is on the disease side. So there's an equilibrium, a balance there somewhere. Who knows where it is? We'll find out. But what are your thoughts about that? And you know, another thing that to your point, we don't know if the virus will ever really go away.  We have new strands every year, right? And I get that this is a different beast. But one of the things that we've also been trying to provide to folks is just making sure that you do have a plan in place because what happens if you reopen, and then you find out that one of your employees is infected, you've got to have a plan to respond and react to that. And what are the steps you have to take? So in addition to the reopening guidance around how to try to prevent the spread in your workplace, you've got to have a plan for what happens if there is somebody that tests positive, or maybe someone in their household tests positive. So we also have provided, and again, available to the public, we of course create it for clients and then we're sharing it out to everybody because it's important to the community, is just the positive response plan. And what are the steps you need to take? Yeah, and then is the degrade factor, the complacency factor. You know, the more we hear from Donald Trump where he says, oh no, this is all resolved. No problem. We don't even need testing anymore. The more we hear from that, and the more we hear from public officials in general, that it's under control, the more complacent we feel. And so I might have worn a mask a couple of weeks ago. Maybe now it's not so important. We seem to have put this behind us. I may have respected social distancing a few weeks ago, but now it seems to be under control. So I'm not going to do that. And I think you get this backsliding thing where people don't realize that it's just as much a threat, if not more of a threat, because there's more of it in the community. It's still that a spike is going up, not only in Hawaii, but in several states on the mainland, they're hitting record sales on the coronavirus. So that's got to be part of the program to instill a sense of discipline, to instill the sense of let's avoid backsliding because backsliding is really dangerous. If we gave you some rules to follow, you better follow them. Yeah, and we are still in all of our reopening guidance that we've been providing, regardless of industry, we're still recommending that folks who have contact with the general public, front of the house restaurant, retailers, the front desk at an office setting, that those books are all still following the Hawaii mandate for wearing, even if it's just a cloth mask. Obviously, if you work in certain industries, certain high risk settings, maybe you're working with the elderly or vulnerable populations, then you might need a higher grade, the N95 mask. But we are recommending at minimum that people are still following the cloth mask guidance for public settings and having the signage to let your visitor, customers, clients, if you're in a setting where you're going to have people coming in and out, so that they understand that that's your expectation for your workplace too. And quite frankly, it is also about protecting your own employees, and that is your responsibility as an employer. So we're trying to get our clients and anybody who's using our materials to see it as your expectation or your responsibility, your Kuliana as an employer. I totally agree. Your employers are the most employees are the most important asset you have really, and you can't lose them because you didn't protect them. So you have to take steps, always have to keep them in mind. The other thing I want to mention, just a free association, while you were talking, is that a lot of people wear masks on their throats. I find that, you know, I'm talking about complacency. I find that more and more to be the case. It's lip service, except it's not over your lips. It's not over your nose.   He's kidding himself and he's kidding us. That's why the certification thing would be so interesting. In other words, I walk in there, I'm a shopper, I'm not disclosed, I'm not identified, and I go to this restaurant and I see people wearing masks on their throats. I say, ah, you're not going to get an A from me. You're going to get a C from me in a letter. So it's all a matter of maintaining the discipline. Okay, so you study these things, and it's really good that you're doing that, very important. And then you take these things back to your clientele and I gather from what you say, take them to the public. How do you deliver them to your clientele and the public? Yeah, so we essentially what we do is we have a team of experts.  We have folks who have many years experience in safety. So with OSHA and high ash regulations, we have folks with healthcare experience. We're talking to our clients that work in those, you know, all across different industries as well. And then we're packaging those things into guides that are essentially PDFs that you can download from our website and, you know, print them off if you like the hard copy in your paper person or just flip through them on your laptop or your phone even. Again, we have the general guide that's kind of for everybody, but then we have the industry specifics. We've also provided just some checklists. You know, we know not everybody wants to read the five page guide. So if all you want is the one page checklist of here's the key things I need to do. It's making sure that my employees have masks. It's making sure that we have signage. It's making sure we have X marks the spots where we want people to be standing indoors. We've removed the extra tables and chairs, you know, those kinds of things. So we've also just got the sort of shortened checklist version, if that's helpful for folks.  And we've continued to bring those in different formats, different topics, whether it's a variety of different leaders, whether it's expertise, we've done a couple of our own one-on-one interviews with folks to get their feedback and share those with, again, clients and general public. Everything's on our website, basically. So it's proservice.com slash coronavirus. Everything is there.  If you just want a quick checklist to download, those things are available to do. So it's available in a variety of different formats. That's great. That's good of you. It's a public service. It's a community service, for sure. I wanted to ask you also, are you covering these ancillary issues, issues that go beyond how you run your business?  This is very important advice because people do panic about this, and they think the worst. And if you do that, then the worst could happen. But are you covering other issues that might affect your people? For example, do you cover whether you should have a thermometer when they enter the room? Because that could be very discouraging for some. If I go to a restaurant, somebody takes my temperature, I'm saying, wow, this is a special environment. I'm not sure I like this. They think it's dangerous. It must be dangerous. Cover that. We have addressed those in our how to make a comeback plan guide. I think it's in there. I don't know if it's not one or maybe one of the reopening guides, but we do talk about and address things like, should you be taking temperatures? And just to give you an example, I have been to, I think, two places now, kind of out in public. So one of them was I went for a massage, and they did take my temperature at that particular location. And I think that is one of the businesses that's, it's a little iffy because it's not a healthcare business, but it's obviously a business with physical personal touch involved. So I think it could arguably be considered a higher risk business.  And that's not necessarily a high risk business. But certainly if you work with vulnerable populations, if you work in a senior living, being that those are the types of businesses where we would definitely recommend that people are, you know, doing something like taking a temperature. Nobody's taking my temperature at the grocery store. And I don't anticipate that they would. Yeah. But I, you know, you touch on a very important point. Every business is different. And for the, for the thoughtful analysts, you have to look at how that business operates, who the staff is, what the flow of traffic is, who's coming in, are they exposed or not, and then calculate your, your suggestions based on that. I think that's really avant garde. I mean, that is where we have to go on this, assuming it takes a long time to solve it, or we can't solve the disease in general, we have to learn to moderate and diversify our, our strategic strategies from business to business. Yeah. And you know, Jay, you were asking, are we addressing other ancillary issues? And I think there are so many of them. It's so complex. I mean, we have clients who have had trouble bringing people back to work because unemployment is really lucrative right now. We have clients who, you know, laid off people and they want to rehire better people because they're going, oh, all of a sudden there's all this really great talent on the market. So we're providing them with guidance on, you know, behavioral interviewing, for example. We have clients who are dealing with the whole, you know, testing, should I be putting up plastic barriers in my office? Should I not? We don't really deal with the public. So there's so many different scenarios. A lot of our clients, I will say, that are operating and reopening aren't necessarily on full capacity or full hours yet. So many of them are still affected by, you know, lack of tourism. We're just wanting to manage their own costs and staffing and things like that. So I don't think every business is fully 100% back to where it was. And I think it's going to be a really long time. Yeah. One of the things that I think has to be done, and I imagine you're at least touching on this, is reimagining the financial statements for the business. In other words, how much traffic do I need to be sustainable? If I was a restaurant operating and the average of say 90%, I'm making that up, you know, last year. Now I'm only getting 10 or 15%, is that sustainable or should I consider closing my doors or chapter 11 or bankruptcy or whatever? And where is the sweet spot on that? How do I make that analysis? And I think that's really important because sometimes as a practical matter, you find you can't do it or you have to work harder to get to a level where you can do it. Have you covered that? Yeah.  But in webinars that we've done, that's a question that we asked many of the business owners themselves and said, how are you planning for this? And the answer that I got time and time again when I was talking to folks is the best practice would be to model multiple scenarios. So model what it would be like to operate at 25%, 50%, 75%, because you don't know if you're going to have 25% revenue or maybe only 10% revenue or maybe you're going to open your doors and there's going to be a high pent up demand for whatever your service is. People are desperate to get out of their houses. And maybe you're going to operate at 80% the first week and then it's going to dip back down. So the guidance that I'm hearing and that I think would be a good recommendation is to have multiple scenarios modeled and then to, you know, flex your staffing and your supply orders and all those things based on what the actual data tells you. And I think you have to re-look at it. The plan you put in place on, you know, June 3rd could be very different from today 21 days later because in three weeks a lot has changed. Well, we talk about reimagining. We talk about, you know, what do you do when you like to reimagine the quality of your staff? What do you do when you find your people staying home for the unemployment compensation, which is going to end soon enough? Aren't they going to have a surprise? And then, you know, it makes me think of the government because the government doesn't have this kind of analysis of this kind of advice. And I wonder if you, you know, deal at all with government offices because they really need to have this advice. They really need to have this thought process. And there have been things that happen to the government that are really totally inefficient and wasteful in the time of COVID. Do you know about this? Have you had any contact with the government? I myself have not. I do know that some of our executive team has been in contact with various departments within, you know, the state and local government. Certainly on the unemployment front, our team that handles unemployment claims because we're helping so many clients through that process has been in contact, has been in conversations related to everything from the processing to the fraud that you're seeing in the media and all of that. I personally have not. But there's, again, it's really complex because there's so much at stake with the economy, with the public health system and, you know, the mandates around wearing masks and, you know, people feeling like their civil liberties are at, you know, play. I mean, there's just, there's so much complexity. There isn't any one simple solution to any of these problems. Yeah. Our whole society has to be reimagined, actually. And little by little, we're going to find that out. And I compliment you. I compliment pro-service and the fact that you figured that out pretty early. Thank you. And that you know that it's going to have to be evaluated and suggestions are going to have to be made. So where do you think it goes?  What you're doing is leadership stuff for the business community, because a lot of small firms, they have no clue. They need advice. They need leadership. Where is it going to go? Can you give me a look into the future, Janina?  It's not going to change overnight dramatically. I think there's still a lot to be figured out. I know everybody's waiting on regulations from Department of Education and what that's going to look like and whether or not children are in school full-time hours is going to affect everybody because all of your employees have children and then it's going to impact their need to work from home or to have more flexible hours. And then I think, you know, the regulation around the tourism industry, I think everybody's waiting to see what happens there and whether or not we can find ways to safely bring tourists back into Hawaii because we have so many businesses that are heavily reliant on that. So it's a lot of wait and see and then adapt to what reality we're given. A lot of businesses are going to be, you know, under pressure to change. Some of the changes they will have made, perhaps, at your advice, will be permanent changes. I mean, temporary things turn permanent if they work well. For example, we're working at home and a lot of people are going to stay working at home and we have to perfect that model so, you know, they actually work at home.  Another possibility is that restaurants are going to, you know, close up their big spaces and let you pick up your food or deliver. And that'll be the model for that restaurant in the future and it'll be very good and you'll pay prices for it and you'll love it and you go pick it up. You know, I think some of that would become permanent. Maybe it already is. But one thing that interests me is a lot of retail, including retail that spend thousands of dollars, you know, for their space and even places like Alamoana and what have you, that retail could emulate Amazon. That retail could go online and improve their back office technique, improve their ability to, you know, to provide the delivery and so forth. And I think the probably local businesses ought to consider that if they're in a business where they could do that. Are you seeing that? Are you recommending that? Where do you feel that fits in the future? Yeah, you know, we are definitely encouraging clients to what we're calling act like a startup, right? Have that entrepreneurial spirit. Think if you were starting a business today from scratch, what would you do to be successful? And digitization, it is certainly one of those things, whether it is online ordering, whether it's online ordering with curbside pickup, whether it is, you know, being able to order and have, you know, retail products even delivered or picked up without having to have the in-store shopping experience. And to your point, I mean, I think, you know, many of us would certainly be happy if we could get the delivery faster than even because Amazon doesn't just take a day or two to get to Hawaii. I think many of us would be really happy if these things came a little faster. So we are definitely encouraging clients to be innovative. And quite frankly, we have already seen clients and just folks in the community that have done some innovative things from, you know, things like selling masks or producing hand sanitizer or rebranding themselves to your point to do more delivery or pickup or just to have a completely different service. We have a client that, as an example, does kind of, let me call it kind of construction and maintenance. And during this time period, they decided to start launching a disinfecting service. You know, that's something that everybody's going to want. So it seems like a really obvious place to find innovation.  So hopefully we'll see more innovative things coming from our local community. Yeah. And sometimes you think the innovation is temporary, but think again, it could be, it could be your future completely. Thank you, Janina. Janina Abiles from Pro Service. We greatly appreciate you coming around. Greatly appreciate what you're doing for the community. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jay.