Podcasts about canadian climate institute

This week on Green Street, Patti and Doug talk about the FDAs continuing failure to regulate toxic chemicals, how a group of mothers are suing manufacturers of plastic food containers, and how the Trump administration is rolling back drinking water standards for certain PFAS chemicals. Then Rick Smith, President of the Canadian Climate Institute and author of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, talks about the dual crises of climate change and plastic pollution as a human health hazard.

The Canadian Climate Institute is at the forefront of research and policy solutions for a sustainable future. In this episode, Douglas Nelson welcomes Rick Smith, President of the Canadian Climate Institute, for a compelling conversation on the future of climate policy in Canada. As a leading voice in environmental advocacy, Rick shares insights on the urgent actions needed to drive meaningful change, the role of innovation in sustainability, and how businesses and policymakers can collaborate for a greener future. Tune in and be part of a vital discussion that offers clarity and real-world solutions for one of our planet's most pressing challenges.

Halfway through this five-week federal election campaign, no major party has yet released its platform and there have been no big climate change announcements either. With U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and affordability concerns top of voters' minds, addressing our heating planet seems to be taking a back seat to other considerations, namely how to build up Canada's economy through energy exploration and diversifying our international markets. But what will that mean for Canada's climate commitments?  In this episode of “It's Political,” Rick Smith, the president of the Canadian Climate Institute, catches us up on the state of Canada's current fight against climate change and Chris Severson-Baker, the executive director of the Pembina Institute, joins host Althia Raj to discuss what the parties' policy proposals mean, and what questions are still left unanswered by their plans.  This episode of “It's Political” was produced by Althia Raj and Kevin Sexton. Kevin also mixed the program. Our theme music is by Isaac Joel. Some of the audio clips this week were sourced from CPAC and the CBC.

As President Donald Trump heats up a North American trade war, Canada is already facing big challenges within its own government. Next week, the governing Liberal party will announce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's successor. And later this year, the country will hold a general election. Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, joins Zero to discuss what shape the country's climate ambitions might take under new leadership, how Canada can deal with the Trump challenge, and why he expects meaningful climate policy in Canada to be driven by provinces and municipalities. Explore further: Past episode about the UK’s climate goals with Chris Stark, Head of UK's Mission for Clean Power Past episode about Canada's carbon pricing Past episode with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Siobhan Wagner and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's episode, we dive into the tech helping us respond to the growing risk of wildfires, including the use of AI systems and smoke detectors. Then, Sam speaks to Dr. Linda Charmaraman from the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab about a recent study that looks into misinformation on TikTok when it comes to diagnosing ADHD. Finally, we talk about how both blind and sighted humans are encouraging greater neuroplasticity in their brains through learning echolocation. Wildfire Tech “Canada Report: 2023 Fire Season.” Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. 2023. “Fact Sheet: Climate Change and Wildfires.” Canadian Climate Institute. 2024. Source 3, Source 4, Source 5, Source 6, Source 7, Source 8, Source 9, Source 10, Source 11, Source 12 #ADHDtestSource 1, Source 2, Source 3Human EcholocationSource 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4Newscast SoundbitesSource 1, Source 2 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A price on carbon is widely accepted by economists as an efficient way to measure the harm done by carbon and to encourage behavioural change, but is it the best route given that it comes with a real cost to consumers and the economy? Amanda Lang checks in with Chris Ragan, the founding director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University for his thoughts.   Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute and Ken Green, Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, lay out the arguments in favour and against Canada's carbon tax system.   Nik Nanos, chief data scientist of Nanos Research, tells Amanda Lang what Canadians tell pollsters they think about the political issue that is the carbon tax. And in her Takeaway, Amanda Lang says the ongoing debate should not distract us from the need to tackle a complicated issue head on.

Dr. Bruce Lourie explains why the Ivy Foundation has chosen to spend down and how they are approaching climate change issues in Canada. He discusses strategies for creating maximum impact during a spend down. Episode Highlights:Bruce's journey into philanthropyThe reasons why a foundation might decide to spend downKey strategies to use during a spend downDr. Bruce Lourie Bio:Dr. Lourie is one of Canada's most influential leaders and experts on climate change and the transition to a net-zero economy. Best known for his ability to rethink climate problems and develop solutions that benefit both the economy and the environment, he has been instrumental in creating more than a dozen organizations that play a critical role in Canada's transition to a net-zero economy, including Canadian Climate Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Finance, Farmers for Climate Solutions, Efficiency Canada and The Transition Accelerator. His focus at Ivey Foundation is the Economy and Environment program, which provides funding to these net-zero focused organizations, among others. He also liaises with government, industry, ENGOs and the business community to ensure Canada achieves net-zero by 2050 while remaining economically competitive.An engaging and lively spokesperson, Dr. Lourie has a unique ability to translate complex issues into timely and actionable information in both print and broadcast interviews alike and has been interviewed by most major Canadian news outlets. Dr. Lourie is also an experienced and in demand speaker, and has spoken at events such as Global Salmon Initiative's COP26 Panel, The Trottier Symposium and the 2021 Calgary Climate Symposium, where he gave the keynote address.In addition to his influential role in pushing Canada towards net-zero by 2050, Dr. Lourie also initiated the largest climate action in North America, the phasing out of coal in Ontario, and helped shepherd the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement and establishment of the Ontario Greenbelt. He is also the co-author of two books, Toxin Toxout and Slow Death By Rubber Duck, an international bestseller. Dr. Lourie holds a Ph.D examining the intersection of risk, science and policy.Links:Ivey Foundation: https://www.ivey.orgCalifornia Endowment https://www.calendow.org/Report: Building Healthy Communities: A Decade in Review November 2020: https://www.calendow.org/app/uploads/2021/04/The_California_Endowment_Decade_In_Review_2010_2020_Executive_Report.pdfIf you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/68-when-a-donor-is-inspired-to-end-injustice/id1556900518?i=1000579747934 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/109-why-do-people-give-with-sybil-fred-ackerman-munson/id1556900518?i=1000591308554 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/119-sybil-speaks-to-spend-down-or-not-to-spend-down/id1556900518?i=1000602925722Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies and tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy.Sybil offers resources including free mini-course videos, templates, checklists, and words of advice summarized in easy to review pdfs. https://www.doyourgood.com/funders Check out Sybil's website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at https://www.doyourgood.comConnect with Do Your Goodhttps://www.facebook.com/doyourgoodhttps://www.instagram.com/doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website https://www.doyourgood.com/ or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com.

Dr. Bruce Lourie explains why the Ivy Foundation has chosen to spend down and how they are approaching climate change issues in Canada. He discusses strategies for creating maximum impact during a spend down. Episode Highlights:Bruce's journey into philanthropyThe reasons why a foundation might decide to spend downKey strategies to use during a spend downDr. Bruce Lourie Bio:Dr. Lourie is one of Canada's most influential leaders and experts on climate change and the transition to a net-zero economy. Best known for his ability to rethink climate problems and develop solutions that benefit both the economy and the environment, he has been instrumental in creating more than a dozen organizations that play a critical role in Canada's transition to a net-zero economy, including Canadian Climate Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Finance, Farmers for Climate Solutions, Efficiency Canada and The Transition Accelerator. His focus at Ivey Foundation is the Economy and Environment program, which provides funding to these net-zero focused organizations, among others. He also liaises with government, industry, ENGOs and the business community to ensure Canada achieves net-zero by 2050 while remaining economically competitive.An engaging and lively spokesperson, Dr. Lourie has a unique ability to translate complex issues into timely and actionable information in both print and broadcast interviews alike and has been interviewed by most major Canadian news outlets. Dr. Lourie is also an experienced and in demand speaker, and has spoken at events such as Global Salmon Initiative's COP26 Panel, The Trottier Symposium and the 2021 Calgary Climate Symposium, where he gave the keynote address.In addition to his influential role in pushing Canada towards net-zero by 2050, Dr. Lourie also initiated the largest climate action in North America, the phasing out of coal in Ontario, and helped shepherd the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement and establishment of the Ontario Greenbelt. He is also the co-author of two books, Toxin Toxout and Slow Death By Rubber Duck, an international bestseller. Dr. Lourie holds a Ph.D examining the intersection of risk, science and policy.Links:Ivey Foundation: https://www.ivey.orgCalifornia Endowment https://www.calendow.org/Report: Building Healthy Communities: A Decade in Review November 2020: https://www.calendow.org/app/uploads/2021/04/The_California_Endowment_Decade_In_Review_2010_2020_Executive_Report.pdfIf you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/68-when-a-donor-is-inspired-to-end-injustice/id1556900518?i=1000579747934 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/109-why-do-people-give-with-sybil-fred-ackerman-munson/id1556900518?i=1000591308554 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/119-sybil-speaks-to-spend-down-or-not-to-spend-down/id1556900518?i=1000602925722Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies and tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy.Sybil offers resources including free mini-course videos, templates, checklists, and words of advice summarized in easy to review pdfs. https://www.doyourgood.com/funders Check out Sybil's website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at https://www.doyourgood.comConnect with Do Your Goodhttps://www.facebook.com/doyourgoodhttps://www.instagram.com/doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website https://www.doyourgood.com/ or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com.

Get to the bottom of how policy is ushering along the energy transition. In part two of the series, Associate Professor Nicholas Rivers shares how energy policies are helping shape the actions taken to address climate change. From decarbonizing buildings and transportation to the hard-to-tackle parts of Canada's economy and its major industries. Plus policy's role in supporting distributed energy and resources. Dive back into the conversation in episode 139 of thinkenergy. Related links   ●       Listen to part one: https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/energy-policy-deep-dive-with-nicholas-rivers-part-1/ ●       More about Nicholas Rivers: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/969 ●       uOttawa Institute of the Environment: https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/environment ●       The Canadian Climate Institute: https://climateinstitute.ca/ ●       Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ ●       Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en    To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcrpit: Trevor Freeman  00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com. Hi, everyone, welcome back. Okay, so this is part two of my conversation with Nicholas rivers about policy, and specifically how policy is and will in the future, shaping the different solutions and different actions that we can take to address climate change and to usher along the energy transition that has already started. As a refresher, Nicholas rivers is a Professor of Public Policy and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa. And his area of focus is really the sort of research into an evaluation of environmental policies. So this is a great conversation. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode with Nicolas, I really encourage you to do that it kind of lays the groundwork and really helps feed into this part of the conversation. On today's episode, we're going to talk about decarbonizing buildings, decarbonizing transportation, about some of those hard to tackle parts of our economy, kind of those major industries, as well as the role of policy and supporting distributed energy resources. So solar panels and batteries and things like that. So it's really a great conversation, start with the previous episode, if you haven't already. And then thanks for joining us here for this one. And happy listening. Okay, so we've talked about generation at the grid level, but let's talk about what we call distributed energy resources. And for our listeners, just a reminder, this is things like rooftop solar behind the meter storage, so having batteries at homes or businesses, which we are going to need a lot more of in the future. And we're going to see a lot more of on our grid in the future. What policy tools are out there that could help ramp up the implementation of these resources? Is it as simple as you know, incentives to lower the upfront cost?   Nicholas Rivers  02:21 Okay, good question. Maybe I'll just start out by giving some broader perspective about why we why we might want to go down the distributed energy route. So as you mentioned, a distributed energy resources are things like rooftop solar, right on the kind of residential building or a battery pack in the garage of your residential building. And this is a different approach than the way we normally approach the electricity sector, where our generation and storage infrastructure to the extent we have any is centralized, right. So in a centralized system, if it's solar, it would be a big utility scale solar project in a field somewhere, or now we're starting to see the ISO just approved a bunch of battery storage projects that are going to be you know, big centralized resources, really big batteries, or it could be pumped hydro, or you know, compressed air storage that that are not in someone's garage, they're, you know, these big sites that are that are well away from people's homes typically. So why would we want to change the paradigm and, and go towards this kind of decentralized type of approach where the where the resources are in people's homes or on people's homes? I'd say there was a couple of reasons we might want to go that route. One is that the distributed resources if they're in people's homes, well, they're close to the demand. Right? So if people you know, ultimately, the reason we have electricity generation is to meet people's and industries demands for electricity. And putting those resources right at the source of demand means that we don't need so many wires to connect the resources to the to the demand centers, and potentially that there's less congestion on the wires and, and less losses getting from the source of supply to the source of demand. So that's one reason. Another big reason I think, that will become more important in some areas of the world and more important as we scale up decarbonisation is land use, and then, you know, we got all these rooftops that are just sitting there. And putting solar panels on those, basically wasted surfaces is a way of conserving land as opposed to to putting new solar panels in a field that has other uses. So I see that as being a potentially really important reason why we might go down that decentralized route. It's important to say that land use constraints are not binding in Ontario today for for, especially for zero carbon resources, right? There's we're lucky in Ontario that we've got a fair amount of land per person. And we've also not got that many solar or wind or battery resources currently. And so the pressure that we're putting on our land from those types of centralized resources are pretty small. But certainly as we try to go further on that decarbonisation route, thinking about land constraints is going to be important. I would say that there is a downside to going the decentralized route. And that's that it's more costly. So generating electricity at a home, is storage of storing electricity at home is typically quite a bit more expensive than doing it at a utility scale, in a in a kind of centralized manner. And that's just because, you know, a solar panel cost what a solar panel costs. So you're getting, I think, the same basic solar panel, solar module, and a centralized system, compared to a decentralized system. But all the side costs, the cost of planning and installing, and all the racking that has to go for solar panels, same with batteries, is a lot more expensive, when it's done kind of on these boutique, individual roof projects, compared to what it's done in a centralized approach. And so what we're gonna do as we think about, you know, do we go down this more decentralized route or more centralized route? So we've got to think, are these land benefits and the benefits we get from having the resources close to the demand? Are they outweighing the extra cost that we're paying from, from going this more decentralized route?   Trevor Freeman  02:25 Yeah, so it's kind of an economies of scale question of obviously, investing in the infrastructure for a large scale solar installation gives you that, you know, more bang for your buck on a kilowatt hour basis, then each individual rooftop project, but I guess there's that aspect of, you know, customer control and customer preference of, you know, I like the idea of having my own power generated on my roof, it gives me some control, it gives me some redundancy. It also kind of protects and let me know what your thoughts on this it. It locks me into cost for energy, at least for a portion of my energy for the life of that equipment, rather than sort of being at the whim of rising utility costs over time. Is that a fair assessment?   Nicholas Rivers  07:15 Yeah, I think that's right. Solar panels and batteries, both have a free long lifetime. So once you've paid for them, you know, what you paid, and you're going to be able to amortize them over the length of the investment. Of course, that assumes that you're going to be living in the same house for the 20 or 30 years of the investment.   Trevor Freeman  07:31 Exactly. Yeah.   Nicholas Rivers  07:32 So I think there is still a risk there. But I do agree with you that it does put more control in individuals hands more, it gives people an ability to kind of choose their own destiny with respect to energy, it allows them to make a zero carbon investment that, you know, they maybe feel really strongly about, and that isn't being made on their behalf at the central level. So I think you're right that it does give more autonomy to households.   Trevor Freeman  07:58 Yeah. And the current way that we I guess, sort of funder incentivize, if you will, on rooftop solar, for example, is just through the rates, so you're offsetting your rates. And that is how you get your payback on your panels. I know you and I have chatted previously about the model in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit about how they've approached this?   Nicholas Rivers  08:20 Yeah. So, South Australia also uses this net metering approach. So basically, net metering means when you're consuming electricity, you can think of like an old analog meter, the meters running one direction. And then when you generate electricity, and return it to the grid, when you're not using as much as you're generating, the analog meter runs the opposite direction. Of course, these meters aren't analog anymore. They're digital, but they're allowing you to kind of reverse the meter at times when you're generating.   Trevor Freeman  08:50 Yep.   Nicholas Rivers  08:51 South Australia has been a real leader in getting solar on people's rooftops. Now, you might think, oh, it's super sunny in South Australia, and it is super sunny in South Australia. So it makes sense to have solar in people's rooftops. But there are lots of areas in the world that are super sunny, that have had not nearly the success that South Australia has had in putting solar on rooftops. And I would think one of the big reasons is, is program design. So they have designed a program that makes it really easy to access the program and access the incentives that are part of the program, and that lets household navigate it pretty seamlessly. So my understanding of the program is it's an incentive, which is the typical way we we kind of provide incentives for people to to undertake these novel technologies. It provides households with a you know, an upfront payment for for putting solar on the roofs. But I think that the real trick is that it's not provided to the household. And there's not an onerous application process that happens. It's provided to the to the companies that install solar panels on people's roofs and they pass through the incentive. Have to the household. So all of the paperwork and the planning is undertaken by the company. And the household, basically, just, as my understanding just says, Yeah, I want some solar panels on my roof. And, you know, tomorrow the solar panels are on the roof. And they don't have to go through the kind of extensive paperwork and the qualifying and the waiting for the, the incentive to be paid. It's all done upfront. And it's all done with a minimum of paperwork.   Trevor Freeman  10:23 Yeah, so from a homeowner perspective, in Canada versus in South Australia, South Australia is just seeking a much cheaper cost for solar, they don't have to jump through the hoops. That's all kind of done taken on by the government and by the the industry.   Nicholas Rivers  10:39 Yeah, and we do have incentives for solar here. In some provinces anyway, and there have been incentives federally, but they're there, they're more onerous to apply for. And they put the homeowner in the position of having to pay for the system upfront, and then waiting for the rebate. And it's a big outlay for homeowners and the rebate is uncertain, right? You can put the paperwork in. And of course, you think you're gonna get it back. But there's always that chance that something went wrong, and you didn't do it quite right. You don't get the rebate. Yeah, there's a risk there. So I think this this kind of upfront payments program that's processed by the company is as a real, you know, something we could learn from in Canada.   Trevor Freeman  11:16 Right. So that's potentially a key role. And this may be applies to other programs, as well of, of government have policies to take on that administrative burden take on that risk, if you will, away from the end user to make it seamless and streamlined for the end user and easier to do   Nicholas Rivers  11:33 People have better things to do than think about energy. And so I think that   Trevor Freeman  11:38 Or fill out paperwork,   Nicholas Rivers  11:39 yeah, fill out paperwork, and just, you know, they don't want to spend their time, you know, trying to figure out if the incentive is going to cover their net metering benefits they wants to be they want to be added be as easy as possible.   Trevor Freeman  11:52 Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, moving along, then to transportation. This is something of course, that Canadians will be pretty familiar with. We've seen a big move toward electrifying personal vehicles, there are more EVs out there today than ever before, you know, going back into even recent memory, it seemed like a rare thing to see an EV on the road. And now it's not at all, but there's still a long way to go. As much as we've got a lot more, we still are overwhelmingly using fossil fuels for our personal transportation. What kinds of approaches will help speed that transition up? We have a federal rebate when it comes to buying electric vehicle. Is that enough? Or are there other tools that we can use to speed up that transition?   Nicholas Rivers  12:36 Yeah, we're at about 11% of new cars that are sold are electric these days, and about one and a half percent of our fleet, because it takes our fleet a long time to turnover, right. So even if we get to 100% sales, we could still be waiting another 20 years before we get to 100% of our fleet be electric. So this is not going to be something that resolves itself really quickly. Because it does take a long time to turnover and longtime for car manufacturers to change the kind of vehicles they're making. I'm convinced we're on the transition, and that it is underway no matter what we do in this sector, that that these cars will be eventually be as cheap or cheaper than internal combustion engine cars, and will deliver the range that we want and the performance that we want. We're not there yet. So So what do we do in the meantime, I would say one of the things we should be doing as governments is fixing kind of the chicken and the egg problem of electric vehicles and governments are very active in this area. But the chicken and egg problem is who wants to build a charging station if there's no electric vehicles, and who wants to buy an electric vehicle if there's no charging stations. And so I think government has been playing an active role there, although arguably, it's still behind where we want it to be. People still experienced troubles with charging electric vehicles. And reliability of chargers is an issue. It turns out that the economics of operating a charging station don't look very good. And so perhaps there needs to be more of a public role in figuring out how to get these systems up and running more of the time. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like. But, but I do think the problem isn't going to solve itself entirely on its own, especially in more remote or Northern or rural areas. This probably along a lot of role for government support for charging. In terms of a policy approach. I really like the zero emission vehicle standard. This is just a standard that says okay, manufacturers, it's targeted. The manufacturer is not a retailer or not customers. And it says manufacturers you have to sell a certain proportion of the fleet you sell is zero by zero emission by this year and a bigger percentage by this year. And that's something that Quebec and BC and California and a number of other places have implemented zero emission vehicle standard, and the Canadian federal government has announced that it's going to go the same route.   Trevor Freeman  15:05 Gotcha.   Nicholas Rivers  15:06 And so what that says is, in 2026, in Canada, major vehicle manufacturers will have to sell 20% of their fleets as electric vehicles. Were at about 11% today. And that number will ramp up every year until it hits 100% by 2035. Now, again, I think this transition is happening anyway. So I think that that will help speed up the transition. But at it, it's not dramatically different from kind of what we expect, even without that kind of policy. And so I do think that's a that's a really nice policy, because it gives automakers a target, it gives them some certainty. And it helps to ensure that they make vehicles available to Canadians where they want them.   Trevor Freeman  15:48 Yeah, I think, I mean, we've all heard those stories of people that wanted to buy an electric vehicle on it wasn't ready, or the price point wasn't there. And I think by requiring more stock, requiring those targets to be hit, it's going to help move people along in the direction that a lot of people already want to go. And we're seeing that as those numbers tick up.   Nicholas Rivers  16:08 Yeah. Let me say a little bit more about this policy, because I think it's cool. It's one of those examples, which is a regulatory policy, which has a market based or carbon pricing kind of component to it. So it's regulatory, right? I just described that manufacturers have to hit, let's say, a 20% target in the year 2026. So the rule is, if you sell a lot of vehicles in Canada, 20% of them have to be electric by 2026. But then it's got this kind of hybrid component, not a hybrid car hybrid policy. So the it's kind of, it's got a carbon price kind of built in, which says, Hey, if you can't do it, well, you can trade with some other company that can. So maybe it's going to be gonna make up some names here, maybe it's going to be that company X says, oh, you know, we're really, you know, we really don't want to make the transition quite so quickly, we're going to sell internal combustion engine cars for a few more years. And Company Y says, Well, we're actually way ahead of that curve, it's going to be able to sell some of its credits, Company Y is going to sell some credits to Company X. And so Company X could keep doing what it's doing. But pay a penalty, that company y can get a benefit from being ahead of the curve.   Trevor Freeman  17:17 Gotcha. And to the consumer, the overall stock of options is still where the government wants it to be. There's still enough electric vehicles out there that we can purchase.   Nicholas Rivers  17:27 That's right. I think I mean, the the availability is less of a concern now than it was when supply chains were all snared up during the pandemic. I think if you went out and you had the money, and you were willing to, you wanted to go buy an electric car, you would get one relatively quickly today.   Trevor Freeman  17:42 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  17:43 That's, that's I think that was that's a legacy problem that fortunately, we don't have so much anymore.   Trevor Freeman  17:47 So I mean, that's personal transportation, we're also seeing a move to make public transportation more carbon free and more electric here in Ottawa, where I'm based where we're both based. We've seen our city make that transition to electric buses, we're bringing on you know, a portion of the fleet in the next couple of years is going to be electric buses, we've seen our new LRT system is at least partially electrified, what are some of the policies out there that are helping municipalities or operators and public transit systems make this shift from traditional fossil fuel systems?   Nicholas Rivers  18:27 Yeah, so this is a procurement policy. So it's government saying, we're going to create a new market for this technology that doesn't really exist yet. And help to drive drive technology along right. So this is something we talked about a little while ago. And I think that this will help, you know, these these vehicles, big vehicles with heavy duty cycles. There's certainly parallels in kind of goods transport. So having some of that kind of exposure to new deployment in the public sector, I think will help with decarbonizing goods transport later on. So this is one of the cases where governments kind of creating this niche role for each policy or niche, I guess, nice role for this technology to be deployed first. And it's accepting the higher cost of these policies of these technologies initially, and will help drive down the costs as they get some experience with these technologies. Okay, so what's it what's it doing in Ottawa? Ottawa has promised to not buy any more fossil fuel buses, it's gonna slowly transition its bus fleet to electric. And I guess that's a procurement policy. It's supported by funds from the federal government. So the Canadian infrastructure bank supports this policy. And so the way that it works is the federal government's pay the additional cost that the electric bus costs relative to a normal diesel bus, and the city just pays the same as it would for the normal diesel boss with the feds picking up the rest of the tab.   Trevor Freeman  19:58 Right   Nicholas Rivers  19:58 The city's original expense. response has been really positive, it's found that maintenance costs are lower that fuel costs are lower, and the performance is at least as good in the electric buses compared to the, to the diesel buses. So it's experiencing a cost savings. And at least in the initial reporting, this seems like a really positive experience.   Trevor Freeman  20:17 So it's essentially the policy there is helping buy down that initial upfront jumping costs. So that, you know, yeah, municipal budgets can remain the same.   Nicholas Rivers  20:26 Exactly.   Trevor Freeman  20:26 But we get that better technology, and we're moving forward on our emissions reduction.   Nicholas Rivers  20:30 Yeah. So this is really a federal and and city policy.   Trevor Freeman  20:33 Gotcha. Okay, so let's talk about buildings, which are a major source of emissions, especially here in Canada, primarily because we are a cold climate, and we have to heat those buildings, or else they wouldn't be comfortable. And traditionally, this has been done with fossil fuels, you know, we burn natural gas, to heat our buildings is a large majority of Canadians. That's how they heat their space. In Canada buildings account for over 100 million tons of GHG emissions a year. So this is definitely a sector that we need to see some transition in how we approach them. What is the role of policymakers to help us decarbonize our buildings? And I want to split this question into two pieces, the first being residential buildings. And then we'll talk about commercial and institutional after because I think they're they're kind of different cases here. So let's talk about residential first.   Nicholas Rivers  21:25 Okay, residential buildings, I think heard at some of this is going to apply to both residential and commercial but of residential buildings, you're totally right to say that the big source of emissions is natural gas. And we do have other fuel uses as well like oil and propane, but the the big one is gas. And I think a special challenge for residential buildings. And it applies to commercial buildings as well, but especially residential is that they last a really long time. And then, so it's not like cars where you know, after we have got all the new cars to be zero emission, you got to wait maybe 10 or 15, or maximum 20 years, and the entire fleet is zero emission. Because cars only last 15 or 20 years buildings last, we don't even know how long they last hundreds of years. 100 years.   Trevor Freeman  22:14 Yeah, exactly.   Nicholas Rivers  22:15 And so we don't just have to tackle new buildings and then wait for them to kind of percolate through in the same way as we do for light bulbs or cars or something, we have to figure out a way to decarbonize existing buildings. And this turns out to be difficult. But let me start by saying the first thing we should do is make sure that the new buildings that we're building are not producing carbon emissions, that's the easiest thing to do. Getting a tackling a building or decarbonizing building, once it's already built, and part of the building stock is relatively difficult compared to taking a new building and designing to be zero carbon from the outset. And my view is that the best thing we can do there is to not connect new homes to the natural gas network, or at least pass the full costs of the natural gas network onto these new homes as they're built so that homeowners can make and developers can make an informed decision about the most effective way to produce those new homes.   Trevor Freeman  23:13 Yeah, I think like even that concept is something we talk about, you know, when we're working with our customers on equipment choices, as well, as you know, the decision you're making today on, you know, let's say your boiler will last with you for the life and that equipment. And in the case of a boiler, let's say that's 25 years, but to your point, in the case of a home, deciding to start down that path of fossil fuels, that building is going to live with us for you know, who knows how long and we will then have to get off those fossil fuels later. So I think for that new construction piece, yeah, that makes a lot of sense of making sure we're making the right decisions today, because we know we have to electrify   Nicholas Rivers  23:50 Right. Yeah, we do not what we don't want to do is build a gas home. And then 10 years later say, oh, let's actually make this home an electric home.   Trevor Freeman  23:58 Yeah, totally.   Nicholas Rivers  23:59 Because now we've spent twice on on one thing. So if we know we're gonna go zero emission, then we should be building new homes as zero emission homes. And we'll save money doing it.   Trevor Freeman  24:08 Yeah, and we know how to do that today.   Nicholas Rivers  24:10 We know how to do it. The harder problem is existing homes. And that's, you know, most of the homes that are around today that are part of our housing stock today will still be part of our housing stock in 2050. So we don't get to do over. We've got to tackle these existing homes. And it's relatively difficult compared to other sectors. Because if you want to take an existing home and decarbonize it, you really have to do it on a home by home basis. You have to invite you know, an auditor in and figure out what's wrong with it, or the cheapest way to decarbonize that home is most effective way to decarbonize at home, maybe get some engineers to help figure out what the interventions look like maybe gotta consultant in to put some new windows or doors or insulation or air sealing into the home and so but I adds up to a lot, a lot of people being touching the home, it's not something where we can go to a factory typically and pull out an identical component that, you know, might get cheaper over time, and strap it to the home. So I think that's part of what makes this challenge difficult. Luckily, we do have some kind of economies of scale in homes when it comes to heating systems. And this is heat pumps that can be adapted to most homes as a replacement for a furnace, or even a boiler. And Heat pumps are a technology that I think people have heard a lot more about over the last couple of years, they're basically an air conditioner that can run in reverse. So we can move heat out of a house and also move heat into a house. And these are getting more common for a cold climate, like we're in. And getting cheaper and contractors are getting more experienced with them. And so I think that we will start seeing more penetration of heat pumps in residential sector. Having said that, it's not a it's not a slam dunk. Right now, heat pumps, in some cases are cost effective compared to gas. But they're right at the margin, right? So you don't save a whole bunch of money by switching a gas furnace to heat pump. In, for example, in Ontario. Now that'll change. If our carbon price keeps going up every year, eventually, it'll it'll become something where the carbon price makes heat pumps make easy financial sense that it becomes a more straightforward decision. But right now, they're kind of similar cost to operate compared to a natural gas furnace. And so we're not seeing a whole bunch of penetration of them in Ontario.   Trevor Freeman  26:50 Yeah, I mean, I think that even even just that fact that actually, coincidentally, the previous episode on this, we actually talked about heat pumps and went through a bit of a case study with with someone that installed one, but you're right, like right now, you're kind of comparable, and your energy costs, maybe you save a little bit of kind of depends on on the rest of your context as well. But that highlights the value of the role in policy of helping to drive down that upfront cost. And by helping get more of them out there. And letting as we've talked about already, in this conversation, letting the market forces drive down the cost of heat pumps, because we're going to be putting more of them out there in the manual manufacturing process, the supply chain process, that's all going to find those efficiencies so that putting that heat pump in becomes comparable on an upfront cost basis to a furnace, for example, which today it's not.   Nicholas Rivers  27:44 Yeah, I would say the other challenge is that the whole HVAC or heating ventilation air conditioning ecosystem is set up around natural gas furnaces and natural gas water heaters in Ontario. And so the contractors are used to it, people are used to it. And it's it makes it kind of when your furnace or your hot water heater fails, and you panic a little bit because it's the winter and you don't want to get cold the next day, the easiest thing to do is to call your company and get them to put in the same thing as you've already had it's safe, you know it works. And by doing that, you've locked yourself into another 20 or 25 years of heating with natural gas. And so I think one of the things is just kind of the human dimension of this problem that heat pumps remain kind of is unconventional technology. They work really well they've been demonstrated to work really well in Ontario, but it's not widely known. And certainly the supply chain isn't there in the same way as it is for furnaces, and the contractors are, I think less comfortable with installing them as they are for furnaces. And so people get guided towards furnaces at the time of furnace failure or water heater failure. And it's only like this kind of, I think if the people that really want heat pumps that end up going towards that route right now. Because you really have to you have to want them for that to be the outcome. It's not something that's going to happen on its own. And unfortunately, in this moment of panic, you don't get the time to kind of reflect on on what you might want over the next couple of decades.   Trevor Freeman  29:25 Yeah, totally. And I've I've thought about this a little anecdote on this show before my own experience with having a furnace die in January as I was starting my research into heat pumps and ended up being able to get a heat pump but not in the manner that I wanted, not the system that I really wanted. And, and yeah, I ended up because of that, having to do all the research myself and being someone that works in the energy space. That's, you know, that's what the reality was.   Nicholas Rivers  29:50 I would say the other thing is I heat pump provides both air conditioning and heating. And it turns out that heat pump is basically cost competitive with a new furnace, and a new air conditioner. So if you if you, if you take a new house, and you either decide to put in a furnace and an air conditioner or heat pump, it's a wash, you'll pay the same for both. But very rarely does a house have a furnace and an air conditioner fail at exactly the same moment. So that they're making this kind of apples to apples comparison of a system that can provide both heating and cooling with another system that could provide both heating and cooling. And so this is like this coordination problem that heat pumps provide. And so I think when we're thinking about public policy, we should be thinking about not this kind of rational decision maker that's weighing the pros and cons of these two systems. But really, the person who's in a panic because their furnace failed in the middle of the night. And we got to think about how to make the Low Carbon solution, the easy solution for that person.   Trevor Freeman  30:50 Yeah, 100%. I mean, this goes back to the, I guess, the intro of what will be part one of this conversation that I gave and talking about, you know, the policy piece is kind of that foundation, that bedrock upon which the technological solutions the societal solutions are built, and exactly what we talked about with solar. How can we use policy to make this an easy path, make it the easiest path so that when someone doesn't want to think about it, when their furnace dies in the middle of the winter. This is the logical and easy and the path that they're going to choose.   Nicholas Rivers  31:23 Yeah, I think in many cases, choices are problematic, right? I'm a believer that that's not that's not universally true that more choices are often better. But also that we can get paralyzed by choices. So having to choose between a heat pump and a furnace is difficult for most people. Most people don't want to spend your time thinking about that. And I think, eventually, I'm of the view that we want to take a regulatory approach that we don't want to just allow everyone to be kind of deliberating especially at a panic about this choice themselves. Probably eventually, when heat pumps become good enough universally, that we want to have that be the regulated solution.   Trevor Freeman  32:02 Yeah, gotcha. Especially when to your point. It is the it becomes that clear, best choice. It's the most efficient.   Nicholas Rivers  32:09 Exactly, yeah.   Trevor Freeman  32:10 And we're working towards that we're getting   Nicholas Rivers  32:12 we're not quite there yet. There are places where heat pumps are not as effective as furnaces. And so I think that's why we haven't seen regulation in this space yet. But I think that should be an end goal.   Trevor Freeman  32:23 Gotcha. Okay, so that was residential buildings. As I said, commercial and institutional are kind of a different beast altogether. These are bigger buildings systems are bigger and obviously, more expensive ownership structure can be complicated. You have owners of buildings and tenants, you have investment companies that are sort of investing in the building as an asset as a way to make money. Help us tackle this beast, what is the role of policy and helping commercial buildings decarbonize here in Canada?   Nicholas Rivers  32:56 Yeah, good question. Again, I wouldn't say this kind of tenant and owner issue also applies if the residential sector, right, so there are renters that want to have a more efficient building, and that don't have any power to make investments in their building. So similar dynamic there, I think. I won't talk about specific technologies in the commercial sector, although there are lots of places that are experimenting with innovative new heating and cooling technologies, again, heating and cooling as the big greenhouse gas source in the commercial building sector, like it isn't residential. But I will just say that, I think the the types of decisions that are made and the way that they're made, it is quite different in the commercial sector to the residential sector. In a bigger commercial building, there'll be a building manager that's responsible for making decisions about, about heating and cooling investments in that. In that building, there'll be lots of tools that they have access to building management software, that that kind of optimizes building energy use, and costs, and helps them to make these kinds of decisions. So whereas the residential consumer doesn't necessarily want to think about what their what types of investments they should make to maximize their comfort and minimize their energy costs. That's what this building manager in a building is paid to do. And so they are going to be really thinking about this, these decisions carefully, and they're not going to be you know, they are going to be highly engaged in these decisions about what what types of energy to be using in the building. And as a result, I would say that carbon pricing can be quite effective in this sector, that policies that shift the relative costs of heating with gas compared to heating with electricity. They're going to hit the bottom line in that building manager for that building manager really quickly and allow them to kind of pivot if there are technologies available that can help them reoptimize in response to these changing prices, I will say that it's important to think about designing rebates for that carbon price. So we don't end up digging, our commercial buildings say we've we've designed rebates for, for residential households and for big industry. But I do think that this kind of pricing tool can be effective, probably more effective in the commercial sector than it can be in the residential sector. Because because there are people whose job it is to pay attention to building energy costs.   Trevor Freeman  35:31 Yeah, and I mean, you talk about rebates, I think, if there's a way to direct those rebates or direct that reinvestment into the types of solutions that are going to help people double down on the savings, and reduce their carbon consumption, and you know, then the next time around, it's even better and even better, I think that's definitely impactful.   Nicholas Rivers  35:51 Right? Yeah. So combinations of incentives and a kind of carrots and sticks approach. I agree.   Trevor Freeman  35:57 I do want to mention, and partly this is a bit of a plug here on the hydro Ottawa side of, you know, one of the initiatives that the federal government's taken on in terms of deep retrofits for commercial buildings is something they call their deep retrofit accelerator initiative. It's a program that hydro Ottawa is a part of two builds, build support services for commercial customers to identify pathways to decarbonize. So this isn't, you know, going out and paying for boilers or electric boilers or things like that, but it's helping building owners create a plan to tackle these complex, these complex retrofits. And that's something that the federal government is investing in. So I mean, for our listeners in our area, definitely keep your eyes and ears open for more information coming on that because it's early days yet. Okay, so my last question for you, Nick. And just looking at the time, I know we've we've taken a lot of time here chatting, it's been great. But I do want to touch on quickly before we wrap up, kind of what might be one of the trickiest areas, which is this idea of kind of heavy industry resource heavy industry, things like you know, the manufacturing of steel and chemicals and cement. There's a lot of emissions associated with this. They have kind of pretty unique demands in terms of high heat, high temperatures, things that are easily achieved with burning fossil fuels, maybe not so easily achieved with an electric option. What are we doing in that sense? What is the government doing to try and help those industries pursue decarbonisation?   Nicholas Rivers  37:28 Yeah, so we've kind of I'm in the the climate world climate policy world. And we have called these sectors for a long time, in quotes, the hard to decarbonize sectors, so, so it's been something where it's the kind of prevailing idea has been, let's all work on the stuff that's relatively easy today, like buildings and electricity, and vehicles. And eventually we'll find solutions for these hard to decarbonize sectors. And these are decarbonize sectors are things like cement, and steel, like you pointed out are chemicals, for example of pulp and paper, these big industrial sources, and it's not just that they require a lot of heat, or a lot of energy. In many cases, it's that carbon is released as part of the process for producing these materials. So for example, when you produce cement, I'm not a chemist here, but my understanding is you take limestone and turn it into lime as part of the cement making process. And the chemical reaction releases co2. Same thing with the typical way for making steel. You're reducing iron ore, and the reduction process that takes place in a blast furnace takes the poles the I'm gonna get in trouble here. I don't quite know what the reaction is. It releases co2 from the iron ore reduction process, in concert with coal. So they do require a lot of heat, but they're also releasing co2, just as part of the kind of process of producing these materials. So no matter how efficient they get that co2 is still coming out. And so that's part of the reason they're referred to as these hard to decarbonize sectors, I would say, Well, let me say that the thought that we've had as a community thinking about how to transition the economy is that it should be possible to do a lot of this easy stuff, almost 100% Man company easy, almost in quotes, here. decarbonizing buildings will be talked about is not actually easy. It's hard. It's easy relative to these hard to decarbonize sectors. So if we can get the easy sectors more or less decarbonized. One approach to dealing with these hard to decarbonize sectors would be to use, carbon capture and storage. So it would be to take the co2 that's coming out of these fixed processes, and capture it before it goes into the atmosphere and try The sequester it permanently, let's say in a depleted oil and gas reservoir. So that's one approach, we're also seeing a lot of a lot of innovation in this sector, away from some of these fixed process emissions. And so I'll give you an example. In Ontario, the federal and provincial governments recently put big investments into some of the steel facilities in Ontario. And these are our biggest point sources of co2 emissions in the province. These steel facilities, they're especially scattered around Southern Ontario around Hamilton. And, and they use this reduction process to to turn iron ore into steel. And then the big investments the province and federal government have put in how they are transitioning some of these steel producing facilities from from electric RBO blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces. So it will take the coal out of the process basically. And the these, these facilities when they're up and running, will produce big savings and greenhouse gas emissions. By eliminating this kind of important source of co2. We're seeing lots of innovation in the cement sector as well. So using different materials, in as part of this, the cement production. We're seeing a big project, for example, underway in Edmonton, it's a big cement facility that will have a lot of efficiencies built into it. But we'll also have CCS carbon capture and storage, it will be adapted for carbon capture and storage so that the co2 that's produced from this facility won't be released from to the atmosphere, it will be it will be sequestered underground. So I would say the role for government and these nascent, I would say projects is a direct support role to help these industries demonstrate the viability of some of these alternate pathways for producing basic materials with less carbon. And what we're seeing is government supporting these through either direct subsidies, or tax credits. And in some cases, we're seeing when these projects are starting to be produced materials, we're seeing government potentially have a role in procurement saying we're gonna buy lower carbon cement for this new set of government buildings, we're not going to source it from usual suppliers, we're going to reach out and try to create a niche market for this new cement or this new steel. So I think that's the right role. We're not at the stage yet where we can mandate these kinds of innovative technologies, because we're really just at the demonstration phase. But I would say that over the last decade, we're moving from thinking of these sectors as hard to decarbonize, to thinking maybe, to, you know, possible to decarbonize, so it initially seemed like there wasn't really a pathway and we're starting to see some light in the tunnel. Now some potential pathway for decarbonizing these sectors.   Trevor Freeman  42:58 Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, similar to how we have most, if not all the answers we need. Now, for some of those other industries, we talked about personal transportation, buildings, etc. There may come a day when we look back and say, yeah, now we've got all the answers we need for the heavy industry. It's just a matter of deploying them. But we're not there yet.   Nicholas Rivers  43:18 Exactly. We're not there yet. You know, it may turn out that these are not the hard sectors. Right, that if these technologies come along, there's only I don't know exactly the number. But let's say on the order of a dozen cement factories in Canada. So if we can figure out the technology, rolling it out to a dozen factories, institutionally is maybe not as hard a problem as rolling out building retrofits to 15 million buildings. So So right now, this seems like the hard to decarbonize sector, but maybe we'll be surprised.   Trevor Freeman  43:47 And to your point, I mean, pretty good bang for buck, maybe when we talk about just the amount of emissions from single points from these from these industries.   Nicholas Rivers  43:56 Yeah, I think the steel sector numbers in Ontario, these two facilities are we're gonna see a 3 million tonne per year greenhouse gas reduction, well, from the investments that Ontario and the feds have made in and converting them to electric arc furnace.   Trevor Freeman  44:11 Great. Well, Nick, I think that's the list of questions I had for you. So thanks very much. I really appreciate the time and your thoughts on these matters. It was great to having this conversation with you. We do always end our conversations with a series of questions that I asked all of our guests. So as long as you're ready to go, I'll jump into those.   Nicholas Rivers  44:30 Let's do it.   Trevor Freeman  44:31 What is a book that you've read that you think everyone should read?   Nicholas Rivers  44:34 This year, I read fire weather by John Vaillant. I've read a number of his books in the past. I love the way he writes. He's a Canadian author. He writes both nonfiction and fiction. This is about the big fire that took place in Fort McMurray in 2016. And it's a nonfiction book, but it's gripping. He's such a good writer. And it's such an important thing for us to understand exactly what's happening again, this year we've seen Fort McMurray threatened just last week by wildfires. So I really recommend this book. It sounds dry. It's about forest fires, but it's not at all. It's really good.   Trevor Freeman  45:09 Yeah. Okay, great. That's a good one. Same question, but for a movie or for a show.   Nicholas Rivers  45:14 I am. I'm a pretty slow TV watcher. I don't get a ton of time. But I am watching Showgun right now and loving it. Don't tell me the end, because I'm not through. But it's excellent show.   Trevor Freeman  45:26 Yeah, so I haven't started it yet, because I read that book as a teenager and haven't read it since. So I'm rereading it right now. And then I'm gonna watch the show after   Nicholas Rivers  45:35 I didn't read it. So I'm my wish with fresh eyes.   Trevor Freeman  45:39 I remember liking it, but I can't remember kind of how it ends. So I'm as excited as you are to see the end of that. If someone was to offer you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?   Nicholas Rivers  45:52 Well, I am a little sensitive about flying long ways, just because of the nature of this conversation but my kids, I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. And they're super into comics and Nintendo and really want to go to Japan. So I would go to Japan for for a few weeks with them.   Trevor Freeman  46:13 Who is someone that you admire?   Nicholas Rivers  46:15 This was hard. I set out you gave me these questions a couple of days ago. And I sat out on the front porch and the first nice day we had in a while with my wife and my kids. And I was telling them about this. And I said I was stuck on the Who do I admire? And they said, You should admire us. So I admire my kids. They're really optimistic. They're super fun. They're loving life. And I think it's a great set of characteristics.   Trevor Freeman  46:41 Yeah, that mean, that is never a bad answer. That's a great answer, and good for them for self awareness to call you out. Finally, what is something that you are excited about when it comes to the energy sector or this transition that we're in what excites you about the future where we're going?   Nicholas Rivers  47:00 Well, let me give a two pronged answer here. I'll start by saying that I'm nervous.   Trevor Freeman  47:04 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  47:04 I think the stakes are high. We're learning more and more as a society about, you know, what climate change looks like. And it's not pretty. And the I think the big thing that we have to keep in mind, and the thing that keeps me optimistic is that we still have a lot of role to play in determining where we ended up here. And, and we're seeing really dramatic changes in Technologies, and in people's engagement and policymakers engagement on on this file. So we've talked about how fast some of the technologies have moved over the last couple of decades or decade in particular, solar and vehicles and batteries and all these things. We're also seeing policy change really dramatically, right? It would have been inconceivable to say that we would have a high carbon price and a mandate for zero emission vehicles and phase out of coal fired power and potential clean electricity regulation and an oil gas cap, and all this stuff on the books 10 years ago, and and now we're there. So I feel like not only is technology changing quickly, but the policies are also changing quite quickly. And and it looks like they're all changing in the right direction.   Trevor Freeman  48:19 Yeah, I definitely can relate to that. As someone who's been in this industry, this sector for a little while, at least, it feels like there's momentum now it feels like the pace of change is finally starting to really pick up and not where we need it to be. There's lots of work to do, as you say, but yeah, maybe we're starting to see things move a little faster   Nicholas Rivers  48:42 Yeah, exactly. So there's certainly reason for optimism. That's that's kind of guarded optimism.   Trevor Freeman  48:47 Yeah, that's a that's a fair point to end on. I think that's a good space then. Nick rivers. Thanks very much. I really appreciate you coming on the show and chatting with us today. And I've really enjoyed our conversation.   Nicholas Rivers  48:59 Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it, too.   Trevor Freeman  49:00 All right. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps us spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you. Whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or guests. You can always reach us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com  

The carbon market system is up and running, and so far there are more large polluters blowing past their emissions caps than there are staying below them. Jeanne Armstrong spoke to Jonathan Alward, VP of policy at Atlantica Centre for Energy, and Dave Sawyer, an environmental economist at the Canadian Climate Institute, about the economic and environmental impacts and future prospects.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-emitters-exceeded-greenhouse-gas-caps-2021-2022-1.7216314

In this first of a two-part series, we unpack the vital role of policy in driving the energy transition with Nicholas Rivers, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the Institute of the Environment at the University of Ottawa. Join us as we explore the layers of policy implementation, the interplay of social and technological solutions, and the challenge of designing policies that balance data with public opinion and emotion. Related links   More about Nicholas Rivers: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/969 uOttawa Institute of the Environment: https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/environment The Canadian Climate Institute: https://climateinstitute.ca/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en     To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcript: Energy Policy Deep Dive with Nicholas Rivers (Part 1)   Fri, May 24, 2024 11:55AM • 52:17 SUMMARY KEYWORDS emissions, policy, carbon, price, work, canada, carbon pricing, technology, government, cost, climate change, electricity, big, emitters, action, ontario, regulations, podcast, climate, energy SPEAKERS Nicholas Rivers, Trevor Freeman   Trevor Freeman  00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. We've talked a lot on the podcast about how climate change is a big complex problem. And the entity transition that is already underway is also a big complex undertaking. These things require complex solutions to address them, it's not a single thing that's going to solve this for us. You know, we often think about solutions as being some kind of technology, either an existing technology or something that we're going to innovate on or invent in the future. And we talk about a lot of those on the podcasts, everything from heat pumps, to renewable generation to grid modernization. But technology doesn't just exist and grow in a bubble. And we can't just rely on technological solutions on their own to solve climate change or to help continue the energy transition. There is also a need for other approaches, for example, Social approaches, you know, we need to educate people on what climate change is and how it works and what we need to do to change it. We need to motivate people, we need to rile up people to create that desire for change, and create the political and social will to go behind that. What are the key drivers to help advance all of these different moving parts, if you will, is policy our policy solutions, you can really think of policy as the foundation or the bedrock upon which all these other things are built. And when we talk about policy, we're talking about all different levels. So from the federal government, to provincial governments, who are municipal governments, and you know, this is the Canadian context, we're in Canada speaking about this. So if you're listening from a different country, you know, slot in your various levels of government there. Our policy solutions are what push or pull certain actions. And I'm sure we're all familiar with the sort of carrot and stick analogy. Carrots being those things dangled in front of us to help us move towards some more desirable action or desirable state sticks being you know, the sort of prod or push that are going to, you know, help push us into something or away from something else. These policy solutions are really designed to make a desirable action easier and more likely, and to make an undesirable action harder and less likely. So in the context of climate change, for example, the desirable action might be the adoption of cleaner technologies, like EVs or renewable generation, or speeding up the development and adoption of new technologies, where the undesirable action might be just the status quo like doing things, the way we've always done them, we know we need to change that's an important piece, or the undesirable action might be just the continued use of fossil fuels, we need to move away from that that's the undesirable action that's not going to help us solve climate change. And so we're going to talk about policy today. And I'll talk about our guests in a minute. But I think it's important to also remember this next piece, and that is that policy is tough. It is tough to know what will work and what won't work. It's tough to know what the thing is, that's going to really create the desired action you want, that people are going to get behind. policy can be uncomfortable, as I've said, policy prioritizes certain actions over others. And we've talked about this before Canadians and more broadly, people, we are not homogenous in the way that we think or care about things we don't always care equally about the same things. We all have different pressures and drivers in our lives. We all have different contexts in our lives, and so naturally, our priorities aren't always going to line up. And when you have a policy that is designed to prioritize certain actions over others, some portion of the population is going to disagree that that's the right priority. And in practical terms, it's usually a bunch of different portions of the population that agree or disagree in varying amounts. Policy is often designed and applied in what you might call a scientific way. So certain policy tools have expected outcomes that can be measured. There are, you know, metrics that go behind these things. But policy is often received by the general public in a very decidedly non-scientific way. In fact, we typically receive policy in a more emotional way, how we feel about some new policy really is what drives our opinion and our action around that policy. And that's more so than maybe the data will drive our opinion in our actions. In fact, the way that we look at that data is often influenced by sort of our emotion around how we feel about something. And I'm not saying that's wrong. That's kind of just human nature. And we all do it no matter what your I guess political leaning is where you fall in the spectrum. We all do this with, with policy, with the direction that our government is taking. But knowing that is helpful, and it lets us check in with ourselves against that, you know, are we really looking at things just based on the merits based on the data, or what is the emotion that we're feeling about certain things, I think that's important. So with that preamble, my guest today is here to help us pull apart the suite of policy tools that are already playing a role in helping us decarbonize and tackle climate change and some of the things that might be upcoming, or other options that are out there. And I'm gonna say off the bat that there's a lot to talk about here. This is quite a long conversation. So we're actually going to split this into two pieces. We'll have part one and part two, and kind of break it up into two different episodes so that they're a little bit easier to get through. But I'll say in advance, I appreciate you sticking through. I think this is an important topic of conversation and, and my guest today knows a lot about it. So I'm happy to have Nicholas Rivers on the podcast today. Nicholas Rivers is a Professor of Public and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the economic evaluation of environmental policies. He is a member of the Canadian climate Institute and served as a co editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and was previously a Canada Research Chair in climate and energy policy. Nick regularly provides advice on energy and climate policies to federal and provincial governments, as well as nongovernmental organizations. So Nicholas, welcome to the show.   Nicholas Rivers  07:32 Thanks for having me on, Trevor.   Trevor Freeman  07:34 So let's start with a little bit of background, can you give us a sense of how you got to where you are today, and really specifically how you came to be passionate about environmental policy?   Nicholas Rivers  07:44 Okay, well, this is something where, you know, maybe it's easy to look back and paint a linear trajectory. But certainly, this is not, this was not the aim. From a young age, I didn't have career goals, I would say leaving high school had no idea. I had been pretty good at math and, you know, a tinkerer. I liked playing with capsula, which was this cool, mechanical toy, and Lego, and that kind of thing. And so I did engineering, without really an end goal in mind. I did mechanical engineering. And at that time, you know, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I started reading books about kind of nascent books about climate change books about energy, I had friends that were really active in the kind of energy and environmental movements, and started to realize that that's maybe where I wanted to focus, my energy, my own energy. And so in my mechanical engineering degree, I wanted to start working on renewable energy, which was really at the beginning at the time, this was the late 1990s. So at the time, there was one wind turbine in Ontario. I went to visit it during my mechanical engineering degree, the Pickering one, right. It was up. No, it was up on the Europe like you're on the Peninsula, Brisbane and so Okay, gotcha, right by the British nuclear station. It was a test one, it wasn't a big commercial wind facility. So I was just like, digging around trying to find interesting stuff. And wind turbines look really interesting because they were big, and they were in moved and they you could see something they were doing. I didn't end up working in wind facilities. I ended up getting some jobs and hydrogen worked with Ballard and Hydrogenics as a co-op engineer. So that was my kind of foot in the in the renewable world. And I have to say, I didn't really like it all that much. I was doing, you know, I was in the field that I kind of wanted to be in the engineering field. And it's working on renewables, but the jobs I was doing didn't appeal to me. So they were really kind of small bits of the renewable energy picture and I was reading the books at the time by Amory Levin's and if you come across him or Paul Hodgkin and they were talking about big system transformations. And that's what I wanted to get into. And here I was figuring out the right radius to bend a pipe that transferred humidity from one stream to another. And it just wasn't jiving with the big picture that I was interested in. And so I ended up going back to university after my undergraduate degree, to study resource and environmental management with Mark Jackered, at Simon Fraser University. And Mark is one of the people that's been really central in thinking about energy policy and environmental policy in Canada over the last, I guess, like four decades now. And I think exposure to the way he was thinking and the way I was taught to think in that program really got me interested in and working on energy and environmental policy on a kind of as a career, and expose me to the possibility that you could work on this right, as a high school student leaving high school, you don't think that there's jobs working on energy policy, so it wasn't something I had in mind from for a long time. I'll also say, I grew up in a family that I don't know if they were environmentalist, but certainly fought a lot about the environment, you know, bird watching, and hiking, and that kind of thing. I was outside a lot when I was young, and I still like to be outside all the time. So I think there's, I've always had that kind of affinity for the environment. But this was a way that I could kind of blend some of my math skills or some of my interests and tinkering with, with some of those kinds of environmental affinity.   Trevor Freeman  11:31 Yeah, I mean, this is definitely not an episode where I need to give my backstory, but there's so much of what you said that, that I relate to from drawing a connection between playing with Lego as a kid and ending up in engineering school, that's totally my pathway as well, and being you know, good at math, getting into engineering school, and then realizing, hey, there might be something else out here through a project. And so I did my fourth year design project, just on a whim on a green roof for one of our university buildings    Nicholas Rivers  11:59 Ah cool.   Trevor Freeman  12:00 I would say that's kind of a point where it pushed me into this more sustainability focused career. So great to hear that. Thanks for sharing that. And certainly, I can appreciate the lack of linearity and a lot of careers in this space, and really the    Nicholas Rivers  12:14 Exactly, yeah    Trevor Freeman  12:15 everything. So. Okay, so the topic here, we're talking about today's policy. So I want to have you help us understand what is the history of decarbonisation policy in Canada? You know, we're at a point today, and we'll talk about maybe where we need to go moving forward. But what has come before this? When did we start seeing policies focused on reducing carbon in Canada, give us a bit of a crash course on our history so far.   Nicholas Rivers  12:45 Sure, I'll do my best. It's not that new. Right. We've known about this for a long time. In fact, I teach a course on climate. And, you know, in digging around for that course, we have studied climate change for over a century. The first, I think, relatively modern looking predictions about climate change came in the 1800s, the late 1800s. And so we have had a pretty good sense of where we're going for a long time. The first real government assessment of the severity of climate change came in the 1960s. This was a US government and national assessment, National Science Assessment. And it pretty much got the contours of the problem right, in the sense that we haven't, haven't changed our understanding of the science of climate change all that dramatically since the 1960s. The projections from that time still hold out today. In Canada, we didn't act quickly after the 1960s reports in the US, although we certainly followed them. The first thing Canada did, I would say, was hold a big international conference on climate change in the late 1980s, in Toronto. And this is a period, you know, when we were holding a number of these big international conferences on sustainable development, for example, or on climate for the first time, and Canada did its part in Toronto in '88 by holding this conference called the World Conference On The Changing Atmosphere. And at that conference, it was recognized that we can't keep going the way we are on climate. It's not sustainable, we're going to end up with more of a warmer world than we want. And we promised at the time, to reduce emissions by 20%. From those levels in the 80s. By the beginning of the century, by the beginning of a new millennium, which we didn't do. We didn't do it. Of course, yeah, this is gonna be a kind of recurring theme. It didn't do much in the way of policy, you know. So I think something we've learned is that just saying, we're going to do something doesn't amount all that much. But we've done that a number of times, and we started doing it in the 1980s. We didn't really start following up with proper policies, and by proper policies, I mean, policies that compel emitters, anyone who emits emissions to change their behavior in some way, either by replacing a technology or, or changing their actions. Until I would say the middle of the first century, or the first decade after the new millennium, so around 2005. And at the time, it wasn't the federal government that was really in the driver's seat on climate policy. It was the provincial governments. And so we saw at the time, British Columbia's government started experimenting with a carbon tax. We saw Alberta's government implement some restrictions on industrial emissions, we saw the Quebec government implement some, some transport industrial policies. We saw Ontario phase out coal fired power starting in 2007. And so it was really the provincial governments that were in the driver's seat, the federal government, you know, it was starting to tinker. But the federal government didn't really begin to take a really strong position, policy wise on climate change until around 2015. And that was the point when the federal government convened the provinces to get agreement that they should all move forward on implementing carbon pricing. All the provinces agreed except for one at the time. And so they all brought in a carbon price, either it was the federal carbon price that was imposed, or the provinces imposed their own carbon price. And that was the beginning really, of a whole slew of other policies and regulations. So since that 2015 period, I would say the federal government has really been more in the driver's seat on climate policy, and has implemented things like regulations on methane emissions, as has required the phase out of coal fired power, which is actually by 2030 of the requirement, but it's actually proceeding quite a bit quicker than the federal requirement. It's also got this carbon price in place, it's bringing in policies to require a complete cleaning of the electricity grid, a cap on oil and gas emissions and regulations on zero emission vehicles. And so really kind of multifaceted regulations coupled with this carbon price. And increasingly over the last couple of years, we're also seeing them coupled with pretty big subsidies for structural transformation of the economy. So you're seeing this play out in Ontario with battery plant investments, for example. And so I would say that's the policy kind of history, we're seeing a pretty slow start. We've known about the problem a lot longer than we've been acting on the problem. We saw ramp up provincially, after the millennium, and that we've seen the transition from the provinces to the federal government taking leadership on this file for the last decade or so.   Trevor Freeman  18:01 And as you said, like, slower than fast, but more to come. We're not done where we are today is not where we need to be. Yeah. So there's lots to talk about.    Nicholas Rivers  18:11 Yeah, exactly. Good point. So we, we've our admissions, not surprisingly, in the absence of any policies kept on growing up until about 2005, when we started bringing in policy. Until that point, it was like, received wisdom, that anytime the economy grew, which it mostly does every year, greenhouse gas emissions would grow with it. And that that held for a long time, like maybe even a century leading up to around 2005. And then policy really started to break that chain. And so we've seen a decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, as well as most other rich countries over the past decade and a half or so. But emissions aren't falling fast. In fact, they hardly even fall. They're falling from where they would have been, but they're not, they're more or less flat lines in Canada are beginning a very slow decline. Yeah. And we've got a maybe it's worth saying, one of the things that we've learned from the climate scientists is that emissions have to go to zero. There's not, you know, we can't solve this problem with modest cuts in emissions, which is where we're at right now that you can think of this as like filling up a bathtub with a tap, and the bathtub is going to keep filling until the tap comes off until the tap turns off completely. And so the goal, the end goal here, if we want to stop the world from heating up is stopping all emissions. And I think that's something that it took me a long time to appreciate. But it's something that I think is transformative and thinking about environmental policy.    Trevor Freeman  19:45 Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that really underpins the conversation today of seeing the role in policy to start decoupling what else is happening in our society with our emissions levels, and I think we're going to pick apart some of those Pacific examples during our conversation. So you brought up carbon pricing. I think everybody listening to this podcast, probably would agree that's, you know, at least the most public if not the signature national decarbonisation policy in Canada today, it's the one that certainly gets the most notice and the most discussion. So I want to start there, I want to pick it apart a little bit. I mean, to say that it's a divisive issue would be kind of an understatement. Help us understand how carbon pricing works in Canada today? What is our current scheme that we have in this country?    Nicholas Rivers  20:37 Good question. Okay, let me start out by saying what's the point of carbon pricing? Because I think it's not evident for lots of people, it seems like a crazy idea. The basic idea is that we live in a market economy. And a market economy is one where the market responds to the cost of producing something and the desire of people to buy something. And so the market sets the prices, and the market determines how much gets produced in response to the prices and how much people buy in response to the prices. It's not directed by some other entity, as a market economy tends to work best when the prices of things reflect their costs. So if I want to go buy some bread, the idea in a market economy is that the price of the bread that I buy should reflect the cost to produce the bread, right, the cost of the grains that are used to make it and the cost of labor, and the machines that are required to make it. And if that does reflect the cost, and there's a motivation for the bread maker to make the bread for me, and, and so it'll be there when I want to buy it. And the idea that behind this carbon pricing is that there is a cost to me producing carbon emissions. Right? So the cost is it makes the world a little warmer. And there's a cost in lives and livelihoods, and wellbeing, from climate change. But I don't pay a price, right, I don't pay the cost, I'm not required to pay the cost because this is a non market good. No one's producing climate change at the public good. And so the idea behind carbon pricing is, hey, the market doesn't work for this kind of good. One way we can fix it is by attaching a price to carbon emission. So it's just like bread when people use it, they have to pay the price to reflect the cost. And so that's the kind of basic fundamental and the, the idea that economists have had for a long time, is that if we properly price carbon emissions, people are going to use an awful lot less of them, because now their actions reflect the costs. Okay, so that's the kind of basic idea behind carbon pricing. Canada has brought in a carbon price federally in 2019 provinces implemented carbon prices, some of them much before that. So Alberta brought in an industrial carbon price in 2007. BC, brought in a carbon price throughout all emit for all emitters in 2008, and Quebec, as well. So, so the federal carbon price now is kind of the law of the land, in the sense that, in that 2016 meeting that I mentioned, where the federal and provincial governments agreed about carbon pricing, the agreement was we should all have a carbon price, let's make this a level playing field, let's all do our piece. And the federal government kind of took that message back and developed a federal carbon pricing benchmark, which said, Hey, provinces, you can do your own carbon price, as long as it's at least, you know, this certain level of stringency. But if you don't do it, we'll bring in our own federal carbon price in its stead. Okay, so provinces have the ability to do something on their own. And if they don't do anything, the federal government will, will bring in a carbon price. And so what we've got now is a kind of a system that's a bit piecemeal, where some provinces have their own carbon price and other provinces have not implemented a carbon price. And the federal government has brought one in and put in their place, the Federal carbon price as two parts. One is a consumer facing part. So for people like you and me, and for people or for institutions that are not giant emitters, like a university or hospital or a mall, for example. They all are subject to what the federal government calls a fuel Levy, and what the rest of us call a carbon tax. Big industrial emitters, like a pulp and paper plant or a steel plant, or a big electricity generator, are subjected to a different scheme. It's still a carbon price. But the way it works is a little different. And it's called an output based performance standard. So I'll speak briefly, on the industry side, the way it works is that each facility that produces a lot of emissions gets a target, then it's usually the same target for everyone in the sector. So at the target could be like, the target is for a steel sector, you have to produce steel with a carbon intensity of less than, say, one tonne of carbon per tonne of steel that you produce. So they get that target and if they managed to get their facility emissions below the target, they get a reward in terms of a carbon price, and if they their emissions are above the target, they have to pay a carbon price   Trevor Freeman  25:38 A financial reward. So they get some sort of incentive to be below that benchmark.   Nicholas Rivers  25:42 They basically get carbon credits, which have a financial value that you can trade them for dollars. So that's the way it works on the industry side. On the smaller emitter side, like you and me, it works a little differently. There's a levy on fuels. So any fuel that we might buy, like natural gas, or gasoline or diesel that contains carbon, or releases carbon, when it's combusted, is imposed in proportion to the amount of carbon that's released from that fuel when it's done. But, you and I are required to pay that fee. Now we don't pay it directly to the government, it's imposed at the retail level. So, you know, the gasoline station will pay the fee on our behalf, but then it'll raise the price of gasoline in the amount of the fee.    Trevor Freeman  26:33 Gotcha.    Nicholas Rivers  26:34 That's the main part of the system. The other thing with respect to this consumer carbon price, is that all that revenue that the government collects, is put into a pot. And then it's rebated back to us that, and you've probably heard about this, if you check your bank account, there'll be a Canada carbon rebate in your bank account, or at least each household will get one not each person.    Trevor Freeman  26:55 That's right.    Nicholas Rivers  26:55 So it depends on who to file their taxes First, each household who gets the rebate. So you want to be the first in your household to get your taxes done. But the money basically is raised from consumers in proportion to how much fuel they burn. And then the government collects it up, and rebates it back to consumers equally for all households. Okay, so a lot of people are confused about these parts, like why would they go to this trouble? Why would they raise money and then rebate it back? And this is an important point. This isn't a traditional tax, right? And then traditional tax governments implement the tax to raise revenue to, you know, buy or build a bridge or to fund a school or something like that. That's not what's going on here. The point of this fuel levy or carbon tax is to provide incentives for people to change their behavior. And in particular, it's to fix this market failure we talked about earlier with the cost of carbon emissions not reflected in their price. And so when the carbon price gets high, it will make a lot more sense for us as individuals to choose the low carbon action, as opposed to the high carbon action and save money doing it. And on the rebate side, the rebate is designed so that we don't get punished, we don't lose our you know, we don't become lower income as a result of this. And so it goes back to each of us equally. So no matter whether I do this, you know, whether I take the low carbon action, or I don't take the low carpet action, I get the same amount of rebate back regardless.   Trevor Freeman  28:26 So it opens the door, then to give people a little bit of control to work within the system to their own economic benefits.    Nicholas Rivers  28:35 Exactly.    Trevor Freeman  28:36 So if I can reduce my emissions and reduce my costs, I'm still gonna get the same amount back, but I'm going to be paying less of it.    Nicholas Rivers  28:42 You'll come out ahead.    Trevor Freeman  28:43 Yeah, it incentivizes me to do lower carbon things. So I pay less of that.    Nicholas Rivers  28:48 Exactly. That's the idea.    Trevor Freeman  28:49 Great. So I mean, the big question mark around all this. There's a lot of questions, obviously. But one of the big ones is, is it working? I mean, it's been in place, as you said since 2019. And in various forms across the country. Are we seeing the impact or the results that we as a society, or specifically the government intended to see from this? Are we reducing our fossil fuel consumption?   Nicholas Rivers  29:12 Yeah, I gotta give a two part answer.    Trevor Freeman  29:15 Sure. Yeah.    Nicholas Rivers  29:16 The first answer is, yes, it's working. So we've got dozens of studies that have looked at carbon prices in various jurisdictions around the world and use the data that we are able to gather to ascertain that yeah, carbon prices worldwide are definitely reducing emissions. Now, they're, they're not cutting emissions to zero, which is our goal, right? There's nowhere in the world that has implemented a carbon price and got emissions to go to zero. And you can see that in Canada emissions are basically flatlining. And so is it working? Yes, it's cutting emissions relatively where they would have been otherwise. But where it's not putting us yet on a trajectory towards getting to zero emissions. So emissions, carbon prices are still relatively low, worldwide and in Canada, and we don't really know what will happen when they ramp up to levels that might be commensurate with getting to zero emissions. But the initial forays into carbon pricing that we've seen around the world have suggested that this is definitely cutting emissions. Let me answer part two.    Trevor Freeman  30:22 Sure. Yeah.   Nicholas Rivers  30:23 And to part two is we don't really know that we don't really know because Canada implemented a carbon price nationwide in 2019. And so we don't have another Canada that didn't implement a carbon price in 2019. But everything else was exactly the same. To compare to, that's what we want to know, if we want to know that the carbon price worked, we would really want to have two Canada's and put a carbon price in one and not put a carbon price in the other, and then compare the two. And we don't have that. And in that sense, this is the same problem as we have for any big economic policy, or any big social policy or any big policy of any kind. We don't really know, for example, if single payer health care works, and then we don't have another candidate without single payer health care, but uh, we can, you know, have some proxies to think about whether it works, we can look at other jurisdictions that don't have single payer health care and try to make some comparisons. But we don't really know what would happen in Canada if we took away single payer health care, because we don't have another candidate without single payer health care. And so there are lots of studies that suggest that carbon prices are working. But we don't have, you know, that rock solid evidence, that of exactly what emissions are being cut by this, this carbon price in this context.    Trevor Freeman  31:39 Yeah, and I think that's partly why I talk about this a lot on the podcast with different guests on different topics. And it applies at the macro level with something like national policy, but also down to the micro level with, you know, what, what are individual utilities trying to do to meet the demands of the future, there really is not likely to be a single strategy that is going to get us where we need to be. It's not like we can pick that one. Policy, that one piece of technology. That's, that is the answer. That's really going to get us there. And I think that probably applies to carbon pricing as well. It's a tool in the toolbox.    Nicholas Rivers  32:16 Oh, absolutely. But I mean, I mean, let's just say that that's not what's what's happening. There were no governments, either provincially or federally, that have said, Okay, we're all in on carbon pricing. Now, we're done with our climate policy.    Trevor Freeman  32:29 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  32:29 That's not at all the picture in Canada. So let's not, I don't want to paint that as, as the picture because as I opened up this podcast saying, you know, Canada's done a ton in the last decade on climate policy, including things like vehicle standards and coal phase out and electricity and low carbon fuel standards, and I could the list goes really, on and on.   Trevor Freeman  32:51 Yeah, and I will definitely pull apart some of that, I think. So my next question on this is, as I mentioned, this is a divisive topic, there are differing ideas around carbon pricing, whether we should have when how it should apply. And the nature and the beauty and the frustration of our open democratic society is that we could very well pick a different direction. In the near future, we may have a different government next time around, that government could choose to do something different. What are other options out there? That might still factor in the fact that there is a cost to emitting carbon, but be a different strategy than the existing carbon pricing? Or is there another strategy out there? Or is there not?   Nicholas Rivers  33:39 Yeah, for sure, you can reduce emissions without a carbon price. The carbon price is one way of reducing emissions and it does have its appealing parts. It's appealing because it allows people some flexibility to respond in the way that suits them best, you know, I can either pay the carbon price or I can reduce emissions and not pay the carbon price. And, and for that reason, it's seen as a relatively economically efficient approach to reducing emissions. But there are other ways I would say the two big other ways are regulatory approaches, and incentive based approaches. So let me go through what those look like. In a regulatory approach. We don't say, here's the financial penalty for carbon emissions. Now figure out what you want to do, like a carbon price, we say here's exactly what you should do or what you have to do. And so a regulatory example would be we've got lots of these nationally, and provincially. But a regulatory example might say you can't generate electricity with coal fired power anymore. Okay, that's a regulation or it might say, you have to cut your emissions by 10% this year and every year going forward as silver it. So certainly regulatory approaches can work, they often seem to be less flexible than a carbon price, because you don't give emitters the choice of how to respond to you imposing upon them. And so that requires the government to know quite a lot about you know, what's feasible and what's appropriate for different situations that it doesn't need to know, in the carbon price case, it didn't. So if I want to regulate you, Trevor, and to do it in a way, that's reasonable, I got to know a lot about your life to know like about what you're, you know, what possibilities you have to reduce your emissions, before I can choose some appropriate, you know, regulations to impose on you. So if I tell you, you have to use a heat pump, and then it turns out you live in a house that is not amenable to a heat pump. I've kind of made life difficult for you. Yeah. So regulations certainly have a lot of potential and, and they are being used in contexts where the kind of technology has become more clear. And I think they have a lot of, they can play a big role, they are playing a big role in driving down emissions. So again, in cases where technology is relatively clear, and there's less of that kind of work in that situation, this doesn't work in this other situation. Another approach to reduce emissions would be an incentive driven approach. So you could think of a carbon price as a disincentive, right, every time you produce emissions, I'm going to charge you. And an alternative approach would be anytime you do something that reduces emissions, I'm going to reward you. And so we have that happening here as well. So there's subsidies for heat pumps, for example, or electric vehicles. We're seeing subsidies for construction of electricity, electric, battery, battery, electric plants. So this is certainly part of that role as well. I feel like subsidies play a useful role in really nascent technologies, but driving decarbonisation with subsidies, it my view is going to be, we're not going to be able to afford the cost as a government, it's going to be too much for the government to try to replace everyone's heating system. With a subsidy. I think we're finding that out. In the case of the green Homes program, the government has pulled back here as a sight into fiscal cost.   Trevor Freeman  37:16 Exactly, yeah, it's popular because it helps, you know, those early adopters get that more expensive piece of technology. But to your point, we can't pay for every single one of those units, we can't provide that incentive. So it's creating more of an ecosystem that makes those make more sense.    Nicholas Rivers  37:31 Yeah.    Trevor Freeman  37:32 Okay. So that's great. Thanks very much, Nick, for enlightening us that we could probably spend an entire episode no question just talking about that. But I do want to push forward here on to some of these other questions. I want to dive into some specific sectors of our economy or some specific issues and understand from you the role of policy and help us drive the change that we often talk about on this show. So given the kind of where I work, and the nature of these podcasts, electricity is a big piece for us. So a constant theme on the show is how electricity is really one of the main tools that we have to decarbonize, we all know that a lot of aspects of our life that are not currently run by electricity, like our transportation and our heating, we are going to move to that fuel source as as our heating or transportation method. We're pretty fortunate in Ontario, that we have a really clean grid, it's a little bit over 90%, emissions free, meaning, you know, most of the generation of our electricity doesn't create GHG emissions. But there are other parts of the country that do rely more on fossil fuels. And to your earlier point, 90% is good, but it's not 100%, there is still that 10% that we need to decarbonize. So what are some of the tools in place now? Or something? Some things that are being considered that will help us move toward totally emissions free electricity generation in Canada?   Nicholas Rivers  39:02 All right, good question. So electricity is a big source of emissions on its own, producing about 10% of Canada's emissions. And as you point out, it is the central tool, which we're hoping to use to decarbonize all the other sectors. And that only works if the electricity industry is clean. And so I think you're right to point out, this is one of the first things we've got to tackle. Unfortunately, it is the big success story in Canada, emissions have been falling rapidly in electricity generation in Canada. And it's because of policy especially. One thing that we've done that's been really effective, and I mentioned it earlier, is an explicit policy to phase out coal fired power generation. coal generation produces about twice as much greenhouse gas per kilowatt hour generated as natural gas. It's very dirty. And so it's the first So you want to do what to tackle. And so Canada's federal government brought in a policy that said, by 2030, there shouldn't be any more coal generation on the grid. That's, it's a little late to the game. And that I mean, this is, I think, an important policy. But Ontario started phasing out coal in 2007. And I believe it was finished by phasing out coal in 2014. And that's why, to his credit, so clean right now, I learned as part of another project that Ontario had the biggest coal fired generation station in North America, which was one of the ones that was closed. As part of this, this coal phase out big local health improvements, as well as greenhouse gas improvements.    Trevor Freeman  40:37 Yeah, that's important to say to you, there are other ancillary benefits here to policies.   Nicholas Rivers  40:42 I think, even if coal didn't produce greenhouse gas emissions, it would be worth closing it. And in fact that that was the reason for Ontario's coal phase out was a policy by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the environment that was worried about local health impacts, and they are dire, we lose about 10 million people worldwide every year from air pollution. So it is a sector that's really worth tackling on its own even without greenhouse gas issues. But it is a big greenhouse gas emitter. And that's the first thing we want to do. And we're being successful, there are some coal fired generating stations left in Canada, but they are many fewer than they were a decade ago. And, they will be phased out by 2030. I think before 2030, in most cases. Aster coal, which is the dirtiest fuel, we've got to tackle natural gas. Natural gas is going to be the main source of emissions in our electricity sector, once the coal is gone, and we're not yet in a position to get rid of natural gas from electricity grids. Natural gas is super useful, because it can ramp up and down really quickly. You can, I mean, I'm not an Electricity System Operator, but my understanding is you can basically flick the up switch and electricity, the gas turbine will go up, you know, in terms of power output pretty much right away. And then you can press the down switch and go down right away. That is not at all the case, for example, with a nuclear power station.    Trevor Freeman  42:06 Exactly. Yep, exactly.    Nicholas Rivers  42:08 And so gas is useful. And it becomes more useful when you put a lot of renewables on the grid, because renewables do fluctuate quite quickly. And, you know, if the sun goes behind the cloud, for example, or if the wind hits a gust, and so you want to be able to respond to those fluctuations with some other source that can go up and down quite quickly. And so we're using that natural gas for that role right now, that backup role. And, and there's not a, there's not a straightforward substitution for all of that gas capacity right now. I think in the near term, what we want to do is stop using or dramatically slow down using natural gas, for providing bulk energy. So bulk energy, I mean, not this kind of quick response function that natural gas plays, but the kind of 24/7 kind of energy that that we also need in society, we should be trying to displace gas's role in providing that, and we can do it relatively cost effectively. Now, with wind and solar electricity or nuclear power in Ontario.    Trevor Freeman  43:11 Yeah, that's our base load is what we call that So absolutely, that that load that's always there, if we can make sure that load at least is completely carbon free, that's a big win for sure.   Nicholas Rivers  43:21 Exactly. And so I would say be looking for opportunities to get wind and solar, and maybe nuclear or geothermal to be providing that bulk energy and start retaining natural gas for uniquely that backup role. And we're starting to see regulations that are developed with that aim in mind. So Canada is currently consulting on what it calls its clean electricity regulation, which is designed to basically limit gas to a backup role by 2035. So it is a regulation that is intent on getting rid of gas as a provider of bulk energy, and limiting it to only providing, you know, a certain number of hours of year of backup capacity. So it's not saying you can't have gas on the grid, but it says you shouldn't be using gas to provide your main source of power. Gotcha. So that's a policy that's not implemented yet. It's being developed. It's being consulted on and we'll see what the final version of that policy looks like. But I think that's basically the right angle to be trying to limit gas to smaller contributions. And eventually, we're going to want to figure out another source of energy that can provide that kind of high frequency or high reliability backup power. And that's tricky to do. Because gas does play that unique role. And so it's not something we need to do right away, but it's something that we should be thinking about how to provide that in the future.    Trevor Freeman  44:55 Yeah, I mean, that raises a great point and kind of leads into my Next question really well. There are certainly things we need to develop, things we need to figure out moving forward on, not just the policy side, but the technology side. In order to address what we have to do for climate change, what role does policy government play in supporting research and development of accelerating these new technological advances that we need, you know, in short order here?    Nicholas Rivers  45:29 Another good question. Okay. Let me start by saying, for our short term climate goals, and our short term climate goal nationally, is to reduce emissions by 40%. By 2030, an ambitious goal, we have the technology we need.    Trevor Freeman  45:44 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  45:45 The IEA, the International Energy Agency, the Canadian climate Institute, have done reports that try to figure out, you know, what we might or what pathway we might follow to get emissions down to 40, or 50%. And the common assessment, and I think it's reasonable, is that we have what we need to cut emissions by half. So we don't need to invent anything new, right away. But to cut emissions to zero. And this is like a mid century 2050 kind of goal, we probably do need to invent some new technologies. Some things like I just mentioned, like figuring out ways to produce firm power. So that kind of firming role that natural gas plays that's clean, would be an example, or figuring out ways to provide zero carbon, long distance transport, or zero carbon, concrete or cement, for example, yet another example. So we do have things to figure out, by all means. I would say the government can play a really big role here. And the government does play a big role here. Maybe we're thinking about how technology gets better. Before we start thinking about what the government can do. technology gets better in two big ways. One is, like before it's ready to be sold on the market. technology gets better through a deliberate research and development process. And so this is firms, or universities or national labs, working on, you know, new types of renewable energy. There's lots of work, for example, new types of solar cells happening right now, or new types of batteries. And this is like the deliberate efforts to invent new technologies for research and development. But the other big way that technology can improve is through the deployment process. And in fact, I think most of the big cost improvements for new technologies happen on the latter side. So it's like we've left after we've invented the basic technology, the scale up process, the economies of scale, deliver big cost gains, and performance improvements. And what we call learning by doing. It's like this process of just getting better at doing something by doing it lots of times. And solar is a really good example of that. You guys have probably talked about how solar on this podcast is so important, but solar has fallen and cost 1000 fold over the last 40 years. Yeah, 1000 fold that's crazy. And much of the cost decline, adults, especially over the last 15 years, has been learning by doing has been us just getting really good at squeezing out all the inefficiencies in the manufacturing process and, and very small improvements, but continuous improvements in the efficiency process of like actually harvesting the solar energy in the cell, such that the cost has continuously fallen by by, well, I don't know exactly the number per year, we talked about a learning curve, falling per number of technologies deployed. So every time solar installations double, we tend to see about a 15 to 20% cost decline.    Trevor Freeman  48:57 Gotcha.    Nicholas Rivers  48:58 And so I would say that that learning process is important as well. And the government can play a big role in both of those processes. Right? It certainly supports basic research and development. And this can be academic or industry research. Candidates don't do a great job on this front, we have quite low return development, investments compared to poor countries, and so are kind of free riding on on r&d investments compared to more innovative countries. And then the other big role for the government would be in helping to deploy new technologies and spur along that learning by doing process. And so that could be like providing niche markets for new technologies or through government procurement. You know, government could might say even though this new technology is a little more expensive, we can see it has a long term future and we're gonna we're gonna we're going to commit to buying it for government purposes, and government itself is a really big market, so that can be a big incentive for them. For cost declines, and it can just, you know, spur deployment. So we're seeing that with electric cars right now, the government is providing subsidies for people to buy electric cars. And one of the reasons that it does that is to help improve the technology.    Trevor Freeman  50:13 Yeah, and just for our listeners out there, you know, what, what Nicholas is describing is not unique to green technology to climate change technology. This is sort of a standard approach for technology development over the last, I don't know, centuries. Is that fair to say?    Nicholas Rivers  50:31 Yeah, the early ones, the reports that I've seen on learning by doing came from airplane manufacturing, right. So when people were learning to make wide body airplanes, researchers observed the same kind of cost improvements in that process, as we're currently observing in, for example, batteries, or electrolyzers, or solar panels.    Trevor Freeman  50:52 Yeah. And that's, that's encouraging, and that we kind of know as a society, how to help technology move along, if there's the political will. And then if ultimately the market decides, yeah, this is something we want, then that iterative process can happen to help get that cost down, as you said, learn by doing, figure out the installation cost, figuring out the manufacturing, supply chain issues, and really making a viable technology.    Nicholas Rivers  51:17 Yeah.    Trevor Freeman  51:18 Okay, so it's Trevor here, breaking into my own podcast. We're gonna pause there. As I said, at the beginning, this is really a long conversation. There's a lot to get through. And there's a lot more to that we talked about that Nicholas and I talked about, so we wanted to break it into two episodes. So this will be the end of Part One. Thanks for sticking with us and joining us today, and we look forward to having you back for part two that will be released at our next episode. So thanks very much, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps us spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you. Whether it's feedback, comments, or an idea for a show or guests. You can always reach us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com  

With Catherine Abreu of Destination Zero. I've heard people say, “climate disaster knows no bounds” and “it discriminates against no one.” There's a sense in which that's true. But impacts of climate change affect different people in Canada and around the world differently, depending on who they are.   Women, girls, and gender-diverse people often experience harsher impacts of climate change, especially if they are marginalized due to racism, poverty, and other factors. They're also an important part of effective climate solutions. Gender equality itself is a climate crisis solution.  Our guest Catherine Abreu is Founder and Executive Director of Destination Zero and an internationally recognized, award-winning climate justice advocate. Recognized for her diplomacy, communication, and coalition-building skills, she's one of the world's top 100 climate policy influencers according to Apolitical. Catherine was named the 2023 National Hero by Canada's Walk of Fame. She's a member of Canada's Net-Zero Advisory Body, the expert body tasked with providing advice to government on pathways to meet climate commitments. She is an advisor to the Canadian Climate Institute and sits on the Boards and steering committees of several organizations, including Climate Action Network Canada, the Global Gas and Oil Network, and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. Catherine is the recipient of the 2020 Jack Layton Progress Prize. She is a vital figure in climate policy and action, shaping global discussions on the transition toward clean energy.  Relevant links: destinationzero.earth  Episode ⁠Transcripts⁠  Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at ⁠canadianwomen.org⁠ and consider becoming a monthly donor.  Facebook: Canadian Women's Foundation  LinkedIn: The Canadian Women's Foundation  Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation  TikTok: @cdnwomenfdn  X: @cdnwomenfdn

In late 2023, a dream team of former elected officials, mayors and chief planners, Indigenous leaders, designers, builders and developers, affordability advocates, and finance and insurance experts came together to create a Task Force for Housing and Climate.  This group released their Blueprint for More and Better Housing in March 2024.This episode we welcome Housing and Climate Task Force co-Chair Don Iveson.  We discuss why addressing Canada's housing crisis should also include consideration of the climate crisis.  We hear how over a hundred recommendations coalesced into a report that is both bold and grounded. We explore why this challenge motivated Don and his colleagues on the Task Force to try and set the floor for climate and housing discussions.About our guest:Don served as Edmonton's Mayor from 2013 until 2021, and Chair of Canada's Big City Mayors for 5 years. Since retiring from City Hall, he's worked part-time with Co-Operators as Executive Advisor for Climate Investing and Community Resilience. He also operates Civic Good, an advisory practice focused on climate resilience, housing innovation, and civic innovation projects with clients ranging from startups to governments. He's a member of the Expert Panel on Adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute, is Co-Chair of the Task Force for Housing and Climate, and serves as Board Co-Chair of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. Additional resources:https://housingandclimate.ca/blueprint/ https://civicgood.substack.com/p/a-blueprint-for-housing-and-climate https://www.conferenceboard.ca/product/work-in-progress/ https://www.conferenceboard.ca/product/canadas-housing-affordability-challenge-plenty-of-questions-some-answers-jan2024/

For the moment, Anthony Housefather remains a Liberal MP. However, after Tuesday's Middle East motion in the House of Commons, he's not ruling out crossing the floor to join Poilievre and the Tories. You'll hear his conversation with Vassy Kapelos on today's program. Also on today's show: You'll hear Vassy's conversation with Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston about the Carbon Tax hike, and how this non-April Fool's joke could impact the province. Meantime, a new report says the industrial carbon price could be more effective in reducing greenhouse gases compared to consumer policies. Vassy goes 1-on-1 with Dale Beugin, the Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Climate Institute. Plus, CTV's Dan Riskin talks about the pending Solar Eclipse, and why this once-in-a-lifetime moment can be life-changing for all the wrong reasons. And finally, we have the Daily Debrief Panel! Today's edition features Rob Benzie, Marieke Walsh, and Laura Stone.

If you live in Canada, and you've looked at your bank account recently, you'll likely see that, at some point on January 15th, you received your quarterly Climate Action Incentive Payment, or what is colloquially referred to as the carbon tax rebate. Will the rebates be enough to cover what most Canadian families spend on carbon tax each year? That's the question I'll be examining in this episode of Green Neighbour. CONTENTS OF THIS PODCAST: 00:00 - Introduction to the Question 02:15 - Scenario A (Upper-Middle Income) 03:38 - Estimating Expenditures on Natural Gas 10:53 - Scenario B (Middle-Middle Income) 13:34 - Scenario C (Lower-Middle Income) 16:08: Final Analysis 17:26 - Thanks for Watching! SOCIAL MEDIA: • Web: www.green-neighbour.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArtLightstone • Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenNeighbour • TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@GreenNeighbour • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenneighbour/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/artlightstone/ SOURCES: Motor fuel prices (Ontario Provincial Government): https://www.ontario.ca/motor-fuel-prices/#:~:text=The%20federal%20carbon%20tax%20is%20now%2014.31%20cents%20per%20litre Fuel consumption ratings search tool (Natural Resources Canada): https://fcr-ccc.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/en Average Natural Gas Usage Per Month (Shrink that Footprint, 2023): https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-natural-gas-usage-per-month/ Average Natural Gas Usage Per Month – 2024 (Shrink that Footprint, Updated, 2024): https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-natural-gas-usage-per-month/ How Big is a House? (Shrink that Footprint) https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/ Federal Carbon Tax (Trans Gas): https://www.transgas.com/customer-central/federal-carbon-tax Federal Carbon Tax (Trans Gas): https://earth.org/carbon-tax-revenue-neutrality/ Canadians receiving first carbon tax rebate of 2024, here's when (CTV News, 2024): https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadians-receiving-first-carbon-tax-rebate-of-2024-here-s-when-1.6723609 Brace yourself for surging heating bills (Canadian Taxpayers Federation, 2023) https://www.taxpayer.com/newsroom/brace-yourself-for-surging-heating-bills Canada's budget watchdog troubled by spin around latest report on carbon pricing (CBC, 2023): https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/watchdog-spin-report-carbon-pricing-1.6805441 Gini Coefficients based on the adjusted family after-tax income, by province and territory, 2016 to 2021 (Statistics Canada, 2021): https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230809/t007b-eng.htm Tax filers and dependants with income by total income, sex and age (Statistics Canada) https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110000801 New analysis finds most Canadian households will save money in switch to electricity (Canadian Climate Institute, 2023): https://climateinstitute.ca/new-analysis-finds-most-canadian-households-will-save-money-in-switch-to-electricity ‘Great Canadian Class Study' reveals strong belief in meritocracy despite low mobility across generations (University of Alberta, 2023): https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2023/11/great-canadian-class-study-reveals-strong-belief-in-meritocracy.html

In a report earlier this month, the province's Financial Accountability Office outlined the financial costs of climate change. Ontario Today talks wih Financial Accountability Officer, Jeffrey Novak and Canadian Climate Institute adaptation director, Ryan Ness.

Eight years ago, Justin Trudeau and 30 ecstatic Liberal MPs walked up to Rideau Hall, ready to be sworn in as Canada's next government. But after three elections, the Liberal glow has faded – drastically – as more and more Liberals suggest it's time for the prime minister to step down. This week on “It's Political,” Abacus Data CEO David Coletto, P.E.I. Sen. Percy Downe and Toronto Star reporter Alex Ballingall join me to discuss whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should step down, and what the Liberals could do to address the public's growing fatigue with their leader.  But first, if Trudeau were to step down, what would he be remembered for? We ask several close observers for their thoughts on the prime minister's legacy. Some of their answers may surprise.  2:20 Mini documentary on Justin Trudeau's legacy 31:55 Panel discussion on Justin Trudeau's future as Liberal leader Some of the clips this week were sourced from CBC, CPAC, Global, CTV, and The Guardian. This episode of “It's Political” was produced by Althia Raj and Michal Stein. Kevin Sexton mixed the program. Our theme music is by Isaac Joel. In this episode: Abacus Data CEO David Coletto, Prince Edward Island Sen. Percy Downe, Toronto Star reporter Alex Ballingall, University of Calgary political science professor Lisa Young, UBC economics professor Kevin Milligan, Acadia University politics professor Alex Marland, Queen's University adjunct professor Eugene Lang, the executive director of First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada and McGill University School of Social Work professor Cindy Blackstock, Canadian Climate Institute executive vice-president Dale Beugin, and York University public administration professor Thomas Klassen. Hosted by Althia Raj.

A new estimate shows Canada's greenhouse gas emissions grew two per cent in 2022. What are the implications? Vassy breaks it down.  On today's show:  A conversation with Dave Sawyer, principal economist at the Canadian Climate Institute.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized for Parliament's recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis in the Second World War. We play Vassy's full conversation with Karina Gould, Government House Leader. Talk Science to Me with Dan Riskin, CTV science and technology specialist.  The Daily Debrief panel with Robert Benzie, Laura Stone and Sabrina Nanji.  Neil Hauer, a Canadian journalist based in Armenia, on the ethnic-Armenian led separatist government of Nagorno Karabkh announcing that it will dissolve.

Summer Rewind: The Canadian Climate Institute's Big Switch Reaching Canada's net zero goals is a bit like solving a national puzzle. There are many pieces that need to fit together, including doubling or tripling the amount of zero-emissions electricity Canada currently produces to meet future demand for widespread electrification. Caroline Lee, senior researcher with the Canadian Climate Institute, walks us through the Big Switch report, which highlights three crucial changes required by Canada's electricity sector in order to hit the country's net zero goals. Related links Website: https://climateinstitute.ca/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadianclimateinstitute/ To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod

Can artificial intelligence be used to find innovative ways to improve our healthcare system? Professor Ross Mitchell believes so. He's the Alberta Health Services “Chair in A.I. in Health” and he joins to explain how the technology can effectively be used to drive healthcare innovation in our Province. Is Canada on the right track to address climate change? We'll discuss the recently released ‘National Adaptation Strategy' and the impact it will have on the fight against climate change with Ryan Ness, Director of Adaptation for the Canadian Climate Institute. Finally, Stampede just over a week away! This year's edition marks the 100th anniversary of flapjack flippin'! We hear about the history of the popular pancake breakfasts from Dave Middleton, Chair of the Calgary Stampede Promotion Committee.

Ann Rohmer speaks with with Janet Gray – Money Coaches Canada where the discussion looks at why we are poorer now than 3 years ago, what to do and will Tuesday's federal budget help? Tina Cortese looks at the Retail Council of Canada's reaction to the federal budget and if the Federal Government couldhave done more to help Canadians by slashing credit card swipe fees, eliminating hidden taxes on consumer goods such as car seats, strollers, diapers. Ann Rohmer is with Rick Smith, President of the Canadian Climate Institute who says that Tuesday's budget accelerates clean growth in Canada. Jim Lang speaks with Toby Boulet – parent of Logan Boulet who died in in the Bronco's bus crash in 2018. April 7th is GREEN SHIRT DAY to inspire people to become organ donors. Kevin Frankish is with Bobbi Hunter to discuss Rembering Bob Hunter, a book about the environmentalist and one ofthe founders of Greenpeace Bob Hunter which will be available later this month – MR. MINDBOMB Shaliza Bacchus looks at Life at Sea, which is offering the ultimate cruising experience.  An opportunity to visit all 7continents, work remotely and live at sea for 30k.

Last week, Volkswagen announced it will build its first overseas electric vehicle battery gigafactory in St. Thomas, Ontario. The federal and provincial governments declined to say what they'd paid to lure Volkswagen to Canada rather than the U.S. but the Financial Times reported the price was around $15 billion. That's a lot of public money going to subsidize a private company, even one that will support thousands of jobs. So this week, on “It's Political” we take a look at what's driving the case for big subsidies, and how Canada is adopting a green new industrial policy with little public debate. First, we'll hear from stakeholders and experts on the impact of the United States' Inflation Reduction Act, and what it could mean here, north of the U.S. border. Then, we'll sit down with the man some have dubbed Canada's energizer bunny, Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne. In this episode: Minister Champagne, Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, Matt Poirier, senior policy director with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, John Lester, an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, Marisa Beck,  director of Clean Growth with the Canadian Climate Institute, Jean Simard, the president and CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada, Brian Kingston, the president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, and Genevieve Dufour, a professor of trade law at the University of Sherbrooke. Hosted by Althia Raj Some of the clips this week were sourced from: CPAC, the House of Commons, The White House, CTV, CBC, The Andrew Lawton Show, Street Sport Television Car show and PBS. “It's Political” is produced by Althia Raj and Michal Stein. Sean Pattendon mixed the program. Our theme music is by Isaac Joel.

Markham interviews economist Jason Dion, senior research director, Canadian Climate Institute, about the oped, "Electric federalism: An idea whose time has come."

Dr. Bruce Lourie shares why the Ivy Foundation has made the choice to spend down. He explains why the Ivey foundation decided to spend down and his tips to making the most impact possible. Episode Highlights:Bruce's personal journey into philanthropyThe reasons why a family foundation decides to spend downThe best grant-making strategies to choose when you are spending down.The unexpected twists and turns of spending down. Dr. Bruce Lourie Bio:Dr. Lourie is one of Canada's most influential leaders and experts on climate change and the transition to a net-zero economy. Best known for his ability to rethink climate problems and develop solutions that benefit both the economy and the environment, he has been instrumental in creating more than a dozen organizations that play a critical role in Canada's transition to a net-zero economy, including Canadian Climate Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Finance, Farmers for Climate Solutions, Efficiency Canada and The Transition Accelerator. His focus at Ivey Foundation is the Economy and Environment program, which provides funding to these net-zero focused organizations, among others. He also liaises with government, industry, ENGOs and the business community to ensure Canada achieves net-zero by 2050 while remaining economically competitive.An engaging and lively spokesperson, Dr. Lourie has a unique ability to translate complex issues into timely and actionable information in both print and broadcast interviews alike and has been interviewed by most major Canadian news outlets. Dr. Lourie is also an experienced and in demand speaker, and has spoken at events such as Global Salmon Initiative's COP26 Panel, The Trottier Symposium and the 2021 Calgary Climate Symposium, where he gave the keynote address.In addition to his influential role in pushing Canada towards net-zero by 2050, Dr. Lourie also initiated the largest climate action in North America, the phasing out of coal in Ontario, and helped shepherd the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement and establish of the Ontario Greenbelt. He is also the co-author of two books, Toxin Toxout and Slow Death By Rubber Duck, an international bestseller. Dr. Lourie holds a Ph.D examining the intersection of risk, science and policy. Links: Ivey Foundation: https://www.ivey.orgCalifornia Endowment https://www.calendow.org/Report: Building Healthy Communities: A Decade in Review November 2020: https://www.calendow.org/app/uploads/2021/04/The_California_Endowment_Decade_In_Review_2010_2020_Executive_Report.pdfIf you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well:https://www.doyourgood.com/blog/119-To-Spend-Down-or-Nothttps://www.doyourgood.com/blog/109-why-people-givehttps://www.doyourgood.com/blog/61-lisa-holtanCrack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies as well as the tools, you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code!In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Link for the wait list for the Philanthropy Accelerator https://www.doyourgood.com/Philanthropy-Accelerator-Mastermind-WaitlistLink to the nonprofit email sign-up to connect https://www.doyourgood.com/ticket-to-fundraisingCheck out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com. Connect with Do Your Goodhttps://www.facebook.com/doyourgoodhttps://www.instagram.com/doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website https://www.doyourgood.com/ or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!

Markham interviews Marisa Beck, clean growth director, Canadian Climate Institute, about the launch of the first publications in the Institute's Mobilizing Private Capital to Support Canada's Clean Growth research series. 

We are at the start of an electrical revolution. A spark of change is flaming across the country – renewable energy, electrification, the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. Conversations have become actions. Industries are united, working together to achieve Canada's net-zero targets. In Episode 101 of the thinkenergy podcast, host Dan Séguin looks back at some of our favourite guests from 2022, sharing insights and ideas about the transition to net zero and how it's shaping our future. Related links   Caroline Lee, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-lee-12345cl/ Caroline Lee, Twitter: https://twitter.com/caroline_lee2 Caroline Lee on thinkenegy: https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/the-canadian-climate-institutes-big-switch/ Catherine Abreu, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-abreu-574764250/  Catherine Abreu, Twitter: https://twitter.com/catabreu_   Catherine Abreu on thinkenergy: https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/the-journey-to-a-net-zero-future/ Robert Hornung, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-hornung-3220145b/  Robert Hornung, Twitter: https://twitter.com/roberthornung2?lang=en  Robert Hornung on thinkenergy: https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/renewable-energys-role-in-net-zero-with-robert-hornung/    To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   Transcript:  Dan Seguin  00:06 This is Think Energy. The podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the think energy podcast. And I'm Dan Seguin. With electrification, renewable energy, electric cars and policy to reduce our reliance on oil and gas. 2022 showed that we are at the start of an electrical revolution. 2022 marked a transformational year in numerous industries, the energy sector, the transportation sector, the building and construction sector and the technology sector. All of these industries became allies in the country's goal to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and work towards achieving Canada's Net Zero targets. The Canadian Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act, which became law on June 29 2021, enshrined in legislation Canada's commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. But it was this year that we saw the momentum begin in a big way. For part one of our special holiday podcast, we're focusing on Canada's transition to net zero and how it will shape the future. I've gathered some of my favorite guests from the past year, and thought I'd reshare what they had to say about one of the biggest topics of the year. My first guest is Caroline Lee, mitigation research lead with the Canadian Climate Institute. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the country's leading climate change policy research organization, all roads to net zero pass through electricity. I know we've mentioned this many times on the show, but it bears repeating how Canada produces some of the cleanest electricity in the world. 80% of the electricity generated across Canada comes from sources completely free of greenhouse gas emissions, Caroline does an excellent job at defining net zero. And the premise behind the Canadian Climate Institute report, The Big Switch,   Caroline Lee  02:44 Maybe I can start with this first explanation around what the net zero goal actually means, you know, Canada, just recently committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. And this is an ambitious goal. And what that means is that Canada has agreed to really zero out our emissions to get our emissions as close as we can to zero, and then whatever emissions are very expensive, or technically very difficult to get out of the economy than we offset in some way. So again, this is an ambitious goal, there's a lot that needs to be done, especially in electricity to support that goal. And the reason why we say all roads to net zero paths through electricity is that when we looked at all the studies that model a trajectory for Canada reaching net zero, there really was no credible path without this switch towards electricity. And without making the generation of electricity cleaner. So we really saw tackling electricity as being critical to the achievement of Canada's netzero goals. And maybe I can just say it and in simple terms, three key reasons why that switch is so important. So first of all, electricity itself when you use it, it doesn't burn fossil fuel, of course, so therefore, it doesn't release greenhouse gas emission. So we all know that if you're driving an Eevee, you're not generating greenhouse gas emissions directly. Now, of course, we also know that the production of electricity can generate emissions. So we can use fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to generate electricity. So that's where you can get some emissions. But what's really positive news in Canada and really around the world is that we're making quite significant progress, especially here in Canada, to reduce those emissions associated with producing electricity. And now that the federal government has a commitment to achieve Net Zero electricity by 2035. The country now has a clear mandate that we're going to be eliminating by and large those emissions associated with producing electricity. So that's a really big thing is that electricity in the future could really be this conduit. for using fully non emitting electricity from the beginning to the end. And then a third reason why electricity is so important is that it's just more efficient. So, driving an electric vehicle is actually three to four times more efficient than using fossil fuels to drive that vehicle. And that's because you lose so much more heat, there's a lot of energy that's wasted when you're combusting fossil fuel. So, because of those three reasons, electricity does seem to play a really critical role in achieving our climate goals.   Dan Seguin  05:31 My next guest is the renowned Catherine Ebru, Executive Director of Destination Zero. Catherine talks about the costs and the rising volatility that exists around the world when it comes to subsidizing fossil fuel sources. Catherine digs into how renewables are not only more reliable, but also more resilient than many people give them credit for.   Catherine Abreu  05:58 The concern over rising energy costs is a huge one. You know, we've actually seen that rear its head pretty substantially this year, in the late half of 2021, with rising energy costs across Europe, relating mostly to the rising costs of gas. And I think actually, a big lesson that we're learning from the energy cost crisis that many parts of Europe and other parts of the world are experiencing right now is that the fossil fuel market is actually quite volatile. And that volatility has impacted Canada quite a bit as a major oil and gas producer already. But it's starting to impact not only, you know, production and jobs related to that production of fossil fuels, it's starting to also now penetrate energy systems that rely on those fossil fuels. And so we need to be correcting for that volatility. And a part of how we do that actually, and this is maybe counterintuitive to a lot of folks, because there's a lot of misguiding rhetoric out there around renewable energy. But part of how we make energy systems more resilient is by incorporating more renewable energy and more distributed renewable energy generation into those systems. And then another important piece is energy efficiency. So you make those energy systems really lean as much as you can, by cutting energy waste, right? So we want to be making sure that we're not losing energy as it's transferred from where it's created to where it's used. We want to make sure that when it's used, it's used as efficiently as possible. And so those investments in energy efficiency help make the energy system more stable. And then when we make that energy system run on renewable energy, and when we're talking about renewable energy, we're talking about a mix here of water, when sun and storage, of course, then we see that there is a new kind of resilience put into that system. Because often those energy sources can help us lock in long term prices that are much more stable than the volatile energy prices associated with fossil fuels. So that is the kind of longer term solution that we're looking to hear about in the long run, that can really offer much lower and more stable energy prices for people. But unfortunately, we've heard a lot of misguided, or I think, intentionally misrepresented rhetoric around renewable energy and having a high cost. And the only reason that it appears to have a high cost is because fossil fuel energy has been subsidized so heavily for the last century by governments, that those fossil fuels tend to have an artificially lower cost. But we're paying for that artificially lower cost as taxpayers. And so part of the equation here is leveling out the playing field between fossil fuels and renewable energy by supporting the growth of renewable energy and stopping subsidies to fossil fuels.   Dan Seguin  09:03 My last guest on part one of our holiday retrospective episode is Robert Horning CEO of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association. Robert joined me back in February of 2022, and talked about why he believes when and solar are Canada's answer to decarbonizing the electricity system. He also details what it's really going to take to achieve Canada's netzero goals.   Robert Hornung  09:35 Well, I think first off, we have to sort of look at some of the research that's been done different studies that have looked at what are the pathways to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions? We've just said it's an enormous challenge. How do we get there? And those studies consistently show that to get to net zero, you have to first and foremost decarbonize electricity production so that you're not producing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity anymore. And then you have to expand that electricity production because you're going to want to use that electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in areas like transportation and in buildings and industries. Now another thing that those studies consistently show is that the majority of that new electricity that we're going to need is going to come from wind and solar. And why is that? The simple reason is because wind and solar are the lowest cost options for new electricity production in the world today. And our vision developed an illustrative scenario, which is consistent with the findings of these netzero studies, which sort of assumes we're going to need to double electricity production, we assume that two thirds of that new electricity production is going to come from wind and solar. And that leads us to the calculation that that means you have to expand wind and solar to be in Canada tenfold in the next 30 years. And that's why it's an urgent call to action. That's a mammoth task. It's achievable. But we have to get started now. I mean, I think we're already starting to see some real evidence of this transition occurring, although we're at an early stage. So in the transportation sector, everyone's aware, we're moving towards a world dominated by electric vehicles in the future, you see it in the choices made by auto manufacturers, consumers, etc. Going forward. But it's really more about electric mobility. You also see a growing number of e-bikes, for example, going forward, we see increasing investments in the electrification of public transportation. So there's a real drive there in terms of the transportation sector. In terms of buildings, heat pumps are going to be critical as a technology that allows us to reduce our reliance on natural gas for heating purposes going forward. And within industry, within heavy industry, we already see announcements being made from steel producers who are switching to electric arc furnaces, the aluminum smelters, but are starting to electrify and across all of those areas, electrification is not the answer for everything. There, there are applications where electricity is not going to be the solution. But for many of those applications, you can actually use clean electricity to produce hydrogen, green hydrogen if it's produced from renewable electricity. And that green hydrogen can then be used to support things like freight transportation, or long distance transportation, or other industrial processes. So electricity really will have a central role to play. And again, we're starting to see that transition occur. But again, we have to accelerate those efforts especially if we're going to achieve our targets.   Dan Seguin  12:37 Net zero is going to continue to be a hot topic of conversations and 2023. Thanks for joining me for part one of our advancing Net Zero holiday special. Tune in on January 2 For part two. And thanks for listening, folks. Have a happy and safe holiday everyone. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. And don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit think energy podcast.com. I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.    

Amidst a backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rapidly rising inflation, ever-lingering COVID, and near constant political convulsions, this year's COP27 took on an unprecedented weight. In this episode, let John Stackhouse walk you through the recently wrapped COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. With his special guest co-host Naomi Powell, Managing Editor of RBC Economics and Thought Leadership, get John's front row seat perspective on the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties (COP27)Hear from some of the world's top leaders and thinkers, including talking to climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and Johan Rockström; Elizabeth Nsimadala, the President of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, as well as Heather Chalmers, the president and CEO of GE Canada.From loss and damages to climate financing, John talks about the successes and failures of COP27, and where Canada stands out. Is the goal of halting global warming at 1.5*C still attainable? Listen in and find out. John Stackhouse shares his takeaways from COP27, click here to read the piece called, “Reality Bites”. For more information about COP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt click here. If you'd like to know more about some of the people John spoke with, read up on Katharine Hayhoe at the Nature Conservancy; Rick Smith, the president of the Canadian Climate Institute, or the call to action by Elizabeth Nsimala, the President of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation. Disruptors recently took an in-depth look at how Canada can reduce emissions and waste in the agricultural sector, it's a special, three-part series called, The Growing Challenge, listen here.

Kristen and Kyla are joined by Sarah Miller, a research associate specializing in climate adaptation with the Canadian Climate Institute to discuss the final report in the Costs of Climate Change series from the CCI, "Damage Control". This report dissects how Canada's economy will be affected by climate change, with a focus on people's well-being and proactive adaptation measures to help mitigate the climate effects we will continue to see over the coming decades. Leave us a voicemail! https://podinbox.com/pullback Website: https://www.pullback.org/episode-notes/episode97 Canadian Climate Institute: https://climateinstitute.ca/reports/damage-control/ Harbinger Media Network: https://harbingermedianetwork.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/PullbackPodcast Sarah Miller: https://twitter.com/sarah_kmiller Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pullbackpodcast/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PullbackPodcast/  Pullback is produced and hosted by Kristen Pue and Kyla Hewson. Logo by Rachel Beyer and Evan Vrinten.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pitches the country as a leader on climate and says it is on track to reduce emissions 45% by 2030. The reality is different. Canada has the second highest per-capita CO2 emissions in the G-20, its oil industry is booming, and its emissions remain persistently high. On this week's episode of Zero, Trudeau joins Zero host Akshat Rathi to discuss when Canada's emissions will start to fall for real, and how it can achieve its climate pledges when its economy and politics remain so tied to oil and gas.  This conversation was recorded live at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa at an event hosted by the Canadian Climate Institute and the Net Zero Advisory Body. Read a full transcript of this episode, here. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net.  For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/greenSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in a conversation in Ottawa with Bloomberg News senior climate reporter Akshat Rathi as part of the Canadian Climate Institute's second annual conference on climate change. Susannah Goshko, the United Kingdom's high commissioner to Canada, provides opening remarks.

Reaching Canada's net zero goals is a bit like solving a national puzzle. There are many pieces that need to fit together, including doubling or tripling the amount of zero-emissions electricity Canada currently produces to meet future demand for widespread electrification. Caroline Lee, senior researcher with the Canadian Climate Institute, walks us through the Big Switch report, which highlights three crucial changes required by Canada's electricity sector in order to hit the country's net zero goals.   Related links Website: https://climateinstitute.ca/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadianclimateinstitute/ --- To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcript     Dan Seguin  00:06 This is thinkenergy. The podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry.  Hey everyone, welcome back. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the country's leading climate change policy research organization, all roads to net zero pass through electricity. I know we've mentioned this many times on the show, but it bears repeating how Canada produces some of the cleanest electricity in the world. 80% of the electricity generated across Canada comes from sources completely free of greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario's electricity sector is one of the cleanest producing 94% of its electricity from non emitting sources. So there's still work to be done to make Canada's electricity sector even cleaner. But in essence, the electricity sector isn't the problem when it comes to climate change. But according to the Canadian Climate Institute's recent report called The Big Switch, it is the solution. So what does contribute to Canada's emissions, refined petroleum, primarily used for transportation, natural gas, which is used primarily to heat our homes and buildings and the energy processes involved in industries particularly steel, cement, and chemical industries. According to the big switch report, our country needs to reduce its reliance on these fossil fuels, if we hope to achieve Canada's Net Zero targets by 2050. But that's only a piece of the national puzzle. The big switch report suggests that we must double or even triple the amount of zero emissions electricity that we currently produce to meet future demand for widespread electrification. The Canadian Climate Institute highlights three critical changes to Canada's electricity sector, make it bigger, cleaner, and smarter. So here's today's big question. What are the key ways that Canada's electricity system can evolve and improve in order to replace fossil fuels and better align with net zero targets? We're going to dig into all of that on today's show. Established by Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Canadian Climate Institute provides independent and expert driven analysis to help Canada move toward clean growth in all sectors and regions of the country. Today, our guest is Caroline Lee, Senior Research Associate at the Canadian Climate Institute. Caroline holds a Master's Degree in Resource Management from Simon Fraser University and has previously held positions with International Energy Agency, the government in New Brunswick and Navius Research. Caroline, welcome to the show. Now, the Big Switch summary report is based on two other detailed reports, bigger, cleaner, smarter, and electric federalism, which we're going to discuss on the show today. But in essence, what is the premise behind your report the big switch? What are you referring to? And what does the report aimed to outline or chief?   Caroline Lee  03:57 Well, in simple terms, you know, we call this report the Big Switch, because we wanted to refer to this switch away from using fossil fuel energy, which as we know, generates greenhouse gas emissions towards using clean electricity. So the technical term for this is electrification. And this Big Switch is really important we saw because it really underpins the reductions of emissions, really across Canada's economy, and ultimately, it underpins Canada's achievement of our climate goals. So that's really why we undertook this project because we saw the importance of moving towards electricity in meeting Canada's climate goals as so central. And we wanted to understand what needs to happen at the system's level to support those changes. So when I say systems, I'm talking about the supply, the transmission, the distribution, how do those systems need to be changing, so that they can be equipped to support the shift towards electricity as we use more EVs as we use more heat pumps and so on.   Dan Seguin  04:59 Here's a follow up question for you, Caroline. Your report references unabated fossil fuels, wondering if you could explain and elaborate.   Caroline Lee  05:07 Yeah, it is a technical term. So unabated simply means that it's not equipped with technology to reduce the associated emissions. So for us that technology is carbon capture, utilization and storage, the technical acronym is CCUS. So there are ways for example, to continue burning fossil fuels, while reducing significantly the emissions associated with them if we equip that type of generation with CCUS. But what we see in our analysis is that if you're not equipping fossil fuels with CCUS, ultimately, the fate of unabated fossil fuels is very clear that significant generation associated with unabated fossil fuels, fossil fuels that don't have CCS equipped is going to have to be largely phased out. So when we looked at all of the analysis, all the studies that model netzero transitions in electricity, what we found is that at most 1%, of all generation by 2050, is associated with unabated fossil fuels. So we have to largely phase out that kind of electricity generation.   Dan Seguin  06:17 That's very interesting. Now, Caroline, what do you mean, when you say that all roads to net zero passes through electricity? Why does electricity play a central role?   Caroline Lee  06:30 It's a good question. And it's a good basic question that I'm very happy to answer. So maybe I can start with this first. First explanation around what the net zero goal actually means, you know, Canada, just recently committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. And this is an ambitious goal. And what that means is that Canada, has agreed to really zero out our emissions to get our emissions as close as we can to zero. And then whatever emissions are very expensive, or technically very difficult to get out of the economy, then we offset in some way. So again, this is an ambitious goal, there's a lot that needs to be done, especially in electricity to support that goal. And the reason why we say all roads to netzero pass through electricity is that when we looked at all the studies that model, a trajectory for Canada reaching net zero, there really was no credible path, without this switch towards electricity. And without making the generation of electricity cleaner. So we really saw tackling electricity as being critical to the achievement of Canada's net zero goals. And maybe I can just say it and in simple terms, three key reasons why that switch is so important. So first of all, electricity itself it when you use it, it doesn't burn fossil fuel, of course, so therefore, it doesn't release greenhouse gas emission. So we all know that if you're driving an Eevee, you're not generating greenhouse gas emissions directly. Now, of course, we know also that the production of electricity can generate emissions. So we can use fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to generate electricity. So that's where you can get some emissions. But what's really positive news in Canada and really around the world is that we're making quite significant progress, especially here in Canada, to reducing those emissions associated with producing electricity. And now that the federal government has a commitment to achieve net zero electricity by 2035, the country now has a clear mandate that we're going to be eliminating, by and large those emissions associated with producing electricity. So that's a really big thing is that electricity in the future could really be this conduit for using fully non emitting electricity from the beginning to the end. And then a third reason why electricity is so important is that it's just more efficient. So driving an electric vehicle is actually three to four times more efficient than using fossil fuels to drive that vehicle. And that's because you lose so much more heat. There's a lot of energy that's wasted when you're combusting fossil fuels. So because of those three reasons, electricity does seem to play a really critical role in achieving our climate goals.   Dan Seguin  09:29 Now, I've got a follow up question again. Your report also refers to electricity systems plural. Was that intentional, and what are you capturing?   Caroline Lee  09:42 It was indeed intentional. And that's because we recognize that Canada doesn't actually have a national electricity grid. We have a whole bunch of provincial regional grids and that's in large part because electricity is managed by provinces and territories. It's not directly managed by the federal government. So we wanted to to recognize the kind of regional uniqueness of all of these systems and that there isn't a single kind of unified grid across the country.   Dan Seguin  10:12 So we're really talking about transforming Canada's electricity system, and how every Canadian will use energy in the future. What is Canada doing right now right now that you feel makes this achievable?   Caroline Lee  10:28 Well, I can talk about a couple of things. One thing on the demand side, so in terms of how we're using electricity, and then another thing on the supply side, so how we're generating electricity. Now in terms of how we're using electricity, we're seeing quite favorable policies now to support the use of more electricity using technologies things like EVs. We've seen now the ban of the sale of internal combustion engines, within just about a decade, in Canada. So this is going to really accelerate I think, the shift towards electric vehicles in Canada in at least passenger vehicle fleets. So that's really promising. There are lots of other things we need to be doing in terms of driving electrification in other types of uses. So not only in cars, but for example, in how we heat our homes, in industrial processes. So there's more work to be done there. But the progress on electric vehicles I think is promising on the supply side, so how we're generating electricity. Canada has now as I said earlier, committed to achieving net zero electricity by 2035. So that's just over one decade, we've committed to having basically clean electricity across the board across the country. And that is quite an ambitious target. And it aligns with a lot of these scenarios that we looked at, for achieving broader net zero goals across Canada. So government policy actually seems in that regard to be following what's actually necessary to get us to net zero in electricity.   Dan Seguin  12:06 The report says that the switch is going to make Canadians better off. Can you expand on that? And also, how inequity could be addressed?   Caroline Lee  12:18 There are so many ways that I can answer this question, I think, from one dimension, we can think about the move towards electricity, this Big Switch, as making energy more affordable for Canadians. So our analysis actually found that overall, as a share of income, energy costs will actually decline as a result of using more electricity. And that's in part because electricity is more efficient, we're also seeing so therefore, the the operating cost over the entire lifetime, for example of an EV is going to be lower than the lifetime cost of owning an internal combustion engine, a gasoline vehicle. And we see the initial costs of these technologies also going down over time. So we know even you know, you probably know this quite well, the cost of buying an Eevee, even five years ago was significantly higher than it is today. And we expect those costs to continue to drop. And so this big switch can actually make energy overall more affordable for Canadians. And that's good news for everybody, I would say. But beyond the costs themselves to individual consumers, we see also quite significant opportunities for economic development. So one example here is that as Canada develops more clean electricity supplies, so we're we're producing electricity in cleaner ways. That gives us the opportunity to supply that clean energy to industries that traditionally use quite a lot of electricity, we think of for example, steelmaking that can increase their carbon competitiveness where consumers are increasingly thinking, okay, I want to I prefer to purchase steel, from a steel company that has a lower carbon footprint than a higher carbon footprint steel company. So using clean electricity in Canada to produce some of our industrial goods can actually give us a competitive leg up internationally. So there are some real carbon competitiveness benefits that we see. And then, thirdly, in terms of opportunities for Indigenous Reconciliation, I mean, this speaks to your question around equity. We know that Indigenous Peoples are in many ways marginalized because of historic racism, oppression, by non settler Canadians, we know that. So one way in which we think this big switch can help with the reconciliation and self determination of Indigenous Peoples is by allowing we know this already, actually, that Indigenous Peoples are already owners and co-owners of a lot of clean energy projects and we only see that trend increasing. So that allows them to be very much a part of this transition, take advantage of the economic opportunities, and also determine their own paths in terms of how they want to pursue this. This next wave of, of energy transition.   Dan Seguin  15:16 Thanks, Caroline. There was a reference to defraying the cost of electricity system investments away from customers by using public funds. Can you explain a bit about that? And why that would be favorable?   Caroline Lee  15:31 Yeah, I think this is worth digging into a little bit. So currently, the costs of generating electricity are paid for by the ratepayers. So whoever uses electricity pays for those investments, at least indirectly. What we're proposing in our report is that it's not only the rate base of the people that are using electricity, that help share the cost of electricity system investments, but that those costs get shared more broadly to taxpayers at large. And the reason why we think that could be really critical is that I'll just say three reasons here. First of all, the benefits of electricity systems investments are actually shared more broadly than across ratepayers. And that's because electricity, as I said earlier, is so essential for Canada to meet its climate change net zero targets, that the benefits are shared more widely, as well. So if the benefits are shared widely, we think there's justification for having the cost shared more widely as well. We also think of electricity really, as something like, you know, it's critical infrastructure in this day and age, you can think of it like hospitals, we need electricity, to run our lives and to, and to support Canadians day to day. And because we see electricity as such critical infrastructure, we see also that there's justification to support the maintenance and the in the kind of enhancement of that infrastructure through the tax base. And then last reason is a little bit more wonky. But when we defray these costs of the electricity systems investments through taxes, instead of the rate payer base, that can be a more progressive way of distributing that costs. And by progressive, what I mean is that it doesn't hit low income households as much as it does when you distribute those costs through rates. So overall, I think there, we think there is justification for having those costs spread out more evenly across society at large and Canada.   Dan Seguin  17:40 Now, let's move to the next big report. Bigger, cleaner, smarter pathways. Now, Caroline, I really want to tackle your report, word by word. Let's start with the word bigger. What does your evidence and research say about meeting future demand due to widespread electrification? And when you say big, how big are we talking about?   Caroline Lee  18:10 The first report is titled bigger, cleaner and smarter. And that summarizes the three critical ways in which we see electricity systems having to change and transform in order to support net zero. So in terms of that first change bigger. Yes, we see electricity systems having to grow because there is going to be increasing demand for electricity as we move into net zero world as we use more EVs, more heat pumps, and so on. And so we expect that demand when we look across all the studies that try to project how much electricity is needed, what we see is that anywhere between 1.6 to 2.1 times more demand is going to be required by 2050 compared to today. So you can think of it as an about a doubling of electricity demand by 2050, compared to today, and what that means in terms of the capacity of the electricity system. So in essence, the physical infrastructure, the size of the system that's required to produce that amount of energy that has to grow even more. So we're seeing installed capacity of electricity, more than doubling if not more than tripling by 2050 compared to today.   Dan Seguin  19:24 Okay, so let's talk about 2050. Are we on track to meet? How can we accelerate to meet the goal?   Caroline Lee  19:33 In short, I don't believe we are on track today. One stat that we have from our analysis is that if we want to be meeting these capacity needs these supply needs for 2050. Canada broadly has to be building capacity three to six times faster to 2050 than it has in the last decade. So the pace that we've been building capacity is not is falling short of the pace that's required to support all of this electrification. What do we do to get there? I mean, there are lots of things we've identified really a range of barriers that are preventing us from building clean energy at the pace that we need. There are barriers in terms of local opposition. I think sometimes community members don't feel like they're, they're consulted enough. And they don't feel like they're a part of the project approval processes. So community members can oppose local projects. We're seeing supply chain blitz right now. I mean, that is one reason why we're seeing higher renewable energy prices, because the markets are having trouble kind of keeping up with the demand for clean energy projects. So there are an array of barriers that we had identified, that we think need to be addressed in order to pick up the pace on increasing clean energy supply.   Dan Seguin  20:54 Moving on to the next word cleaner. Okay, where will the majority of cleaner electricity capacity come? Your report actually says solar wind storage, what's involved in growing these cleaner electricity sources and phasing out those that are polluting or emitting greenhouse gases.   Caroline Lee  21:16 So maybe I can divide my answer in two in terms of what's involved in growing that cleaner component, and then what's involved in phasing out the polluting sources. In terms of the clean energy sources, the sources that we saw that grew by far the fastest in any net zero scenario, as you say, We're solar and wind, if you add storage into the mix, those comprise really the majority of all new capacity that has to be built in Canada. So what we saw is that in the next decade, so from now to 2030, anywhere between 63 and 96% of capacity that's added to Canadian grids has to be from those sources in order to be compatible with net zero. So generally, whatever we're putting onto the grids, it should be wind, solar, or storage, to support netzero goals. Now, there are lots of things that stand in the way as I said in my previous answer to this rapid building, and deployment of clean energy projects. So there are lots of things that we need to be doing from a technical perspective. But also from a social and institutional perspective. I think bringing people on board, making sure the markets that are in the systems that our electricity systems operate in, are aligned with those broader netzero goals. tackling some of these really sticky challenges around enhancing the integration of grids across regions, all of these things are going to have to be tackled in order to build solar and wind in particular, as quickly as we need to know in terms of your the second component of phasing out polluting sources, the federal government already has policy in place to phase out unabated coal generation, so coal generation that's not equipped with CCUS. But the next frontier now is tackling natural gas and natural gas is a fossil fuel, it burns cleaner than coal. But currently, we don't have at least a policy that's been implemented to address natural gas that's consistent with net zero. So the federal government has now committed to what's called a clean electricity standard. They've committed to finding a way to develop a policy, essentially to meet that 2035 netzero electricity goal. We'll see how the details of that are rolled out. But it's promising that that policy is already in development. So I'm actually seeing quite a lot of progress on that front in terms of phasing out polluting sources. And I think so long as the federal government policy is robust and applies, really across the country, I think we should be in good standing to meet the target of phasing out polluting sources.   Dan Seguin  24:13 Okay. Now, what about our existing renewable energy sources like hydro, and nuclear? Will they still be vital and play a major role? What's the plan or recommendations for them?   Caroline Lee  24:28 It's a great question. I mean, oftentimes, the story is about solar and wind. And we forget about Canada's strong existing base of non emitting power, which is hydro and nuclear. And so I would say that in terms of getting cleaner, we talked about growing clean energy, we talked about phasing out polluting sources, but there's a third element that's really critical, which is maintaining what we already have that's working quite well. So the studies that we looked at for the most part, they still see large hydro and large nuclear are playing a strong, continuing strong role in Canada's netzero future. There are some studies that want to test what happens if we phase those out. What happens if we let you know at the end of their useful life, we fail to refurbish them. In most cases, what that means is you have to simply rely even more on other non emitting sources like solar and wind to grow even faster. So it puts the pressure on other sources to grow even faster. So that's, of course, a decision that has to be made by Canadians by decision makers, what is the energy future that we want? But again, if we allow our strong base of hydro nuclear to decline, then we need to be really accelerating the deployment of other types of energy.   Dan Seguin  25:47 Now, how about we address the next word- smarter? What is the smartest way to make our electricity system more flexible and supportive of variable supply from renewable sources? Can you maybe talk more about what it means to make electricity systems smarter?   Caroline Lee  26:10 By a smarter what we actually mean is more flexible. So that's what you alluded to in your question. And there isn't a single way to enhance flexibility. I think that's actually the good news story. First of all, why don't I take this take a step back to say that flexibility is so important, it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's going to become increasingly important as we move to integrate more shares of solar and wind onto our grids. Solar and wind, as we know, produce electricity in more variable and more intermittent ways. So flexibility in electricity system is something that can help accommodate higher shares of solar and wind onto our grid. So that's important for that reason, flexibility is also really important because we're also seeing, say increased demand for electricity and changing load patterns as a result of more EV uptake. If everybody comes home and charges their EVs at the same time, that's going to change the level and the timing of electricity demand. So the ability for the system to respond to those is also really useful. And let me just say a last reason why flexibility is so important is to respond to disruptions due to extreme weather events. I think we know this extremely well here in in Ottawa, I bet you know this better than most people, the cost, and the losses that can be associated with extreme weather events, and, and the and the terrible implications, essentially, of extreme weather on electricity systems. So flexibility is another thing that can help us better respond to those things. So broadly, we see kind of four groups of measures that can help us build more flexibility into our electricity systems. And the good news is, is that different regions are going to be relying on different types of measures. And there's no single bullet that there's really a toolkit, there's an array of measures that different regions can draw on. So things like for example, on the supply side, using more dispatchable types of generation generation that can be called upon on demand to generate like hydro, like natural gas with CCS. Also, things like enhancing the integration of grids across regions, those types of things help different provinces and territories better share resources across borders, things like hydropower, that can be really valuable in helping to balance variable sources like solar and wind, a third set of measures around storage, deploying storage, including short term storage, but more emerging long term storage solutions as well. And then a last basket of measures around making demand itself more flexible. So traditionally, we have seen demand is being fixed, you know, you consume demand when you consume it. But now we're seeing all kinds of possibilities, for example, to shift demand to times when it makes more sense. So for example, to defer the charging of EVs to the middle of the night when it puts puts less stress on the system.   Dan Seguin  29:19 You've just provided me with a great segue. Given climate change and extreme weather events becoming more commonplace, what does boosting resiliency of our electricity system look like for the future?   Caroline Lee  29:33 I think resiliency is only going to become more of a priority not only in electricity systems, but broader energy systems as we see the growing incidence and magnitude of extreme weather events. So you're exactly right that this is this is a an important thing to talk about. I think traditionally when we think about building resilience in our electricity systems, we think about hardening infrastructure. So we think about measures to Do, for example, strengthen transmission and distribution lines or maybe even underground lines and poles, to withstand extreme weather to avoid those things. But what I would say is that while those buckets have met that bucket of measures is really important. The concept of resilience is broader than that. So it's not only about avoiding or withstanding extreme weather events, for instance. But it's also to the extent that we can minimize our exposure to them, but also accepting that there will be inevitably, some disruptions along the way that we can't 100% avoid them, and then shifting also to learning how to manage them, and then recover very quickly from them. So they're not as disruptive. So from that perspective, and in addition to hardening infrastructure, I think we also need to be prioritizing emergency response and recovery. So thinking about as soon as we see some anticipate a disruption, how do we respond really quickly? And how do we make sure that we're deploying, that we have the resources to deploy emergency response when those things happen. And then, another thing I would highlight is that whole bucket of measures around flexibility that I was talking about. So flexibility is really great, because it helps us achieve our climate goals. It helps us accommodate more solar and wind onto our grids. But it also helps us better respond to extreme weather events. So there's an adaptation a climate change, adaptation benefit, too. And so flexibility, for example, you know, you think about storage, if you have a solar panel, and a battery in your house, that is good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, because solar panels are a clean source of energy. But also that storage can be really beneficial as a backup source of energy when your lights go out. So you can kind of think of some of these flexibility measures as killing two birds with one stone where there's a emissions reductions benefit as well as a resilience benefit.   Dan Seguin  32:00 Okay, now, it's time to move to the next report, the Electric Federalism, that's a policy report. Now, Caroline, one of the key takeaways from your bigger cleaner, smarter report, is that in order to successfully align Canada's electricity system for net zero, both orders of government must drive change through policy. This brings us to the next report, electric federalism, what is Electric Federalism? And why is it so important?   Caroline Lee  32:34 Great question. So we think of this report as the, the how report and the first report as the what so bigger, cleaner, smarter is like what needs to happen from a technical perspective and electricity system. And electric federalism is well, how do we accelerate and support those changes? So electric federalism is this concept? Based on the fact that yes, we all we live in Canada, Canada is a decentralized Federation, which means that, as I was saying earlier, provinces and territories carry significant power and jurisdiction over many issues, including energy and electricity. So the federal government, of course, has has some power to drive, electricity systems transformation, but a lot of those levers, a lot of those policy levers actually reside within provinces and territories. So electric federalism is a way of moving forward on transforming electricity within this context, where we see multiple orders of government having complementary roles to play, we're trying to figure out how can those different orders of government work together? How can we make the most of the respective policy levers that the different orders carry?   Dan Seguin  33:44 Something fascinating in the report, is the call for greater inter regional coordination, and the integration of Canada's provincial and territorial electricity systems. Those of us in the electricity industry know that there are a lot of regulatory roadblocks, but also that folks are very territorial about their electricity system. Can you walk our listeners through the vision? And what would be required for this to become a reality?   Caroline Lee  34:20 You know, you are so right in recognizing the long entrenched barriers that exist to enhancing the integration of grids across our regions. The current state of electricity systems, as I was saying earlier, is that we really operate mostly in siloed systems. There's a little bit of trade between provinces and territories, but it's actually quite modest, even especially in relation to the trade that we have with the US. So we can think of, of Canada's electricity system as largely balkanized and siloed right now, and the reason why we wanted to really tackle this issue is that we've always known the benefits of integrating with neighboring regions. But now that we have this net zero goal, this climate change agenda that's so much more ambitious than it was before the benefits of integration have increased. So significantly. So the barriers that we identified to, for example, enhancing inter ties between Ontario and Quebec, we've got a long laundry list of what's preventing that from happening. Things like even self sufficiency, mandates from utilities, utilities, in some cases are mandated to have enough electricity within their borders to take care of themselves to be completely self sufficient. And so having too much trade or too much integration with neighboring regions would actually be going directly against that mandate. So there are some formal barriers like that. But then exactly as you touched on, there are all kinds of informal barrier. So political, social barriers, we don't really consider as electricity in the same way as other goods that can be easily traded across borders, I mean, electricity is often thought of as something that that is closely ident, closely connected to a provinces identity. So we have a harder time, I think, thinking about the trade of electricity. And then a last barrier I would mention is that because Canada's systems are so balkanized. Even market barriers and institutional barriers can be really important. So the fact that for instance, in BC, there's one type of electricity system, right next to it, Alberta has a very different type of electricity market. The the misalignment between how different provinces manage and regulate electricity can also be a barrier. So what we're saying is that we have our eyes wide open in terms of a realistic goal on enhancing integration. It's not about instantaneous integration, and a national grid tomorrow, we think that is not realistic and pragmatic. But what we do think is that there are ways of kind of testing and advancing integration and incremental ways across willing regional partners. And I would highlight in this circumstance, the Atlantic provinces, who are now pursuing this project of the Atlantic loop, they're thinking about integrating all of themselves better with Quebec, to better exploit, essentially, Quebec hydropower. So those regions that region rather those provinces have said, we are interested in taking those steps forward, there might be other provinces that are different stages of readiness. So we recognize it is ultimately up to provinces to decide yes, I want to pursue more integration or not. We think there's a few things that provinces can do, though, we think there's a lot more work that can be done to simply quantify those benefits of integration. So in an integrated resource plan, so when an electricity utility is planning for the next few years of how it's going to meet demand, having knowing how much the benefit of integration would be, and if they decide not to pursue it, having a justification for why they left that off the table, I think could be really important. Even things like collaborating on the development of those integrated resource plans with neighboring jurisdictions, not doing them formally, necessarily together. But having a little bit more consultation with neighbors can be really important. Things like sharing reserved margins across borders, those kinds of things, province provinces can do together. But then I will also mention the federal government is not without power here, the federal government has significant spending powers, they have significant convening powers. So the federal government can use the financial spending power that it has to support, even the building of transmission infrastructure between provinces. In terms of convening, the federal government has recently announced this Grid Council in its last climate plan, to be able to pursue more integration across different provinces so they can bring people together, they can bring provinces together, share best practices help organize some of these integration projects.   Dan Seguin  39:33 That's great insight, Caroline, let's continue. In the Electric Federalism Report, it's recommended that the Federal Government work with provinces and territories to negotiate climate policies and electricity agreement. Has this been done before? And what are some of the advantages for Canadians with this approach? It's probably similar to health care and the recent childcare agreement that The Federal Government just introduced with the provinces.   Caroline Lee  40:03 So this idea is really trying to, as I was saying earlier, to leverage the respective powers and policy levers of different orders of government. So it's possible that we can transform electricity systems with the federal government moving in its direction with provinces and territories moving in their own direction, that's possible. But we think that we have a greater chance of success when people work together when different orders of government collaborate and coordinate. So that's why we have this proposal of the federal government essentially tying financial support to the fulfillment of high level conditions on the part of the provincial governments. So for example, I'll give you some examples of what we think those conditions could be. So we would ask, for example, that provinces could change the mandates of key institutions in their electricity systems to align with net zero. Currently, utilities, for instance, are pursuing climate change goals, but it's not necessarily explicitly in their mandate to make investments that are consistent with net zero. So making and formalizing the netzero mandate, we think could be really important. The federal government could also ask provinces and territories to develop comprehensive energy plans. So thinking about what is the future for electrification in that province? How might we meet that demand? What is the future for integration, thinking about energy in a more holistic way across different energy sources could provide some more consistency and more foresight, essentially, for utilities as they make investments and make decisions towards net zero. And then thirdly, the federal government can ask provinces to participate in working groups essentially like to propose grid council. So the idea of this of this proposal is not to be too prescriptive in terms of the federal government requiring provinces to do XYZ. implement policies that look like this, this this, but rather simply fulfill these high level principles, fulfill them in a way that they see fit based on their provincial circumstances. And that way that would give greater assurance that we would all provinces and territories and the federal government together would be moving in the same direction towards net zero. And so as you said in your question, we've already done similar negotiating systems like this on health care, recent childcare agreements, essentially, the federal government has said, we will provide financial report, financial support, rather to provinces, if you fulfill these certain high level principles, so we're proposing a similar thing with regards to electricity.   Dan Seguin  42:49 Now, Caroline, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. We've got some new ones for you. Are you ready?   Caroline Lee  42:58 I'm ready.   Dan Seguin  43:00 What are you reading right now?   Caroline Lee  43:02 It's a book called Crying in the H Mart. It's it's written by a, an American Korean pop star, and she writes about her mom struggle with cancer. So it's, it's really good so far.   Dan Seguin  43:16 Cool. Now, what would you name your boat? If you had one?   Caroline Lee  43:22 The Sweet Caroline?   Dan Seguin  43:23 Now a simple question here, Caroline. Who is someone that you really admire?   Caroline Lee  43:30 I admire my parents,   Dan Seguin  43:32 What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Caroline Lee  43:37 This is so cheesy, but the birth of my two children is, is the most miraculous thing I've ever witnessed.   Dan Seguin  43:44 The next one- what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Caroline Lee  43:51 I think the social isolation has been particularly challenging, I think, not only for me, but for lots of people.   Dan Seguin  43:58 Okay, we've all been watching a lot of Netflix and TV lately. What is your favorite show or movie? And why?   Caroline Lee  44:07 I think one show that I found that helped kind of buoy my mood was Ted Lasso. So I don't know if you've watched this show. But the positivity of the show, I really especially valued I think, during the pandemic.   Dan Seguin  44:21 Lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now,   Caroline Lee  44:27 I think in climate policy, in the climate policy world, it's so easy to feel depressed about our prospects for succeeding in tackling this most this huge climate challenge. But I think on the positive side, we're seeing progress, like we've never seen in history of Canada or really in the world. In terms of energy transition in terms of policy implementation. We're seeing renewable energy growing faster than we've ever seen it grow and we expect it to grow even faster. We're seeing the phase out of polluting fossil fuels faster than we've ever seen. So I think there's no question a long way to go in terms of meeting our climate targets. But the progress I think that we're seeing in energy transitions is a reason for hope.   Dan Seguin  45:14 Well, Caroline, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. If our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect? How can they learn more,   Caroline Lee  45:26 Feel free to reach out to me directly. My email is clee, C L E E@climateinstitute.ca. And you can go to our website directly climateinstitute.ca To learn more about us and get more contact information.   Dan Seguin  45:41 Again, Caroline, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Caroline Lee  45:46 It was great. Thanks so much for the invite.   Dan Seguin  45:49 Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. And don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests, or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com. I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Markham interviews Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, about his August 15, 2022 op-ed in the Toronto Star titled, “Four ways the Inflation Reduction Act can accelerate Canada‘s clean energy transition.”

Markham interviews economist Chris Bataille about his new paper, "How the sector can decarbonize operations and develop new net zero products," for the Canadian Climate Institute. Link: https://climateinstitute.ca/scoping-papers/

Curious how NL is doing when it comes to the transition towards a net zero future? Sachi Gibson from the Canadian Climate Institute joins us to break down the research from their latest report.(0:00) Protesters took to the street last weekend to voice their displeasure with increased prices for goods and services. (6:42) We'll speak with the captain of the Physio North men's soccer team as they get ready for the Lab Cup. (9:46) We get the details about the Red Bay National Historic site kicking off its season for the summer of 2022.(17:16) Three locations in Labrador have been chosen to participate in a pre-kindergarten pilot program.(23:46) After 40 years of service in the fisheries, a resident in Happy Valley-Goose Bay could soon find himself homeless. (35:00) A Community History Project Forum is coming to Hopedale.(40:50) Tourism operators are celebrating national tourism week...we'll chat with an operator from Forteau about the difficulties faced within the industry these past few years. (47:49) We hear from Ryan Tumilty, Parliamentary Reporter for the National Post. (54:02)

Curious how New Brunswick is doing when it comes to the transition towards a net-zero future? Jonathan Arnold, a senior research Associate at the Canadian Climate Institute, joins us to break down the research from their latest report.

Markham interviews economist Jason Dion, Mitigation Research Director, Canadian Climate Institute, about the new report, “The Big Switch.” Making Canada's electricity system bigger, cleaner, and smarter.

Alan speaks with Caroline Lee, Senior Researcher at the Canadian Climate Institute and one of the report's authors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recorded at Globe Forum 2022 late March 2022, episode 59 features a conversation with Jason Dion, Mitigation Research Director, at the Canadian Climate Institute. We discuss the Canadian Climate Institute, its role in fostering practical solutions and researching pathways to meet climate targets, the centrality of electricity to the energy transition, the challenges of intergovernmental coordination, carbon tax and revenue recycling, and the potential future for “wild-cards” like direct air capture. We close our conversation with his recommendation for an addition to the Flux Capacitor Book Club.