you know, Mark, the words that just keep going through my head right now are it's go time, right? And it seems as if everything I've prepared for over the last decade or everything I've been doing over the last decade has really prepared me for this moment. You know, in the US, we sort of have this confluence of events, right? This reemergence and awareness about our racial pandemic. And we have an actual pandemic, right? COVID-19 that has been particularly difficult for communities of color, Black and Latinx communities. And that's in part because of the economy and the way that structure, but also because of environmental injustice and their exposure to air pollution, things like that that have caused those comorbidities and made them more vulnerable to the virus. And we have an energy system that is undergoing transformation. And so all of these things, I think, make it even more urgent to engage in an energy transition that is just and brings more clean energy resources to those particularly hard to pick communities and those communities where structural violence and structural racism are a fact of daily life. Solanda H. Baker is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by Innovators Magazine and 1.5 Media. Solanda is a professor of law, public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University. She has spent more than a decade conducting research on the equity dimensions of the global transition away from fossil fuel energy to cleaner energy resources. She teaches courses on renewable energy development, energy justice, and environmental law. In 2015, she was awarded the Fulbright Garcia Robles grant to explore Mexico's energy reform, climate change, and indigenous rights. Before joining Northeastern faculty, Solanda spent three years as an associate professor of law at William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii, where she was the founding director of the Energy Justice Program. Prior to that, she served on the faculty at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She holds a bachelor's of science degree in political science from the United States Air Force Academy, a Juris Doctorate from Northeastern University School of Law, and an LLM from the University of Wisconsin School of Law, where she also served as a William H. H. D. Fellow. Immediately after law school, before working as a corporate and project finance attorney in both the Boston and Tokyo offices of the law firm of Bingham McCutcheon, Solanda Clerk for Associate Justice Roderick Ireland of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Solanda, also a veteran of an former Air Force officer, fought to end the militaries, don't ask, don't tell policy. She is the author of over a dozen articles, books, chapters, and essays on renewable energy law, policy, and development. She is the co-founder co-director of the Initiative for Energy Justice, an organization committed to providing technical law and policy support to communities on the front lines of climate change. She also serves on the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Sitting Board, the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee, Climate Justice Working Group, the Board of Solutions Project, the Board of Clean Energy Group, and the Board of Solstice for Book Revolutionary Power. An activist guide to the energy transition will be out publicly January 14th. I was lucky enough to get that digital pre-copy and I hot off the press copy here, Revolutionary Power. I read it end to end digitally and physically and I'm so glad to welcome Solanda on the show. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you so much, Mark. That was a lovely and long introduction, so I have to live up to all of that, but it's delightful to be here with you. You will absolutely live up to it and actually, that was a shortened version because you have been doing this for a long time. You deserve the accolades and you've not only done the hard work and put in the time and spent the effort, but this book is so fabulous. I love it. It's amazing because it's not a dry academic read. It's a story.  It's a story of your journeys. A lot of it based in Hawaii and the injustice is there and it just tells such a nice journey and how and why even your, how do I put it, your hesitance to sometimes say, should I get into this topic? Should I broach social injustice with energy rights and changes and renewable energy and these inequalities? Should I combine the two and say how they're linked together? We'll get into that more before I go too deep down some rabbit holes.  Mark, the words that just keep going through my head right now are it's go time, right? And it seems as if everything I've prepared for over the last decade or everything I've been doing over the last decade has really prepared me for this moment. You know, in the US, we sort of have this confluence of events, right? This reemergence and awareness about our racial pandemic. And we have an actual pandemic, right COVID-19 that has been particularly difficult for communities of color, Black and Latinx communities. And that's in part, it's in part because of the economy and the way that way that structure, but also because of environmental injustice and their exposure to air pollution, things like that, that have caused those comorbidities and made them more vulnerable to the virus. And we have an energy system that is undergoing transformation. And so all of these things, I think, make it even more urgent to engage in an energy transition that is just and brings more clean energy resources to those particularly hard communities and those communities where structural violence and structural racism are a fact of daily life. Yes, that's absolutely true. And I mean, dude, did all this past, not only Hawaii, but even before that and now in Boston and your work with Energy and also Mexico, did any of that, you personally give you some resilience or some foreshadowing, so to say, boy, this is coming. The infrastructure is not stable. The way things are set up is very unequal. There are some issues and eventually it's going to bubble to the surface. And we'll get into this a little bit later, but there was a section in the book about Hurricane Xavier and Hawaii and the devastations that that included. And as climate speaker, we can kind of go in how and why and some of those things. But did you have any resilience or were you also caught off guard or does this knowledge, all this past knowledge and the things you've been working on and trying to fight the inequalities and the social justice in this energy sector, has that given you resilience to say, OK, we're going to be OK. We can weather this. There are some better operating systems, some models. I kind of want to update and see how you've been, how you've dealt with that. In many ways, I think this moment actually, it's horrible. It's terrible, but it provides this window. It provides this opportunity and to create this transformative change. And I think as I've been doing this work, I wasn't ever sort of thinking something bad is going to happen.  But I had this sense that nothing will really change unless there is a disruptive moment. And so it's sort of like, you know, along the journey, I've been collecting my tools, collecting my tools, kind of waiting for the perfect opportunity to really advance some of these ideas. Yes, I'm tired. So I mean, I think the root of your question is sort of, you know, how do we think about resilience? And I'm tired, but also so uplifted in a way by the opportunity. And, you know, I take breaks here and there.  And, you know, I tell them, okay, take your break, but this is your moment as well to kind of create the world that you believe in, the future that you want. So I couldn't have predicted this moment. I don't think any of us really could have. But I knew that nothing would change without disruption. And, you know, when I was in Hawaii, and I know we're going to talk about that, you know, one of the things I would always tell my students was to dream about a world and dream of a world without constraints. Because we were, you know, they were law students. And so they were very familiar with the rules and sort of the boxes that we had to fit in. And I said, let's, let's dissolve those. And let's just imagine what the world might look like if we didn't have these sort of constraints that are already baked into the system. So now here we are. And I'd like to hear from you, but I imagine, as I read your book, and I hear about your journey, that a lot of your transition in the ways of thinking, your ways of teaching, things that you write in the book, are not truly conventional that you were received at law school. I've been to law school myself and, and not conventional wisdom and learnings that you receive to kind of broach the subjects of social injustice. And I imagine you're also enabling your students with some empowering tools to help them through situations like this, which then provides them with resilience, not only for themselves, but for those who they work for and the projects they work on to, to have resilience and see the brighter day. How do we, how do we make it through this pandemic? How do we make it through these unrestful situations that we're experiencing now? Is that the case?  Because you're like, wow, this microscope is shining, things are bubbling to the surface and I'm, I'm prepared, I'm ready. Now I can help my students and people with the solutions on the way we should be thinking differently to solve these problems. I mean, I'm getting chills as you're speaking because this has been the most incredible, the busiest, you know, the most productive time, I think of my career. You know, I think starting in May post, well, just as the pandemic was kind of really becoming devastating here in the United States, but also after the death and the murder, the public lynching of George Floyd, that sort of sparked, you know, all of the sort of connections.  And, you know, between racial violence, this pandemic, structural inequality, and the energy system. And so, yes, I've been quite busy of late. And, you know, it's so interesting because I have been against the grain for the bulk of my career, really saying that, you know, issues of justice should be a part of this technical conversation concerning energy and climate. But those were sort of always thought of as things we will deal with later, right? Well, we'll sort of build the whole, the plane and then figure out, you know, where to seat the, you know, people of color and Indigenous folks. But that's always been central to my work. And, you know, one of the things I come out with in the book is who I am, right? I'm a woman.  I've had an interesting journey.  And so that's kind of been the way that I've approached this work, highlighting injustice, highlighting structural inequality, because it's my unique superpower on the planet, I think. Yeah, many superpowers in your book. Yeah, you talk about COVID. So it's a very timely book as well. The timing of all of this is extraordinary. I mean, this is a moment when also our national leaders are realizing that we need to move in a direction of centering issues of equity. And so I'm excited to support that team in whatever way makes sense. And, you know, I've been working on the ground through my organization, the Initiative for Energy Justice to help develop equitable energy policy frameworks as well. Yeah, I really appreciate you getting us up to speed on kind of this transition and what you've experienced. And it leads me to my first question is probably that I see you take a big focus on the US, obviously, because that's where you're from. You've done a lot in Hawaii, Mexico, as well as North America and Boston and that. But you've worked with cities like Texas or in states like Texas and many others that are discussed in the book.  And how do you view or think about a world in the future, one without nations, borders, divisions of humanity, one from another, one that has a revolutionary renewable power grid that is global? Wow, that is a fascinating concept.  I'm not as aligned with the tribal kind of affiliations and alliances that have come even more stark in the United States of late. You know, I think we have to work together, no matter what, to resolve this climate crisis. And if that means a grid that is, you know, stretched across continents, then so be it. I tend to be more of the mind that we need decentralized grids.  So we absolutely need a distributed grid. But I'm intrigued by the idea of, you know, this more global grid. And of course, the legal brain in me is working and like, so how would you govern that? You know, what are the governance mechanisms? I'd love to learn more about what you have in mind. Yeah, I think that's interesting, because in your book, you really talk about what's on the ground realities politically and also making, putting some of these things in the practice, because there's a lot of issues that arise even on a state level that are from state to state, very, very different. And your energy and your meaningful energy justice work.  Yes. Well, those investments really need to be in infrastructure and the basic needs and you talk about basic needs a lot in your, your book, you might not say basic needs, but it's the basics, clean water, energy, you know, we need to tackle these and those that we're seeing all around the world who are facing not only social injustice, but are who are affected by climate change first, are those who have the worst infrastructures or the poorest communities, the ones of indigenous populations of color who even in the Bronx, in New York, in the Bronx, you know, poorest communities of poor schools, the ones that are hardest hit because they don't have that infrastructure, they don't have the basic needs. That's right. And you really address that, how do we flip the switch and do it differently. And so that's kind of why I touched upon that because I want to bring out more your thoughts, your feelings on what that you talk about in the book on what direction we should take, how can we make it a more unified plan that works for everybody, a system that's really well thought out and covers the basic needs for everyone. Yeah. I love that you mentioned this and I like this, the framing that you've offered. So I first want to say that the type of circumstances that people in places like the South Bronx are living within on a day-to-day basis are not accidental, right? These are structural and these are problems that were created and constructed by law and policy choices. And so we are almost, I mean, I would argue we have sort of this blank slate where we can construct a new reality and construct and make different choices that elevate the needs of those particular communities. And so I think my vision is to put them at the front of the line in terms of receiving any of the economic benefits. And so the 40% commitment that President-elect Biden has made is a great start, but that means reducing their energy burden. So these are the same communities that pay upwards of 10, 20, 25, 30% of overall income just to meet energy needs, which is mind-blowing. And it's to subsidize an energy system that is in effect killing them because it is a fossil fuel-based one. So they're subsidizing it not only with their pocketbooks but with their bodies. And so these are policy choices. So I think we need to reduce energy burden. And we can do that through policy levers. We can also do that by investing solar resources in those communities. So there's no reason why a family can't have solar that is powering a clean grid and it's also reducing their own energy burden. Now, we haven't been able to figure that out. The low-hanging fruit for solar, particularly rooftop solar, was the sort of middle class, more affluent folks. And now we need to go to those who have been left behind just as we're hitting the grid limits around rooftop solar. So we need to innovate. We need to figure that out. And I think we can. I think we also need to find pathways for people to participate in solar through things like community solar. So I know you're in Germany and community energy is sort of a no-brainer.  Community ownership of solar, yeah, sure. Let's figure it out. We have the mechanisms. So in the US, we need to sort of get free of all these constraints that we've constructed for ourselves where we assume that communities should not be participants in this transition. And I mean, economic participants, not just, oh, yes, okay, whatever the community benefit is, if it's a donation to our local soccer team or whatever. I'm talking about real benefits. And we need to, I don't fight the bad. So there are two types of sort of advocates in this space. One is kind of the environmental justice advocate. They're fighting the bad. They have been doing that for 30 years and I'm aligned with them and my work overlaps with them. But I'm about sort of making sure that the good is not replicating the inequalities that we see in the bad system. And so I'm encouraged. The last thing I'll say is, well, two things. One, we need to make sure that people have access to credit and finance in order to actually get some of this clean energy infrastructure in their communities. And we can innovate. There are different banking models that can allow for that. And then the second thing is some of this equity discussion has to start at the top. So we have states in the United States that are sort of experimenting with 100% clean energy laws and policies. And we need to make sure that equity, like President-elect Biden's plan, equity is central to that transition. So that's my soapbox on all my vision. You get on so many soapboxes. That's fine. That's what our platform is for. I really want that all to come out. And it's really great because you touched on credit. And that was really where I wanted to go a little bit deeper. I want you to explain it a little bit more for us because I think it is absolutely asinine that we need to get credit for a basic need. We should be getting credit if we want to buy a car or something extravagant or something extra to improve our livelihoods. But for basic needs, water, utilities, power, we shouldn't be needing a credit to get those. That's my personal opinion. And I don't mind bringing it in. But to hear you talk about it, I want you to tell me some of the struggles, what your thoughts are and what you mean by that exactly. Sure. So the solar assets are not cheap. And for folks to participate, they either need to have the money in the bank. So that means they have wealth, right? And they can just kind of dip into that and purchase it. Or they go and get a loan from the bank and finance it through that. Or they work with a third-party solar developer who finances it themselves and charges the customer kind of a monthly rate for the assets. And so because of the model, we already know who's going to be excluded, right? Historical patterns of racism, redlining, all those things make access to credit a problem in communities of color. It makes, you know, the wealth creation a problem, right? People of color have less wealth than white people in this country. And we, I mean, there was a study here in Boston that showed that I think the average white family has something like $100,000 worth of wealth.  Like, it's wild disparity. It's ridiculous. So wealth is not something that communities of color have. And, you know, with respect to the third-party model, where the developer comes around and knocks on doors, they're going to where they perceive there to be low-hanging fruit. And so the solar industry, you know, studies have come out showing that the solar industry is just not diverse. And so their majority white workers going into majority white communities to say, hey, we want to sell our product. And, you know, the pressure of sales and all of that, the model means that they're going to go to the communities where there's just an easier entry. So that's why communities of color have been left behind. And so we either need to fix that solar access problem through the utility bill. And I think that's sort of one thing that you're alluding to, right? This is a basic human right. You know, one of the other studies out there shows that community people pay their electricity bills. Like, that's one of the first things they pay. And so if the utility company could kind of sit with that debt, and that maybe could be guaranteed by another government entity, right? And they're financing this debt for solar over time, then that would help communities of color get more access. If we could create a new banking model where the traditional markers of sort of credit worthiness are, you know, put aside. And, you know, it's more of have you been paying your electricity bill instead of do you have an 800s credit score? You know, those are the types of innovations we need desperately right now. And we are going to need government intervention to support those types of innovations. Yeah, I remember it was probably more than six years ago now when when there used to be door to door salesmen going around selling solar panels for your home and things like this. And then Tesla Solar City, Elon's cousins, I guess, relatives got into the market as well. And they kind of flipped the switch on the model where they were kind of giving loans and kind of giving credit to certain people. But they also continued to own the product and they would get monies back. And there was kind of a win win situation on that utility. But I also believe that there are some big disparities of what neighborhoods or what places they were going to sell those. But there are innovative models out there. And there's more and more emerging all the time that how can we make this something for everyone? How can we make this something that gives us more micro grids and more availability of this these type of services in the worst areas in the South Bronx and in the rougher communities where where the there's big poverty level or, you know, well, in Germany, they call it a social level and I'm trying to think of the word in English now. So the projects basically in places where they really need this the most, you know, where they're really struggling day to day. Right, right. I mean, the question the central question that I ask in my work is how can this transition be used to transform society? How can it be used to, you know, create economic empowerment to be a gateway for civil rights? And I think one one way I've started to talk about this whole issue is if we are simply putting our clean energy transition on top of an infected system, one that is infected with structural racism and inequality, then that new system will itself be unequal, right, and infected in the same way. And so we have to create a new model, an underlying model, and put that and put the clean energy transition on top of that so that we can be more just. So so yeah, I agree. I mean, we should be prioritizing communities and under resource neighborhoods, which again, I'll just say our neighborhoods that were designed by choice, right, and designed by deliberate policy and law choices. And I see that around the world, a lot of our neighborhoods, a lot of our communities, they're really outdated. They're infrastructures that need to be overhauled, updated to this renewable transition that we need to make this new some more passive homes, more homes and buildings run on renewable energy with green roofs and on and on, to keep up with, yeah, the future of our infrastructure. And we're paying more, and we're running into more problems, but we're not getting a better service. And we're still, like you said, a lot of these poorer communities are really paying with their their own lives, they're on doing fossil fuels, they're living in really bad air pollution, bad areas that is only exacerbating the problem even more. And they're at more risk right now to COVID-19 because they're deemed essential workers, right. Many of them are in the very jobs that are low paying, but that put them in harm's way routinely. So not only are they kind of entering into that higher risk environment with these underlying conditions or other things that make them more vulnerable to this disease, but they're having to go out and work, you know, simply because of their economic vulnerability. And so it's just, there's a lot here to unpack and a lot of connections. Yeah, there is tons to unpack. I mean, that's also some of the ties you made. And I totally agree with you as you know, those conditions really are not good conditions to try not to get the COVID or try to get, you know, affected because not only even if you're a high risk, your environment, the air pollution, the type of energy in your area is also a factor that increases your chances of getting that. And so it's really a systemic problem that we need to fix a real root cause. I guess I want to really start out now with your definition. If you could define the phrase revolutionary power, what you mean by that, what the concept is, that would be great. You know, it's interesting. I have struggled to kind of come up with a succinct definition of it. But the one that I've been landing on, and I think people will come up with their own definitions actually, that's one of the, the hopes I have for the book. But it's, it's sintering the voices, the hopes, the dreams of those who are most impacted by the energy system in this energy transition. And so that's, that doesn't sound radical to someone like me who's been in this space for a little while, but it is absolutely radical in terms of the way that we approach energy policy today. And it's using, revolutionary power is using the energy system as a vehicle to advance civil rights and social change. So that's, I think I'll, I'll, I'll leave it there. That's perfect. And I don't want to give too big of a spoiler alert, but you also, you also alluded to it as well. At the very end of the book, you said, you know, take these stories, these messages that I've given you this empowerment of the tools, the big picture of these systems, these, these grids or energy situation where we're at, and make the stories your own, add to them, make them personal to where you're living, whether it's the Bronx, whether it's Hamburg, Germany, whether wherever, and, and, and, and connect the dots and then tell your story, but spread the word and, and, and empower yourself to, to join in this revolution. It's really a revolution for a better future. But, but I mean, you, you honestly, one of the things I was so excited about when I knew we were going to have our, our discussion is you empower women and girls, you exude diversity, you exude, you know, gender equality in your beliefs and basic rights, social rights for, for humanity that you, you want it for all, you teach about it, you empower people and so I'm so excited because I can see that throughout your book with the tools on, on through stories, and that's what the story is, is empowerment tools to, to move forward on, on how you can use that in a very positive way, you know, not, there's very, not, not, I don't see negativity or anything, you know, the type of revolutionary words that we would use in any way. So it's a very positive movement and I'm with you. So I'm totally with you. Thank you so much. I want to, maybe if you could tell us a little bit more, if there was a specific moment or time where the social disjustice specifically in the energy, but in other areas were kind of bubbled to the surface for you and you said, I can't continue. I've got to say something, I've got to change, I've got to be that voice, I've got to announce the time. Was there a moment or was it a transition or journey over time? Oh my gosh, there's so much that you've just shared that is resonating on such a deep level and I just want to acknowledge that, you know, you're moving words. So it's interesting. I mean, this journey really started in Mexico. I used to be a corporate lawyer and so way back in 2008, during President Obama's electoral season and during the financial crisis of the global financial crisis of that year, I found myself in Japan. And I was a young lawyer working in Japan, sort of head down, the world was falling apart. It was the hottest year on record. We just elected our first black president and there was such hope about what might be next.  And meanwhile, my family was underemployed or unemployed in the United States. And I was, it was just this moment of great dissonance. And I would say for me, living in Tokyo during that time, so I lived there, 2008, 2009, was the wake up call. And then I bought a one way ticket to Mexico. And I bought that ticket. Not really sure where I was headed or what was going to happen. But I wanted to learn Spanish. I maybe wanted to work against fossil fuel companies in Latin America, didn't know where it was very naive. And I was old enough to know better. But during that time, I actually met indigenous people who were fighting against large scale wind development. And that was the moment where I realized that everything I had learned up until that point could be used in service of social justice. And it was sort of like that, you know, lightning bolt moment that kind of strikes you. And at that point, I knew I couldn't turn away. And so the indigenous peoples were fighting against wind in the same way that we see communities fighting against coal and oil and gas, the same companies are the same sort of types of companies were going in, dispossessing them, dividing their neighbors, people were getting killed over clean energy. And the environmental harms were devastating. I mean, it was, it was, you know, messing with the water table, you know, they couldn't farm in the same traditional ways. And it wasn't just one wind project, right? I mean, that we can count on this one wind project for a community that's, you know, it's supplying that community. These were mega projects, some of the largest wind energy projects in the world. And now that place, Oaxaca has the highest density of onshore wind of any place in the world. But I got there just as that was getting off the ground. And I think the people there realized that they were a part of this essentially neocolonial moment, right, that they were going to be subject to this devastation, if their lives have changed, there are over 2,200 megawatts of energy in this small place called the Isthmus of Tawanta Peck. And the energy does not even flow into their homes, which is the most devastating, one of the most devastating aspects of the story for them. And so I got there at the beginning, and my career, my academic career really started with telling that story through the sort of traditional academic way. I became an expert on indigenous rights and wind and finance. And during my time in Hawaii, I saw the similar something similar playing out where the most marginalized communities in Hawaii were sort of being sought after as the location, the home for this new development, without receiving any of the benefits. And these are the same communities that were paying a lot more for electricity. I mean, Hawaii is ridiculous in terms of how much people pay. But I saw a real opportunity for them to benefit from that state's transition. And so, you know, your question was, when did I, how? It sounds like it was a journey over time. It wasn't like a lightning strike, but it was more and more, you were seeing things, or you're like, oh, this is injustice. This is not right. Yeah. And there were multiple inflection points. And then it wasn't until I really left Hawaii that I thought, I have something to say here. And, you know, I know you get a lot of authors on your show and they talk about the writing process, I'm sure. And for me, I mean, I had written, so I had the opportunity to go back to Mexico 10 years after my initial time to go as a Fulbright scholar and study how energy, the energy transition, you know, was continuing to unfold. And I spent a lot of time in the Yucatan Peninsula, which is gorgeous and lovely and Mayan country and just so rich culturally and great activists and communities there. And I thought my book was, and so I wrote a book proposal when I was on my Fulbright and I said, this is the book I'm going to write. And I got back to the United States. And I don't know why, but something said, it was just sort of serendipitous. Someone introduced me to Island Press, my publisher. And they said, I think she's writing a book.  And I said, yeah. But the book that came out was really this domestic story. It wasn't about Mexico. And you asked me about sort of being an outlier in the Academy. The Mexico book would have been very doctrinal, very legalistic, very, you know, standard kind of legal book. This book that wanted to come out is deeply personal.  And my dad was with me because my father passed away. And he had a story to tell in this book. You know, my mom, my family, there were stories that needed to be told. And this is the one that came out very quickly. And so it turns out that it's a book for this moment. And I don't own it. I'm grateful to be the conduit for that story. I I can't take credit for what I experienced. I'm just the vessel to disseminate those lessons. And so it is with humility that I present the work to the world. Thank you so much. Do you have any specific stories about social injustice, this justice that specific towards the energy sector that maybe the most of us are in the dark about that would be good to know and hear about that you would like to touch upon? Sure. I mean, you know, I think I do want to uplift the Mexico story because it is one that is devastating. You know, we think about plunder of a place in the oil and gas and coal context. But Mexico is very much an exemplar of what happens when you do clean energy development using the same logics of fossil fuel development. So extractive, large footprint, you know, not paying attention to social and environmental rights. And we have Indigenous communities in Oaxaca who are continuing to fight for their humanity in the clean energy transition. And I think that's the point I really want to make there is that clean energy again can replicate inequality if we're not careful. I think there's an injustice going on right now in the United States regarding COVID. And so we have folks who are underemployed or unemployed due to this ongoing financial crisis that had they had nothing to do with. And there were all sorts of policies and essentially policies and orders that were adopted throughout the summer saying we can't disconnect these folks from electricity because, you know, there's this financial shock and we want to we have a state of emergency. So there was protection in general throughout the summer and early fall. And now those protections have been lifted. And so what that means is people can be shut off from electricity. So we think about the sort of human needs, the basic needs that we were talking about earlier, we think about housing, we think about water access, but electricity is often not a part of that. The fact that so many people are being disconnected or have the threat of being disconnected from electricity during a time when everyone's being asked to go inside and shelter in place, during a time when children are being asked to use computers and other electrical devices to educate themselves to me as a human rights violation. And so that's going on right now where folks are with facing those threats. And then on the back end, we don't know what the economy is going to look like in March or April or May. Are these people going to be able to go back to any sort of jobs? Or, you know, will they continue to flounder? I mean, I'm hoping that this new administration and the Congress will create real economic benefits for these folks. But they're going to be facing back payments because of all the, they're called the rear edges. They're going to be facing those due to the lapses in their financial financial flow in the last several months. So that's an emergency that I would say that is invisible because it's not being kicked out of your home. It's being, it's sitting in your home in the dark. It is. So I don't even want to talk too much or broach the oompa-loompa, but as there's pardons going on or discussions of that, I really think our president, elect Biden, when he gets in office, not only should fix the U.S. electoral system, but also that there should be some pardons made immediately of all those people affected during the pandemic, not a stimulus check. I mean, that's fine. And that's another debate, but some pardons, the bond, basic needs, rights, electricity, utilities, and those things that people aren't left.  Biden's talked about college debt. This is another form of life debt. It's a basic needs, basic rights, and dealt with it in many different ways during the beginning of the pandemic. Parents were all of a sudden becoming teachers. They were trying to get their kids enough computers and educate them at home and their domestic violence was on the rise and they were trying to, now they went from a parent to also being a school teacher and educator, finding enough computers and whatever. The infrastructure wasn't there for this type of new, yeah, this new view of our human zoos in 24-7 where every family member or person is now in the space and you get this microscopic view of what that infrastructure looks like. Is there enough space? Is there enough energy? Is there enough computers? Is there enough internet? Is on and on of what to do? Yeah. It's just mind boggling the assumptions that were built into the policy responses to COVID, right? The policy, I mean, the assumptions were, okay, we're going to shelter in place. We're going to shut everything down. But that means some people are still working. Some people can't shelter in place. Some people, you know, live in homes that have multi-generations with vulnerable people in them. You know, not everyone has a computer, as you said. So the policy responses were built for the affluent middle-class American, right? So those folks were taken care of. And then we didn't create a safety net, right?  You think my grocery store checker wants to be there working, is taking pride in being a front-line worker? That person wants to be home. And what if they have kids? Who's taking care of those kids? Because those kids can't go to school. So, I mean, our policy responses were completely misguided with assumptions baked in concerning, you know, what types of resources people had at their disposal. So, yeah, I'm... I'm a multifaceted crazy thing. There's a lot more we have to do going forward. And I absolutely, we do not want to return to business as usual as the world economic form has said, you know, the great reset. And as one way to put it, we definitely need to create some new systems and fix those ones that have come bubbling to the surface that we've really seen microscope on last year and the beginning of this year as well. We need to fix those. And because it just doesn't affect us, I'm in Hamburg, Germany, but you know, my heart's in the U.S. as well. And I feel for the things you guys are going through and feel and see that as well. And so, that's another reason I really like that it's very timely book and it addresses those things in the book. And I'm going to ask you my hardest question that I have for you today. Okay, hopefully I can answer it. Let's see if you start sweating. No, it's not that bad. It's the, yeah, it's the burning question, WTF. And it's not the swear word, although many people have been asking themselves that and pulling out their hair this year. It's actually, what's the future? Oh, love it. What's the future?  What's your future? What's the future? Yeah, there is a capital F and a little F, right? There's sort of the big F future. And the little F for me is it's going to be a dark time for the next, I would say, two years at least, maybe more as we reckon with ourselves in this country and our role in creating the global climate crisis. And I think the next two years are going to be a time of dealing with who we are and looking at ourselves in the mirror and also understanding those connections, you know, the structural violence, our imperial appetite, our appetite for consumption, the systems that we have erected on top of a very infected social structure. We are going to be reckoning with that. And you could see it in the last Wednesday's insurrection where there was initially a shock. But then things sort of sort of sort of settled into their their usual places. But there were even some in the middle who didn't know whether they were going to go on the side of racial justice or go with the sort of saddest quo and say, we need to move on. So I think we'll see more and more moments. I mean, I'm sad to say that. But we are in a moment of incredible unrest and instability in this country. And I think until we reckon with who we are, that's our future. Little F. But the big F is that light will prevail and that we will end up in a place of justice. And this is sort of some of the concepts I was playing with in the last chapter, which was very much a fictional account of what I think might happen. Climate changes here, it's going to be devastating. It is already underway. The the justice that we're fighting for on climate is for future generations. We're amidst a transition in terms of climate. That's undisputable. And I think the science is there on that. But we have an opportunity to really create an energy system that allows us to be more resilient in the face of that. And so the the capital F, I think, is one where we have reckoned with ourselves in terms of the social injustice and the racial injustice that exists. And we've created a world where everyone has access to those basic rights that you talked about, Mark, including energy, including water, including internet, you know. And so I'm looking I'm working toward that future. And I am not cynical enough to believe that it's not possible. I think I think it's something that we can do. You got the answer right, my goodness. Yeah, no, I've never had the same answer twice. And yours was very beautiful. Thank you for that. It's so important that we we think about that question. What's the future? Because if we don't know what the future is, that means we don't have a plan, which means we'll never reach it. It's just like a map or a compass on a ship or a boat or or an airplane or whatever. If you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there. And so we need to have some form of plans. And there's some global plans out there. You know, one is the Sustainable Development Goals of Paris Agreement, the Green New Deal, the New Deal. You know, there's there's many out there that we we've heard about, maybe not many, less than a handful. But unless we know about them, unless we're working towards them, we're never going to achieve it. We're going to wait for someone to deliver the future to us. And I think we will be sorely disappointed if we're waiting for some of the crazy leaders we have today to deliver those futures to us or even even others will be disappointed. We need to realize we're on the spaceship Earth. We're all crew members, none of us are passengers.  The most of the time you are able to grab the steering wheel and be a crew member to guide your direction, the Earth's direction of where we want to go in the future.  And even though, you know, said at the end is a little bit your vision of the future, what your best case scenario or what you would hope and wish for. But I believe it's very achievable. It's very doable for us. I want to get some clarification on three other little points that you make in the book. And there are also some, I guess, teasers or hopefully not spoilers, but it will move people to read the book. Tell me about solar segregation and what you mean about energy segregation. Exactly what that means and maybe there's not just one definition. There's a couple instances where you've seen that. Can you tell us a little more about that? Sure. So, you know, that concept really connects back to our earlier discussion around how the solar industry has sort of targeted whether that's directly or indirectly, you know, certain communities for solar development and left others behind. And we now have several studies showing that communities of color simply have less access to solar. And so it's a provocative term because we know what segregation is, but we don't think about that in the context of solar. But we absolutely have a disparity in terms of access to rooftops, top solar, and black and brown communities in this country simply don't have the same access. So that's really what I meant by solar segregation. And it's one I actually heard, Seth Spears, who's the founder of Solstice Solar and out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, used in a talk. And I said, oh, I used that in my book. And so, you know, we're friends, but I think it's a concept that resonates in terms of its construct. Yeah, so there is some change on the horizon. There are some things that are moving. And I think specifically for certain countries, specific locations that we're at, indigenous communities, we're seeing some differences in that. I want to give you a positive story and maybe whisper to any of my listeners, I have some high level friends at IKEA who listen to the show. I've worked on projects with them before. But IKEA in India sells solar panels. And they sell them to people of color, very impoverished, very poor, shopping at IKEA. And they're taking to their shanty huts to their, to their, you know, slum areas, some bad areas, they're taking some of those things back to put on the roof and to create energy for internet, for school, for to do work, you know, things like that. So now we need to see IKEA in the US and IKEA in Europe and other places offer those same type of solutions at an affordable price, you know. And I don't know what, in Germany, the rules around renewable energy, especially solar, is you have to be connected to the grid. You have to be able to pay back to the grid and exchange back and forth. That's the way it works with solar in Europe. I don't know in the US how it always works about being connected to the grid, if you can have your own little solar panels on the house and how all that has worked and evolved over the years. But empowering at the lowest level, those people who, you know, shop at the Ikea's or shop at the local markets to even understand there's alternatives. There's other options available. Here's how you have your entry point at a price point that may eventually be affordable to you. That's a great story. I'd love to see spread around. And they do a lot of things with the UN and refugee camps and things with the UNCHR as well, Ikea does tents and other things. But I would love to see some more innovators, sustainable innovators and some really pioneers go out there and kind of push our lobbyists, our policymakers and those local communities to deliver those services that are needed for everybody. I mean, whether you live in an apartment or a home, you should be able to put a solar panel on your balcony or on your roof or have some kind of a little auction. I agree, which also provides you with some resilience in times where the grid may fail or where you can't pay your utilities and the local infrastructure decides to shut your utilities off. That's right. That's right. And in places like Arizona and Hawaii, the utility has pushed against that wider proliferation of rooftop solar, wanting to sort of maintain control over the system. So it's quite stark. I mean, this is a human rights issue, I think. It is. Yeah, it really is a human rights issue. And there's two last things I want to touch on in the book. And we've kind of already touched on some of them as well. But climate change fundamentalism, how do we end it or how is it ending? What is it? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love it.  And in the context of advocates who were solely focused on greenhouse gas reductions, you know, reducing carbon emissions without focusing on the social justice dimensions of this transition. And so they sort of just said, we need more large scale energy or whatever, whatever their drama is that they're beating, but we can't afford to focus on issues of social justice because we don't have time. So then they become fundamentalists in their perspective concerning climate change. And so I've seen that play out in Hawaii.  And, you know, I think one way to disrupt that narrative is to first call it out, right, to illustrate the ways in which it is limited and that eventually you're going to butt up against issues of social unrest or social injustice. And so it's ultimately going to be ineffective and we're still going to have the most vulnerable people, you know, migrating because of climate change and not able to adapt, not able to be resilient in the face of weather events. So it's a bad solution, sort of on the merits, but it's a bad solution just in terms of our moral obligations. And so I think we call it out. And then we also create alliances. We see some of the major environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, like Environmental Defense Fund, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, finally coming around to these ideas that, oh, equity needs to be a part of what we do. And unfortunately, they have not trained themselves to understand equity. So they're kind of going into communities now and trying to connect with communities around these issues. But because of the history, because of the ways in which they've burned some of these communities in the past and gone against them on issues of justice, there's still some healing that needs to be done in repairing those relationships. So we're in this, we're in this reckoning where the reckoning is happening also within the environmental community. And we have the justice-centered folks who are now getting a bigger voice in the environmental space and they're sort of disrupting this narrative around climate change fundamentalism. I love that. So I deal with that a lot in many different aspects. There's so too many to name veganism, biofuels, bioreactors. We made a big push on that a while ago and it's come back to bite us because it was just a bad idea. We need more systemic approach that addresses all the multiple facets of environment and climate and to get rid of this extremism. It's almost fundamentalism in some respects. It's this blinder view on just one siloed approach for the solution. There is no silver bullet. I'm sorry, there is no silver bullet. You need to take a systemic approach and really address all those aspects. Yeah, there are some positives around it but to to leave out so Indigenous and social justice and it's just, it's just horrific. The last one we did touch upon on credit but it's really about the utility reform lynchpin. You want to say a little bit more about that and at all kind of explain a little bit more on what that is. Sure, so I would say there are two, I mean, I think every chapter in the book is important but it would say sort of foundational pieces of this transition are or key aspects of the transition are reforming our utility sector and access to finance. We talked a lot about the access to finance piece and the problems with people being able to get the financing they need to put rooftop solar on or participate in community energy. So that's one thing. On the utility reform side, I think we've just got to grapple with what justice looks like in the utility sector. We have created a system that is incentivized to build crap and and to charge us for it and you know whether or not that infrastructure is needed and whether or not that's the the most just path toward this clean energy transition. So they're incentivized to build things. They're incentivized to sell energy, sell electricity, whether or not it's based on a clean grid or a dirty one. And so I think we have to really take a hard look at the business model that that is the current dominant model and I'm thinking mainly about the investor-owned utility model in the United States. We have the public power model which is you know more municipally driven. You could argue that a state-owned grid is another public model or cooperatively owned model which has been problematic in some places but is another way to kind of think about you know the people owning their own electricity. So yeah that's I think until we figure out how to properly incentivize investor-owned utilities or really understand the best business model in general or the best sort of governance model. It's more of a governance model for the utility sector. I think we're still going to be budding up against some resistance in terms of a just clean energy transition because the IOUs are the ones stopping rooftop solar in this country. They are the ones kind of stopping innovation around communities owning their own energy assets and we've got to deal with them if we're going to make sure that this transition allows for the economic justice that I think it pretends. Here's my last hardest question for you. It's really similar to the WTF but it is what does a world that works for everyone look like for you? You know it's almost hard to even imagine that right because we're so far from it. It is one where we don't have benefits programs because everyone is on equal footing right. We don't need I mean I guess we have a social safety net but it's not because people are falling it's because their baseline is just so much higher and so that's a world in which every child born into the world has the opportunity to live his or her their potential right where their zip code doesn't determine life outcomes or the race doesn't determine their outcomes or ethnicity or skin color and it's one where the government has provided a substantial foundation for upon which everyone can thrive and that's that's the best future for me and that means across dimensions it means in the energy sector it means you know health and education it is it is just a place where you know we sprout like trees you know and flowers and you can just really shine in living our potential. That's beautiful thank you very much the last three questions I have for you are selfish takeaways for my listeners. I want you to kind of give them a sustainable takeaway that has the ability to empower them or to get them to look at their how they can apply it into their lives or see the world differently so if there was one message that you could depart to my listeners that had the power to change their life what would it be your method? Oh wow you know you mentioned sustainability and I think it's it's a noble goal as well as resilience these are noble goals the question the disruptive question I will ask is what are we sustaining right are we sustaining a system that is inherently unjust and unequal and what are we making more resilient as we move forward are we making our unequal and inequitable structures more resilient as we as we harden and prepare for the what's ahead so let us be disruptive in how we think about these two concepts that are such a big part of the discourse around climate what are we sustaining and how are we contributing to inequality and what are we rendering resilient as we move forward so I think that's okay that definitely answers the question um what should young lawyers innovators in the energy sector renewable transition be thinking about if they're looking for real ways to make impact? Yeah find your allies on the ground talk to people who are living it and there are so many community organizations around the world and I've connected with them where folks are fighting for breath they're fighting for life they're fighting for clean water and so align yourself with them communicate with them because you have such power as an educated person as someone who understands technology and you can translate what they are experiencing into your work or at least it can inform your the way you do your work so this is about stitching together that society that I talked about right it's stitching together that community through those relationships. What have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start? Keep trusting your instinct keep trusting your intuition and I have followed it but it's been scary at times not knowing if you know when I leapt if the ground was really going to be there but it will be and I'm continuing to be on this journey I'm halfway through my life and I'm so excited about the next half. That's all I have for you today it's been absolutely wonderful I thank you so much for being on the show and if there's anything else that you might have left out or you'd like to say now's your opportunity otherwise I'm going to wish you a wonderful day. Oh wow well it's just been such a pleasure to be on this call and in this conversation with you and thank you so much for reading the book and for the care that you with which you read it and thank you for allowing me to elevate this message of energy justice and revolutionary power. You're most welcome you're most welcome revolutionary power a activist guide to energy transitions wonderful book and thank you so much Shalanda I really appreciate you being on the show and I hope we can have a follow-up very soon please take care. Thank you so much have a great day. Take care.


Welcome to Stand the Energy Man. I'm Stan Osterman from the White Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. Hope you guys had a safe 4th of July weekend. We certainly did. We had a great time. I got a special guest today.  So I'm really honored. We've got Paul Ponteo from Blue Planet Research, one of my favorite places to visit over in Puvava on the Big Island. And we're going to talk to Paul about what's going on on the Big Island. But first of all, Paul, welcome to the show. Thanks, Stan. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your background? Because you had a pretty interesting background on how you ended up in Hawaii and your upbringings in Louisiana and all that stuff. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. And my background started off as doing construction work from building houses to building roads. Then I became a machinist and did engineering work for the offshore industry and safety products. From there, I got into architecture and ended up coming to Hawaii to do architecture. I spent about 20 years doing architecture here in Hawaii. And then eventually moved to the Big Island after I met Hank Rogers and went over there to do some architectural projects. And eventually, we got into energy and went full-time working on energy projects, renewable energy. So that's where I'm at now. And a fine job you're doing, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate all your support. I think some of the best tours you can get when you want to see a really sustainable environment, a microgrid, if you will. The ranch is really a great place to go. So thanks for your support when we send folks over there to look at that. It's the old saying, seeing is believing. When you really see it in action, it makes a great impression. Access education is so important, especially for subjects like hydrogen. There's very little public knowledge about hydrogen. And being able to show people the reality of it, the safety and the efficiency makes a big difference. Well, we're bringing Paul over here for a couple of things. Not just to be on the show, but later on this month, Rachel James, my sidekick down at HCAP, and some kids from the Center for Tomorrow's Leaders are going to be converting a gem electric low-speed vehicle. We're going to put a hydrogen fuel extender on it. So Paul came over to help us do our first dry run, putting it together, so we're ready for the students. So Robert, if you can bring that gem picture up, I'll show folks what the vehicle looks like. And there it is. It's a great little vehicle. All electric, has a speed governor on it at 25 miles an hour, but it's actually street legal to go anywhere in the state. 35 mile an hour zone or less. And so we use it to zip around town when we have meetings at the Capitol or downtown at D-bed or anything. And it's a great little vehicle, but we're going to take up some of that bed in the back there to put a hydrogen fuel cell in. And Paul came over to help us look at that. What do you think? Do you think it's going to be pretty easy? Yeah, I think it's a pretty straightforward conversion. It's nice about electric vehicles like that. They're all at 48 volts. It matches most fuel cells really, really well. Well, let's talk about the big one a little bit. We've got a picture of some of the PV that you put on the lab that you designed. As an architect, you've designed the whole lab and I've been there. The PV is really just a close-up of the PV, but the building itself is a great design. And I've always wanted to compliment you on that. It's a good form follows function for what you guys do. It's a nice, cool design. It takes advantage of the south-facing roof to get the PV max exposure. It's a good passive design going back to the old ways of designing buildings, especially in Hawaii. And then for working hydrogen inside, it's kind of self-venting. So hydrogen zooms out of there when you need it to. Yeah, we feel safer because of that. So tell us a little bit about the building itself. What were you thinking about when you put it together? What are some of the things you were thinking? Well, when we built the building, the idea was to put solar on the roof. So that's why it's on a shed pitch of 20 degrees. But originally, we were going to do a grid tie to be utility. And that turned into a more difficult process than we thought at first. And that was kind of the impetus for us to go off grid completely. And it was kind of a blessing in disguise because doing that, we learned so much about batteries, about storage technologies, and the electrical systems that we became pretty adept at it. And now that's pretty much what we do full-time. We design renewable energy systems, microgrids, and storage products.  I think we've got a couple pictures coming up of some of the folks that visited. Like, there's this governor that we happen to know to get keen interest in seeing what you do in your lab. Yeah, so that's where they were showing the hydrogen-watt burner conversion. And basically what he's doing is feeling the moisture in the heat right now, the humidity in the flame. Hydrogen, when it burns, creates water vapor with the oxygen in the air, and you get a nice, moist heat out of it. Very hot, but still some water vapor. And part of the demonstration that the governor saw, you also go right down next to the flame laterally, and you don't feel the heat. Why is that? Yeah, that's because of the lack of carbon and hydrogen fuel. It's one element hydrogen. Without the carbon, it doesn't radiate heat. The heat goes straight up. So you can literally put your finger about one-eighth of an inch from a flame on the side without burning. Yeah, and I've done it. It's very hot. It's pretty impressive. People don't believe it's really true until you do it yourself. Yeah, so we invite people to actually do it, bring their hand there, and warn them not to go over just on the side. The governor did that, right? He did it. Yeah. So if any of you visiting the governor, you can talk to the governor about his experience up there. I think the next shot we have is kind of rolls us into the hydrogen piece a little further. You have a unit there that's a dispenser made by a millenium rain, and it's actually, the unit looks a lot like our dispenser on Cook Street, but this one is strictly just the storage and dispensing, correct? Yes. So the reason we have hydrogen is to take advantage of the excess energy, just like with the utility company when they have the curtail power, because the demand is not great enough. We have the same issue at the ranch with our large PV array. We have more energy than we can use, especially in the early mornings when it's very sunny. So hydrogen makes really good sense at that point to take the excess energy and store it in the form of hydrogen. And then we can use that later for cooking. We can use it to turn back into electricity with fuel cells, for mobility with fuel cell vehicles, and even internal combustion engine vehicles. One of the critiques that I always get back when I have a discussion, especially with somebody who's kind of battery centric only, they just say the round-trip efficiency for hydrogen, this isn't there, so why bother? Yeah, well, if people realize that the internal combustion engines on the cars are only about 20 to 25% efficient, then a 50% efficient fuel cell or anything else sounds really good, but true, batteries are more efficient. We have batteries that are 97% efficient. But again, you're looking at the range issues of batteries where hydrogen eliminates that. Yeah, so I tell folks that when you're dealing with anything in transportation, weight's a big factor, whether it's airplanes or cars or trucks or even ships other than ballast, which they have to have. But weight makes a big difference, and that's where the hydrogen has to get a balance over batteries is in weight. Yeah, even with lithium batteries, they're much heavier than a fuel cell and the storage for the hydrogen. And storing the hydrogen, how complicated is that? And like a battery discharges, whether you have it plugged into anything or not, but the hydrogen, you know, tell us. Yeah, well, hydrogen has no self-discharge properties. The energy stays there literally forever unless it leaks out. It's always going to be there. So you can store it for years and it's going to have the same amount of energy as the day you filled it. And the embrittlement sometimes brought up too in the discussions. Is there really any significant degradation to like metal tanks because of embrittlement? I think the industry has identified what metals can really be safely used for long term. There aren't many embrittlement issues anymore. But what's funny is our friend Ryan McAllister has a cylinder that's used for hydrogen that actually came from World War II, or actually World War I. And it still passes the hydrostatic test. Yes, I think it's 1917 as the date stepped on it. It's not embrittled yet. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So another shot, we're talking about vehicle transportation, but this is actually the internal workings of a hydrogen forklift power pack that you've taken all the ballast off of so we could just see the fuel cell and the tank itself and all the control mechanisms. Can you tell us a little bit about this work that you did here? Yeah, this was actually a plug powered gen drive that's used for forklifts. So to replace the lead acid batteries in the forklift, you've got to match the weight of the lead acid for ballast. So this normally comes in case than about 3,000 pounds of cast iron. So what we did was take the cast iron off and mount the components on an aluminum frame. So it became kind of like an invisible or the thin man kind of display where you can see all the components inside. It's a portable generator at that point. And how powerful is that generator? That's an 11 kilowatt fuel cell stack. Okay, so to put it in perspective, my house is 21 kilowatt hours a day. So that one generator there that fits on a little trolley is enough to power my house, you know, for two days at about four of your neighbors. Yeah, so it's way more powerful than I need for my house. Yeah, with a full tank, you could run about 30 to 35 kilowatt hours of energy off that. Yeah, so that's way more than I need for my house. What would be the deal with like spikes in your microgrid when you have kind of like a battery buffer system in your microgrid with a fuel cell? So can you kind of tell us how the relationship is between the batteries and the fuel cells? The fuel cells need some type of buffer storage between them and the load that they're supplying. In the case of the plug power gen drive there, these ultracapacitors. So that takes the place of batteries. But lithium batteries or any type of battery would do the same thing. But lithium has much better performance for spikes and handling load changes quickly. Yeah, lithium is really kind of popular right now. And you told me one time that car batteries will just kind of slowly die off, but the lithium battery holds a pretty steady state till it's almost discharged. Anybody who has power tools, they run until they stop. Yeah, but then they just stop. Yeah, they charge pretty quickly. What are some of the drawbacks safety-wise with lithium batteries that you're aware of? Well, most lithium batteries contain cobalt as one of the chemical components of the battery. And that has the advantage of being fairly energy-gents and lightweight. And the drawbacks are on the safety side. So for a power tool, a computer, even a car, it's not such a big issue. But when you start putting stationary storage inside of buildings or houses, then it becomes more of an issue. They have a tendency to go into thermal runaway if something goes wrong. So consequently, they normally need liquid cooling kind of like a radiator system on a car. The chemistry that we use is lithium ferrous phosphate made from olivine. And it doesn't have the thermal management issues that the cobalt has. They literally can't catch on fire unless you actually put them in a fire. And then the components and the casing will burn as well as some of the organic solvent that batteries are made with. Well, we're going to take a quick break and talk about some of the other things going on at Think Tech here. Then we'll be back with Paul Pontiou in about 60 seconds. A show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic. We identify those areas where we do have problems in the state, but also the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions, not just detail our problems. So join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apachella. Thank you. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii. 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stan Hendryman here with Paul Pontiou from Blue Planet Research over on Poovaba on the Big Island. And we were talking about batteries and fuel cells. And one of the things that we talked about was that for transportation, the hydrogen fuel cell makes a big difference because you don't have a lot of weight to deal with. And that's good in stationary applications. The batteries make a lot more sense because they're a lot more efficient. You don't have to worry about the weight. It's just sitting there. But there are some other safety issues that you do have to think about. And there's some great new technology come out that Paul's actually working with on the Big Island. But let's talk about the nail test that you looked at as you got into your new technology and the batteries with the cobalt versus the olivine. Our blue line batteries are actually made with Sony components. And Sony uses the lithium ferrous phosphate chemistry. They actually do an industry standard nail test which simulates damage to the battery. And they literally drive a nail through one of the cells and shorts out the battery internally. And with the LFP, the ferrous phosphate, you look at it and you watch it and nothing happens. And then all of a sudden you see a little bit of a drip coming out of the end. That's the organic solvent starting to boil off internally. And then that's it. It discharges and nothing else happens.  And that's because lithium cobalt can release all of its energy very quickly. The ferrous phosphate can't, which is why it's not the best choice for cars. Tesla likes to have a ludicrous mode where you can accelerate to like 60 in 3.2 seconds. Ferrous phosphate wouldn't be able to do that. But for stationary storage, you really don't want your battery to discharge that quickly anyway. So it's an ideal chemistry for that. The issue is it's a little bit more expensive than cobalt. And not because of the chemistry, the ingredients are actually cheaper. The chemicals used are cheaper than the cobalt. But it's not manufactured to the scale of the cobalt. Okay. Well, I think we have an image coming up of one of those Sony batteries assemblies anyway. You can't really see the batteries because they're inside the container. But this is a fairly new development that you're working on on the ranch. Can you explain what the project's all about? Yeah, this is our Blue Lion M-Series battery. It's a utility class 1 megawatt-hour battery. So this installation right here is powering the community water system. To the left of the battery, kind of out of the frame, is the actual water well. The community's water is pumped up from 2,500 feet deep. And it takes a lot of energy to do that. So we've been planning this project now for quite a while. It took a long time to get the lease from the state for the land. But this summer, by the end of the summer, we'll start construction on a field of PV array that will power the well and actually charge the battery. So this will become somewhat of an off-grid battery. We're actually working with the local utility at Helco to grid tie it and do what we call more of a UPS system where the battery could take over even if the utility wasn't there. But we'll also shift the load so that when the battery's charged, we can run the pump at night off of the battery. And save some money for the customers. When you pump from 2,500 feet, the utility bill is pretty high. And it's basically the customers of the water system are watering their lawns with bottled water. It's that expensive. So this will save some money for the customers. And it's actually a fixed price for the next 20 years. So it sounds encouraging that Helco's kind of leaning in and saying they'd like to see how this works. Well, with the governor's mandate and the utility stepping up to try to meet the renewable mandate, they're going to need storage. So it's important for them to start getting data and information about different storage technologies, different chemistries. So that's what we're planning on doing is sharing the data that we collect on the batteries. We have our own control system that does all the monitoring and control. It's called EMC. And that data will be logged historically and we'll be able to go back and look at all the performance parameters under different conditions. Okay. Share that. As I kind of challenged over here on Oahu with trying to implement more hydrogen into our infrastructure, and I keep running into the conflict of, well, batteries are more efficient round-trip energy-wise, but hydrogen is what I need for transportation. It's more efficient on wheels. You know, we're trying to get the whole electric over here to understand that even on the megawatt scale, hydrogen can be good energy storage when you have curtailed power. And it helps the transportation sector. So I'm trying to convince people that we really no longer have two separate grid and a transportation energy thing. It's all becoming one thing. On your ranch, that's essentially what you've done. You've merged the transportation hydrogen piece with stationary energy storage with batteries and hydrogen and running your grid. I know you've had it up for what, three years now? Going on for almost four years. How's it working? It's working great. And like you said, the marriage of hydrogen and batteries is actually the perfect marriage. Scale-wise, we run into this all the time talking about the efficiencies of different technologies and chemistries. That container holds one megawatt hour of electrical battery storage. In that same space, you could put almost five megawatt hours of hydrogen stored. But you still need both. You need the quick response and performance of the battery. And just like the vehicles, the hydrogen is more of a range extender. So it makes the battery last longer at a more economical price after a while. But we need to have the cost of fuel cells come down, which will happen over time because like everything else, it's a scale issue. So as that becomes less expensive, it'll make more sense to start building hybrid batteries that are components of hydrogen and lithium batteries. It's something I learned talking to some folks at Verge a couple of weeks ago at a conference that was here. The automotive industry, I think Toyota specifically, has gotten the amount of platinum used in their fuel cells down to basically the equivalent amount of platinum used in a catalytic converter on an internal combustion engine. So like you said, the price keeps coming down as we find improvements on how to basically get the surface thinner and thinner and thinner with the precious metals so that you get the reaction but you have a lot more surface area. And you don't have just stacks of metals saying they're not reacting with stuff. And that's where nanotechnology is going to really play an important role. And that's going to change everything from batteries to fuel cells to things that we touch every day in our normal lives. And the nanoscale is something that people aren't really used. We're not really equipped to deal with with our brains. And the best example I give usually on the tours is if you took a cubic centimeter of carbon nanotube, which is roughly the size of a small shooter cube, if you could measure the surface area of all the tubes, there's over 9,000 square meters of surface area in something this big. Wow. So that's nanoscale. And what's keeping us from really reaching that plateau and getting batteries and fuel cells? I mean, to really be able to use that technology, is it just... Well, we kind of started late. And now with the attention and the focus being on battery storage for both vehicles and for stationary storage for homes, the industries have been pumping more and more money into R&D. So it's an exponential type of growth. So I would say that in the next five years, what we're talking about right now will be completely different than what we're seeing now. So it's going to change the industries quite a bit. And it'll bring it into a price point that everybody's going to be looking for. I always joke and say, when you see them at Costco on the shelf, you'll know they're there. But you'll have to buy two. You'll have to buy twice as many as you need to get two of them. So what was I going to say? We have, with the carbon, basically those nanofibers are carbon layers. They're one atom thick carbon, right? Yeah. And you mentioned Roy before. And he's got the, and still has a dream of the injectors and metron and those kind of things for transportation. How do you see that concept of a liquid fuel that sequesters carbon on the way into the engine using exhaust heat to sequester the carbon and use that carbon as basically a commodity that you can then sell to make nanotechnology and then hydrogen going into the engines? Is that starting to pan out? Is Roy doing much more work on that? He's moving on it. You know, carbon kind of has a bad reputation because of CO2 and everybody. It's a household word now, carbon this, carbon that. But carbon is actually one of the most valuable things that we could be utilizing to make durable goods. And the internal combustion engine kind of gets a bad rap because of its history and because of pollution. But when you run an engine on hydrogen, it not only doesn't pollute like a fuel cell or electric vehicle, but it has the added advantage of being able to clean the air as it drives through. So this is significant because, first of all, the 1.3 billion, soon to be 2 billion internal combustion engines aren't going to go away anytime soon. No matter what any car company predicts, they're going to be around for quite a long time, certainly more than our lifetime. And they're going to continue to pollute. So if those can be converted, for example, cities like Beijing could be cleaning their environment with the same things that are polluting. So there's a reason to go after both. You know, we have to do the internal combustion, we need to do the fuel cells, we need to do the pure EVs. The other thing about carbon, we talk about doing electric motors to take over everything. Well, there's a limit to supply of copper on the planet. So we need new conductors, and that's where carbon plays an important role. It's a better conductor than copper. It's lighter than aluminum, stronger than steel. Yeah, and I think you told me that three or four years ago, and I didn't believe you. So I went down to fiberglass Hawaii and I bought some carbon fiber cloth for like glassing surfboards and stuff. And I pulled a couple of strands out, and I hooked wires to them. And I could pull carbon through the thing. I'm reading it on my hand here. Yeah, and it was pretty amazing. And it didn't have any loss, really. I mean, it was very efficient, which impressed me even more. That's why graphene is so important, because at one atom thick or just a few atoms, the resistance is almost insignificant. It's not there, so things move very quickly. Why do you think we help Roy get his technology on the road then? Well, it takes money. It takes money. Money is the lubricant that makes it all work. We need to demonstrate the feasibility of it and show people. It's just like when people come to the ranch, they see that the technology is available now, that we're actually doing it. We live it every single day. And the biggest comment we get is, why aren't we all doing this? Yeah. Well, believe it or not, Paul, we're right through 30 minutes of showtime. So I want to thank you again for coming over and spending some time on us and helping me with the conversion. That's really going to help me be more confident when we have the kids in there. I hate embarrassing myself in front of high school kids, so I appreciate you coming over to help me get that over. I'm looking forward to that. I'd be happy to bring over one of my best technicians to come help us. Great. We'll work on that. Well, thanks for being with us today. And thanks to our broadcast engineer, Robert McLean, and our stage and our floor manager, Cindy Manufakai. I got it right this time, right? Thanks for being with us. Join us next week for Stanley Energy Man. Until then, Allah.


Okay everyone, hi it's Bernice here, your community outreach specialist for the Paso Sheriff's Office and today I'm at Chasco Middle School and I'm going to be showing you guys a video on the campus closet that they have here so stay tuned let's find out what it's all about the beauty of it and how all of you can help with this great program. If you're local or not so stay tuned and let's see what we can get into. I'm Belsi Soto, I am the parent liaison here at Chasco Middle School. And I am Cobra Hernandez, I am the SRO at Chasco Middle School. Boom, who you guys actually may recognize from a commercial that we filmed not too long ago just saying okay. I'm Cobra Hernandez with Paso Sheriff's Office. The reason I pulled you over this morning was because you were using your wireless communication device while driving through an active school zone. We are in the campus closet and we are at Chasco Middle School so today I just want to learn a lot about this closet and how all of our followers can help out what you guys need and just basically the backstory of this here so break it down for us. Okay the campus closet is a collaboration of Misoto and I that we got together and saw what our students need. We work at a Title I school that is at 85% free or reduced which means that 85% of our students are at or below the poverty level. So we have developed a way that they can come to us and get a new pair of sneakers, a couple pair of pants, some shirts, or even food or laundry detergent and personal hygiene items without anybody else knowing that they actually need them. How long has this campus the the closet campus been around? It was started maybe three four years ago but it never really took off. Once I came back to work last year, the whore had mentioned it to me and we started working together and it's just expanded and it's becoming a great addition to our school. So a lot of the things in the room come from local resources, correct Dave? Yes I reached out to Target and they donated three of our clothing racks and I have reached out to the community when I see them on Facebook and I have been lucky enough to have about three or four of our community members donate racks for us too and our freezer. I absolutely love that. So the freezer specifically is new and I as we can see we have a lot of canned goods behind us but what difference you know what benefit does the freezer have for you guys from here on out? Oh the freezer, we have been graciously accepted by a local pastor Troy Peterson who said that he would help us with his food donations. So here we can store milk. Milk can be frozen for up to three months absolutely and at times he gets chicken and hams and at one time he had frozen pretzels that we could give the kids. Oh that's awesome that's hard. Something that the kids can pop in the microwave and heat up themselves when they're hungry. So this gives us the ability to store some other items that we weren't able to provide earlier. That's a blessing. I just want to go ahead and say that. That's a blessing. Thank you pastor for that part. Okay so clothing you guys mentioned clothing as well but as of right now it's just for our middle school. Okay so you were taking and you guys still accept donations from anywhere so if one of our followers wanted to reach out and send in some stuff it's anywhere from socks underwear shirts, hoodies, pants and even formal items more so because I know that there is an eighth grade dance coming up. There it is. Okay okay and so you guys mentioned canned goods, boxed goods but also hygiene products. What are you looking for when it comes to hygiene products? How can we help out? Shampooes, conditioners, body wash, body sprays, toothpaste, toothbrushes, wash rags, towels. So anything along those lines and with the canned goods kid friendly food. So you guys they get breakfast and lunch here but when it comes to the summer I know you said that in the last couple of months this is taken off it's expanded and it is this room is absolutely incredible but do you guys are you still gonna be able to help out during the summer? There is a summer program on the campus it's not school it's actually the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club. That's awesome okay. They are on campus all year long. I love that okay. It is. Arlene Nunez who is the coordinator for that and okay and she could actually come over here she has the accessibility.  Absolutely. That is awesome. Is there anything else about this incredible campus closet that you guys want the people to know about? It's a project that's that it's expanding and it's a project that I still have many more plans for because I want this to look like a store and I'm slowly getting there with my volunteers thank you volunteers. Without them I think this would not be at the point that it is right now. I love I hope that it gets to a point where it just hearing how you guys have gone from the last couple years to the last couple of months that other schools are reaching out to you as well for as an example and just saying I want to do what you were doing don't know if I can do it as well but help us get there but you guys are incredible and what you're doing for the community is incredible as well. I will be sure to put information in the description below if you any of you would like to donate clothing like you can see it shoes socks underwear box goods canned goods kid friendly teenage friendly hygiene products all of it so that you can be on the lookout but don't forget to like comment subscribe and support a really good cause and you don't have to be local to help donate. We have followers everywhere and some of you come through more so than our Pasconians I'm just saying but we will see you guys next time


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Welcome to Toffey TV, it is the Everton News Daily. James Vaughan has given his first interview to Everton TV after rejoining the club from Tramio Rovers to take up the role as the loans pathway manager. Vaughan said that he couldn't refuse the opportunity to leave his role as Sporting Director at Tramio Rovers when Everton came calling. He took that role very young, 33, I think he was when he got the role of Sporting Director so really young for someone doing that job but obviously it's given him the experience of working within the game and then to come to Everton as a loans pathway manager is the next step in his career, I'm sure he's got ambitions to become Everton Sporting Director one day. But he's talking about his time at Everton so far, the meetings he's had with Gareth Proser, another new recruited person at Everton. He said there's lots of ideas, it's an exciting time and a new direction in which the club wants to be taken. Kevin Thelwell's structure has been put in place. Kevin Thelwell has been brilliant, he's fantastic to work alongside and for someone as young as me and to learn, offer him and grow into that role. Vaughan went on to say he wants to make the pathway to the first team for younger players a smooth journey as well as offering support for young players who do go out on loan. He spoke about his own experiences, obviously still the youngest Premier League goalscorer ever scoring for Everton against Crystal Palace in 2005, the fourth goal in a 4-0 win. He's played in Everton's third team, obviously scored an important penalty in the shootout against Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final in 2009 as well. He's got some great experiences playing for Everton but also experience of going on loan as a player at Everton and then on to other clubs throughout the division. So fantastically experienced in that and I think that will vary help with young players who've got the potential. The whole point of the academy is to turn players into either first team players for Everton football club or football players within the football league and therefore hopefully that then brings money back into the football club and the academy becomes self servicing. Too many players over the last kind of 10 years have just slipped away, slipped through the net. We haven't done it maybe in the correct way or maybe the structure hasn't been in place. It's not to say we haven't brought some players through in that time because we have but if there's a better way of doing it and a better way of being able to communicate with players while they're on loan. This is what a lot of football clubs are doing now as well by the way. This structure is already well in place. We have to make sure we are the best we can be.  So check it out on Everton's website, a good interview with James Vaughan. One of the players who Vaughan was involved in taking to Tramio last season on loan is young Everton, we feel the Lewis Warrington. He is now on loan at Fleetwood Town. He played last night and really impressed as Fleetwood Town beat Peterborough United 1-0. Warrington won seven duels, five tackles and one interception. He had the second most touches in the Fleetwood Town team and finished with an 82% passing accuracy. So really impressive for Scott Brown's men. They did, of course, make his Everton debut against Fleetwood Town a few weeks ago in the Karabong Cup. Mohamed Cudas remains on Everton's radar and still interested in joining Everton in the January transfer window of these stories doing the rounds again today in Holland. And this coming off the back of the fact that Cudas scored at Anfield last night during I Axis 2 on defeat in the Champions League game. He was very, very close to joining Everton in August. He was trying, he even went on strike to try and force the move through. And even though he's had a really tremendous start of the season, I think that was his sixth goal so far this season. He remains keen, apparently, to make the move to Godderson Park in January. The only complication with it would be if he continues to do what he's doing. I imagine the 9 million Everton were quoted, 9-10 million Everton were quoted in August probably will look more like 20 million come January. But that will probably rumble on. I imagine also if he continues to impress, he was brilliant against Rangers scored, against Rangers last week scored, against Liverpool this week. If he continues this, other clubs will be looking for him as well. So we'll see how we go with that one. Finally, Everton under 21 side beat Pozigies side Esi Braga 5-0 last night. Goals from Sebastian Cwirk, Stanley Mills, Isaac Price, Mackenzie Hunt and Charlie Whitaker gave the young blues a comfortable 5-0 victory. Paul Tate delighted with the way Everton pressed, the way they were out of possession and obviously the goals. The team was involved in a mass brawl during the second half after Joe Pedro's late challenge on Charlie Whitaker turned into a brawl. Paul Pedro was red carded and Everton's Joe Anderson, who'd already been substituted, was given a yellow card after charging onto the pitch to get involved. But yeah, Everton had won the game 5-0. So good they look like they're in good vein of form and Paul Tate as his side has started the season really well. That is it for the news daily. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't and if you want to join Premier the link is in the description and the QR code is on the screen now. See you later.


Let's take a look at some of the properties of vector arithmetic. So far, we know, well, none of the properties of vector arithmetic. So in the spirit of mathematics, let's play around with the properties of vector arithmetic and see if any interesting results show up. For example, one useful feature, which our underlying scalar field has, is that addition is commutative. So we might ask whether vector addition is commutative. And so we'll prove, or possibly disprove, that the vector u plus v is equal to the vector v plus u. So a good way to structure simple proofs like this is to think of them as a bridge. We have some starting point, in this case the sum of the vector u plus v, and we have some ending point, the vector v plus the vector u. What we want to determine is whether or not it's possible to go from our starting point, u plus v, to our ending point, v plus u. So we can structure it this way. We'll put down our starting point, and we'll put down our ending point, separated by some distance to give us some space to work. We then want to build a bridge from our starting point to our ending point. And if we can do that, that bridge is going to be our proof. Now remember, definitions are the whole of mathematics, all else is commentary, and so one of the most important things we can do is we can pull in any relevant definitions. And in this particular case, because we're looking at the sum of two vectors, we might want to pull in our definition for the sum of two vectors. And this tells us that the sum of two vectors is going to be found by adding the corresponding components of the two vectors.  Now a useful thing to remember is that you can build a bridge by starting at both ends and working towards the middle. And in this case, at the end of the bridge, I have the vector sum vector v plus vector u. And my definition tells me that if vector v has components v1 through vn, and vector u has components u1 through un, then this sum is going to be the vector with components v1 plus u1, v2 plus u2, and so on, up to vn plus un. And now we have that final step. Can we bridge this gap that takes us from where we left off, coming from u plus v, and where we got to, starting at v plus u? And our vector components look very similar, and the only thing that we have to worry about is whether or not u1 plus v1 is the same as v1 plus u1, whether u2 plus v2 is the same as v2 plus u2. And we're in luck, because remember these vector components came from a scalar field, and in the scalar field, addition is commutative. And so u1 plus v1 is equal to v1 plus u1, u2 plus v2 is equal to v2 plus u2, and so on. And that means we are able to bridge the gap, which means we're able to go from our starting point to our ending point, and that completes our proof. Well that worked out really nicely. Let's see if we can do something else. How about scalar associativity? So suppose I have two scalars in R and some vector in Rn. So I could multiply our vector v by b, and then multiply the result by a. Or I could multiply a and b together, and then multiply the result by v. And the question is, do I get the same thing? Well, let's check it out. Again, since this proof seems to involve scalar multiplication, let's go ahead and pull in our definition of scalar multiplication. And again, we want to build a bridge from our starting point to our ending point. So I'll write down a times the quantity b times the vector. And a definition of scalar multiplication says this is going to be a times the vector where b is multiplied by every component. And that's going to give me a times b times every component. Again, we'll work our way back a step. So ab times the vector v is going to be ab times each component of v. And in this case, my next step takes me directly to where I finished. And so I'm able to start at a times the quantity b times the vector v. And I'm able to go directly to the quantity ab times the vector. And so I have what can be called scalar associativity of scalar multiplication.