2014-12-18 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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Mr. Rolston: You’re welcome. We have the best biodiesel for transportation fuel; we have the best biodiesel in the world. So the plant that’s just outside of Hilo in Kea‘au, is the best rated biodiesel in the world and Robert King who runs that plant and County of Hawai‘i are working towards a partnership to use biodiesel for our Mass Transit and our fleet. So this is going to move us into renewable energy for our transportation, which no one could ever do in Hawai‘i. So we plan on leading that as well. So not only are we the renewable energy leaders at 50% going to 90% or above, but we’ll also lead in transportation transition. Mr. Matsuda: Will, what… Mr. Rolston: The next slide. Ms. Maddox: Hang on one second Will, there’s a question coming your way. Mr. Rolston: No problem. Mr. Matsuda: Will, what makes it the best biodiesel energy plant? Mr. Rolston: It’s the best biodiesel because you can drop it in an engine that’s created for diesel without any problems. So this is the purest biodiesel, it wasn’t always as such, it’s been worked on over the past 20 or 30 years with plants in Oregon, Asia th and Maui and now this plant which is the 7 generation plant built on our island is the best manufacturing facility which takes used waste grease and combines it with plant material to make the purest diesel you can possible have from bio products. So it is basically a drop in for most every engine, in other words, no modifications to the engine and no fouling with the engine, which has been the concern with biodiesel. Is that sufficient? Mr. Matsuda: Thank you. Mr. Rolston: You’re welcome. So slide ten, County of Hawai‘i Leadership. A good example of how we try to engage the community is there was a project, if there’s a project in the community say whether it’s a micro grid or a biodiesel manufacturing plant like the one that was looked at in Pāhala, Ka‘ū. We go out to the community and we do it endlessly, we’ll do it for a period of a year as we did in the case of the Aina Ko‘a Pono project which was a docket before the Public Utilities Commission twice. So County is an intervenor on behalf of community interests and we go and we find out what their concerns are, what the plant can do from a technology standpoint, from an economic development stand point and then we analyze all that and we present our findings before the Public Utilities Commission which has final say over whether the project goes through or not. So County of Hawai‘i does do the number crunching, the social impact crunching and has much engagement with the community as we can. Next slide please. The hard thing to do is, if you can do energy efficiency first. So like this building as LEED silver and you can go up to LEED platinum and LEED platinum plus, which means that you’re facility should be as energy efficient as possible so it uses the least amount of energy. That’s the place you’d want to put your money first, like buying an energy efficient car. So we try to do energy efficient for, efficiency for sending on- site renewable power that low energy intensive facilities. So like on this facility we have 4