Good afternoon and welcome to today's energy seminar. Our speaker today is Anthony Kinslow, who just happened to be in town from the East Coast today. And our friend, Holmes Hummel, alluded us to the fact that Anthony and Holmes actually have, over the last three years, developed the set of courses here at Stanford on energy equity. But that's not what he's going to talk. They're going to come back next quarter or maybe on the fall and talk about that. What he's going to talk about today is his own personal adventure, if I could call it that. Anthony was a PhD in the Sustainable Design and Construction Program here at Stanford in Civil and Environmental Engineering about four or five years ago. And I think at that point, he's the kind of guy that saw there was a big problem and was frustrated because there didn't seem to be easy way to do it. And probably then concluded it was because it was nobody's job to solve it. And then he went out and did a startup called Gemini Energy Solutions to try to solve the problem. So he solved the problem of it being no one's problem by making it his personal problem. So Anthony, tell us about how that went. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you to the whole energy seminar team for having me. Before I jump into it, I want to thank Jane Woodward and Holmes Hummel, who are probably the two individuals most responsible for me teaching at Stanford University. And as a result, being able to be here today and be here and talk to you about our work with community anchors, our work in trying to accelerate the building decarbonization efforts, transportation efforts. And really, I want to also give a shout out to my partners in these endeavors, our community anchor partner Green the Church, who, as you'll see, is revolutionizing what is most people consider the biggest issue, which is finding demand within these communities. OpConnect and Dexter Turner, CEO of OpConnect. And lastly, Dr. Reginald Parker from Optimal Tech, all who conversations with have sparked what I'm about to discuss today. So in this energy seminar, I'm going to be talking a lot about the realities of different folks in this country and how our limitation of not fully recognizing those realities have led to us really creating exacerbating effects in our attempt to decarbonize. It is creating a slowdown aspect in our attempts to accelerate our decarbonization. And I want to bring in those different realities and how focusing on them, recognizing them, and embracing them will allow us to accelerate using, in particular, community anchors, cultural competency, and microgrids for both revenue and resilience. Now, I want to key in on both revenue and resilience. And you'll see why later on in this talk. But I would like to last say that I am a black man. And so most of my stories of the literature that I'll be speaking to is going to be from that context because that is what I'm most comfortable with. But to make no mistake, that this will be relevant cross-culturally. So everyone here should be able to take what I'm saying and connect it to themselves personally, to their communities, and see how this could be applied there. So first, I should probably start with my journey and how I got here. I am a proud graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. I keep crying. It's mandatory that we do that after saying the name, by the way. And it actually graduates the most black engineers in the country with Georgia Tech being second, I believe. And during that time, I was surrounded by the black diaspora, folks from all over the world coming here to learn about engineering, and also folks who cared about energy and the environment. So I very early on realized that, wow, there's a lot of folks that look like me who also care about the energy, who also care about the environment, and are actively trying to do something about it. And so I was able to hold on to that when I came to Stanford in 2013, where I started in the Sustainable Design and Construction Program, focused on sustainable buildings, the design and operation of those buildings, and continued on to do my PhD in energy efficiency analytics. And my PhD focused on taking statistics that is typically used in psychology, so Bayesian statistics typically used in psychology or epidemiology and applying that to our energy consumption, understanding that behavior and how we identify and how we operate in a building drives the energy consumption. And then I started to hear more about things such as identity-based motivation, this concept that if a task or activity does not resonate with your identity, then you're less likely to actually follow through on that task or do that activity. So I see this a lot in my space where you talk about going hiking, and they're like, it's kind of a white thing to do. And so that kind of comments, right, used here. And I encourage you to think through your stuff and say, oh, that's something else. That's what some other group does, right? That kind of commentary goes into and floods into and leaks into clean energy, right? Into energy efficiency. So it's funny when we talk about hiking, but it's not funny when we talk about adoption of energy efficiency technology, of getting solar panels or buying an EV car, where there's a feeling that that isn't for me. And we'll get into that too. I got into my company after doing multiple years of consulting from the Allen Group, a black woman-owned construction management firm here in San Francisco. At that time, I was going to conferences. I was being really deep into the energy efficiency space and the decarbonization space. And it was there when I started to really, I thought Stanford was a bubble. That was why I was the only black person there, right? That couldn't be the industry as a whole. Coming from historically black university, I knew there was folks out there, different backgrounds that cared about energy environment. But then I'd go to conferences and be one of two out of hundreds, right? I go to seminars and professional energy audit trainings and be one of 50, right? And I started to recognize that there was a fundamental problem here, that the energy efficiency space, the clean it. And then what I found later, the renewable energy space as a whole, clean energy, clean technology, had a real diversity problem, right? We weren't there. And I say the world we of anybody with a little bit more melanin in their skin, right? And then I started talking to my contemporaries, folks who were starting companies, folks who had started companies, being at Stanford, we had this great opportunity to be involved and connected with individuals who are CEOs, who are startup founders, right? Multiple time founders. And you started having these conversations with them and I realized all of them agreed that, oh man, you're right, diversity is a problem. All of them agreed that it was important to have diversity. None of them connected that with the success of their business. None of them, in my view, saw that prioritizing communities of color was how we were going to accelerate our decarbonization, was how we were going to be successful in addressing climate change. You would hear things like they're not ready for it. They're not interested in it, right? They have so much other things going on. We don't want to, you know, we'll get them next, right? Or my favorite was, you know, we don't want to test this out on them first, right? This idea that these communities needed to be, you know, cared for, right? Because they didn't have the aptitude, the thought, the desire to be involved in this. Created this system where we look at the solar panels today and where they are located, right? Just as an example, and you see that independent of income, there's a huge disparity of solar panels in black and majority black communities versus majority white communities, right? Independent of income. And so what I wanted to do was create a company that addressed that, right? That addressed this aspect of not only the lack of diversity but the lack of thoughtfulness to why we should be prioritizing these communities first. And so I founded Gemini Energy Solutions in order to solve that. And I'll just quick aside. I consult for clean energy works and racial equity. I teach two classes here at Stanford, as John mentioned. And I am co-founder of Clear Decarbonization, which is a sustainability accelerator here at Stanford that focuses on bringing decarbonization curriculum in partnership with historically black universities across the country. So all these efforts are driving my core purpose and core path was how do we bring more diversity into this space because without that, we can't reach our goals. So the other thing I should add is that when I started Gemini Energy Solutions, we got our first tranche of money from the Tomcat Center. So thank you for all those involved at Tomcat Center. And from there, we were able to really start developing the platform that led to kind of this automation of analysis and report writing, which we call Conserve, which allows us to train anybody anywhere on to pride energy audits for community managers, community building owners, et cetera. So now we opened that up. And so now to the realities, right? I've mentioned in beginning this, I'm gonna talk to you about different realities. This is one example of the impact of one segment of the US population, right? If you look at that, that is the number of asthma attacks and you look at where those are on a map, that's gonna be relevant, right? Now this is a map of the black or African-American population, the darker the blue, the denser the population, right? The higher majority there is. Now look at air pollution. The red is worse, starting to see a trend here. Different realities, different levels of concern about some of the same problems, right? One thing that we don't remember often is that our highway system was built predominantly through existing black neighborhoods. We all know what pollution is, the cars pollution levels, buses, trucks, where they go and where they travel, it starts to become very clear why this is happening. Now intergenerational upward mobility, to darken the red, the worse it is. A union of concerned scientists, they put out an energy burden map by county. And once again, you can start to see a trend here. The Northeast is very interesting because of the fundamental cost of energy up there. And it also pull out indigenous lands that are highlighted here, right? Right along the border of Mexico, deep reds there. And what I want to make sure that you understand that energy burden is actually just one side of the coin. A colleague, a former classmate of mine also from Nerca Line A&T, who is now a professor at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Destiny Nock, is working on this concept that energy deprives. And what you're looking at right now is an energy equity gap by ethnicity within a group. So that black line at the top is for black folks. And that's the difference between low income black folks and high income black folks in terms of how high their temperature is in their home before they turn air conditioning on. Think about that. They will, on average, have their temperature 11 degrees higher just to avoid being energy burdened. What that means is they are starting to use, they're using too little energy to, and it's impacting their health risk, right? In a community that already has high rates of asthma, cancer of other illnesses and diseases, having also uncomfortable temperatures of 80 plus because you are trying to save money so you are not energy burdened, right? This is something that is, this research is something that's really interesting, but it also speaks to how we are still learning, right? This article came out just last year. Up until last year, everyone just assumed low income folks were either energy burdened or not, right? We're still understanding this space. We're still understanding opportunities for how we can impact and improve people's lives. But once again, a different reality, right? You have a different reality when you are poor, and in this case, if you're poor and black, you have even more of a different reality. The last four maps shown on one slide, so you can kind of see this graphic, just to beat it home with a hammer. Folks have different realities, and we in our solution space have not been recognizing that, have not been taking that into account. And it's not just on a health perspective, but also on an economic perspective. We look at the persistent poverty graphs, right? This is counties that have had above 20% poverty rates for three decades in a row, not three decades period in a row. That's 1990 to 2010, that's almost as long, right? That 30 years of poverty persistently through there, what does that mean in terms of opportunity? What does that mean for the people who, and I think it's important to recognize that everybody in these communities understand their situation. They're not in a bubble where they're not aware that they are living in a persistent poverty county. They know about it, they talk about it. We often in the industry treat this as they aren't unaware, right? Or if they do know about it, then it's just something that's just a reality for them. They are aware and they're trying to find a solution. And this is important because it is not just community wide but it's individual wide, right? We look at this home ownership, net worth. I always am shocked by this number of difference between the medium net worth. White families have more wealth than black families, Hispanic and other multiple race families. And this is from 2019, I guarantee you it hasn't changed much and because of the pandemic it may have worsened, all right? Look at the separation in that. How does someone's reality change because of that? And then it's not just economics, it's also the social justice comes into play with this, right? The school to prison pipeline, I would point out here, male enrollment of 8% but expulsions of 23%. Research shows that teachers are more likely to see a black student's transgressions as part of a trend versus one time. So they have a higher degree of expulsions because they see this person as a bad kid versus as a kid who made a mistake. What does that happen when you increase expulsions? Well, as just as the prison pipeline states, if you're born in 2001 and you're black, one in three chance of being prisoned. Start reality, right? Your day-to-day actions. And when I say reality, for me it's three aspects. It's your day-to-day interactions. It is the environment that you must live in. I say must because we have to remember that this is part of a historical effort, redlining and other policies and legal ramifications purposely put people in flood areas. Purposely put people surrounded by highways, purposely put people in poverty-stricken areas. So this isn't a choice. This was part of decades-long purposeful activity. When I talk about someone's reality, it's part of their internal motivations and ambitions and goals, but also their environment and their day-to-day experiences. I can't remember the exact numbers, but in New York at one point, during the stop and search rules, there was more black folks stopped and searched in black people in New York City. Think about that. That means people were gonna stop their search multiple times in a year to have that kind of result, right? Your day-to-day interactions. But I don't want people to think of this as an income thing, right? One in three is not an income thing, and this shows it really starkly is that race, not income, is their greatest predictor to whether you live next to a polluted air, water, or soil, right? The color of your skin, a social construct is the greatest predictor of whether you live next to it. And something that I rarely point out but I think is really important is that 95% of their claims against the polluters are denied by the EPA. So it's not like they're sitting there living in polluted areas and saying, oh, well, this is life. They are complaining about it. They are filing suits again, and 95% of them are denied, right? So this is going to come to a point. This is going to come to a point. It's not just all about gloom and doom. But the point here is that because of all that, this Stanford study that shows that non-whites, and particularly folks from black and Hispanics, have a higher degree of concern about climate change, have a higher in want to see, they see it as a very serious problem, right? There's multiple studies. This is one I put up Stanford because we're here at Stanford. But there's multiple studies that same results. And that is that people in these communities care about it and want to see something done because they connect all this together. They don't see having to not turn on their air conditioning as separate from living near a polluted site, Cancer Alley, right, and other places like this. They see this as all interconnected when you talk with them. And so what that means is if we are sitting here saying that our surveys and our in-person conversations show that they care more about this than the white Americans, right? Why do they have less electric vehicles? Why do they have less solar panels? Why do they have less energy efficiency technology in their homes, right? And the answer is pretty simple. And that is that technology innovation and commercialization in itself is not sufficient to reach in 100% clean energy, right? That we are not providing that, in fact, we need upgrades, we need solutions that not only are available to these communities, not only are accessible, financially accessible to these communities, but are acceptable to these communities, right? Because they see the problem not as I have a high energy bill. They see the problem as I have a high energy bill. I have high rates of asthma. I have the school to prison pipeline to worry about. I have jobs that I have lack of jobs in my community that I wanna see filled, right? They see all these interconnected. So when we come to them with a solution that is not acceptable, well, why would they take that? They have to take everything else. They have to take the pollution. They have to take the police disproportionately imprisoning them. They have to take their kids being treated as bad youth in their schools. Why would they take unacceptable solutions from the clean energy space? And to give you an idea of how this connects to the larger picture of things, right? We got the governor here in California that established a goal of 3 million climate ready and climate friendly homes by 2030 and an additional 7 million by 2035. And at least 50% of the funding to achieve these goals should be directed toward disadvantaged communities. Well, from what I've been telling you already today, do you think they're gonna accept just any solution with money tied to it? Do you think that just money is enough? Well, so we have this situation where the reality is these communities in today's industry has three options. If you're able and willing to pay, you can pay with your car. If you're not and you have good enough credit history, you can take out debt to get a clean energy upgrade, right? So it's not enough that you have one tenth the income as someone who is white in America, but now you also have to go in debt to upgrade, to save the planet that you are disproportionately less polluting, right? Or the option or they just don't participate at all, right? These are your options today. These are, and the result is what we've seen already, the clean energy divide, right? I mentioned solar panels, you can use any single technology in a clean energy space and see the same results. And then even when you do make it available, right? Look at these pictures. This is the marketing for solar, right? I don't see myself in them. These communities don't see themselves in them. So even when it is there, that's not for me. All right, like I had a pastor from rural Alabama tell me, if a white guy showed up at any of my members' houses, they would first check to see who else is there, and then listen to them and then close the door on their face. Because for them, although that individual may be a wonderful individual, right? What they see is the history of trauma, in that anytime someone white has come into their neighborhood is not been for a good reason, right? That's the realities that we have to contend with in this clean energy space. So a new transition has happened, right? All of a sudden, $369 billion has been passed around October of last year, and several aspects of this came into play. Now nonprofits, community-based organizations can have direct pay, right? Instead of the tax credit that only businesses were able to take advantage of, now nonprofits can take advantage of that. Home electrification and decarbonization efforts are now incentivized, so they're less money, right? It is more accessible. Bidirectional EV charging allows for energy storage where you can actually plug in and draw the energy from the car battery to power your building. Now those are eligible for tax credits, right? More accessible. Now, if you get upgrades in your building, you can actually give the tax credit to the contractor. You can cash that out and say, hey, you know, I can't take advantage of this money, but I know you can, so how about you take this and then do the work, right? More accessible, giving more options here. And there's also these block grants, 3.5 billion, and hopefully more coming through from different agencies, to focus on disadvantaged communities. 40% of the benefits, disadvantaged communities. But once again, it's a lot of money, but we're missing something, right? We're gonna have access, we're gonna have this gonna be accessible, but is it gonna be culturally relevant? Is it going to be acceptable? So entrepreneurs in this space, we have really two options here, right? We can either focus on a single solution, we can say, hey, I'm gonna focus on solar, I'm gonna focus on EV charging. But as I just said, the community see this as all interconnected, right? The community see jobs in solar industry is the same as having a job in a solar industry is just as important as having solar on your house, right? Or you can look at it across sectional, and that's what we decided to do. We said, all these different channels, streams, are coming down of EV charging, money for EV charging, money for solar, money for energy efficiency. We wanted to work across those sections to provide a solution that enables us to approach and deliver an acceptable solution for these communities. And we thought, how do we get that into the communities? And this book actually, ironically talked about this before in the parallel of us thinking about how to do this, but I love this book, I have it sitting in my apartment right now. And they talked about community anchor strategies. And a colleague of mine who is actually running for mayor in Memphis talked to me about community anchors. The importance of community anchors when you're dealing with and housing and how they're trying to work with different community anchors to bring housing folks who have to be displaced back into those communities after they rebuild them with more energy efficient housing. And how working with these community anchors actually resulted in a higher percentage of displaced, a lower percentage of displaced people leaving, right? So more percentage of the people who were displaced actually came back in the communities and got the benefits of those nice new houses. So addressing gentrification for those who, So in this book, they talk about housing authority medical centers, but what about churches, right? In the black community, the church is the backbone, right? You think about all of our transitions from the end of slavery to having slavery abolished really to reconstruction through Jim Crow, through the civil rights movement, the black church is one of these staple organizations within our communities. It is one of the few places where you have a cross-sectional of engagement. And so what we thought about was, well, how about we treat churches as community anchors? They're trusted organizations. They have regular community interactions and they own their own property, right? One of the few places that the property hasn't diminished over the decades. Black farmers have lost property. Black businesses have lost property. Black and the households have lost property. The black church is one of those few places that haven't seen a considerable loss in property. And so as I talked about, we wanted to provide a solution that looked at the cross-sectional and we wanted to use community anchors. So what exactly, and one thing someone asked me about this actually earlier today is that, well, how do you connect with these community anchors, right? They're in every community. There's 70,000 census tracts in America. 13,000 plus are considered disadvantaged. How do you connect with these community anchors? We don't go one at a time. What we do is we work with partners. I mentioned Greener Church, right? These partners have decades worth of trust. Already established within these groups. Decades worth of trust already created with these community anchors. And as a result, we don't have to recreate that trust. As you talk about these things and you're in classes, you're in here, this come up a lot, trust, right? Because that is the key to getting someone to find to actually give you the time to determine if your solution is acceptable, trust. And what I like to say is we move at the speed of trust. And most people in the industry think that's really slow. In an example in two slides, I'll show you why that isn't the case. So our solution is, our vision is, I guess our solution is a revenue generating microgrid, right? And a microgrid that uses both resiliency and revenue generation as a way to start to seed this aspect of clean technology, making it more familiar for the folks, making it look like that fits with their identity. So imagine when you go to church on Sunday, you see a building management system on the display, right next to the scripture, right? You see on the roof, there's the solar panels. In the parking lot, there are charging stations with the pastor's EV vehicle powering the church, right? Imagine what that could mean for the community and what they see, think about clean technology, whether they would want that next. There's also this research called seeding, right? Seeding effect. And what we found is that communities that have the first house happens get solar, right? And what you see is there's a seeding effect where the rest of the community starts to get solar at an accelerated rate. What we've actually seen, one study out of Connecticut showed that communities of color actually seed faster. So once it's in one place, then it spreads even faster than in white communities. So once again, all this is going back to this idea of accessible and acceptable, right? Being critical. So Hayward, right across the bridge, Glad Tidings International Church of God Christ is been working in their community for 40 years, right? They are undoubtedly a community anchor who COVID hurricane support elsewhere as well as food pantries and things here in their communities, right? And what they are super excited about is being the first prototype for this revenue-generating microgrid, one that uses bidirectionally be charging, one that uses solar as a way to power the charging stations not just try to get money from net metering, right? So, and in their case, not only they're excited about being the first, but they're excited about what this means for the community, the revenue and what they could do for their community about their thinking, can they ask me the meaning? So can we just plug up our solar panels to all the houses around us? Right, that's what they're thinking about, is how do we expand our impact to the community, right? But that's just one church. What about scale, right? Because as an entrepreneur, that's very important. I can't make a living off of one church. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a very hierarchical level, right? And they have bishops who run each of these regions. So as you can see, region five is quite large. We are already in our partners already in conversation region six, nine, 13, and I believe two already in two months, right? Because we are not selling the technology. What we are selling is something different, and I'll get to that, this is gonna be the crudegar. So when we talk about scale, and I talked about speed of trust, sorry. So the assistant to the bishop who in their framing is actually kind of like the COO, interesting enough, just how they describe, that's the title of the name, but it's like the COO to the bishop, said, hey, we wanna do 100 churches throughout Georgia this summer. And I said, okay, that's a lot of money, but okay. Sounds great for my bottom line. How are we gonna do this? Are we gonna get these 100 churches? They have 550, by the way, across the state. So how are we gonna do webinars every week for a few months at different times so that the pastors can come and make it in their schedule? He's like, oh, no, that's a lot of work. I'm like, okay, he's like, we're gonna have two meetings. We're gonna have the bishop at both of those meetings. And we're gonna tell the church that the bishop expects them to be there. Two meetings. And people think speed of trust is slow. Right, like having that relationship with someone who knows the politics of a space, it changes the whole game. It makes things move faster than you could ever imagine. Right, like if I told you I gotta get 100 churches, as a black churchgoer, I was the trustee of my church down the street. Like I know the black church, me getting 100 churches by myself in a summer, whoo, I wouldn't see my family much. Right, two meetings, speed of trust. And then last example is Christ the King, thank you, Episcopal church, whoo, bumble on my words. It's a Hispanic church, actually, who Reverend Michael Malcolm, who is a big deal down in the south, he connected me with this church because they wanna create a laboratory. The pastor I talked with last week, he said, I want every single type of solar panel you could think of. I want the bendy ones. I want the ones on the roof. I want the ones in the yard. I want people to see what is available to them. Right, like that is what's happening in these communities. When I talk with these churches, they're not wondering what this stuff is. They know what it is. They want access to it. They want it. But they want it in a solution that is acceptable. So what is acceptable? What makes us different? Well, our revenue generating microgrids, the key difference is that they have ownership of them. They have ownership of them. Mostly the industry will come to a church and say, hey, we're gonna lease you a solar panels, we're gonna lease you your charging stations, and we're gonna even pay you a little bit for as a thank you for that, token gesture of thank you for this work. And you'll get a few churches like, well, I need resiliency. I need to make sure the lights are on. But then I talk to them, and I'm introduced by another pastor, and say, you know, his brother's from, PhD from Stanford, right? He went to HBCU, all winning things, right? And I start talking, and there's nothing they haven't heard before, but then I say, hey, we're not gonna treat you like the music industry. What I mean by that is in the music industry, for those who don't know, the artist makes all the content and gets pennies on the dollar for their music, right? The label gets all the money. And this was a huge issue in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s. That's what we're doing right now in the clean energy space. We're asking these churches to take on, to give us their roof, give us their parking lot, and we'll give them pennies on the dollar. And I say, I'm not gonna treat you like that. We're gonna be co-developers. We're gonna develop this together, and you're gonna have ownership of it, which also means, yes, that means you gotta maintain it. A big selling point is, oh, you won't have to worry about maintenance or operations, don't worry about it, right? That's the selling point. That's what they'll say in these meetings. I say, yes, you're gonna have to maintain it. That means jobs in your community, right? They love to hear that. They want responsibility for this. It's countering to a lot of people in the industry, but that's the reality. They want ownership because that also means revenue generation. Just if I went to 13,000 communities, one church in 13,000 communities, we could do $4 billion in revenue a year, 4,000 megawatts or 4 gigawatts of energy produced a year, and 4,000 jobs with our, what I call clean energy hubs, our revenue generating microgrids, all right? That's just 13,000 within disadvantaged communities. But, and apologies for the small, this is the map of ministries, of churches in the States. A lot more than 13,000, right? What could that mean for these communities that have that level of wealth generation, where they can then reinvest into climate change solutions? The number of jobs, folks who finally can see someone that looks like them in these jobs. And so with that, I'll end with this idea, and actually it's a call to all of you and those listening. And that is, we are still figuring this out. One of the fundamental barriers we're seeing is that this is something new. And financial institutions and other groups see things as new as fundamentally risky, right? And what we've had conversations with was that most folks, federal government or in the industry, their biggest concern is demand, right? How do we get demand in these communities? We have the demand, but we have a model that's different. And so what we need from academics, from professionals, from institutions is, how can we grow this, right? How can we continue this trend of looking for solutions that are acceptable to these communities, that look across the sector of their challenges and it addresses them. And so I ask you all to either reach out to me or come and develop your own. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Anthony. That was totally inspiring and eye-opening, I must say. So thank you very much. We have time for a few questions in the room here. Anybody want to go first? Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't all stand up at once. You're quite inspiring. I like the idea of the community engagement, investment, growth in the community. My question is a compliment to the church model. Is there a community college model that you might want to consider? As far as I can see, most of the same students who are looking for opportunity are going to go to a community college. And those spots, I understand there's government that may slow things down a little bit relative to the velocity of the ministry, but they have real estate. They have a job training program. They have people in the community that want to teach the young folks there and they can provide also jobs. So I'm wondering, in addition to this, is there the sibling with community colleges? Thank you. So not yet with community colleges, though Glad Tidings is actually bringing in the community college for their project. So what's great about working as a co-developer with these groups is they bring in the organizations that they see are doing good work. So they're bringing in the community college for their work about workforce because they want to do workforce development in addition in this hub. We are working with my colleague for Optimal Tech, Dr. Reginald Parker. We are working where he's doing 40, they're doing 40 HBCUs. So we're doing a whole program of 40 HBCUs in lieu of kind of a reference to 40 acres in a mule. And so that is actually, there's an application process going on right now and HBCUs are applying to be a part of this program. So, yeah. This is amazing work, Anthony, bravo. Where is the Catholic Bishops Conference or any of the Bishops Conferences? And I ask it because I know from the stuff that I've done with the Vatican that there were recently encyclicals about how Catholics specifically should invest in sustainable projects. And they have some pension money. So from what I've seen. So how does the Bishops telling the local folk what to do translate into the Bishops taking some of the pension and any other money in supporting this? That's a great question. Well, I haven't talked with the Catholic Church yet. I'm open to talking to any denominations interested in this, by the way. One of our part, Green to Church are our main partner for the Black Church. That's their focus. And so we identify partners for each demographic, right? That specializing each demographic. They were just talking to me about this last week. There's a lot of money in these churches that are sitting there in pensions at the denominational, national domination level. How can we get those to be investing into these projects so that you keep a cycle of money coming through and also removing some of the barriers that the financial institutions have for this? So it's a conversation that's just starting. And I'm sure we're gonna talk more about it soon. Very inspiring. Thank you for doing this. My question is how are you funding your current projects? Where are you getting the finances from? Are you raising venture capital or what's your source of money? Thanks for the question. Where are we getting the money from right now? Well, there was a nonprofit that actually pays for the technical feasibility studies that we were doing for these churches. But we exceeded their demand so fast that they ran out of money. So that was originally how we were doing this. Ourselves, I think, are doing more microgrid studies than all their other people combined to give you an idea of demand, right? Now we're actually trying to think through that. There's pre-development funding. It's arguably one of the hardest tranches of money to get. And so we're still trying to explore opportunities there that don't require a 20% down payment or things like that of this pre-development funds. There are venture capital, not venture capitalists, there are private equity firms that we're in conversation with. My company itself, we are trying for venture capitalists funding. I'm an accelerator right now to really learn how to talk the language of VCs, right? Just like talking a PhD language, VCs have their own language in having to talk to them and explain the business model from metrics that they care about. So we're trying to hit all different aspects of the money, though. But if anybody out there wants to just say, hey, I think this is great, throw money at it, let's do it. So following up, I have a couple of quick questions. So last quarter, we actually had Sarah Carney who runs the Prime Coalition, which is impact investing. Have you talked to those first? I'm not yet. You ought to, and they ought to talk to you. The second, maybe this is a totally bad idea, is we did have the lead in the administration on environmental justice. He's at CEQ here a few weeks ago when you talked to them. That's not direct funding for the business, but if you could figure out how to, you're already doing this, how to best use the incentives in the IRA, that seems like it would give you a lot of leverage in what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. The Inflation Reduction Act is key. And one of the things that's challenging that people don't realize is the flow of money. And so there's grants coming out, but they take six months, nine months, right? That's a long stint of time. And so we are trying to have these conversations within the government to kind of supersede that like, hey, yes, there's a new trades group called Black Owners of Solar Services, Solar Services. They just received $6.3 million from a collaborative agreement with the Department of Energy. And we partner with them on things. So there's efforts around collaborative agreements within the federal government that we're trying to have those conversations with and love anybody who's connected in there to help us with those conversations. But that is absolutely kind of a route. The other one I could think of in this regard is, Holmes actually had Shalanda Baker come in and do a Dean's thing. So have you talked to her? Oh yes, we had a chance to talk before she was in her position at the Department of Energy. And I got to see her just last week, so yeah. Yeah. Great. You know, any other questions in the room? At this point, I think we're just about out of time anyway. So, Anthony, thank you so much. That was definitely inspiring and eye-opening and to the infinite power. As nerdy little, you're not going to, in years like me, is to say thank you very much. Thank you.


Good morning or good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us today on Condo Insider. I'm really excited to have with me as my guest, Mike Golojus with Pahlehua Townhouses. He's also one of my fellow HCCA board members. So he's been on board with us for a couple years now. So today we're going to talk about what a condo board duty and responsibilities are. So it's going to be the two of us having this conversation. I often get a lot of questions, especially after a seminar about what exactly a board member is supposed to do, especially for the new ones, the newbies that come on board. So we're going to start off with going through some of the statutes. So where does it all start? So we're on our slide number two. And actually it started when the potential home condo owner signed that purchase agreement because even though we're not on the board, we still have to comply with all the governing documents, the declarations, the bylaws, the house rules, all the, and if you have covenants, you know, like some areas have certain things that you can and cannot do around the property. So it really starts with knowing that and then also reviewing the Hawaii Revised Statute 514B or 421J. 421J applies to plan unit communities like Everbyte Gentry. So Mike, I want to really thank you for being on board with us. So you've been a board member for a long time. So what would be your suggestion for people to start with? Start with, I really recommend they read their declarations as they come out on the DCC and ours so they know what their association, what they're required to do by not only 514B, which the law, but what their own association needs to do. And besides that, they also need to review and their bylaws that run their association. And by doing that, then going back to review 514B helps them out a lot in knowing what their responsibilities are for a board member. There's other things too, but I mean, those are the basics. And of course, Kondo Insider has a lot of good programs that could help them out too. But people don't really understand what they are. And I know it's coming up what a fiduciary is and that type of thing. But it's all important to understand the rules first. Okay. Next slide. So you mentioned fiduciary duty. So here's 514B 106, which is the board powers duties and limitations. So it's highlighted in here in it's bolded that each board member owes the association of fiduciary duty, and to exercise the degree of care and loyalty that's required of an officer or director of an organization under chapter 414D, which is the nonprofit corporation act. So we actually have several statutes that not just 514B, we have 414D, not to mention, I think we have to also do fair housing. But if you don't comply, then you're going to be in breach of your fiduciary duty. So along with fiduciary duty, so next slide is really the explanation. You want to kind of review what a fiduciary duty is? Well, I can't see that slide. So a fiduciary duty is an individual in whom another person has placed the utmost trust and confidence to manage and protect property or money. So how would you apply that? Or how would you explain it? Well, for me, it's to understand your budget, what your condo association has set aside for their normal maintenance, but also their reserves, because you have to be able to pay for things in the future. And you have to look out what's best for the association and that's what's best for individual homeowners or yourself as a homeowner. You have to look out for the responsibility, the overall association, so that you're doing things and having the money to do the necessary prayers in the future. And we've seen what's happened when for one reason or another association has not been able to. There's special assessments or there's a big loan that has to be taken just because funds weren't there to do the projects that needed to be done. And some people do get on the boards to figure out, I'm going to stop raising maintenance fees. I mean, I've heard that one before and that's really isn't it. That's a red flag already. Yeah, because I've told even our board, I said, I'd rather see a $5, $10 yearly increases versus a $5 or $10,000 special assessment. That's true. I mean, it's just incremental, so it's not going to, you don't really feel the $5 or $10 so to speak versus you have to come up with a $5 or $10,000 man, that's really going to hurt your pocket. Right, that's true. So when we learn as we go into fiduciary duty, we also have to realize as a fiduciary, we have to watch out for conflicts of interest. That is true. So the actual definition by statute of conflict of interest is used as a means in which an issue in which a director has a direct personal or pecuniary interest not common to other members of the association. So it has to be disclosed that relationship. True. And I've had it on our board that some people have had to disclose that, hey, one of the contractors you're considering, I know the person personally, and they'll recuse themselves in voting on that particular thing. Exactly. Yeah, or even hiring an employee. Yeah, they used to be my tenants way back when they're fine, but really you really should have no conversation regarding that person, right. That's true. And one of the main things, because even 421 Jay, if you're in a pud at like a ever by Gentry, you have to disclose the nature of that. And then you also cannot vote on that issue, but you got to make sure that that disclosure is recorded in the meeting minutes. Right. Yes, definitely. And it's, it's important. And, you know, and especially in the condo, sometimes, you know, board members just like others need to have things that they want to do to their unit that need to have board approval. And you need to disclose, hey, this is my unit and I will not be voting on this. Right, right, right. Okay. Let's go to the next slide. So the responsibility, so now you're on the board. So what exactly is your responsibilities? So we have like things to do like the upkeep of the condo property.  Then the other big responsibility is the fiscal. We got to deal with the budget and the reserves, plus the insurance requirements. That's right. So it's our responsibility to, to learn how to read the budget, which could be an experience in itself in the very beginning. And then it's experience itself to get to understand how to read the reserves, you know, and we don't, I don't think everybody expects you to get it in the first time. It kind of takes a little while to kind of get the hang of reading the budget, going through the reserves and how they all play together, you know, and then with the budget and reserves, then we start doing the assessments for maintenance fees, figuring out how much, how much the rate and the fees are going to be for the year. Right. And I would, I would, I would like tell anybody that they're boasting to me that they haven't raised maintenance fees in a couple of years. I'd be like, something's wrong with your property. I agree with you. That's true. Even if it's a small amount, I've heard that over and over again. It's true. People don't like to raise them, but if you don't raise them a little bit, you may be raising them a lot. Yeah, because I don't like the $20 jumps. I'd rather have five than 10. I don't like the $20 jumps. It's, you know, it just is really scary, you know. And truthfully, when I first got on the board, that happened to us. They had relied on some funds that had come in from a settlement and they hadn't looked at really the maintenance fees and all the other aspects. So when I got, we had a fairly sizable jump in maintenance fees because we had to wait to cover the reserves and maintenance that was needed. Yeah, yeah. And then we also have the responsibility of maintaining certain records. So, you know, even though a lot of the records are with the managing agents usually, but still we have to make sure that certain ones are maintained and that they're available to owners upon request, according to the procedures that are set up for that. Right. And then we also have to make sure that there's the rules compliance. So making sure our decor and bylaws and then the house rules and also the other other architectural stuff are all being complied with. So we have to make sure and even with that is hard to rule enforcement. That alone is a challenge in itself. You know, making sure everybody's window coverings are all white. They're not storing a bunch of stuff on the lanai where it looks like someone's living there.  But what other things can you put in as a board member that you've seen challenges on with rule compliance?   So if you need to, that you can follow up to find out which dogs may be doing that, you know. That's just one thing. But are they keeping their areas squared away? You know, what are your rules about what can be stored in front of the doorway or can't be what can be on lanais and other things like that? And in a recent fire inspection we had a couple of people still had arbor cues up on the second lanai and they can't do that. Yeah, it has to be five feet away from a building from a wall. Right, right. And we're also responsible for the upkeep, the repairs. Right, that's true. Repairs comes with painting. Yeah, we've been painting, replace siding, the sprinkler system, that's an ongoing battle with our we've got a good resident manager though because he can do all that. But now there's things that we have to contract out to, but the things he can handle, he does and he does a good job of it. But yeah, you're right, all the different maintenance things.  And ours the townhouse so it's more flat, but you know, high rises, they've got their own issues that they have to worry about, whether it's elevators or parking spaces underneath or whatever, the lighting for that, etc, etc, that goes on. Yeah, I have to tell someone they couldn't keep their shoes outside, outside the door, because it was a trip hazard. And they were kind of upset. I go, no, you have no idea. That's why you can't have mats outside, no footwear outside, anything where someone can trip. I go, you know, I go, even in my house, I'm like, the shoes go against the wall, not why we need to walk and triple.  And the other part of our responsibility is, as board members, and even the employees that we hire need to welcome our owners, make them feel that they're part of the community, you know, we have to comply with all the fair housing, ADA, pets, you know, all of those things, you know. That's true. You're right. And we, our resident manager gets ahold of them quickly so that they're welcomed and then, and also has them fill out the things. So we have an emergency contact for them and we have their car information so that we know it's theirs. So they don't get towed. Yeah, the big thing, don't get towed. Okay, let's move on to, on to the next slide, which is, wow, we need to know a lot. It's almost like we need to go to college to learn how to be a board member, right? There's a lot of things we need to know. But it's not like we have to be experts in those fields, right? We can hire professionals to help us. You know, so like, like I would not know how to measure the chemical balance of a pool. I just kind of know that they got to do certain things. It's got to be a certain color or something like that, right? You know, so it's not like you have to, and then plus two, there's other resources available to even to help you learn some of the things that you need to take. Like with Hawaii Council, we have our seminars four times a year. And then once a year, we do an all day board of director training. You know, we just had it, what, a couple months ago, last month. But there's a lot of educational things that you can take. Our seminars are only like, what, 90 minutes, you know, four times a year. Every once in a while, we might add in a new one. If it's a hot topic, something that we really want to get the word out to everybody, what other ways can they learn? Condo Insider, that's one. That's right. No, and going and talking to other board members from other associations. We've done that in the past. I mean, we actually made a couple of trips out to Mililani and went to a couple of board meetings there. You know, we'd had beforehand, so we were invited to be there. Reading and studying up on these things and going to the seminars is really important. And I think when we can get back into in-person seminars, the rules would be so valuable because you can talk to other people, you know, so really the networking you get from attending the in-person ones, if we can ever get back to it, is really, really good. It is. Oh, yeah. When you're sitting around that table, you find out a lot of information and they find out information from you. You know, it's surprising what people do or don't know. It's a good way to find out what works and what didn't work, you know. And people who are really getting to the point that they were welcoming and looking forward to the next seminar so that they can meet up with their other people that they've engaged in, right? That's true. Okay, so let's go on to the slide business judgment rule. So as board members, we need to exercise our independent judgment.  And so you vote again, you say, no, my opinion is no, this is not good for us, you know. So you have to be able to really exercise your business judgment rule. Don't vote just because everybody else is voting the same way. It's okay to be the other guy that says no, right? Correct. And we have people that happens, and I'm glad that does happen. So it makes us all think again, you know, hey, was that the best decision? And maybe overall, we still in the majority think it is, but it's good to be thinking of different opinions and viewpoints on different topics. And it's like the budget review. And are you following up on delinquencies? And have we heard recently from our attorney or, or however we're handling getting that checking up on delinquencies?  And we proposed that I go, he does reserves. He doesn't know about plumbing, you know, or siding repair. Oh, he's not the expert that you would see to get advice from, you know, you would really seek advice from, from maybe that attorney that has that construction litigation experience. And plus two, it should go to the attorney anyways, to review that contract, right? You know, and you always got to have a scope of work, make sure that that scope of work is detailed out. So everybody knows they're all on the same, same late playing field, you know. What other advice would you give a new board member? Their advice, really talk not just to your own board members, but find out other ones. That's why it's important that when we have in-person sessions or even the ones that are online to attend, so that you listen, pick up information. So as you read through some of these documents, sometimes the first time you're in them, they don't make any sense at all to you until you've had a chance to talk to people and see it in action and ask questions. And I mean, that includes talking to your managing agent, your resident manager on a discussion basis, not that you're their boss or anything else in that aspect, but you know, trying to find out what's going on in your particular association to make it better for you and understanding. In fact, one of the things you could do and you can ask for them and some associations have them online anyway, go through past minutes and see what has been passed, what hasn't, what actions have been taken by the board. And that's your opportunity to go back and read the history, kind of like a history of that situation. Like why did they not, why did they choose, you know, to paint this one area yellow versus the rest of the area is like a brown, but this one section is yellow?  So if they put a lighter paint, it's going to be easier for the other lighting to kind of like, you know, blow off a bit, you know, that kind of stuff, stuff that it doesn't seem that we may not think of the reasons why. But once we understand why the board did something previously, then it could actually make sense, you know, you know, like a certain kind of landscaping, you know, they, they, they, they really want the certain kind of plant because number one, it's low maintenance or, you know, the sun hits it and that type of plant is perfect for the sun, especially if you're on the west side or if your property gets the afternoon sun, you don't want to put a plant there that take a lot of water, but now you're wasting water, so to speak, you know. And, and the type of trees, we've, we've had to take some trees out because of the damage they were doing, but we wanted to replace with other trees that would grow, but you know, and not cause that kind of damage. Right. Yeah. So it's really good to learn that, that background so that you're, you're informed and you're not fighting with the board because there's, there's decisions are always based upon reasons and maintenance and upkeep is always going to be at the top of the list. One of those reasons, you know. You're correct there. And, and people, you know, if they're new on it, they don't understand, you know, some of the things that have gone on the past. And that's why it's good to have new board members, but it's also good to have people that have been around for a while so that, you know, they can discuss and give reasons why things have happened in the past and new people. So maybe they'll see some new directions or new ideas that that are helpful in the association. Right.  So you already kind of know everything. I mean, how it works, but we have to be welcoming to the new ones because not all of us want to be here forever. You know, you want new blood in there. Sometimes new blood can bring in new ideas that we never thought of, you know, so you really want that. I always try to make everybody feel like they're welcome now to have their input. You know, like, what do they say out of the mouths of babes? You know, same thing. We brand new. Something, you know. Any other closing remarks on what you want to offer to a new board member? Attend the meetings. Because that's very important, you know. And each board is all different. Ours meets basically monthly. There's some dunce we don't, but normally other associates, I know only meet quarterly, but whatever it is, show up, be prepared, read those minutes before you show up to the minute meetings. Yeah, there's a lot of time there. So you have your questions. If you do have questions, what's going on? Yeah. Review the minutes and take your notes. So you see something that was like, well, I don't remember this, but take your notes and bring it to the meeting, you know, but you really should be prepared and review that board packet before you actually go into the meeting. I mean, it takes like 30 minutes to go through the packet unless you have like some proposals and stuff like that that came in, you know, that's making the packet a lot bigger. But you know, you have to conduct yourself in a business manner. This is a business. You need to run it like a business. So you need to be informed and ask the questions.  Right. So one question I always have asked, you know, if they have a contract coming up, if there's not three bids, you always want to ask the question, why didn't you get at least three bids? That's just a standard we try to follow. Now, there's sometimes there's a reason why you don't have three, but have it come out and then decide whether you want to push again for more bids or go with what you have. Right, right. Yeah. Any other closing things you want to give some of our newbies?  Bring them forward, you know, get them out there. You know, some people, it's the old inertia, they'll just go on the same way unless, you know, something gets in there and people start asking questions and bringing up things and looking at it a different aspect. I think that's very important to have that input.  Okay, I, you know, I really appreciate you being on here with me, Mike, because I think this is kind of going to be one of the first, I'm actually going to forward this to someone because she's new to the board and she's a board president. So it's a big project.  This is going to be my first one that I'm going to send to her. You need to read, look at this one, review this one, you know, but I really want to thank you because our time is coming to a close. So Mike, I really appreciate you being on the show for me today and going through it. I think it's always good to hear it from experiences from other board members, seasoned board members on what it's like and what we need to do. So we hope to see you guys, you people again next Thursday at three o'clock for another Condo Insider. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.