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Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda break down the TPI Composites bankruptcy fallout. Vestas is acquiring TPI’s Mexico and India operations while a UAE company picks up the Turkish factories. That leaves GE in a tough spot with no clear path to blade manufacturing. Plus the crew discusses blade scarcity, FSA availability floors, and whether a new blade manufacturer could emerge. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’ve got Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxum in Texas. And Rosemary Barnes is back from her long Vacation in Australia and TPI. Composites is big in the news this week, everybody, because they’re in bankruptcy hearings and they are selling off parts of the business. Vestas is, at least according to News Reports positioned to acquire. A couple of the LLCs down in Mexico. So there’s uh, two of them, TPI in Mexico, five LLC, and TPI in Mexico, six LLC. There are other LLCs, of course involved with this down in Mexico. So they’re buying, not sure exactly what the assets are, but probably a couple of the factories in which their blades were being manufactured in. Uh, this. Is occurring because Vestas stepped in. They were trying to have an auction and Vestas stepped forward and just ended up buying these two LLCs. [00:01:00] Other things that are happening here, Joel, is that, uh, TPI evidently sold their Turkish division. Do you recall to who they sold? That, uh, part of the Joel Saxum: business too, two companies involved in that, that were TPI Turkey, uh, and that was bought by a company called XCS composites. Uh, and they are out of the United Arab Emirates, so I believe they’re either going to be Abu Dhabi or Dubai based. Uh, but they took over the tube wind blade manufacturing plants in Isme, uh, also a field service and inspection repair business. And around 2,700 employees, uh, from the Turkish operation. So that happened just, just after, I mean, it was a couple weeks after the bankruptcy claim, uh, went through here in August, uh, in the States. So it went August bankruptcy for TPI, September, all the Turkish operations were bought and now we’ve got Vestas swooping in and uh, taking a bunch of the Mexican operations. Allen Hall: Right. And [00:02:00] Vestas is also taking TPI composites India. Which is a part of the business that is not in bankruptcy, uh, that’s a, a separate business, a separate, basically LLC incorporation Over in India, the Vestus is going to acquire, so they’re gonna acquire three separate things in this transaction. The question everybody’s asking today after seeing this Vestus move is, what is GE doing? Because, uh, GE Renova has a lot of blades manufactured by TPI down in Mexico. No word on that. And you would think if, if TPI is auctioning off assets that GE renova would be at the front of the line, but that’s not what we’re hearing on the ground. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I mean it’s, the interesting part of this thing is for Vestas, TPI was about 35% of their blade capacity for manufacturing in 2024. If their 30, if, if Vestas was 35%, then GE had to be 50%. There [00:03:00] demand 60. So Vesta is making a really smart move here by basically saying, uh, we’ve gotta lock down our supply chain for blades. We gotta do something. So we need to do this. GE is gonna be the odd man out because, I mean, I think it would be a, a cold day in Denmark if Vestas was gonna manufacture blades for ge. Allen Hall: Will the sale price that Vest has paid for this asset show up in the bankruptcy? Hearings or disclosures? I think that it would, I haven’t seen it yet, but eventually it’ll, it must show up, right? All, all the bankruptcy hearings and transactions are, they have an overseer essentially, what happens to, so TPI can’t purchase or sell anything without an, um, getting approved by the courts, so that’ll eventually be disclosed. Uh, the Turkish sale will be, I would assume, would be disclosed. Also really curious to see what the asset value. Was for those factories. Joel Saxum: So the Turkish sale is actually public knowledge right now, and [00:04:00] that is, lemme get the number here to make sure I get it right. 92.9 million Euros. Uh, but of, of course TPI laden with a bunch of non-convertible and convertible debt. So a ton of that money went right down to debt. Uh, but to be able to purchase that. They had to assu, uh, XCS composites in Turkey, had to assume debt as is, uh, under the bankruptcy kind of proceedings. So I would assume that Vestas is gonna have to do the same thing, is assume the debt as is to take these assets over and, uh, and assets. We don’t know what it is yet. We don’t know if it’s employees, if it’s operations, if it’s ip, if it’s just factories. We don’t know what’s all involved in it. Um, but like you said, because. TPI being a publicly traded company in the United States, they have to file all this stuff with SEC. Allen Hall: Well, they’ll, they’re be delisted off of. Was it, they were Joel Saxum: in Nasdaq? Is that where they were listed? The India stuff that could be private. You may ne we may not ever hear about what happened. Valuation there. Allen Hall: Okay, so what is the, the [00:05:00] future then for wind blade production? ’cause TPI was doing a substantial part of it for the world. I mean, outside of China, it’s TPI. And LM a little bit, right? LM didn’t have the capacity, I don’t think TPI that TPI does or did. It puts Joel Saxum: specifically GE in a tight spot, right? Because GEs, most of their blades were if it was built to spec or built to print. Built to spec was designed, uh, by LM and built by lm. But now LM as we have seen in the past months year, has basically relinquished themselves of all of their good engineering, uh, and ability to iterate going forward. So that’s kind of like dwindling to an end. TPI also a big side of who makes blades for ge if Vestas is gonna own the majority of their capacity, Vestas isn’t gonna make blades for ge. So GEs going to be looking at what can we, what can we still build with lm? And then you have the kind of the, the odd ducks there. You have the Aris, [00:06:00] you have the MFG, um, I mean Sonoma is out there. This XCS factory is there still in Turkey. Um, you may see some new players pop up. Uh, I don’t know. Um, we’ll see. I mean, uh, Rosemary, what’s, what’s your take? Uh, you guys are starting to really ramp up down in Australia right now and are gonna be in the need of blades in general with this kind of shakeup. Rosemary Barnes: What do we say? My main concern is. Around the service of the blades that we’ve already got. Um, and when I talk to people that I know at LM or XLM, my understanding is that those parts of the organization are still mostly intact. So I actually don’t expect any big changes there. Not to say that the status quo. Good enough. It’s not like, like every single OEM whose, um, FSAs that I work with, uh, support is never good enough. But, um, [00:07:00] it shouldn’t get any worse anyway. And then for upcoming projects, yeah, I, I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s gonna be on a case by case basis. Uh, I mean, it always was when you got a new, a new project, you need a whole bunch of blades. It was always a matter of figuring out which factory they were going to come from and if they had capacity. It’ll be the same. It’s just that then instead of, you know, half a dozen factories to choose from, there’s like, what, like one or two. So, um, yeah, I, that’s, that’s my expectation of what’s gonna happen. I presumably ge aren’t selling turbines that they have no capability to make blades for. Um, so I, I guess they’re just gonna have a lot less sales. That’s the only real way I can make it work. Allen Hall: GE has never run a Blade factory by themselves. They’ve always had LM or somebody do it, uh, down in Brazil or TPI in Mexico or wherever. Uh, are we thinking that GE Renova is not gonna run a Blade Factory? Is that the thought, or, or is [00:08:00] that’s not in the cards either. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think it’s that easy to just, just start running a Blade Factory. I mean, I know that GE had blade design capabilities. I used to design the blades that TPI would make. So, um, that part of it. Sure. Um, they can, they can still do that, but it’s not, yeah, it’s, it’s not like you just buy a Blade factory and like press start on the factory and then the, you know, production line just starts off and blades come out the other end. Like there is a lot of a, a lot of knowhow needed if that was something that they wanted to do. That should have been what they started doing from day one after they bought lm. You know, that was the opportunity that they had to become, you know, a Blade factory owner. They could have started to, you know, make, um, have GE. Take up full ownership of the, the blade factories and how that all worked. But instead, they kept on operating like pretty autonomously without that many [00:09:00] changes at the factory level. Like if they were to now say, oh, you know, hey, it’s, uh, we really want to. Have our own blade factories and make blades. It’s just like, what the hell were you doing for the last, was it like seven years or something? Like you, you could easily have done what? And now you haven’t made it as hard for yourselves as possible. So like I’m not ruling out that that’s what they’re gonna try and do, because like I said, I don’t think it’s been like executed well, but. My God, it’s like even stupid of the whole situation. If that’s where we end up with them now scrambling to build from scratch blade, um, manufacturing capability because there’s Yolanda Padron: already a blade scarcity, right? Like at least in the us I don’t know if you guys are seeing it in, in Australia as well, but there’s a blade scarcity for these GE blades, right? So you’re, they kind of put themselves in an even more tough spot by just now. You, you don’t have access to a lot of these TPI factories written in theory. From what we’re seeing. You mean to get like replacement blades? Yeah. So like for, for issues? Yeah. New [00:10:00] construction issues under FSA, that, Rosemary Barnes: yeah. I mean, we’ve always waited a, a long time for new blades. Like it’s never great. If you need a new blade, you’re always gonna be waiting six months, maybe 12 months. So that’s always been the case, but now we are seeing delays of that. Maybe, maybe sometimes longer, but also it’s like, oh well. We can’t replace, like, for like, you’re gonna be getting a, a different kind of blade. Um, that will work. Um, but you know, so that is fine, except for that, that means you can’t do a single blade replacement anymore. Now, what should have been a single blade replacement might be a full set replacement. And so it does start to really, um, yeah. Mess things up and like, yeah, it’s covered by the FSA, like that’s on them to buy the three blades instead of one, but. It does matter because, you know, if they’re losing money on, um, managing your wind farm, then it, it is gonna lead to worse outcomes for you because, you know, they’re gonna have to skimp and scrape where they [00:11:00] can to, you know, like, um, minimize their losses. So I, I don’t think it’s, it’s, it’s Yolanda Padron: not great. Yeah. And if you’re running a wind farm, you have other stakeholders too, right? It’s not like you’re running it just for yourself. So having all that downtime from towers down for a year. Because you can’t get blades on your site. Like it’s just really not great. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and I mean, there’s flaws on there. Like they’ve got an availability guarantee. Then, you know, below that they do have to, um, pay for that, those losses. But there’s a flaw on that. So once you know, you, you blast through the floor of your availability, then you know, that is on the owner. Now it’s not on the, um, service provider. So it’s definitely. Something that, yeah, there’s lots of things where you might think, oh, I don’t have to worry about my blades ’cause I’ve got an F, SA, but you know, that’s just one example where, okay, you will, you will start worrying if they, they yeah. Fall through the floor of their availability guarantee. Joel Saxum: Two questions that pop up in my mind from this one, the first one, the first one is [00:12:00] directly from Alan. You and I did a webinar, we do so many of ’em yesterday, and it was about, it was in the nor in North America, ferc, so. They have new icing readiness, uh, reporting you, so, so basically like if you’re on the, if you’re connected to the grid, you’re a wind farm or solar farm and you have an icing event, you need to explain to them why you had an outage, um, and why, what you’re doing about it. Or if you’re not doing something about it, you have to justify it. You have to do all these things to say. Hey, some electrons weren’t flowing into the grid. There’s certain levels. It’s much more complicated than this, but electrons weren’t flowing into the grid because of an issue. We now have to report to FERC about this. So is there a stage when a FERC or uh, some other regulatory agency starts stepping into the wind industry saying like, someone’s gotta secure a supply chain here. ’cause they’re already looking at things when electrons are on the grid. Someone’s got a secure supply chain here so we can ensure that [00:13:00]these electrons are gonna get on the grid. Could, can something like that happen or was, I mean, I mean, of course that’s, to me, in my opinion, that’s a lot of governmental overreach, but could we see that start to come down the line like, Hey, we see from an agency’s perspective, we see some problems here. What are you doing to shore this up? Allen Hall: Oh, totally. Right. I, I think the industry in general has an issue. This is not an OEM specific problem. At the minute, if this is a industry-wide problem, there seems to be more dispersed. Manufacturers are gonna be popping up. And when we were in Scotland, uh, we learned a lot more about that. Right, Joel? So the industry has more diversification. I, I, here’s, here’s my concern at the minute, so. For all these blade manufacturers that we would otherwise know off the top of our heads. Right. Uh, lm, TPI, uh, Aris down in Brazil. The Vestus manufacturing facilities, the Siemens manufacturing [00:14:00] facilities. Right. You, you’re, you’re in this place where. You know, everybody’s kind of connected up the chain, uh, to a large OEM and all this made sense. You know, who was rebuilding your blades next year and the year down, two years down the road. Today you don’t, so you don’t know who owns that company. You don’t know how the manager’s gonna respond. Are you negotiating with a company that you can trust’s? Gonna be there in two or three years because you may have to wait that long to get blades delivered. I don’t know. I think that it, it put a lot of investment, uh, companies in a real quandary of whether they wanna proceed or not based upon the, what they is, what they would perceive to be the stability of these blade companies. That’s what I would think. I, I, Vestas is probably the best suited at the minute, besides Siemens. You know, Vestas is probably best suited to have the most perceived reliability capability. Control, Joel Saxum: but they have their own [00:15:00] blade factories already, right? So if they buy the TPI ones, they’re just kind of like they can do some copy pasting to get the the things in place. And to be honest with you, Vesta right now makes the best blades out there, in my opinion, least amount of serial defects. Remove one, remove one big issue from the last couple Allen Hall: years. But I think all the OEMs have problems. It’s a question of how widely known those problems are. I, I don’t think it’s that. I think the, the, the. When you talk to operators and, and they do a lot of shopping on wind turbines, what they’ll tell you generally is vestus is about somewhere around 20% higher in terms of cost to purchase a turbine from them. And Vestus is gonna put on a, a full service agreement of some sort that’s gonna run roughly 30 years. So there’s a lot of overhead that comes with buying a, a Vestas turbine. Yes. You, you get the quality. Yes. You get the name. Yes, you get the full service agreement, which you may or [00:16:00] may not really want over time. Uh, that’s a huge decision. But as pieces are being removed from the board of what you can possibly do, there’s it, it’s getting narrow or narrow by the minute. So it, it’s either a vestus in, in today’s world, like right today, I think we should talk about this, but it’s either Vestus or Nordic. Those are the two that are being decided upon. Mostly by a lot of the operators today. Joel Saxum: That’s true. We’re, and we just saw Nordex, just inked a one gigawatt deal with Alliant Energy, uh, just last week. And that’s new because Alliant has traditionally been a GE buyer. Right. They have five or six ge, two X wind farms in the, in the middle of the United States, and now they’ve secured a deal with Nordex for a gigawatt. Same thing we saw up at Hydro Quebec. Right. Vestas and Nordex are the only ones that qualify for that big, and that’s supposed to be like a 10 gigawatt tender over time. Right. But the, so it brings me to my, I guess my other question, I was thinking about this be [00:17:00] after the FERC thing was, does do, will we see a new blade manufacturer Allen Hall: pop Joel Saxum: up? Allen Hall: No, I don’t think you see a new one. I think you see an acquisition, uh, a transfer of assets to somebody else to run it, but that is really insecure. I, I always think when you’re buying distressed assets and you think you’re gonna run it better than the next guy that. Is rare in industry to do that. Think about the times you’ve seen that happen and it doesn’t work out probably more than 75% of the time. It doesn’t work out. It lasts a year or two or three, and they had the same problems they had when the original company was there. You got the same people inside the same building, building the same product, what do you think is magically gonna change? Right? You have this culture problem or a a already established culture, you’re not likely to change that unless you’re willing to fire, you know, a third of the staff to, to make changes. I don’t see anybody here doing that at the minute because. Finding wind blade technicians, manufacturing people is [00:18:00] extremely hard to do, to find people that are qualified. So you don’t wanna lose them. Joel Saxum: So this is why I say, this is why I pose the question, because in my mind, in in recent wind history, the perfect storm for a new blade manufacturer is happening right now. And the, and the why I say this is there is good engineers on the streets available. Now washing them of their old bad habits and the cultures and those things, that’s a monumental task. That’s not possible. Allen Hall: Rosemary worked at a large blade manufacturer and it has a culture to it. That culture really didn’t change even after they were acquired by a large OEM. The culture basically Rosemary Barnes: remained, they bizarrely didn’t try and change that culture, like they didn’t try to make it a GE company so that it wasn’t dur, it was wasn’t durable. You know, they, they could have. Used that as a shortcut to gaining, um, blade manufacturing capabilities and they didn’t. And that was a, I think it was a choice. I don’t think it’s an inevitability. It’s never easy to go in and change a, a culture, [00:19:00] but it is possible to at least, you know, get parts of it. Um, the, the knowledge should, you should be able to transfer and then get rid of the old culture once you’ve done that, you know, like, uh. Yeah, like you, you bring it in and suck out all the good stuff and spit out the rest. They didn’t do that. Joel Saxum: The opportunity here is, is that you’ve got a, you’ve got people, there’s gonna be a shortage of blade capacity, right? So if you are, if you are going to start up a blade manufacturing facility, you, if you’re clever enough, you may be able to get the backlog of a bunch of orders to get running without having to try to figure it out as you go. Yolanda Padron: I feel like I’d almost make the case that like the blade repair versus replace gap or the business cases is getting larger and larger now, right? So I feel like there’s more of a market for like some sort of holistic maintenance team to come in and say, Hey, I know this OEM hasn’t been taking care of your blades really well, but here are these retrofits that have proven to be [00:20:00]to work on your blades and solve these issues and we’ll get you up and running. Rosemary Barnes: We are seeing more and more of of that. The thing that makes it hard for that to be a really great solution is that they don’t have the information that they need. They have to reverse engineer everything, and that is. Very challenging because like you can reverse engineer what a blade is, but it doesn’t mean that, you know, um, exactly like, because a, the blade that you end up with is not an optimized blade in every location, right? There’s some parts that are overbuilt and um, sometimes some parts that are underbuilt, which gives you, um, you know, serial issues. But, so reverse engineering isn’t necessarily gonna make it safe, and so that does mean that yeah, like anyone coming in with a really big, significant repair that doesn’t go through the OEM, it’s a, it’s a risk. It, it’s always a risk that they have, you know, like there’s certain repairs where you can reverse engineer enough to know that you’re safe. But any really big [00:21:00] one, um, or anything that involves multiple components, um, is. Is a bit of a gamble if it doesn’t go through the OEM. Joel Saxum: No, but so between, I guess between the comments there, Yolanda and Rosemary, are we then entering the the golden age of opportunity for in independent engineering experts? Rosemary Barnes: I believe so. I’m staking, staking my whole business on it. Allen Hall: I think you have to be careful here, everybody, because the problem is gonna be Chinese blade manufacturers. If you wanna try to establish yourself as a blade manufacturer and you’re taking an existing factory, say, say you bought a TPI factory in Turkey or somewhere, and you thought, okay, I, I know how to do this better than everybody else. That could be totally true. However, the OEMs are not committed to buying blades from you and your competition isn’t the Blade Factory in Denmark or in Colorado or North Dakota, or in Mexico or Canada, Spain, wherever your competition is when, [00:22:00] uh, the OEM says, I can buy these blades for 20 to 30% less money in China, and that’s what you’re gonna be held as, as a standard. That is what’s gonna kill most of these things with a 25% tariff on top. Right? Exactly. But still they’re still bringing Joel Saxum: blades in. That’s why I’m saying a local blade manufacturer, Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s less the case. That everyone thinks about China, although maybe a little bit unconventional opinion a about China, they certainly can manufacture blades with, uh, as good a quality as anyone. I mean, obviously all of the, um, Danish, uh, American manufacturers have factories in China that are putting out excellent quality blades. So I’m not trying to say that they dunno how to make a good blade, but with their. New designs, you know, and the really cheap ones. There’s a couple of, um, there’s a couple of reasons for that that mean that I don’t think that it just slots really well into just replacing all of the rest of the world’s, um, wind turbines. The first is that there are a lot of [00:23:00] subsidies in China. Surely there can only continue so long as their economy is strong. You know, like if their economy slows down, like to what extent are they gonna be able to continue to, um, continue with these subsidies? I would be a little bit nervous about buying an asset that I needed support for the next 30 years from a company like. That ecosystem. Then the other thing is that, um, that development, they move really fast because they take some shortcuts. There’s no judgment there. In fact, from a develop product development point of view, that is absolutely the best way to move really fast and get to a really good product fast. It will be pervasive all the way through every aspect of it. Um, non-Chinese companies are just working to a different standard, which slows them down. But also means that along the way, like I would be much happier with a half developed, um, product from a non-Chinese manufacturer than a half developed product from a Chinese manufacturer. The end point, like if China can keep on going long enough with this, [00:24:00] you know, like just really move fast, make bold decisions, learn everything you can. If they can continue with that long enough to get to a mature product, then absolutely they will just smash the rest of the world to pieces. So for me, it’s a matter of, um, does their economy stay strong enough to support that level of, uh, competition? Allen Hall: Well, no, that’s a really good take. It’s an engineering take, and I think the decision is made in the procurement offices of the OEMs and when they start looking at the numbers and trying to determine profitability. That extra 20% savings they can get on blades made in China comes into play quite often. This is why they’re having such a large discussion about Chinese manufacturers coming into the eu. More broadly is the the Vestas and the Siemens CAAs and even the GE Re Novas. No, it’s big time trouble because the cost structure is lower. It just is, and I. [00:25:00] As much as I would love to see Vestas and Siemens and GE Renova compete on a global stage, they can’t at the moment. That’s evident. I don’t think it’s a great time to be opening any new Blade Factory. If you’re not an already established company, it’s gonna be extremely difficult. Wind Energy O and M Australia is back February 17th and 18th at Melbourne’s Pullman on the park. Which is a great hotel. We built this year’s agenda directly from the conversations we’ve had in 2025 and tackling serial defects, insurance pressures, blade repairs, and the operational challenges that keeps everybody up at night around the world. So we have two days of technical sessions, interactive roundtables and networking that actually moves the industry for. Forward. And if you’re interested in attending this, you need to go to WMA 2020 six.com. It’s WOMA 2020 six.com. Rosemary, a lot of, uh, great events gonna happen at. W 2026. Why don’t [00:26:00] you give us a little highlight. Parlet iss gonna be there. Rosemary Barnes: Parlow is gonna be there. I mean, a highlight for me is always getting together with the, the group. And also, I mean, I just really love the size of the event that uh, every single person who’s there is interested in the same types of things that you are interested in. So the highlight for me is, uh, the conversations that I don’t know that I’m gonna have yet. So looking forward to that. But we are also. Making sure that we’ve got a really great program. We’ve got a good mix of Australian speakers and a few people bringing international experience as well. There’s also a few side events that are being organized, like there’s an operators only forum, which unfortunately none of us will be able to enter because we’re not operators, but that is gonna be really great for. For all of them to be able to get together and talk about issues that they have with no, nobody else in the room. So if, if you are an operator and you’re not aware of that, then get in touch and we’ll pass on your details to make sure you can join. Um, yeah, and people just, you know, [00:27:00] taking the opportunities to catch up with clients, you know, for paddle load. Most or all of our clients are, are gonna be there. So it is nice to get off Zoom and um, yeah, actually sit face to face and discuss things in person. So definitely encourage everyone to try and arrange those sorts of things while they’re there. Joel Saxum: You know, one of the things I think is really important about this event is that, uh, we’re, we’re continuing the conversation from last year, but a piece of feedback last year was. Fantastic job with the conversation and helping people with o and m issues and giving us things we can take back and actually integrate into our operations right away. But then a week or two or three weeks after the event, we had those things, but the conversation stopped. So this year we’re putting some things in place. One of ’em being like Rosemary was talking about the private operator forum. Where there’s a couple of operators that have actually taken the reins with this thing and they wanna put this, they wanna make this group a thing where they’re want to have quarterly meetings and they want to continue this conversation and knowledge share and boost that whole Australian market in the wind [00:28:00]side up right? Rising waters floats all boats, and we’re gonna really take that to the next level this year at Allen Hall: WMA down in Melbourne. That’s why I need a register now at Wilma 2020 six.com because the industry needs solutions. Speeches. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the feedback and support we received from the wind industry. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn and please don’t forget to subscribe so you’d never miss an episode. For Joel Rosemary and Yolanda, I’m Allen Hall. We’ll catch you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

A power outage is planned overnight in the West Island from 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 21 to 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 22. It is expected to impact approximately 64,000 customers. Advisor of Media Relations at Hydro-Québec, Cendrix Bouchard spoke to Andrew Carter. Photo Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

Cendrix Bouchard, spokesperson for Hydro-Quebec

Cendrix Bouchard of Hydro Quebec joins Ken Connors with an update on the power outages after snowfall on Nov. 10.

Barry Christensen, Trudie Mason, Josée St-Onge, John Moore, Tom Mulcair, Dr. Mitch Shulman, Rick Cartmel, Pattie Lovett-Reid

Another voice is casting doubt on the province's MOU with Hydro Quebec. Senator David Wells is calling for an independent review of the agreement.

We’ve been following the ongoing power outage issues in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, where hundreds of residents have been dealing with frequent blackouts for years. Last month, we spoke with the Mayor of DDO about the problem, and just last week we had a Hydro-Québec representative on to explain what they’re doing about it. But what does it feel like for the people living with these outages day after day? Michael Common spoke to Andrew Carter.

Alex Bottausci is the mayor of Dollard-des-Ormeaux. He joined Ken Connors to shares frustration on behalf of residents following repeated Hydro-Quebec outages. Image: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Summer rewind: Hydro Ottawa recently unveiled its largest investment plan ever, with a five-year focus on modernizing and strengthening the grid. The way we're consuming energy is changing, and this investment plan focuses on four key areas that highlight why Hydro Ottawa is taking action, and how they plan on doing it.   Hydro Ottawa's Chief Operating Officer, Guillaume Paradis, joins thinkenergy to dive a little deeper into those focus areas, and why they matter, with host Trevor Freeman.   Related links   ●       Guillaume Paradis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaume-paradis-30a47721 ●       Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-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 -- Transcript: Trevor Freeman  00:00 Hi everyone. Well, summer is here, and the think energy team is stepping back a bit to recharge and plan out some content for the next season. We hope all of you get some much needed downtime as well, but we aren't planning on leaving you hanging over the next few months, we will be re releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past year that we think really highlight innovation, sustainability and community. These episodes highlight the changing nature of how we use and manage energy, and the investments needed to expand, modernize and strengthen our grid in response to that. All of this driven by people and our changing needs and relationship to energy as we move forward into a cleaner, more electrified future, the energy transition, as we talk about many times on this show. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with all new content in September. Until then, happy listening.   Trevor Freeman  00:55 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 front lines 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 hydroottawa.com.   Trevor Freeman  01:19 hi everyone, and welcome back. A few episodes back I talked about some of the important work that happens at the distribution level to maintain and expand our grid, and I tried to connect the dots between that work and the broader societal energy transition that is happening at all levels. How the work we do at the distribution level is really important and tied to some of those larger projects that may get a little bit more news and attention that energy transition, which, as you're hopefully aware by now, is ongoing right now. It's not something of the future. It's happening today. That energy transition is multifaceted, but from an electricity and electrification perspective, the distribution utility, ie the Hydro Ottawa, of whatever jurisdiction you're in, is at the very leading edge of many of the changes we need to see within our electricity system to support that transition. So today, I'd like to go a little bit further with that topic and focus on Hydro Ottawa's next five year investment plan, which covers the 2026 to 2030 period. This will be the largest investment plan in our history as a company. And I wanted to dig into what we have identified as key focus areas for investment in the coming five years, with more than 100 years of operating a large, complex distribution network, Hydro Ottawa is embarking on a pretty significant journey to modernize and strengthen our grid for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. We have filed our 2026, to 2030, Electricity Distribution rate application, as it's called, with the Ontario Energy Board, and this is a standard practice for all local distribution companies in Ontario. That's what we have to do. As a reminder for our listeners, the Ontario Energy Board, or OEB, as we often call it, is our independent regulator. Their mission in this process is to strike a balance between ensuring the financial health and operational needs of utilities like Hydro Ottawa, while also safeguarding the affordability and reliability of the service for the customer. So they want to make sure that we're spending enough to tackle the right projects on the grid, to make sure it stays operational while not spending too much. They meticulously scrutinize every detail of these applications to ensure that the proposed rates are just and reasonable, and that all investments are prudent and really in the public interest. So we have gotten a number of questions about the plan and specifically around where is the money going to go? What are you going to actually spend these dollars that you're requesting on? And why are these investments necessary? What benefits are they actually going to bring to our community? And often we get the question of, does this mean less outages or shorter outages? So I want to dig into that. I want to talk a little bit about what we've got planned and what the impact will be, and what the impact would be if we don't do those things, and to help me walk through that energy roadmap, that plan that we've put together. I've got Guillaume Paradis joining me today. Guillaume is the Chief Operating Officer of generation and distribution here at Hydro Ottawa, and he's going to join me, and we're going to talk through this. Guillaume and his teams are responsible for the planning, design, operation, construction and maintenance of our electrical power distribution system, and in his role, he leads the teams that are directly accountable for ensuring the safe, efficient and reliable delivery of electricity to our customers. Today, I'm going to ask Guillaume, really, to walk us through the details of. Our investment plan, how it was shaped, how we came up with these specific areas, and what benefits are going to be realized by our community and the broader energy landscape. Guillaume, Paradis, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. Trevor, okay, so, Guillaume, this is Hydro Ottawa's largest investment plan ever, and I'd like you to start by talking us through the primary drivers behind what our five year investment plan is.   Guillaume Paradis  05:29 Yeah, so as you've heard, as you've seen, we're in a historical, or historically, you know, unique point in the evolution of our industry. Electricity underpins most of our societal aspirations with respect to creating, you know, a more sustainable future, creating the future we want to leave for the next generations. And our distribution system underpins a lot of those aspirations in simple ways and in more complex ways. So, you know, a simple way is that essentially, for, you know, the well being of our society, for our customers, the residents of Ottawa, and really any area, to live the lives they're hoping to live, to, you know, enjoy the benefits of modern life. Electricity is a critical underpinning in any way you can imagine and you know, think about so. Our service has always been very important. It's just become even more critical as a foundational block for you know, the lives that we're hoping to live and we're living today in our modern society. So that, combined with other aspirations related to where we can reducing our carbon footprint and integrating more renewable energy resources within our footprint, it creates a situation where there's a significant need for us to invest, continue to invest and reinvest in our infrastructure to deliver those outcomes for customers.   Trevor Freeman  07:16 Yeah, I think, I mean, we talk a lot about the energy transition on the show, and if, if you think about, you know, let's say our previous rate application five years ago, the energy transition was a thing we knew about it, but it was like a thing of tomorrow where, hey, that's going to come soon. The difference now, I assume, and maybe you can speak to this, is we're seeing that. We're seeing the change now.   Guillaume Paradis  07:40 Yeha, you're exactly correct, like we're in it now. So we've been talking about it for some time, both from a like a general societal aspiration standpoint, but also from a technological standpoint. For a very long time, we talked about electric vehicles having an impact and becoming more commonplace. We talked about leveraging automation to deliver our services. We talked about two way power flows. So we've been building toward this moment, and now we're essentially in it, if you will, and we're seeing all those things, the confluence of all those longer term trends, sort of manifest themselves in real demand for our system, in real changes in our customers want to use energy, and we're in the middle of that, and we're, you know, to enable those things happening in our community here in Ottawa.   Trevor Freeman  08:36 Yeah. So it's like the business as usual, a lot of the same things, and we're going to talk about some of this. About some of the specifics, but a lot of the same thing, things we would normally do just a lot more of at the same time, as like also pivoting a little bit to meet some of these new needs, like charging transportation and like heating our spaces, more of electricity, like some of these new needs that didn't exist are not to the same extent. So it's like more of the same plus other new stuff, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.   Guillaume Paradis  09:11 Yeah. So, you know, we always would say that the future of the energy sector was very exciting, and things were coming and like, change was upon us, and now, essentially, we're, we're living it, right? So you have to carry on with the responsibilities that you always had, and meanwhile, figure out how to deliver those new outcomes, those new services that previously weren't required or expected, right?   Trevor Freeman  09:39 So let's, let's kind of get into some of the details here. So there are four key capital investment categories in this plan, so growth and electrification, aging, infrastructure, grid modernization and grid resilience. So we're going to dive into the specifics of these in a minute, but we're. To start off with why these four? How did we land on these four as the main categories?   Guillaume Paradis  10:07 Yeah, so there's, there's various ways you can categorize investments. There's a lot of drivers that will lead us to invest in an area or replace some infrastructure somewhere in our system, these categories capture quite well. What is at the core of various investments. So for one specific investment, there will be multiple drivers, but these ones sort of in an elegant way, I would say, capture. You know why investments are occurring, what the primary driver is for those investments, and they help translate that for folks who are not involved day to day in planning the electricity system, that's our responsibility. What we're trying to communicate is why we're taking action where we're taking action. So those categories, in my mind, capture that really well. They also tie our investments to broad trends that people should be aware of, and they're a way to make sure that we have, you know, a clear baseline for a conversation as we proceed with those plans.   Trevor Freeman  11:18 Yeah, one thing I find, and you know, in my role, I talk to customers a lot, and I find these are fairly easy to explain, or at least, I hope they are, if you're listening and you disagree, let us know. But people can kind of get their heads around why the utility needs to do each of these four things, and some, in some ways, they align with other sectors as well. So I think, and I hope, as we carry on our conversation here, it'll be easy to sort of build out the picture of what we're doing in each of those four areas. So why don't we? Let's dive right in then and look at the specifics. And starting with growth and electrification, what are the specific investments that are planned to support the growing energy needs of our community, you know. And we've already started talking about electric vehicles, other electrified aspects of our lives, like, what? What falls into this category?   Guillaume Paradis  12:11 Yeah, so with respect to growth and electrification, um, there's a few underlying trends that drive the investment requirements. So as you've suggested, as you mentioned, you know, there's an evolution of how our customers use energy at home, day to day. EVS being obviously a primary example that everyone will be very aware of. Just, you know, driving around town, frankly, the difference in how regularly you'll see electric vehicles in our community relative to even five years ago is is pretty dramatic, and that is having a long term, you know, impact over time, likewise for technologies like heat pumps at home, and just generally, the growth of our community. So those elements just drive a longer-term trend of more demand being present in our community, within our system. And in addition to that, one big change that we've seen over the last few years is more large scale demand request coming into our service territory, typically, that will be large customers wanting to do something different with energy. So it could go. It could be driven by a few different kinds of corporate aspirations. What we're seeing a lot of are instances where large corporations decide, or institutions decide, to do away with more carbon intensive energy sources, so they will look to us and electricity to replace what previously would have been another fuel source that maybe is less green. So we're seeing that affecting choices some of those type of customers are making, and then at the same time, we're seeing just large requests related to a different type of energy demand. So companies wanting to, for example, bring back their R and D efforts to a data center that they operate and they control, so that they have more control over cybersecurity elements, and then, likewise, with where their data flows to and how it's being managed. So we're seeing large requests at a rate that we didn't previously, and that those requests are significant enough that they require us to make very major investments, like new substations, like building a. New feeders again at a pace that far outpaces what we've seen historically. So the underlying trend of more small demand creating an impact at the aggregate level, combined with those larger requests, that's creating a significant need for us to invest in responding to that growth in the electrification drivers within our system.   Trevor Freeman  15:29 Yeah, so this is in response to what we're seeing our customers do. And that's it's something that has come up before in conversation here. Of you know, we we respond to what we see our customers doing and what our customers are asking us. They're asking for more power. We have to respond to provide that more power. So this, this kind of area of investment, is really just building out the grid and all of the assets and infrastructure that are that make up the grid to be able to meet the needs of our customers, which are growing faster than they were previously? Is that fair to say?   Guillaume Paradis  16:05 Yeah, and for us, it's an interesting balancing act we have to find where we have to anticipate our customers' needs and the demand that's upon us, but we can't get ahead of it, because that would draw investments that potentially would, you know, later become stranded, or, you know, create a cost burden for our customers. So we have to know where the demand is going, and we have to be ready to respond and connect new customers, but we can't get too far ahead of it, because ultimately, you know, if we invest too soon, that's, you know, a burden for all our customers. So sometimes I, I would say there's that misconception that somehow, we're, we're creating our own forecast and believing our own forecast. And really, it's a bit simpler than that, we take in the request and we respond to those requests. We have to be able to look out a few years to make sure that we're not missing, you know, anything significant that would have an impact on our system, but we don't get too far ahead from an investment standpoint.   Trevor Freeman  17:19 Okay, so Guillaume, we've been talking about the more traditional aspects of our grid, you know, pulls, wires, transformers, et cetera. But I know that we're also looking at how we can deploy what we call non wire solutions to also help manage capacity on our grid. Can you just explain what some of these solutions are and how we're going to use them in conjunction with our traditional assets to manage grid needs.   Guillaume Paradis  17:43 Yeah, so normal alternatives are essentially the concept that without having to install traditional infrastructure, think poles, new Transformers, new cables, underground, you may be able to harvest existing resources within your footprint to help you manage operational needs. Be it like certain peaks that have a short duration, other scenarios of constraints where, rather than building net new infrastructure, which is expensive and time consuming, you might be able to optimize I'll call it the use of embedded resources in a manner that actually meets your operational objectives. So the way you would do that is by using combination of resources. Typically, you would look at small scale embedded storage. So if it exists in the system, you would actually leverage it if, if you could, otherwise, you might install some in a very targeted manner that helps you meet those operational needs. And then otherwise, you would leverage customer resources. So that's either existing generation that is owned by customers, or which is more typical, you know their ability to adjust their demand at certain times to meet your operational constraints. So the idea there is that you can do a business case, you can do an evaluation of what it would take to engage all these resources to get the same operational outcome as you would if you build the new infrastructure, and compare the two on a cost basis. And actually, in some instances, see scenarios where those non wire alternatives actually beat out large scale infrastructure upgrades from a financial standpoint. So it's, it's an evolving area. We have a few pockets within the city that we're targeting for programs like those ones, and we expect, over time, as more embedded resources proliferate, as more customer devices become controllable, we'll have a great. Greater opportunity, in fact, to leverage those non wire alternatives, or those non traditional solutions to meet our operational requirements.   Trevor Freeman  20:08 Great. So this is a combination of you know, Hydro Ottawa is planning to invest in in some assets, you know, be they battery or otherwise, on our side of the meter. We call that in front of the meter to help manage grid needs, while also looking for opportunities to partner with customers you know in the aggregate, so you know 100 or 1000 customers at once, to say if we need to call on your devices to either inject into the grid or to ramp back your operations, that will help us manage grid needs while the customer still maintains control. Is that fair to say?   Guillaume Paradis  20:47 Yeah, that's fair, and that's an emerging capacity we have. So if our ability to control and call upon a very large number of small devices and customer devices has grown and is growing and will be over the next few years. And with that, our capacity to then draw from those resources to respond to operational circumstances is also increasing and will give us options we just wouldn't have had in the past. So it's just a better way of utilizing available energy resources a more refined way, and one that probably wasn't available to us at scale 10 years ago.   Trevor Freeman  21:29 Yeah, and the driver behind all this is what's the best, most cost effective way to address that grid need? Some cases it's going to be the poles and wires and transformers. In some cases, it's going to be these non wire solutions, and it's part of the planning of the grid to identify where does each technology make sense.   Guillaume Paradis  21:50 Absolutely. So again, it's a more refined way of assessing options and ensuring that we identify the most cost effective strategies possible.   Trevor Freeman  22:02 Perfect, great. Okay, so that's the growth and electrification section. Let's move to aging infrastructure, which is about a third of this investment plan. So this may seem like a softball to start with, but what are some of the challenges posed by aging infrastructure? Maybe talk to us a little bit about what that infrastructure is when it comes to utility grid, and then what are what are we doing with this investment plan to address that aging infrastructure?   Guillaume Paradis  22:31 Yeah, so aging infrastructure is a very clear and appropriate descriptor here. So we invest in assets that are long lived, think 5060, years plus in some instances, and you know, eventually you use them, you leverage them over, you know, many decades. And at some point, those assets deteriorate beyond a point where they're no longer able to provide the service that our customers expect. So that would be failures, which leads to reliability issues in parts of our system. So one at one point or another in the life cycle of those assets, depending on how they're being used, what environment they are operated in, you have to replace them. What we try to do is assess them on a risk basis. And when we say risk, we mean, what impact can they have on our customers if they were to fail? Impacts can be things like safety risk. It could be, of course, reliability issues. It could limit our ability to service our customers. And so we assess risk on an ongoing basis, looking at those assets over decades. And eventually we get to a point where the risk has to be addressed, and that typically takes the form of or it can take the form of an outright replacement through the life cycle of all those assets, all of our assets. We do maintenance, we inspect them, we try to see if there are other things we can do before we replace them. But you get to a point ultimately, where the only option that's viable is to actually replace and then you have to go in and take action, physically in the field. Now what becomes a little complicated is, as you can imagine, it's one thing to put infrastructure up when a field being converted to a subdivision, or the city's growing and it's all brand new. You know, infrastructure being developed to support the growth, but decades later, when you come back, 60-70, years plus, in some cases, you're in someone's backyard. You're in the middle of an intersection where multiple utilities have installed their own infrastructure. So you have to coordinate that things have been moved over time. So getting access to the infrastructure is more difficult. Difficult, and so replacing many decades later is a lot more involved than putting up new infrastructure in the first place, and the type of infrastructure that we're talking about here probably falls into three major categories. So there's the overhead infrastructure you see around town. So really, when you and you shouldn't do that while you're driving, but if you're walking ideally, and you're looking at the beautiful hydro infrastructure around Ottawa, what you'll see are very old poles that need attention. So that's very visible, right? We have wood poles, you know, in a lot of the areas of our city, and you get to a point where structurally, they're not as strong as they used to be. They've weathered many storms, and they need attention. And then otherwise, it's the Transformers you might see on those poles. And that would be the boxes that are hanging from the poles, the ones that look like they, you know, predate the Cold War are the ones we're going after, and we need to give some attention to today. And then on the underground side, similar infrastructure, it's cables in in the ground, so in some instances, it's buried directly in someone's backyard. That was a an approach people took many decades back. Now, you can imagine it's very convenient when you're building it, but not so much when you're trying to get it out of the ground and put new cables into the ground. So there's cables that need replacing. They've, you know, been damaged or creating reliability issues. The transformers that go with that as well might need attention. And again, as I mentioned before, you know, decades later, that transformer may be right behind someone's pool in their backyard, and they've done some real nice landscaping, and accessing it for a replacement is a lot more complicated. So underground infrastructure, in fact, is one of the more complicated replacements to execute. And then, you know, if you move up from there, you're looking at substation equipment. So that's the stuff that's fenced in across the city where power is being delivered from to our customers across the city. And so those assets may be a bit less complicated in terms of managing sites and access, but certainly complicated in terms of logistics costs of the equipment. Those are very, very large assets that require a lot of planning to replace, because they're critical to our system, and we can't afford to have them be out of service too long.   Trevor Freeman  27:49 Got you and just for our listeners, while Guillaume talking, I pulled up a few quick stats here. So we, Hydro Ottawa on our service territory, has over 6000 kilometers of conductor so of wires and just under 50,000 poles out in our service territory. So as you can imagine, a lot of that is in great shape, and some of it isn't, and some of it needs to be addressed, just like you're talking about here Guillaume.   Guillaume Paradis  28:17 Yeah, and that's helpful. Trevor. The thing that we often forget, especially for electricity distribution, is the sheer number of assets that can create a risk. So it's one thing to manage one large transformer and make sure it doesn't fail, but when you're talking about 1000s of assets dispersed around a very large service territory like Ottawa, making sure that we keep an eye on all of them at all times, making sure that we intervene at the exact time prior to a failure, to make sure we deliver the best service possible for our customers. That's really the essence of our challenge and what makes distribution unique versus other parts of our business, where it's maybe more centralized and you may be looking at a smaller set of assets.   Trevor Freeman  29:04 Yeah, absolutely okay, so obviously, it's important to maintain what we've got, in addition to building out that new stuff that we talked about earlier, maintaining and replacing what we have, so that you know our existing grid remains reliable. The next section of our investment plan is what we call grid modernization. Now that's something that we've talked about to varying levels of detail on this show before, but I'd like you to talk us through what is in this investment plan over the next five years. When we talk about grid modernization, what are we actually doing? What are some of the specific things that we're gonna put some of our investment towards?   Guillaume Paradis  29:45 Yeah, so grid monetization is, is a category that gets talked about a lot, but maybe is, I would say, a bit misunderstood, I think, because it sounds futuristic, people assume we're doing a. And very different things. And ultimately, in my mind, it's better leveraging technology to get good outcomes for our customers. It's really that simple. So as you can imagine, you know, as I talked about, we're looking at assets that have expected life of 50- 60-70, years when some of our assets were first installed, things like communication technology, things like IT, operational technology, weren't as advanced as they are today. Our ability to collect data in real time was not what it is today, and so nada we're we have an opportunity to reinvest and replace all assets. It's important that we do so in a manner that will allow us to drive essentially more performance or better performance out of the assets we put in our system, so that can take various forms. As I mentioned, getting better real time information is one of those ways in which we can leverage technology, what that allows us to do is better respond to outages, offer a better service by being more aware of what's happening at any given point in time, getting better information in near real time as to what assets are posing a risk to reliability because they've been utilized heavily, or they've seen a lot of faults, for example. And so building in that technological infrastructure as a layer that enhances the traditional investments that we've always made is sort of the right thing to do in a context where you want to optimize where you spend your dollars, and you don't want to have to go back and reinvest on the same assets or in the same parts of our system multiple times, uh, over, you know, the coming years, in the coming decades. So the grid monetization portfolio, essentially is our opportunity to, you know, very strategically, identify where we can put in technology that will allow us to get more of our assets and provide a better service for our customers. So simple things like automated devices that would be automated switches that we install on our overhead infrastructure, underground infrastructure that gives us a capacity during an outage to shift demand around and resupply our customers more rapidly than we would have been able to otherwise, and that gives us a capacity to provide a better service under contingency scenario. So very simple, right? It's telemetry. It's communication to a device. And rather than have someone physically go in the field and, you know, switch customers and try to move demand around, we can do that remotely from our control center, likewise, in the control center, putting in more telemetry to identify and proactively suggest to our operators how to restore power to customers. Again, is a simple thing in by today's standard, right? It's not competent technology. It's not complicated software, but it's a layer that didn't exist previously, where we can have software, you know, model based. Its tool suggest how best to optimize the restoration of power. And as we do that, our trade operators get to review and take action in an informed manner. So grid, modernization, again, is about making the most of today's available technology while we reinvest in our distribution system to make sure that the quality of our service, and the breadth of the services we can provide align, well, going forward, with our customers aspirations, and provide a quality service for many decades to come.   Trevor Freeman  34:15 Yeah, and I think it's important to remember, and you know this, this little saying has been out there in the industry, and I've used it before. Of the electricity grid is the world's largest machine. Like the grid itself is a piece of technology, and like any technology, we would not be happy if it stayed stagnant, like we want it to evolve with the latest and greatest and operate better and more efficiently, and the grid is no different, and so part of grid modernization is just keeping up with what's out there to make sure we are delivering the service that we deliver in the best way, in the most advanced way, in the most efficient way possible. With that. Guillaume, what about things like, you know, we hear a lot about more distributed energy resources, so more small-scale generation or storage out there on the grid that might be owned by the utility, but it might not be. It might be customer owned. What are we doing from a grid modernization perspective, to enable more distributed energy resources to utilize that those assets more on our grid?   Guillaume Paradis  35:28 Yeah, so that's core to the evolution and we're proposing and working toward and and really, if you boil it down to, you know, simple kind of concept, it's really that traditionally, we've had a static model of how our grid needs to operate, and we planned accordingly. So, you know, power flows in one direction to certain size customers. They use electricity to use our energy, and then we protect, we coordinate, we control accordingly, and we're moving into an environment where customer behavior evolves in a dynamic fashion in near real time, depending on what prices are available in the electricity market, depending on what aspirations various Customers have, depending on what technology they want to deploy to manage their energy footprint, a customer may look different, really, from one day to the next, as far as the electricity system is concerned, because their demand might be less significant on a day where their solar panels are better able to generate energy on a day where they choose to leverage a large battery system that they've installed at their facilities to manage their demand. And so from an electricity system standpoint, we need a much better awareness of what is happening in near real time to be able to control and then respond and ultimately offer the right service for our customers. So that's a big change again, going back to the how we're going to enable that. It's again, the core elements of communication infrastructure, more telemetry, so that we can see what's happening in real time. Think sensors. Think smart meters. Think, you know, software system within our control room to take all that information, information in in real time and make sense of it, and then ultimately drive our decision making and support our customers in leveraging energy resources in an optimal way for their needs, by making sure that we're aware of what's happening and not create barriers that are artificial because we're not Sure, and when we're not sure, safety is paramount, and when you prioritize safety and you don't have information, you have to be very conservative in the decisions you make, and you may limit customers choices and behavioral, you know choices, by having to have that safety margin and that safety conscience kind of override everything else. So better telemetry, better real time information, more dynamic ways of controlling energy allow us to enable customers and support their aspirations ultimately,   Trevor Freeman  38:38 I mean, it really comes kind of full circle back to our job is to let our customers do what they want to do when it comes to energy, enable that, and that may be just making sure the power is there and available, but it also may be making sure that our grid is set up to allow them to generate and store and sort of interact with energy in the way that they want to. So those two things are quite parallel. Okay, great. Last category here is grid resilience, and this is an important one, and especially in the eyes of our customers, because, you know, we're that unique industry where most of the time, people don't think of us when they really do think about us, it's because the lights have gone off, because there's some event that has resulted in an outage. And I just want to ensure our customers, we try very, very hard to make sure that doesn't happen as much as we can't control everything. So we have this category of grid resilience in our investment plan, and we know that we're going to be seeing and we have already started to see more frequent extreme weather events that is increasing. It's not going down. So what are we doing in our investment plan, or what are we planning to do in order to enhance grid resiliency and withstand those extreme weather event?   Guillaume Paradis  40:01 Yeah, so the need for resilience, in my mind, comes from a couple places. So, you know, there are drivers that are external, so the operating environment is evolving to your point. We've seen a number of very impactful weather events over the last few years, whether it be historically impactful ice storms, we've seen tornadoes in our service territory in a way that we didn't previously. We saw derecho a couple years ago, which was, you know, by some measure, the most impactful storm in the history of our company. And so, we know what we plan to withstand has evolved, and we need to reflect that in the decisions we make when we invest in our infrastructure. That can take a few forms, but for grid resilience, we're targeting specific investments so we can identify, and have identified areas of our system that are more vulnerable. Imagine overhead infrastructure that is more exposed to stronger winds. And so, we can go in there and then target those areas, target those segments of our system and make them more robust, more resistant to those external factors. And so, we have assessed our entire service territory. We've studied, you know, our vulnerability to changing patterns, to changing weather events, and in a very targeted manner, identified areas where we'll take action over the next five years to boost resilience of our electricity system in those scenarios, and really just generally. The other element is, you know, while those external factors are evolving and creating a stress on our system, we're also seeing people's dependence on electricity is availability continue to grow, right? So, you know, we've been through this many times at this point, and I'm sure it's been covered on on this podcast a number of times. But you know, people's, you know, need for highly and readily available electricity continues to go up. Think, you know, remote work. Think our utilization of, you know, the internet and the technologies that support that people need access to power, you know, on an ongoing basis for a variety of reasons that support their lifestyles. And so, while the external factors have become and are becoming more challenging and creating a stress, we're also seeing customers relying more heavily on our service being available, and so those things combined make it sort of an imperative that we take action and ensure that our system is robust and can withstand those conditions that are upon us. So, we change our planning approach. We evolve our choices with respect to investments. It could be simpler things than you know, targeting areas and replacing specific infrastructure. It could be as simple as changing our standards so that when we install a new poll, we know that it can withstand harsher winds and heavier ice loading parameters, and we do that across all our investments. So that's a key point here, with respect to grid resilience. Yes, we have a targeted, sort of very strategic approach to building resilience, but we also do that across all our investment categories when we put money in our distribution system to make sure that, similar to the point we made about technology, you know, we invest in assets that will, you know, outlive many of us, and they need to be adequate and appropriate for the environment in which they will operate long term. So we change, you know, the choices we make. We change the materials we use to build the infrastructure that we put in our system, so that ultimately the service levels and service quality that our customers get to enjoy, you know, meets their expectations for decades to come.   Trevor Freeman  44:47 I think the idea like it's good that we have called out specifically some activities targeted at group resilience, but some of the other stuff that we've already talked about all. Support resilience. And you mentioned in the grid modernization part, you know, part of that is restoring power to most customers quicker in our growth and electrification part, I mean making sure that our grid can handle the new loads also lends itself to resiliency. So, all of this is in service of making sure that power is there for our customers when they need it, how they need it, and done in a sort of safe and affordable way. That's the goal of all these categories together.   Guillaume Paradis  45:33 Yeah, absolutely the you know, going back to the earlier point, the categories are helpful in identifying the major drivers. But ultimately, to your point, Trevor, they all support each other, and when our team plans the future of electricity system, they do so in an integrated manner that considers the various benefits that we can achieve by taking action and putting more money in our distribution system?   Trevor Freeman  46:02 Yeah, great. So that's a nice segue into his next question, which is, of course, there's a cost for this, and this is why it is an investment plan. We're out there outlining, these are our targets. This is what we want to do, but there's a cost to that. And so if we don't do this. If we said, look, we just can't put that extra investment into these areas. What are the implications on the grid, on our service? And let's look at kind of like quality of service, reliability, safety, et cetera, if we don't make these investments that we are identifying right now.   Guillaume Paradis  46:41 Yeah, so it's pretty direct, right? We what we've done for the in preparation for our rate application, in preparation for to develop our plans for 2026 to 2030 is we've considered all the needs. We've looked at how old the assets are, how quickly they're deteriorating, how many might require replacement over the next five years. What would be an appropriate race rate of replacement to ensure that we don't let let risk build up in our system, we don't cause reliability issues. We've looked at making how we make sure that we can provide service to our customers, that we can connect them in a timely, timely manner, that we can do all those things in a fashion that is safe and ensures the safety of the public, our customers. And so a lot of thought goes into what is required over the next five years, and then on top of those factors and considerations, we also look at what impact will this have financially on our customers, because we're mindful that our service does affect, you know, our customers lives, yes, in a positive manner When our services reliable and power is available, but also financially from a cost standpoint, we add to other pressures that everyone experiences in their lives. And so we want to be very judicious in setting the size of our programs the level of investments in managing those various factors, right? So we have a multifaceted responsibility, and we weigh all those factors in in our or in setting the plans for the future. So doing so looking five years out, as you can probably imagine, you know, if we didn't constrain the plans. If we just did everything our planning engineers would like to do, we would have spent probably another 50% more than what is in the current plan. So looking at old assets, looking at the service levels we want to deliver, we could have spent a significantly larger amount of money if it was purely based on, we'll call them planning, you know, drivers. But as I said, we are mindful that we're responsible for the quality of our service on behalf of all our customers. And we took a very deliberate, you know, extensive approach to adjusting the program size to match the various considerations and ultimately manage the impact on our customers from a financial standpoint. And so we landed where we are after some measure of restraint, some measure of adjustments, down to the plans that would otherwise have been put in place. So thinking about what the outcomes would be if we didn't take the actions we're proposing. You know, it's pretty direct, if you think about it, and we've covered most of them, but it. Just from difficulties in connecting and delivering power to new customers in a timely manner, so that can have impacts with respect to economic development and growth of our community so fairly direct, and frankly, it's our obligation to connect. So we would do everything we can to provide power, but it might just be more difficult take more time on the reliability front. Again, what happens when you don't replace old assets is the failure risks continue to build in your system. So an 80 year old wood pole doesn't get any younger and does it get any stronger if you wait five, six more years? And so as I said, we do a risk assessment before we choose to invest, and our risk assessments tell us that we need to take action on those type of assets. And, you know, take action in a timely manner. If we don't, what is likely to happen is that in a storm scenario, those polls that are deteriorated are more likely to fail, even in normal conditions, it's likely that we would see more failures that could lead to reliability issues, and so just a direct impact on the quality of our service for customers with respect to other outcomes like enabling customers and supporting them in integrating more embedded energy resources. That might just become more difficult, as I said earlier, when we're don't have good real time awareness, we have to err on the side of caution and be more conservative in our management of the system, and that might mean restrictions on where and how we can integrate renewable energy resources. And then ultimately, you know, the paramount consideration for us is always safety, and that's an area where we would just have to be even more vigilant if we couldn't reinvest so old assets, you know, are inherently more likely to create failure risks, and failures can lead to undesirable outcomes from a safety standpoint. So we would have to, and already do, but be very vigilant in monitoring those assets, looking at them, looking at what we can do from a maintenance standpoint to ensure that they don't fail in a manner that would be problematic. So we would be, and are always, very active in looking at those riskier assets, those older assets, to make sure they don't cause problems. But reducing investment levels from what is being proposed now, reducing them further relative to, as I said, the planning levels we would have liked to put forward would have real consequences, and of course, we would do everything we can to manage those consequences and ensure that, you know, we continue to deliver the best service we can. But that would become more difficult than it is today.   Trevor Freeman  53:15 I appreciate that that context of you know, you like me, like energy, and we want to do all the cool things, and we want to have the system that is absolutely able to handle every eventuality, but we have to balance that with what is the right level of investment, what is the right pace to go at? And I think, you know, having seen the process, there's been a lot of work over the last year plus to find that balance, and I think we've, we've hit that balance in terms of being able to move the ball forward while trying to maintain that sort of affordability aspect for customers. Last question here to kind of wrap it all up, and we've touched on this a few times in some of the other questions, but how does our investment plan align with that broader energy transition that that we talk about? You know, decarbonizing, reducing emissions, increasing sort of customer flexibility when it comes to their own generation and storage. And what role do you see Hydro Ottawa playing moving forward in that? And I know that this has already gotten a little bit of attention, but I'll give you a chance just to kind of tie a nice little bow around it at the end.   Guillaume Paradis  54:39 Yeah. So to your point, we did cover a few elements, how we enable those you know, sustainability aspirations. But you know it ranges from making it possible for large customers to shift a significant portion of their energy demand to a lower. A carbon source like electricity. So again, think a customer who would use natural gas for their facilities, and you know, for corporate reasons, decides to use electricity instead us connecting that extra demand and delivering power to them allows them to lower their foot their carbon footprint. So that would be on high end in terms of size and impact, all the way to enabling customers to install different technologies on their homes, within their homes, to reduce their carbon footprint and change how they use energy. So it could be as simple as buying EV and making sure that power is available within that neighborhood to supply demand from that EV. It could be them installing solar panels on their roof and try to export power back to us. And so that would tie to the earlier point around visibility and real time awareness that we need to have to make sure that we can make that possible. So again, you know the energy system, the electricity system is integrated in so many ways, and enabling our customers to achieve their sustainability outcomes, their desired outcomes in terms of energy use, comes from planning the energy system, the electricity distribution system, in a manner that supports that and that permits it. So again, going back to some categories, the grid modernization that we spoke about earlier fits right in there. So being aware allows us to allow and enable customers, and that becomes critical again, in an environment where things are very dynamic, and we want to support that dynamism, and we need to do so in a manner that's safe. So we need information, and we need technology that allows us to go get that information to support the decision making. So as we said, all the investments we're proposing in one way or another will support our supporting those decarbonization and emission reduction objectives that we all have.   Trevor Freeman  57:26 Right, yeah, it really comes back to the idea of us being and this is something that I certainly talk to our customers about. A lot of us being partners with our customers when it comes to their energy journeys, and that can be very active partners in the sense of the word, where we are involved in helping make decisions together on technology or strategies, or it can be very passive in that kind of residential model that you talked about, of just making sure the grid can be there in the way that the customer wants it to be there, and that's still a partnership that that we need to lean into and that we are kind of through this investment plan.   Guillaume Paradis  58:07 We're essentially underpinning people's aspirations when it comes to energy, and so we're there to make it possible for them to do what they're hoping to do. And you're absolutely right. We're seeing both ends of those conversations where some you know, go about their own choices and really don't need us involved, and our responsibility there is to make sure that we don't create a roadblock by not being prepared and not being equipped to respond to you know how they want to change their behavior, all the way to that partnership, where it's a very involved conversation, we're being brought in to fully explore all the options and work with stakeholders in essentially demystifying, or maybe more specifically, sort of see through some of the complexity that exists today in an environment that is much more dynamic again and offers a lot more options than people would have seen a few decades ago.   Trevor Freeman  59:11 Fantastic. Well, Guillaume, I think we'll leave it there. This has been great, and I appreciate you taking the time to help pick apart you know what? What can be a pretty complex, lengthy plan, but really boils down to building out the grid, continuing to do the great work that that the folks at Hydro Ottawa do, while also preparing for the future. So I appreciate your insight into this. As our listeners know we always end these interviews with a series of questions, and you're no different. So I'm going to dive, dive right into that. So Guillaume, what is a book that you've read that you think everyone should read?   Guillaume Paradis  59:54 Yeah, so I'm probably going to get his name wrong, or at least the pronunciation, but it's a book called How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. Essentially, you know, he's a very pragmatic thinker with respect to how systems work, how our world is integrated, from a supply standpoint, from a geopolitical standpoint, and how that leads to outcomes in the real world. And think things like energy, think things like food supply. And what I like with his approach is that he breaks thing that things down, sort of from a first principle standpoint, to try to help explain why certain things may or may not be possible, and in an environment where, and maybe that's just my perspective, but I think today, there's a lot of big picture, you know, broad opinions being shared by people who may or may not always be very knowledgeable or have the expertise in certain fields. It's nice to see someone kind of break things down to then try to support, or in some cases, dispel certain misconceptions. So really nice approach. He has a number of books that are similar in nature, some cases a bit dense to read through, frankly, but I would say the how the world really works, book is easier to digest and it's it's a good entry into kind of his works and his approach to his studies. The other thing that's a plus maybe, is that he's based out of Winnipeg in Canadians, so it's great to have a mind like his, you know, contributing to the discourse in Canada.   Trevor Freeman  1:01:59 Awesome. So same question, but for a movie or a show, what's a movie or show that you think everyone should check out?   Guillaume Paradis  1:02:05 Yeah, that's a little harder. I think maybe I'll go to an old classic. For me. I'm always impressed with extreme creativity, I'll call it - in whatever forms. I think it's neat to see how people can envision a world - or create a world. And so an example for me was the Grand Budapest Hotel movie by Wes Anderson, so I think people are familiar with his work by now. I just like the combination of humor color, color like the creation of a world that doesn't quite exist but resembles one we might know. And just, you know, it's, it's a way of expressing oneself that is so interesting, so different. He does it really, really well. And, you know, I find it sort of like awe inspiring to go back to those kinds of movies and look at, certainly, there's all sorts of good content these days that's being produced, but I think this one is kind of withstood the test of time so far and kind of brings you to a different place. So I'll point to that.   Trevor Freeman  1:03:17 Yeah, it's one of those where it's not just about the story. Watching that movie is a bit of an experience. And all the ways that you just said, you know, there's like, an artificial aspect to it. There's that sort of mental, emotional side of it, and then there's the story itself, with the humor and everything. So yeah, that's a great one. I really like that.   Guillaume Paradis  1:03:35 Always fascinating to think someone was able to come up with that, right? Like that. Yeah, totally have all like, the attention to details, the way in which the storylines are integrated, the way in which the decors, the images are graphed like it's just remarkable. And, and I think in anything, it's really cool to see people who are sort of masters at their art, right? And whatever for and there's all sorts of other examples. But that one, you know, came to mind.   Trevor Freeman  1:04:09 Yeah, very cool. If you had a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?   Guillaume Paradis  1:04:13 I think for me, it'd be somewhere very far north. I think it's on the list somewhere for the next few years, but just getting access to lands scenery that you wouldn't otherwise is really cool concept, maybe even spaces that are a bit less impacted by human you know, behavior and presence. So I just think a flight to somewhere random that maybe doesn't even have a name, but is in between two small villages that can only be accessed by a plane. I think that would be cool.   Trevor Freeman  1:04:58 Yeah, that does sound very cool. I like that. Who is someone that you admire?   Guillaume Paradis  1:05:03 Yeah, so my wife, for sure, I think that's sort of the foundation of a healthy relationship. You should have some admiration for your partner, and I absolutely do more generally. I would just point to anyone in our lives, and I think we all know people like that who spend a large amount of their time making other people's lives better. I could pick, you know, a celebrity of some kind, or politician of some kind, or even a historical figure, but, you know, I think in general, it doesn't have to be that complicated, people who just invest a lot of their time making sure others lives are better. I think that's something we should all admire, aspire to, you know, emulate, if we can, and just recognize as well. Because a lot of the times people do that, the people who do it well, don't do it for recognition. It doesn't mean they don't deserve it. And I think we should kind of try to promote it, you know, recognize it in our lives, and encourage it and emulate it, if we can.   Trevor Freeman  1:06:20 Fantastic. Well said. Last question, what is something about the energy sector or its future that you are particularly excited about?   Guillaume Paradis  1:06:25 Yeah, so I've been in the sector for about 20 years now, in fact, longer than that. My father worked for Hydro Quebec for many decades. So think we spent a lot of time talking about the future and getting excited about a future that was to come, and just the fact that we're living it now that we're actually shaping it, is pretty exciting, maybe even not appreciated to its full extent. And I think having a chance to contribute now is really awesome, and to whatever extent we can as well, I'm trying to encourage as many people as possible to join our sector, bring various backgrounds, you know, expertise, knowledge to helping us make decisions about how energy is going to be used in our society going forward, and how we can make the most this confluence of factors that create the window of opportunity to change things and make them evolve. And so for those of us who are part of it, let's not take it for granted, and let's make sure that we contribute to the full extent of our capabilities.   Trevor Freeman  1:07:45 Awesome, great, great way to wrap this up, I agree completely. Guillaume, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And sharing your thoughts with us. Really appreciate you coming on the show.   Guillaume Paradis  1:07:56 Thanks. Trevor, pleasure.   Trevor Freeman  1:07:59 Great take care. Well, there you have it everybody that was our last episode of the season before our summer break. Our regular listeners will know that we typically take a break over the summer to regroup and work on content and plan out the next year. But don't worry, we will be still releasing episodes every two weeks. They will just be rewind episodes, and we'll take a look back at some of our favorite episodes or things that we feel are particularly relevant for what's going on right now. So keep tuning in and listen to those, and we will be back with brand new content in September. Take care and have a safe summer. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review and review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or a guest. You can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.

Industrial Talk is onsite at DistribuTech 2025 and talking to Adile Ajaja, Director of Digital Technology at EVLO Energy about "Securing Energy Storage". Scott MacKenzie hosts an industrial podcast featuring Adile, an electrical engineer and expert in grid-scale energy storage systems. Adil discusses his background with Hydro Quebec and the evolution of his company, EVLO, which focuses on innovative and cost-efficient energy solutions. They delve into the importance of cybersecurity in energy systems, emphasizing a life-cycle approach to protect against attacks and failures. Adile highlights the challenges of integrating legacy systems with modern cybersecurity measures, as well as the increasing demand for power due to data centers and AI processing. He also touches on Hydro Quebec's strategies to manage this demand through efficiency and renewable energy sources. Action Items [ ] Reach out to Adil on LinkedIn to connect and learn more about EVLO's energy storage solutions and cybersecurity approaches. Outline Introduction and Podcast Overview Scott MacKenzie introduces the Industrial Talk podcast, emphasizing its focus on industry professionals and their innovations. Scott mentions the new intro and the sponsorship by Siemens, highlighting their role in solving distribution and transmission challenges. Scott introduces the guest, Adile, and discusses the conference's energy and the challenges in the industry. Adil shares his background, mentioning his work with Hydro Quebec and his involvement in smart grids and energy storage systems. Adile's Background and EVLO's Mission Adile explains his career path, starting as a power system engineer at Hydro Quebec and working on smart grids. He describes the joint venture between Hydro Quebec and Sony to create grid-scale energy storage systems. Adile details the evolution of the company, from a joint venture to a fully capable commercial operation called EVLO. Evelo's mission is to provide innovative and cost-efficient energy solutions to utility customers, integrating electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. Cybersecurity in Energy Storage Systems Scott and Adile discuss the importance of cybersecurity in energy storage systems, emphasizing the need for digitalization and data protection. Adile explains the cybersecurity measures implemented at each stage of the product life cycle, from design to operation. They discuss the challenges of protecting legacy systems and the role of NERC in ensuring grid stability and cybersecurity. Adil highlights the importance of creating a secure perimeter around energy assets and conducting regular audits and penetration tests. Addressing Increased Demand for Power Scott and Adile discuss the increasing demand for power due to data centers, AI processing, and other technological advancements. Adile explains Hydro Quebec's strategies to address this demand, including demand response programs and the installation of electronic devices to control energy consumption. They discuss the challenges of balancing generation and demand, especially during peak periods. Adile mentions the shift towards renewable energy sources and the need for cybersecurity in these systems. Future Insights and Contact Information Scott asks Adile about his future insights on energy demand and cybersecurity. Adil predicts continued growth in energy demand due to population growth and technological advancements. He emphasizes the importance of...

Joining Andrew on today's show were lawyer Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, Dr. Mitch Shulman, Virgin Radio's Kelly Alexander, scientist Dan Riskin, opencourt.ca's Stephanie Myles, Hydro Quebec's Cendrix Bouchard and ScotiaMcLeod senior wealth advisor Arnie Zwaig.

Cendrix Bouchard, spokesperson for Hydro-Quebec’s Electricity Distribution Division

Powering tomorrow: investing in Ottawa's energy future Hydro Ottawa recently unveiled its  2026-2030  investment plan focused on modernizing and strengthening the grid. The way we're consuming energy is changing, and this investment plan focuses on four key areas that highlight why Hydro Ottawa is taking action, how they plan on doing it, and what it all means for you.  Hydro Ottawa's Chief Operating Officer, Distribution and Generation, Guillaume Paradis, joins thinkenergy to dive a little deeper into those focus areas, and why they matter, with host Trevor Freeman.  Related links Guillaume Paradis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaume-paradis-30a47721 Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-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:/www.twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:07 Welcome to ThinkEnergy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the front lines 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 thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.Hi everyone, and welcome back. A few episodes back, I talked about some of the important work that happens at the distribution level to maintain and expand our grid, and I tried to connect the dots between that work and the broader societal energy transition that is happening at all levels—how the work we do at the distribution level is really important and tied to some of those larger projects that may get a little bit more news and attention. That energy transition, which, as you're hopefully aware by now, is ongoing right now; it's not something of the future, it's happening today. That energy transition is multifaceted, but from an electricity and electrification perspective, the distribution utility—i.e., the Hydro Ottawa of whatever jurisdiction you're in—is at the very leading edge of many of the changes we need to see within our electricity system to support that transition.So today, I'd like to go a little bit further with that topic and focus on Hydro Ottawa's next five-year investment plan, which covers the 2026 to 2030 period. This will be the largest investment plan in our history as a company, and I wanted to dig into what we have identified as key focus areas for investment in the coming five years. With more than 100 years of operating a large, complex distribution network, Hydro Ottawa is embarking on a pretty significant journey to modernize and strengthen our grid for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. We have filed our 2026 to 2030 electricity distribution rate application, as it's called, with the Ontario Energy Board. This is a standard practice for all local distribution companies in Ontario; that's what we have to do. As a reminder for our listeners, the Ontario Energy Board, or OEB, as we often call it, is our independent regulator. Their mission in this process is to strike a balance between ensuring the financial health and operational needs of utilities like Hydro Ottawa, while also safeguarding the affordability and reliability of the service for the customer. So they want to make sure that we're spending enough to tackle the right projects on the grid to make sure it stays operational while not spending too much. They meticulously scrutinize every detail of these applications to ensure that the proposed rates are just and reasonable and that all investments are prudent and truly in the public interest.So we have gotten a number of questions about the plan, and specifically around, "Where is the money going to go? What are you going to actually spend these dollars that you're requesting on? And why are these investments necessary? What benefits are they actually going to bring to our community?" And often we get the question of, "Does this mean fewer outages or shorter outages?" So I want to dig into that. I want to talk a little bit about what we've got planned and what the impact will be, and what the impact would be if we don't do those things. And to help me walk through that energy roadmap, that plan that we've put together, I've got Guillaume Paradis joining me today. Guillaume is the Chief Operating Officer of Generation and Distribution here at Hydro Ottawa, and he's going to join me, and we're going to talk through this. Guillaume and his teams are responsible for the planning, design, operation, construction, and maintenance of our electrical power distribution system, and in his role, he leads the teams that are directly accountable for ensuring the safe, efficient, and reliable delivery of electricity to our customers. Today, I'm going to ask Guillaume to really walk us through the details of our investment plan, how it was shaped, how we came up with these specific areas, and what benefits are going to be realized by our community and the broader energy landscape. Guillaume Paradis, welcome to the show. Guillaume Paradis 04:24 Pleasure to be here, Trevor. Trevor Freeman 04:26 Okay, so Guillaume, this is Hydro Ottawa's largest investment plan ever, and I'd like you to start by talking us through the primary drivers behind what our five-year investment plan is. Guillaume Paradis 04:41 Yeah, so as you've heard, as you've seen, we're at a historical, or historically, you know, unique point in the evolution of our industry. Electricity underpins most of our societal aspirations with respect to creating, you know, a more sustainable future, creating the future we want to leave for the next generations. And our distribution system underpins a lot of those aspirations in simple ways and in more complex ways. So, you know, a simple way is that essentially, for, you know, the well-being of our society, for our customers, the residents of Ottawa, and really any area, to live the lives they're hoping to live, to, you know, enjoy the benefits of modern life, electricity is a critical underpinning in any way you can imagine and you know, think about. So our service has always been very important. It's just become even more critical as a foundational block for, you know, the lives that we're hoping to live and we're living today in our modern society. So that, combined with other aspirations related to reducing our carbon footprint and integrating more renewable energy resources within our footprint, it creates a situation where there's a significant need for us to invest, continue to invest, and reinvest in our infrastructure to deliver those outcomes for customers. Trevor Freeman 06:28 Yeah, I think, I mean, we talk a lot about the energy transition on the show, and if, if you think about, you know, let's say our previous rate application, five years ago, the energy transition was a thing; we knew about it, but it was like a thing of tomorrow where, hey, that's going to come soon. The difference now, I assume, and maybe you can speak to this, is we're seeing that. We're seeing the change now. Guillaume Paradis 06:52 Yeah, you're exactly correct. Like, we're in it now. So we've been talking about it for some time, both from a, like a general societal aspiration standpoint, but also from a technological standpoint. For a very long time, we talked about electric vehicles having an impact and becoming more commonplace. We talked about leveraging automation to deliver our services. We talked about two-way power flows. So we've been building toward this moment, and now we're essentially in it, if you will, and we're seeing all those things, the confluence of all those longer-term trends sort of manifest themselves in real demand for our system, in real changes in how our customers want to use energy. And we're in the middle of that, and we're, you know, to enable those things happening in our community here in Ottawa. Trevor Freeman 07:49 Yeah, so it's like the business as usual, a lot of the same things, and we're going to talk about some of the specifics, but a lot of the same things we would normally do, just a lot more of at the same time as, like, also pivoting a little bit to meet some of these new needs, like charging transportation and like heating our spaces more with electricity, like some of these new needs that didn't exist or not to the same extent. So it's like more of the same plus other new stuff. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. Guillaume Paradis 08:23 Yeah. So, you know, we always would say that the future of the energy sector was very exciting, and things were coming and like, change was upon us, and now, essentially, we're, we're living it, right? So you have to carry on with the responsibilities that you always had, and meanwhile, figure out how to deliver those new outcomes, those new services that previously weren't required or expected. Trevor Freeman 08:51 Right? So let's, let's kind of get into some of the details here. So there are four key capital investment categories in this plan: growth and electrification, aging infrastructure, grid modernization, and grid resilience. So we're going to dive into the specifics of these in a minute. But to start off with, why? Why these four? How did we land on these four as the main categories? Guillaume Paradis 09:20 Yeah, so there's, there's various ways you can categorize investments. There's a lot of drivers that will lead us to invest in an area or replace some infrastructure somewhere in our system. These categories capture quite well what is at the core of various investments. So for one specific investment, there will be multiple drivers, but these ones sort of in an elegant way, I would say, capture, you know, why investments are occurring, what the primary driver is for those investments, and they help translate that for, you know, folks who are not involved day-to-day in planning the electricity system, that's our responsibility. What we're trying to communicate is why we're taking action where we're taking action. So those categories, in my mind, capture that really well. They also tie our investments to broad trends that people should be aware of, and they're a way to make sure that we have, you know, a clear baseline for a conversation as we proceed with those plans. Trevor Freeman 10:30 Yeah, one thing I find, and you know, in my role, I talk to customers a lot, and I find these are fairly easy to explain, or at least, I hope they are. If you're listening and you disagree, let us know. But people can kind of get their heads around why the utility needs to do each of these four things, and some, in some ways, they align with other sectors as well. So I think, and I hope, as we carry on our conversation here, it'll be easy to sort of build out the picture of what we're doing in each of those four areas. So why don't we? Let's dive right in then and look at the specifics. And starting with growth and electrification, what are the specific investments that are planned to support the growing energy needs of our community, you know? And we've already started talking about electric vehicles, other electrified aspects of our lives, like, what? What falls into this category? Guillaume Paradis 11:23 Yeah, so with respect to growth and electrification, there are a few underlying trends that drive the investment requirements. So as you've suggested, as you mentioned, you know, there's an evolution of how our customers use energy at home, day-to-day. EVs being obviously a primary example that everyone will be very aware of, just, you know, driving around town. Frankly, the difference in how regularly you'll see electric vehicles in our community relative to even five years ago is pretty dramatic, and that is having a long-term, you know, impact over time, likewise for technologies like heat pumps at home and just generally, the growth of our community. So those elements just drive a longer-term trend of more demand being present in our community, within our system, and in addition to that, one big change that we've seen over the last few years is more large-scale demand requests coming into our service territory. Typically that will be large customers wanting to do something different with energy. So it could go or it could be driven by a few different kind of corporate aspirations. What we're seeing a lot of are instances where large corporations decide, or institutions decide to do away with more carbon-intensive energy sources, so they will look to us and electricity to replace what previously would have been another fuel source that maybe is less green. So we're seeing that affecting choices some of those type of customers are making, and then at the same time, we're seeing just large requests related to a different type of energy demand. So companies wanting to, for example, bring back their R&D efforts to a data center that they operate and they control, so that they have more control over cybersecurity, you know, elements, and then likewise, with where their data flows to and how it's being managed. So we're seeing large requests at a rate that we didn't previously, and that those requests are significant enough that they require us to make very major investments, like new substations, like building out new feeders, again at a pace that far outpaces what we've seen historically. So the underlying trend of more small demand creating an impact at the aggregate level, combined with those larger requests, that's creating a significant need for us to invest in responding to that growth in the electrification drivers within our system. Trevor Freeman 14:42 Yeah, so this is in response to what we're seeing our customers do, and that's it's something that has come up before in conversation here, of, you know, we, we respond to what we see our customers doing and what our customers are asking us. They're asking for more power. We have to respond to provide that more power. So this. So this kind of area of investment is really just building out the grid and all of the assets and infrastructure that are that make up the grid to be able to meet the needs of our customers, which are growing faster than they were previously. Is that fair to say? Guillaume Paradis 15:17 Yeah, and for us, it's an interesting balancing act. We have to find where we have to anticipate our customers' needs and the demand that's upon us, but we can't get ahead of it, because that would draw investments that potentially would later become stranded or create a cost burden for our customers. So we have to know where the demand is going, and we have to be ready to respond and connect new customers, but we can't get too far ahead of it, because ultimately, you know, if we invest too soon, that's, you know, a burden for all our customers. So sometimes I would say there's that misconception that somehow we're we're creating our own forecasts and believing our own forecasts. And really, it's a bit simpler than that. We take in the requests and we respond to those requests. We have to be able to look out a few years to make sure that we're not missing, you know, anything significant that would have an impact on our system, but we don't get too far ahead from an investment standpoint. Trevor Freeman 16:31 Okay? So Guillaume, we've been talking about the more traditional aspects of our grid, you know, poles, wires, transformers, et cetera. But I know that we're also looking at how we can deploy what we call non-wire solutions to also help manage capacity on our grid. Can you just explain what some of these solutions are and how we're going to use them in conjunction with our traditional assets to manage grid needs? Guillaume Paradis 16:56 Yeah, so non-wire alternatives is essentially the concept that without having to install traditional infrastructure—think poles, new transformers, new cables, underground—you may be able to harvest existing resources within your footprint to help you manage operational needs, be it like certain peaks that have a short duration, other scenarios of constraints, where, rather than building net new infrastructure, which is expensive and time-consuming, you might be able to optimize, I'll call it, the use of embedded resources in a manner that actually meets your operational objectives. So the way you would do that is by using a combination of resources. Typically, you would look at small-scale embedded storage. So if it exists in the system, you would actually leverage it. If, if you could, otherwise, you might install some in a very targeted manner that helps you meet those operational needs, and then otherwise you would leverage customer resources. So that's either existing generation that is owned by customers, or which is more typical, their ability to adjust their demand at certain times to meet your operational constraints. So the idea there is that you can do a business case, you can do an evaluation of what it would take to engage all these resources to get the same operational outcome as you would if you build the new infrastructure, and compare the two on a cost basis. And actually, in some instances, see scenarios where those non-wire alternatives actually beat out large-scale infrastructure upgrades from a financial standpoint. So it's, it's an evolving area. We have a few pockets within the city that we're targeting for programs like those ones, and we expect, over time, as more embedded resources proliferate, as more customer devices become controllable, we'll have a greater option, in fact, to leverage those non-wire alternatives or those non-traditional solutions to meet our operational requirements. Trevor Freeman 19:20 Great. So this is a combination of, you know, Hydro Ottawa is planning to invest in some assets, you know, be they battery or otherwise, on our side of the meter. We call that in front of the meter, to help manage grid needs, while also looking for opportunities to partner with customers, you know, in the aggregate, so, you know, 100 or 1000 customers at once to say, "If we need to call on your devices to either inject into the grid or to ramp back your operations, that will help us manage grid needs while the customer still maintains control." Is that fair to say? Guillaume Paradis 19:59 Yeah. Fair, and that's that's an emerging capacity we have. So if our ability to control and call upon a very large number of small devices and customer devices has grown and is growing and will be over the next few years, and with that, our capacity to then draw from those resources to respond to operational circumstances is also increasing and will give us options we just wouldn't have had in the past. So it's just a better way of utilizing available energy resources, a more refined way, and one that probably wasn't available to us at scale 10 years ago. Yeah. Trevor Freeman 20:41 And the driver behind all this is what's the best, most cost-effective way to address that grid need? In some cases, it's going to be the poles and wires and transformers. In some cases, it's going to be these non-wire solutions, and it's it's part of the planning of the grid to identify where does each technology make sense? Guillaume Paradis 21:02 Absolutely. So again, it's a more refined way of assessing options and ensuring that we identify the most cost-effective strategies possible. Trevor Freeman 21:14 Perfect, great. Okay, so that's the growth and electrification section. Let's move to aging infrastructure, which is about a third of this investment plan. So this may seem like a softball to start with, but what are some of the challenges posed by aging infrastructure? Maybe talk to us a little bit about what that infrastructure is when it comes to utility grid, and then what are what are we doing with this investment plan to address that aging infrastructure? Guillaume Paradis 21:43 Yeah, so aging infrastructure is a very clear and appropriate descriptor here. So we invest in assets that are long-lived. Think 50, 60 years plus in some instances. And you know, eventually you use them, you leverage them over many decades, and at some point, those assets deteriorate beyond a point where they're no longer able to provide the service that our customers expect. So that would be failures, which leads to reliability issues in parts of our system. So one at one point or another in the life cycle of those assets, depending on how they're being used, what environment they are operated in, you have to replace them. What we try to do is assess them on a risk basis. And when we say risk, we mean what impact can they have on our customers if they were to fail? Impacts can be things like safety risk. It could be, of course, reliability issues. It could limit our ability to service our customers. And so we assess risk on an ongoing basis, looking at those assets over decades, and eventually we get to a point where the risk has to be addressed, and that typically takes the form of or it can take the form of an outright replacement. Through the life cycle of all those assets, all of our assets, we do maintenance, we inspect them, we try to see if there are other things we can do before we replace them. But you get to a point ultimately, where the only option that's viable is to actually replace, and then you have to go in and take, you know, action physically in the field.Now, what becomes a little complicated is, as you can imagine, it's one thing to put infrastructure up when a field is being converted to a subdivision or the city's growing, and it's all brand new, you know, infrastructure being developed to support the growth, but decades later, when you come back, 60, 70 years plus, in some cases, you're in someone's backyard. You're in the middle of an intersection where multiple utilities have installed their own infrastructure, so you have to coordinate that things have been moved over time. So getting access to the infrastructure is more difficult, and so replacing many decades later is a lot more involved than putting up new infrastructure in the first place.And the type of infrastructure that we're talking about here probably falls into three major categories. So there's the overhead infrastructure you see around town. So really, when you—and you shouldn't do that while you're driving, but if you're walking ideally, and you're looking at the beautiful hydro infrastructure around Ottawa—what you'll see are very old poles that need attention. So that's very visible, right? We have wood poles, you know, in a lot of the areas of our city, and you get to a point where structurally, they're not as strong as they used to be. They've weathered many storms, and they need attention. And then otherwise, it's the transformers you might see on those poles, and that would be the boxes that are hanging from the poles. The ones that look like they, you know, predate the Cold War, are the ones we're going after, and we need to give some attention to today.And then on the underground side, similar infrastructure, it's it's cables in the ground. So in some instances, it's buried directly in someone's backyard. That was an approach people took many decades back. Now you can imagine it's very convenient when you're building it, but not so much when you're trying to get it out of the ground and put new cables into the ground. So there's cables that need replacing. They've been damaged or creating reliability issues. The transformers that go with that as well might need attention. And again, as I mentioned before, decades later, that transformer may be right behind someone's pool in their backyard, and they've done some real nice landscaping, and accessing it for a replacement is a lot more complicated. So underground infrastructure, in fact, is one of the more complicated replacements to execute.And then, you know, if you move up from there, you're looking at substation equipment. So that's the stuff that's fenced in across the city where power is being delivered from to our customers across the city. And so those assets may be a bit less complicated in terms of managing sites and access, but certainly complicated in terms of logistics costs of the equipment. Those are very, very large assets that require a lot of planning to replace because they're critical to our system, and we can't afford to have them be out of service too long. Trevor Freeman 27:01 Got you and just for our listeners, while Guillaume was talking, I pulled up a few quick stats here. So we have Hydro Ottawa's service territory has over 6,000 kilometers of conductor, so of wires, and just under 50,000 poles out in our service territory. So as you can imagine, a lot of that is in great shape, and some of it isn't, and some of it needs to be addressed, just like, just like you're talking about here. Guillaume Paradis 27:29 Yeah, and that's helpful. Trevor, the thing that we often forget, especially for electricity distribution, is the sheer number of assets that can create a risk. So it's one thing to manage one large transformer and make sure it doesn't fail, but when you're talking about thousands of assets dispersed around a very large service territory like Ottawa, making sure that we keep an eye on all of them at all times, making sure that we intervene at the exact time prior to a failure, to make sure we deliver the best service possible for our customers. That's really the essence of our challenge, and what makes distribution unique versus other parts of our business, where it's maybe more centralized and you may be looking at a smaller set of assets. Trevor Freeman 28:16 Yeah, absolutely okay. So obviously it's important to maintain what we've got, in addition to building out that new stuff that we talked about earlier, maintaining and replacing what we have, so that, you know, our existing grid remains reliable. The next section of our investment plan is what we call grid modernization. Now that's something that we've talked about to varying levels of detail on this show before, but I'd like you to talk us through what is in this investment plan over the next five years, when we talk about grid modernization, what are we actually doing? What are some of the specific things that we're going to put some of our investment towards? Guillaume Paradis 28:57 Yeah, so grid modernization is a category that gets talked about a lot, but maybe is, I would say, a bit misunderstood. I think, because it sounds futuristic, people assume we're doing very different things, and ultimately, in my mind, it's better leveraging technology to get good outcomes for our customers. It's really that simple. So as you can imagine, you know, as I talked about, we're looking at assets that have an expected life of 50, 60, 70 years. When some of our assets were first installed, things like communication technology, things like IT operational technology weren't as advanced as they are today. Our ability to collect data in real time was not what it is today, and so now that we have an opportunity to reinvest and replace the old assets. It's important that we do so in a manner that will allow us to drive or essentially more performance or better performance out of the assets we put in our system so that can take various forms, as I mentioned, getting better real-time information is one of those ways in which we can leverage technology. What that allows us to do is better respond to outages, offer a better service by being more aware of what's happening at any given point in time, getting better information in near real time as to what assets are posing a risk to reliability because they've been utilized heavily, or they've seen a lot of faults, for example, and so building in that technological infrastructure as a layer that enhances the traditional investments that we've always made is sort of the right thing to do in a context where you want to optimize where you spend your dollars, and you don't want to have to go back and reinvest on the same assets or in the same parts of our system multiple times over the coming years, in the coming decades. So the grid modernization portfolio essentially is our opportunity to very strategically identify where we can put in technology that will allow us to get more out of our assets and provide a better service for our customers.So simple things like automated devices, that would be automated switches that we install on our overhead infrastructure, underground infrastructure that gives us a capacity during an outage, to shift demand around and resupply our customers more rapidly than we would have been able to otherwise, and that gives us a capacity to provide a better service under contingency scenarios. So very simple, right? It's telemetry, it's communication to a device, and rather than have someone physically go in the field and, you know, switch customers and try to move demand around, we can do that remotely from our control center. Likewise, in the control center, putting in more telemetry to identify and proactively suggest to our operators how to restore power to customers. Again, is a simple thing by today's standards, right? It's not complicated technology, it's not complicated software, but it's a layer that didn't exist previously, where we can have software, model-based tools suggest how best to optimize the restoration of power, and as we do that, our trained operators get to review and take action in an informed manner. So grid modernization, again, is about making the most of today's available technology, while we reinvest in our distribution system to make sure that the quality of our service and the breadth of the services we can provide align well going forward, with our customers' aspirations and provide a quality service for many decades to come. Trevor Freeman 33:26 Yeah, and I think it's important to remember. And you know this, this little saying has has been out there in the industry, and I've used it before, of the electricity grid is the world's largest machine. Like the grid itself is a piece of technology, and like any technology, we would not be happy if it stayed stagnant. Like we want it to evolve with with the latest and greatest and operate better and more efficiently. And the grid is no different, and so part of grid modernization is just keeping up with what's out there to make sure we are delivering the service that we deliver in the best way, in the most advanced way, in the most efficient way possible. With that, Guillaume, what about things like, you know, we hear a lot about more distributed energy resources, so more small-scale generation or storage out there on the grid that might be owned by the utility, but it might not be, it might be customer owned. What? What are we doing from a grid modernization perspective, to enable more distributed energy resources to utilize those assets more on our grid? Guillaume Paradis 34:42 Yeah, so that's core to the evolution and we're proposing and working toward. And and really, if you boil it down to, you know, a simple kind of concept, it's really that traditionally, we've had a static model of how our grid needs to operate, and we planned accordingly. So you know, power flows in one direction to certain size customers. They use electricity, they use our energy, and then we protect, we coordinate, we control accordingly, and we're moving into an environment where customer behavior evolves in a dynamic fashion in near real time, depending on what prices are available in the electricity market, depending on what aspirations various customers have, depending on what technology they want to deploy to manage their energy footprint. A customer may look different, really, from one day to the next, as far as the electricity system is concerned, because their demand might be less significant on a day where their solar panels are better able to generate energy, on a day where they choose to leverage a large battery system that they've installed at their facilities to manage their demand. And so from an electricity system standpoint, we need a much better awareness of what is happening in near real time to be able to control and then respond and ultimately offer the right service for our customers. So that's a big change, again, going back to the how we're going to enable that, it's again, the core elements of communication infrastructure, more telemetry, so that we can see what's happening in real time. Think sensors, think smart meters. Think, you know, a software system within our control room to take all that information in in real time and make sense of it, and then ultimately drive our decision making and support our customers in leveraging energy resources in an optimal way for their needs, by making sure that we're aware of what's happening and not create barriers that are artificial because we're not sure, and when we're not sure, safety is paramount, and when you prioritize safety and you don't have information, you have to be very conservative in the decisions you make, and you may limit customers' choices and behavioral, you know, choices by having to have that safety margin and that safety conscience kind of override everything else. So better telemetry, better real-time information, more dynamic ways of controlling energy allows us to enable customers and and support their aspirations.  Trevor Freeman 37:50 I mean, it really comes kind of full circle back to our job is to let our customers do what they want to do when it comes to energy, enable that, and that may be just making sure the power is there and available, but it also may be making sure that our grid is set up to allow them to generate and store and sort of interact with energy in the way that they want to. So those two things are quite parallel. Okay, great. Last category here is grid resilience, and this is an important one, and especially in the eyes of our customers, because, you know, we're that unique industry where most of the time people don't think of us when they really do think about us, it's because the lights have gone off, because there's some event that has resulted in an outage, and I just want to ensure our customers, we try very, very hard to make sure that doesn't happen as much as we can't control everything. So we have this category of grid resilience in our investment plan, and we know that we're going to be seeing, and we have already started to see, more frequent extreme weather events. That is increasing. It's not going down. So what are we doing in our investment plan? Or what are we planning to do in order to enhance grid resiliency and withstand those extreme weather events? Guillaume Paradis 39:14 Yeah, so the need for resilience, in my mind, comes from a couple places. So, you know, there are drivers that are external; so the operating environment is evolving. To your point, we've seen a number of very impactful weather events over the last few years, whether it be historically impactful ice storms, we've seen tornadoes in our service territory in a way that we didn't previously. We saw derecho a couple years ago, which was by some measure the most impactful storm in the history of our company. And so we know. How what we plan to withstand has evolved, and we need to reflect that in the decisions we make when we invest in our infrastructure. That can take a few forms. But for grid resilience, we're targeting specific investments so we can identify and have identified areas of our system that are more vulnerable. Imagine overhead infrastructure that is more exposed to stronger winds, and so we can go in there and then target those areas, target those segments of our system and make them more robust, more resistant to those external factors. And so we have assessed our entire service territory, we've studied, you know, our vulnerability to changing patterns, to changing weather events, and in a very targeted manner, identified areas where we'll take action over the next five years to boost resilience of our electricity system in those scenarios, and really just generally.The other element is, while those external factors are evolving and creating a stress on our system, we're also seeing people's dependence on electricity's availability continue to grow, right? So, you know, we've been through this many times at this point, and I'm sure it's been covered on on this podcast a number of times. But, you know, people's, you know, need for highly and readily available electricity continues to go up. Think, you know, remote work. Think our utilization of, you know, the internet and the technologies that support that. People need access to power, you know, on an ongoing basis for a variety of reasons that support their lifestyles. And so while the external factors have become and are becoming more challenging and creating a stress, we're also seeing customers relying more heavily on our service being available. And so those things combined make it sort of an imperative that we take action and ensure that our system is robust and can withstand those conditions that are upon us.So we change our planning approach. We evolve our choices with respect to investments. It could be simpler things than, you know, targeting areas and replacing specific infrastructure. It could be as simple as changing our standards so that when we install a new pole, we know that it can withstand harsher winds and heavier ice loading parameters, and we do that across all our investments. So that's a key point here, with respect to grid resilience. Yes, we have a targeted, sort of very strategic approach to building resilience, but we also do that across all our investment categories, when we put money in our distribution system to make sure that, similar to the point we made about technology. You know, we invest in assets that will, you know, outlive many of us, and they need to be adequate and appropriate for the environment in which they will operate long-term. So we change, you know, the choices we make, we change the materials we use to build the infrastructure that we put in our system, so that ultimately, the service levels and service quality that our customers get to enjoy, you know, meets their expectations for decades to come. Trevor Freeman 43:59 I think the idea like it's good that we have called out specifically some activities targeted at group resilience, but some of the other stuff that we've already talked about also support resilience. And you mentioned in the grid modernization part, you know, part of that is restoring power to most customers quicker. In our growth and electrification part, I mean, making sure that our grid can handle the new loads also lends itself to resiliency. So all of this is in service of making sure that power is there for our customers when they need it, how they need it, and done in a sort of safe and affordable way. That's the goal of of all these categories together. Guillaume Paradis 44:46 Absolutely. The, you know, going back to the earlier point, the categories are helpful in identifying the major drivers. But ultimately, to your point, Trevor, they all support each other, and when our team plans, depends the future of electricity system. They do so in an integrated manner that considers the various benefits that we can achieve by taking action and putting more money in our distribution system. Trevor Freeman 45:13 Yeah, great. So that that's a nice segue into this next question, which is, of course, there's a cost for this, and this and this is why it is an investment plan. We're out there outlining these are our targets. This is what we want to do, but there's a cost to that, and so if we don't do this, if we said, "Look, we just can't put that extra investment into these areas," what are the implications on the grid, on our service? And let's look at kind of like quality of service, reliability, safety, et cetera, if we don't make these investments that we are identifying right now. Guillaume Paradis 45:54 Yeah, so it's pretty direct, right? We what we've done for the in preparation for our rate application, in preparation for to develop our plans for 2026 to 2030, is we've considered all the needs. We've looked at how old the assets are, how quickly they're deteriorating, how many might require replacement over the next five years. What would be an appropriate rate of replacement to ensure that we don't let risk build up in our system, we don't cause reliability issues? We've looked at making sure that we can provide service to our customers, that we can connect them in a timely manner, that we can do all those things in a fashion that is safe and ensures the safety of the public, our customers. And so a lot of thought goes into what is required over the next five years. And then on top of those factors and considerations, we also look at what impact will this have financially on our customers? Because we're mindful that our service does affect, you know, our customers' lives, yes, in a positive manner when our service is reliable and power is available, but also financially from a cost standpoint. We add to other pressures that everyone experiences in their lives, and so we want to be very judicious in setting the size of our programs, the level of investments, in managing those various factors, right? So we have a multifaceted responsibility, and we weigh all those factors in our or in setting the plans for the future.So doing so, looking five years out, as you can probably imagine, you know, if we didn't constrain the plans, if we just did everything our planning engineers would like to do, we would have spent probably another 50% more than what is in the current plan. So looking at old assets, looking at the service levels we want to deliver, we could have spent a significantly larger amount of money if it was purely based on, we'll call them planning, you know, drivers. But as I said, we are mindful that we're responsible for the quality of our service on behalf of all our customers, and we took a very deliberate, you know, extensive approach to adjusting the program size to match the various considerations and ultimately manage the impact on our customers from a financial standpoint. And so we landed where we are after some measure of restraint, some measure of adjustments, down to the plans that would otherwise have been put in place.So thinking about what the outcomes would be if we didn't take the actions we're proposing, you know, it's pretty direct, if you think about it, and we've covered most of them, but it ranges from, you know, difficulties in connecting and delivering power to new customers in a timely manner, so that can have impacts with respect to economic development and growth of our community, so fairly direct, and frankly, it's our obligation to connect, so we would do everything we can to provide power, but it might just be more difficult, take more time on the reliability front. Again, what happens when you don't replace old assets is the failure risks continue to build in your system. So an 80-year-old wood pole doesn't get any younger and doesn't get any stronger if you wait five, six more years. And so as I said, we do a risk assessment before we choose to invest, and our risk assessments tell us that we need to take action on those types of assets. And, you know, take action in a timely manner. If we don't, what is likely to happen is that in a storm scenario, those poles that are deteriorated are more likely to fail. Even in normal conditions, it's likely that we would see more failures that could lead to reliability issues, and so just a direct impact on the quality of our service for our customers, with respect to other outcomes like enabling customers and supporting them in integrating more embedded energy resources. That might just become more difficult, as I said earlier, when we don't have good real-time awareness, we have to err on the side of caution and be more conservative in our management of the system, and that might mean restrictions on where and how we can integrate renewable energy resources. And then ultimately, you know, the paramount consideration for us is always safety, and that's an area where we would just have to be even more vigilant if we couldn't reinvest. So old assets, you know, are inherently more likely to create failure risks, and failures can lead to undesirable outcomes from a safety standpoint, so we would have to, and already do, but be very vigilant in monitoring those assets, looking at them, looking at what we can do from a maintenance standpoint to ensure that they don't fail in a manner that would be problematic. So we would be, and are always very active in looking at those riskier assets, those older assets, to make sure they don't cause problems, but reducing investment levels from what is being proposed now, reducing them further relative to, as I said, the planning levels we would have liked to put forward would have real consequences, and of course, we would do everything we can to manage those consequences and ensure that we continue to deliver the best service we can, but that would become more difficult than it is today. Trevor Freeman 52:27 I appreciate that that context of, you know, you like me, like energy, and we want to do all the cool things, and we want to have the system that is is absolutely able to handle every eventuality. But we have to balance that with what is the right level of investment, what is the right pace to go at? And I think, you know, having seen the process, there's been a lot of work over the last year plus to find that balance. And I think we've, we've hit that balance in terms of being able to move the ball forward while trying to maintain that sort of affordability aspect for customers. Last question here, Guillaume, to kind of wrap it all up, and we've touched on this a few times in some of the other questions. But how does our investment plan align with that broader energy transition that that we talk about, you know, decarbonizing, reducing emissions, increasing sort of customer flexibility when it comes to their own generation and storage. And what role do you see Hydro Ottawa playing moving forward in that? And I know that this has already gotten a little bit of attention, but I'll give you a chance just to kind of tie a nice little bow around it at the end. Guillaume Paradis 53:51 So to your point, we did cover a few elements, how we enable those, you know, sustainability aspirations. But you know, it ranges from making it possible for large customers to shift a significant portion of their energy demand to a lower carbon source like electricity. So again, think a customer who would use natural gas for their facilities, and, you know, for corporate reasons, decides to use electricity instead. Us connecting that extra demand and delivering power to them allows them to lower their carbon footprint. So that would be on the high end in terms of size and impact, all the way to enabling customers to install different technologies on their homes, within their homes, to reduce their carbon footprint and change how they use energy. So it could be as simple as buying an EV and making sure that power is available within that neighborhood to supply demand from that EV. It could be them installing solar panels on their roof and trying to export power back to us. And so that would tie to the earlier point around visibility and real-time awareness that we need to have to make sure that we can make that possible. So again, you know the energy system. The electricity system is integrated in so many ways and enabling our customers to achieve their sustainability outcomes, their desired outcomes in terms of energy use, comes from planning the energy system, the electricity distribution system, in a manner that supports that and that permits it. So again, going back to some categories, the grid modernization that we spoke about earlier, fits right in there. So being aware allows us to allow and enable customers, and that becomes critical again, in an environment where things are very dynamic, and we want to support that dynamism, and we need to do so in a manner that's safe. So we need information, and we need technology that allows us to go get that information to support the decision making. So as we said, all the investments we're proposing in one way or another will support our supporting those decarbonization and emission reduction objectives that we all have. Trevor Freeman 56:38 Right? Yeah, it really comes back to the idea of us being—and this is something that I certainly talk to our customers about—a lot of us being partners with our customers when it comes to their energy journeys. And that can be very active partners in the sense of the word, where we are involved in helping make decisions together on technology or strategies, or it can be very passive, and that kind of residential model that you talked about of just making sure the grid can be there in the way that the customer wants it to be there. And that's still a partnership that that we need to lean into, and that we are kind of through this investment. Guillaume Paradis 57:18 Plan, we're essentially underpinning people's aspirations when it comes to energy, and so we're there to make it possible for them to do what they're hoping to do. And you're absolutely right. We're seeing both ends of those conversations where some go about their own choices and really don't need us involved, and our responsibility there is to make sure that we don't create a roadblock by not being prepared and not being equipped to respond to, you know, how they want to change their behavior, all the way to that partnership, where it's a very involved conversation. You know, we're being brought in to fully explore all the options and work with stakeholders in essentially demystifying, or maybe more specifically, sort of seeing through some of the complexity that exists today in an environment that is much more dynamic again and offers a lot more options than people would have seen a few decades ago. Trevor Freeman 58:23 Fantastic. Well, Guillaume, I think we'll leave it there. This has been great, and I appreciate you taking the time to help pick apart, you know what? What can be a pretty complex, lengthy plan, but really boils down to building out the grid, continuing to do the great work that that the folks at Hydro Ottawa do, while also preparing for the future. So I appreciate your insight into this. As our listeners know, we always end these interviews with a series of questions, and you're no different. So I'm going to dive, dive right into that. So Guillaume, what is a book that you've read that you think everyone should read? Guillaume Paradis 59:06 Yeah, so I'm probably going to get his name wrong, or at least the pronunciation, but it's a book called How the World Really Works, by Vaclav Smil. Essentially, you know, he's a very pragmatic thinker with respect to how systems work, how our world is integrated from a supply standpoint, from a geopolitical standpoint, and how that leads to outcomes in the real world. And think things like energy, think, things like food supply. And what I like with his approach is that he breaks things down, sort of from a first-principle standpoint, to try to help explain why certain things may or may not be possible, and in an environment where—and maybe that's my perspective—but I think today there's a lot of big-picture, you know, broad opinions being shared by people who may or may not always be very knowledgeable or have the expertise in certain fields. It's nice to see someone kind of break things down to then try to support, or in some cases dispel certain misconceptions. So really nice approach. He has a number of books that are similar in nature, some cases a bit dense to read through, frankly, but I would say the How the World Really Works book is easier to digest, and it's it's a good entry into kind of his works and and his approach to his studies. The other thing that's a plus, maybe, is that he's based out of Winnipeg and Canadian. So it's great to have a mind like his, you know, contributing to the discourse in Canada. Trevor Freeman 1:01:11 Awesome. So same question, but for a movie or a show, what's a movie or show that you think everyone should check out? Guillaume Paradis 1:01:17 Yeah, that's a little harder. I think maybe I'll go to an old classic. For me, I I'm always impressed with extreme creativity. I'll call it in in whatever forms that I think it's neat to see how people can envision a world or create a world. And so an example for me was The Grand Budapest Hotel movie by Wes Anderson. So, you know, I think people are familiar with his work by now. I just like the combination of humor, color, like the creation of a world that doesn't quite exist but resembles one we might know. And just, you know, it's a way of expressing oneself that is so interesting, so different. He does it really, really well. And, you, know, I find it sort of like awe-inspiring to go back to those kind of movies and look at, certainly, there's all sorts of good content these days that's being produced. But I think this one is kind of withstood the test of time so far and and kind of brings you to a different place. So I'll point to that. Trevor Freeman 1:02:30 Yeah, it's one of those where it's not just about the story. The whole watching that movie is a bit of an experience. And all the ways that you just said, you know, there's like an artificial aspect to it. There's that sort of mental, emotional side of it, and then there's the story itself, with the humor and everything. So, yeah, that's a great one. I really like that. Guillaume Paradis 1:02:47 Always fascinating to think someone was able to come up with that, right? Like that. Yeah, totally level. Like the attention to details, the way in which the storylines are integrated, the way in which the decors, the images are graphic. It's just remarkable. And, and I think in anything it's really cool to see people who are sort of masters at their art, right? And whatever form, and there's all sorts of other examples, but that one, you know, came to mind. Yeah, very cool. Trevor Freeman 1:03:21 If you had a free round-trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go? Guillaume Paradis 1:03:25 I think for me, it'd be somewhere very far north. I think it's on the list somewhere for the next few years. But just getting access to lands, scenery that you wouldn't otherwise is a really cool concept, maybe even spaces that are a bit less impacted by human, you know, behavior and presence. So I just think a flight to somewhere random that maybe doesn't even have a name, but is in between two small villages that can only be accessed by a plane. I think that would be cool. Trevor Freeman 1:04:10 Yeah, that does sound very cool. I like that. Who is someone that you admire? Guillaume Paradis 1:04:15 Yeah, so my wife, for sure. I think that's sort of the foundation of a healthy relationship, you should have some admiration for your partner, and I absolutely do. More generally, I would just point to anyone in our lives, and I think we all know people like that who spend a large amount of their time making other people's lives better. I could pick, you know, a celebrity of some kind, or politician of some kind, or even a historical figure, but, you know, I think in general, it doesn't have to be that complicated. People who just invest a lot of their time, you know, making sure others' lives are better. I think that's that's something we should all admire, aspire to, you know, emulate, if we can, and just recognize as well. Because a lot of the times people do that, the people who do it well, don't do it for recognition. It doesn't mean they don't deserve it. And I think we should kind of try to promote it, you know, recognize it in our lives, and encourage it and emulate it, if we can. Trevor Freeman 1:05:30 Fantastic. Well said, last question, what is something about the energy sector or its future that you are particularly excited about? Guillaume Paradis 1:05:37 Yeah, so I've been in the sector for about 20 years now, in fact, longer than that. My father worked for Hydro Quebec for many decades. So think we spent a lot of time talking about the future and getting excited about a future that was to come, and just the fact that we're living it now, that we're actually shaping it, is pretty exciting, maybe even not appreciated to its full extent. And I think having a chance to contribute now is really awesome, and to whatever extent we can as well. I'm trying to encourage as many people as possible to join our sector, bring various backgrounds, you know, expertise, knowledge to helping us make decisions about how energy is going to be used in our society going forward, and how we can make the most, you know, this confluence of factors that, you know, create the window of opportunity to to change things and make them evolve. And so for those of us who are part of it, let's not take it for granted, and let's make sure that we contribute to the full extent of our capabilities. Trevor Freeman 1:06:58 Awesome, great, great way to wrap this up. I agree completely. Guillaume, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And sharing your thoughts with us. Really appreciate you coming on the show. Guillaume Paradis 1:07:07 Thanks, Trevor. Pleasure. Trevor Freeman 1:07:10 Great, take care. Well, there you have it, everybody. That was our last episode of the season before our summer break. Our regular listeners will know that we typically take a break over the summer to regroup and work on content and plan out the next year. But don't worry, we will be still releasing episodes every two weeks. They will just be rewind episodes, and we'll take a look back at some of our favorite episodes or things that we feel are particularly relevant for what's going on right now. So keep tuning in and listen to those, and we will be back with brand new content in September. Take care and have a safe summer. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the ThinkEnergy 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 to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments, or an idea for a show or a guest, you can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.

We visit Swanton's recreation commission where a group of teens has created a variety of after-school activities. Plus, why rank and file lawmakers in Montpelier may not automatically sign off on an education reform bill even if party leaders come up with a compromise this week, Gov. Scott vetoes a bill that would have overhauled Vermont's motel voucher program, regional co-op grocery stores have been unable to place orders after a cyber attack on a major supplier scuttled deliveries, the head of Hydro-Quebec has resigned, and we see signs of hope for the Boston Red Sox after consecutive series wins against inter-division rivals in our weekly sports report. 

We've all been there, trying to decode a document filled with acronyms and numbers. In this episode of thinkenergy, host Trevor Freeman pulls back the curtain on the typical Ontario electricity bill. Learn about what makes up your monthly bill and exactly where your money goes. From generation mix to infrastructure and provincial differences, tune in as Trevor sheds light on the diverse factors that influence electricity prices across Canada.   Related links   Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-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: Trevor Freeman: Welcome to a ThinkEnergy Short, hosted by me, Trevor Freeman. This is a bite-sized episode designed to be a quick summary of a specific topic or idea related to the world of energy. This is meant to round out our collective understanding of the energy sector and will complement our normal guest interview episodes. Thanks for joining and happy listening. Hi everyone, and welcome back to another ThinkEnergy Short. I'm your host, Trevor Freeman. Today, I want to pull apart something pretty fundamental to your relationship with your utility, and something that might seem kind of basic on the surface, but there's actually a lot to it. I'm talking about your bill and how you are billed for electricity in this province, in the province of Ontario. A lot of folks may not pay much attention to their bill, other than the total at the bottom, or maybe you also look at the total consumption number. But there are actually several different components to your bill, and understanding them will help you understand a little bit more about the electricity sector and how it works and how it's funded. And we'll also take a minute to look at electricity costs in Ontario compared to other provinces, and why there's a difference. Now, there's a lot to go through here. I'm going to do my best to get through it quickly while still explaining everything. But this may be more of a "ThinkEnergy Medium" instead of a "Short." There's just a lot of content to get through. So, let's dive right in. Obviously, we're coming to you from Ottawa here, so we're going to be speaking in the context of Hydro Ottawa. But really, what we're talking about is pretty consistent across the province of Ontario. Your bill in Ontario is generally divided into a couple of different sections: your electricity charges, which could include things like Global Adjustment; delivery charges; regulatory charges; and then you'll see HST, some credits or rebates potentially, and maybe a few other sections, depending on what type of customer you are. So, let's take it from the top. First off, your electricity charge. This is the cost of the actual power you consume. You will see this expressed as cents per kilowatt-hour. This is the commodity cost of the electricity, of those electrons that you're using in your home or your business to do the things you need to do. In Ontario, most residential customers and a lot of small commercial customers as well are on the Regulated Price Plan, or RPP. The Ontario Energy Board, which is Ontario's independent energy regulator—it's the regulatory body in the province—sets the RPP price for the province based on its forecast of the cost to supply households and small businesses over the next 12 months. So, that's stable, predictable electricity pricing for Ontarians, and new rates generally take effect on November 1 of every year. So you have those rates for typically 12 months, and they change each year on November 1. There are a couple of different options for how you're billed for electricity under the RPP, which you might be familiar with. There's time-of-use pricing, which has a different rate depending on the time of day or the day of the week. So you've got on-peak, mid-peak, or off-peak, and those are aligned to encourage customers to use electricity outside of the peak demand times in the province when everybody is trying to use electricity for things at home or for work, and there's the most stress on the grid. The exact times of those periods do change between summer and winter. The next option is tiered pricing, and so this is a fixed price per kilowatt-hour up to a certain threshold each month. So you can use a certain amount of electricity at one price. If you go past that threshold, the price goes up. And that's kind of a plan for those who like a consistent amount; they don't want to have to worry about what time of day it is, or maybe the way they've structured their lives or their businesses is such that they have to use electricity during peak times, so that may make sense for them. The other option is Ultra-Low Overnight, or ULO, pricing. This is really a rate that's focused on primarily electric vehicle owners because it has a very, very low overnight rate. And the idea is that you would charge your electric vehicle—it's a big load in your house or in your business—and you would move that load to be overnight. You would charge it overnight and avoid doing that during the day, because in order to make up for that ultra-low overnight rate, there's a much higher on-peak rate kind of in the late afternoon and evening. So you'd really want to avoid using electricity as much as possible. The overall goal of all these programs, as I said, is to really reduce strain on the grid during those peak times, and that will in turn reduce greenhouse gas emissions because our fossil fuel generation in Ontario—that's natural gas generation—is primarily used during peak times. So we call them our peaker plants, and those are turned on when we need to make up that sort of highest demand load that occurs just a few times during each day and indeed during the year. The reason that we're able to do these different rates is that over a decade ago, Ontario adopted the use of smart meters for electricity, which accurately measures and tracks electricity usage down to at least the hour, sometimes even more granular than that, and that allows for utilities to really tailor pricing plans around timed consumption. It's worth noting here that if you have signed a contract with an electricity retailer, your electricity charge will be based on the price you agreed to in that contract. So there are retailers out there who will come to you and say, "Hey, we can guarantee you this price of electricity, and it's not going to change for the life of the contract, or whatever their terms may be." And maybe that's a better deal for you, or maybe that makes more sense for your situation. So you can sign on to that. You will be charged at that contracted rate rather than the Regulated Price Plan, and you won't be subject to the changes of that Regulated Price Plan; you'll be with your retailer. That said, you will still see other charges like delivery charges and regulatory charges, which we will get to in a minute. Before we go there, I do want to quickly talk about commercial customers, because that is a slightly different structure to the electricity charge section. So in that electricity charge section, there is a line item that is the market cost of electricity, and that does change month-to-month. And in fact, it also changes from customer to customer. Basically, there's a price every hour, and that customer's usage over that month results in a prorated price. And so on their bill, they will see the price that they're paying, the market cost of electricity that they've used in that month. There is also a line item for Global Adjustment, which is a very unique Ontario charge. To my knowledge, it only exists in Ontario. So let's take a minute to talk about what Global Adjustment is. There is a certain cost to running the electricity grid in Ontario, and that cost factors in maintenance and planning and conservation programs, as well as long-term fixed contracts. So the system operator signs contracts with generators to supply electricity at a certain rate. The market price of electricity isn't always enough to make up that full cost. So what we pay, the market rate, isn't enough; sometimes Global Adjustment is what makes up the difference. Now, every electricity customer in Ontario pays Global Adjustment, whether you see it on your bill or not. For residential and small commercial customers that are on the RPP, Global Adjustment is built into their rates that I just described above. But for commercial customers, you actually see that as a separate line item. And for most commercial customers, that is a rate that's tied to your consumption. So the more you use, the more Global Adjustment you pay. There is an option for the largest consumers to change that equation about how you're paid or how you're charged Global Adjustment, but we're not going to get into that in this episode. So that is the electricity portion of your bill. Another quick note here: all the money that you pay for this portion of the bill goes upstream, basically to the generators and the system operators and other players in the system. Your distributor, who actually gives you the bill—so Hydro Ottawa, in my case—doesn't actually keep any of this, nor do they set those rates. That is all upstream of us. That is not the distribution company's territory. We just are the ones that provide the bill and collect what you pay. Next section is delivery charges. So delivery charges cover the cost of getting electricity from the generating stations all the way to your home or business. It's essentially the cost of building, maintaining, and operating the vast network of transmission lines and towers, distribution systems like their lines and poles and substations and transformers, and all the equipment that's necessary to get electricity to you, to your home or to your business, and also to repair outages. So if there's a storm and lines are down, it's the delivery charges that fund the exercise of going out there and repairing that. So if you think of electricity as the product, the delivery charge is the logistics behind that. So it's like the warehouses and the trucks and the route to get that package to your doorstep. The same thing happens with the electricity system. Some of that delivery charge is fixed, and it doesn't change month to month, no matter what consumption you have, so how much you're using. That's why sometimes you'll hear people say, "Oh, you know, my electricity consumption was super low, but my delivery charge didn't change. That's not fair." And the reality is that we still need to maintain that grid. Even if you have a month where you're not using a lot of electricity, you still want those poles and wires and transformers to be there and to be working and ready for you when you are going to use a lot of electricity. There's also a customer service charge within that delivery charge, so that kind of covers the meter reading, the billing, the customer service; maintaining that infrastructure is included in there. There's a distribution charge, and that's kind of the main portion that Hydro Ottawa keeps, as well as that customer service charge, and that is for us to maintain the distribution system. And then there's a transmission charge that is to do the same thing, except for the high-voltage transmission system that brings electricity across the province. There is also a line loss adjustment. Now, it's normal for a small amount of electricity to be lost as heat when it travels over power lines. That's just the reality of moving electricity over long distances, and you will see a small adjustment on your bill to account for these line losses, to make sure that all the electricity being generated is actually being paid for. And your local distribution utility, again, Hydro Ottawa, in my case, collects this money and keeps the portion that's meant for the distribution company and pays the rest to all the various other stakeholders in the system that make up the electricity sector. It's important to know that these delivery rates are reviewed and approved by the Ontario Energy Board based on the specific needs and the priorities of each utility. So this is the nature of us being a regulated industry. Our regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, has to approve the rates that we charge. We have to show to the Ontario Energy Board, "Here is what all of our costs are to maintain the system. Here is what we want to do to grow and expand in order to meet our customer needs. Here are all the programs that we're running, and therefore, here are the rates that we need to charge." And the Ontario Energy Board will actually make a ruling on that to say, "Yes, those are fair rates," or "No, we think you're charging too much," or "Hey, we actually think you're charging too little." The Ontario Energy Board also wants to make sure that utilities are being responsible and maintaining the grid so that it is safe and reliable and affordable for their customers. The next section is regulatory charges. And so that is very simply the cost of having a regulated system of the Ontario Energy Board and having a regulator to oversee and administer the provincial electricity system and ensure that it remains affordable and reliable for everybody. So there is a cost, and that is on everyone's electricity bills. So those are the main sections, but there may be other potential charges and rebates on your bill that you'll see. And so these include things like HST. So electricity is subject to HST in Ontario, so you'll see that tax line. Most customers that are on the RPP, the Regulated Price Plan, are eligible for the Ontario Electricity Rebate, and this is a rebate from the provincial government of Ontario to help reduce electricity costs, primarily targeted at residential, farm, and small business customers. And you will see this on your bill as a pre-tax credit. One last section that you might see if you're a net-metered customer, and a net-metered customer is someone who generates electricity on their home or business and uses some of that electricity, but may also push some back to the grid. So if you're one of those customers, you will sometimes see net-metered generation credits, and so this is a credit that you get that can be used to offset the electricity portion of your bill based on how much you generate and push back to the grid. So to wrap this all up, let's take a quick look at why electricity prices are different in different areas of Canada. What's the difference? Why are we not charged all the same? As we've said before, energy is a provincial jurisdiction, so there are provincial grids, and they're usually operated at the provincial level. And, you know, some of the pricing and the structure is set at that provincial level. Different provinces have different generation mixes, and so in some of the sort of cheaper provinces to run, one of the things they have is a lot of hydroelectricity. So these are dams that use the movement of water to generate electricity. Quebec has a lot of hydroelectricity. Manitoba and BC both have a lot of hydroelectricity. And the reason that this results in lower electricity prices is that while there's a high upfront cost to build a dam, to build a generating station based on, you know, falling water, the operating cost is actually extremely low compared to other options. There's not a lot of input, you know, the water is going to do its thing, and once you've got that turbine there and the right infrastructure, it's going to generate electricity. And so there are costs, but not as much as, for example, a nuclear plant or a gas or a coal plant that require a lot of input in the form of fuel to make that plant run. So when you look at where some of the cheapest jurisdictions are and most expensive jurisdictions, there's actually a report from Hydro Quebec that looks at Canadian municipalities, Canadian cities that have the highest and lowest electricity costs. And the four cheapest cities are Montreal, Quebec; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Vancouver, BC; and Ottawa, Ontario. The four most expensive cities, and these are 2023-2024 numbers, I believe, the most expensive cities are Edmonton, Alberta; Calgary, Alberta; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Charlottetown, PEI. There are other reasons why different jurisdictions will have different prices. You know, there are different sort of regulatory charges and costs and environments. There's infrastructure and maintenance costs. So an older, more aging grid that has to be renewed and upgraded is going to cost more than something that's gone through that already. If you look at density, also, if you have a very dense population where everyone lives kind of close to each other, it's a lot easier to get electricity to those folks compared to a much more sparsely populated, spread-out area where there are lots of long runs to get electricity to different municipalities and towns and villages. So lots of variables go into the cost of electricity, and it definitely differs from province to province. So that's the bulk of what we wanted to talk about today. I know it's a lot, but it is really important to understand why you're paying what you're paying for electricity, and what your money is going to do, especially at a time when we are looking to grow and expand our grid, to modernize our grid, to invest in making sure that the electricity grid can support us decarbonizing our lives, electrifying our lives, and adding more distributed energy resources like solar and storage and things like that. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of ThinkEnergy Shorts, or ThinkEnergy Medium. I hope this breakdown gives you some of that information, and I always appreciate you joining us. I'm Trevor Freeman, and this has been another episode of ThinkEnergy. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the ThinkEnergy 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 to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments, or an idea for a show or a guest, you can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.

Elias Makos is joined by Dan Delmar, Co-founder of the content marketing firm TNKR Media and co-host of the podcast Inspiring Entrepreneurs Canada, and Akil Alleyne, Reporter and commentator with extensive experience analysing legal, political, and social issues and Manager of the GemStar Circle of Excellence Scholarship Program. A powerful windstorm swept through Quebec on Tuesday night, leaving nearly 100,000 Hydro Quebec customers without power and causing widespread destruction, particularly on the Island of Montreal Prime Minister Mark Carney was congratulated by Donald Trump in a private phone call yesterday, and the two agreed to meet “in the near future.” Carney was elected to deal with Trump, seemingly, so what should the game plan be? Donald Trump just passed 100 days in office. A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll asked Americans to describe Trump’s second term in one word''' Following Jagmeet Singh’s resignation after the NDP’s electoral collapse, Valérie Plante has emerged as a top choice among party insiders to succeed him, according to former leader Tom Mulcair Just a day after the Liberal win, Alberta has announced a sweeping list of electoral reforms. Of most importance to national politics - the bill tabled would lower the threshold to hold a referendum, giving fewer voters more time to force such a measure.

Hydro Quebec will increase rates by three percent. There are ways to save on consumption. Walter Assi, the president of Renovco, spoke to Andrew Carter.

Senior Communications Advisor at Hydro-Québec, Lynn St-Laurent joined Andrew Carter to explain why parts of Saint-Michel and Montreal North are currently without power. Updated: Jan. 21, 2025, 8:49 a.m.

Deal or no deal? That's the big question for MHAs during an extraordinary sitting of the House of Assembly this week. They're debating one issue: a proposed new agreement between Hydro Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. If approved, the Memorandum of Understanding would replace the current deal, governing the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador. Government officials say the deal is a good one that would mean billions for the provincial treasury. But MHAs on the other side of the House are skeptical... and want a formal review of the MOU before voting "yes." The CBC's Darrell Roberts has been at the House of Assembly for this week's debate.

Deal or no deal? That's the big question for MHAs during an extraordinary sitting of the House of Assembly this week. On Tuesday, they continued debating one issue: a proposed new agreement between Hydro Quebec and N.L. Hydro. It would replace the current deal, governing the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador. Government officials say the tentative agreement is a good one that would mean BILLIONS for the provincial treasury. But MHAs on the other side of the House are skeptical... and want a formal review of the M-O-U before voting yes.The CBC's Darrell Roberts has been at the House of Assembly for this week's debate.

Politicians will spend the next four days debating the province's new Churchill Falls MOU with Hydro Quebec. NDP Leader Jim Dinn and PC Leader Tony Wakeham gave us their thoughts.

The House of Assembly is opening today to discuss the MOU between NL Hydro and Hydro-Quebec. The two opposition MHAs in Labrador share their thoughts with Labrador Morning.

Tom Mulcair can be heard every weekday morning at 7:40 on The Andrew Carter Morning Show.

This episode Allen and Phil examine China's move to end its domestic wind turbine price war and its global market implications. They discuss Germany's countermeasures and the complexities of international manufacturing in the U.S. wind industry. Additionally, they highlight an innovative bolt tensioning system featured in PES Wind Magazine, showcasing advancements in wind turbine maintenance technology. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Well, Phil, a Minnesota man has won the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh off with a 2, 400 pound squashy dub. Travis Ginger of Nalvin traveled his gargantuan gourd to the competition in Half Moon Day, California, of course, Phil, not for where you are where it was placed on a massive scale and dubbed the heaviest in the contest. The win marked Giger's fourth top spot win in the Safeway World Championship pumpkin weigh off. And if you're not from the United States, Safeway is a grocery store. It's Really big in California and a couple other places. So a 2, 400 pound squash. Now that's not the most he's ever. grown. And back in 2023, he raised a 2, 700 pound pumpkin named Michael Jordan. Now I don't understand why they have to name these things. That is the mystery to me is why would you have to name a pumpkin or a gourd? It is what it is. And it's just heavy, right? Philip Totaro: I mean, I'm, I'm impressed not only by the, the growing of something that large, but the logistics of getting it from the Midwest out to California. I mean, we talk in the wind energy industry about the logistics around, shipping components and, and things like that all the time. I mean, how the hell do you even truck a 2, 400 pound? And that's, that's gotta be a pretty, that's got, that's a big rig right there, isn't it? It'd be Allen Hall: Travis to start. Moving some blades around. There's been some blades that look like they've been moved like pumpkins, I've seen lately. Yikes. Philip Totaro: Yeah, well, Aion, we did catalog the fact that blade damage was the number one cost impact on, on repairs, so. Maybe this guy can teach the industry a thing or two. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'll be joined by my Uptime co host, After these news headlines, France is making waves in offshore wind development, announcing plans to tender for 9. 2 gigawatts of projects in the coming months. This includes two fixed and three floating wind farms to be built off the coast of the Ficon, Brittany, the Gasconia Gulf, and the southern Mediterranean. These installations are part of France's ambitious goal to have 45 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2050. Francis, Energy Minister, emphasized the importance of these projects for the industrial value chain, urging companies to maintain their local presence for turbine manufacturing and installation. Crossing the Atlantic, Hydro Québec and Lyons, de l'Energie de l'Est. has unveiled a plan for a new wind farm in eastern Quebec. The project, which could generate up to one gigawatt, represents a three billion dollar investment in the region and spans over 700 square kilometers. This development also includes First Nations marking a step towards economic reconciliation. The project aligns with Hydro Quebec's strategic shift towards collaborating with communities from the outset. In the United States,

Trudie Mason welcomes in Akil Alleyne, Reporter, commentator and Manager of the GemStar Circle of Excellence Scholarship Program, and Jimmy Zoubris, special advisor to the Mayor. A faulty Windows update has caused a worldwide IT outage Immigration Minister Marc Miller's Montreal office was vandalised by protestors One Montrealer was met with a nasty shock after getting a $2,000 dollar bill from Hydro-Quebec because they had been undercharging him

Electricity Canada's President and CEO, Francis Bradley, joins thinkenergy in episode 140. Hear about the shift to sustainable electricity, including the difficulties navigating provincial and federal policies, climate change directives, and funding gaps. Plus how Electricity Canada evolved from a technical exchange club into a national advocate for sustainable energy. From challenges to leading the charge, learn how governments and private sectors are working towards a clean, efficient electricity system. Related links:   Francis Bradley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-bradley-3617802a/ Electricity Canada: https://www.electricity.ca/ The state of the Canadian electricity industry 2024 Getting to Yes report: https://www.electricity.ca/advocacy/getting-to-yes-the-state-of-the-canadian-electricity-industry-2024/ 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: 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. On the show before we have talked about how energy is primarily a provincial jurisdiction in Canada, so that means that provinces and provincial governments set energy policy provincial grids are structured both in a regulatory sense as well as a physical infrastructure sense. at the provincial level, we've gone into some detail about Ontario's grid and talked about how it's kind of a distributed grid meeting most electricity customers in Ontario get their electricity from a local distribution company. Not every province is the same in any of those senses. Some are a little bit more vertically integrated, meaning there are you know, maybe a single entity that gets you all the way from generation to distribution. There's different regulatory frameworks. The point is there's a lot of diversity across the country. Now, as much as that is a provincial jurisdiction, there is a role for the federal government to play here at that national level. There are some national policy directions that are important and that impacts energy policy. Climate change is a great example. So the federal government has jurisdiction to set targets and come up with strategies to address climate change for the country. Things that the federal government is doing currently is enacting a clean electricity standard with the goals of decarbonizing electricity generation in the country, so making sure that we stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity on a large scale. The federal government also supports decarbonisation efforts for buildings and for transportation, and they put money into those things. And those efforts impact electricity grids and impact markets. The federal government also has a role to play when it comes to major projects and providing approvals for those projects to move forward. And that includes energy projects. So new generation or new transmission, you know, things that are using land or moving across land, there's a role for the federal government to play there. So enter electricity Canada, the national voice for electricity utilities in Canada. Now, we've talked before about the sort of provincial equivalent that advocates on behalf of energy utilities. This is the national voice here for electricity, utilities, electricity, Canada has been around for over 130 years now. And their focus, at least in the last while has been on federal advocacy. I'm not going to tell you too much about electricity, Canada, because my guest today is going to talk a little bit about that. But just as a primer. So they have recently published their 2024 state of the industry report, which looks at the need to accelerate some of these major initiatives in the electricity sector to keep up with the energy transition that, as we've talked about many times is already underway. It's already happening. And we are just trying to keep up really. So my guest today is actually making his second appearance on the podcast as Francis Bradley, who is the president and CEO of electricity Canada, and has held a number of different roles within electricity Canada as well prior to becoming the president CEO. He also has a number of key positions on national committees and working groups, which are focused on infrastructure, energy and electricity and other related topics. And most interestingly, he also hosts his own podcast, the flux capacitor, which I highly recommend you check out. Francis, welcome back to the show.   Francis Bradley  04:01 Delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation, Trevor.   Trevor Freeman  04:03 So I know you've kind of given us the background before but electricity Canada has been around for over 130 years now, which is older than our kind of modern, interconnected grid, at least here in Canada. Can you just remind us of the role and the mandate that your organization plays in the electricity sector?   Francis Bradley  04:20 Sure. Absolutely. In fact, somewhere we have a photograph of like the first meeting of what at the time was the Canadian electrical Association at Niagara Falls in 1891.   Trevor Freeman  04:32 Wow.   Francis Bradley  04:32 But yeah, you know, where, where we're at today. So basically, you know, if you turn a light switch on pretty much anywhere in Canada, any province, any territory, everything it took to generate, transmit and distribute the electricity to turn that light on was probably done by by one of one of our 42 members. They're in every single province, every single territory to use the official the official definition you know, Our mandate is to be the national voice for sustainable electricity for our members and the customers they serve. We do this through advocacy through sharing best practices, and, and education of stakeholders and the government. But yeah, our our members are basically the, you know, the 40 odd, biggest companies that generate transmit distributed coast to coast to coast.   Trevor Freeman  05:22 And has that mandate changed over the course of the 130 years, or is it pretty consistent?   Francis Bradley  05:27 No, it's It's actually that's that's an interesting question. It has changed a lot. And it's changed over the time since I've been at the association even and then aimless changed, that this is the third name. I'm on since since I joined the organization. Yeah, when it was first established. As you say, there was a letter A long time ago, 133 years, it was basically a little club for these people that were in this nascent industry who, who would, you know, swap stories about, about what they're doing and how it's working. And even at the time, there was still, you know, debates about should we be doing AC or DC and, you know, the whole, the whole, you know, battle between, between Westinghouse and, and, and, and the other folks, but so, you know, it was initially a technical information exchange organization, when I joined the organization, it was still very much technically focused, would do a big annual conference, we actually had a technical research division, and we do a couple of million dollars of research a year, back then. We then evolved, we, we evolved from the Canadian electrical association to the Canadian electricity Association. And our mandate began to shift away from Duke First off, where we stopped doing technical research and moved away from technical detailed technical information exchange, and increasingly our mandate began to focus on advocacy and and what the what the industry needs and what they what the members require, from an advocacy standpoint. And then in the 1990s, mid 1990s, we moved up into Ottawa because prior to that we'd been in Montreal, we've been in Montreal since the 1930s. Before that, we were in Toronto. So in the 90s, given that the focus had shifted pretty significantly to advocacy, and the principal government that we were seeking to advocate with was the federal government, the office moved up to Ottawa. And then three years ago, the name of the organization was changed from the Canadian electricity Association, to simply electricity, Canada.   Trevor Freeman  07:42 So that's that switch from technical to the more advocacy and policy work. It's really interesting and actually kind of ties into this. This next question, I want to ask you, we've talked on the show before about, you know, how the Ontario electricity sector is structured. And it's complex, to say the least, but that's one of many in Canada, different provinces have different regulatory structures. Energy Policy is primarily provincial jurisdiction. But as you mentioned, the federal government has a say in that as well, especially when it comes to climate change recently. So I'm curious, how do you navigate all those differences and kind of speak with a common voice when you're dealing with so many different regulatory bodies? So many different governmental bodies? What's How do you find that common voice?   Francis Bradley  08:31 Yeah, well, and you know, that that is that is that the fundamental challenge of, frankly, any organization in Canada that's attempting to, to operate at a national level, in a in a sort of domain that's principally principally provincial, but it's kind of even more so with electricity because of the differences in different jurisdictions. And, you know, you've noted that Ontario is complex in terms of the industry structure, it was more complex. When I when I first started in the sector, there were 300 and more than 350 local distribution companies, you know, so there's been a little bit of consolidation,   Trevor Freeman  09:11 we have a paltry 60 something now.   Francis Bradley  09:13 Yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, we're down into only double digits. But at the same time, you know, we also saw, you know, municipal municipal amalgamations that's taken place that have driven some of that, but, you know, so we've seen an evolution here in Ontario. But, you know, there are no two jurisdictions in this country that are the same. So you know, there isn't a like an electricity system in Canada, each province and territory is different, different types of ownership. You know, in some, it's like a private, privately run companies and in other jurisdictions, it's a Crown Corporation. In some like Ontario, it's a hybrid of a mix of different types of ownership. But, you know, there's there are there are crowns, there are municipally owned there are privately owned companies as part of the value chain. And so you know, It results in a pretty disparate system, both in terms of how the sector is structured, and also how its regulated. Because the regulations are different in each and every one of those jurisdictions. And so, you know, this presents us with a huge problem, frankly, and we see it now, in particular, with respect to all of the politics around climate change, because electricity is a provincial responsibility, but we have one level of government, the federal government, providing direction in this space. And then we have another level of government, that the provincial level, you know, reacting to what those national objectives are, we've got multiple regulators across the country offering their own interpretations on what can and cannot be done in this space. And it proves to be a problem, you know, with respect to the challenge to build the infrastructure that's going to be needed to meet our, our, our aspirations, our future aspirations, this complexity makes it very difficult to get things moving and get things done. And, you know, in addition to that, honestly, in the past year, you know, if you look at the relationship between federal government, the federal government and provincial governments, in some parts of this country, it's starting to smell and feel like just raw geopolitics, right. You know, all sides, frankly, on some of these files have have demonstrated the sort of dogmatic posturing that you'd expect between countries, not necessarily between provinces, and a central government and in a confederation. But, you know, the thing is, and I keep going back to this, if you sort of strip out the posturing that we see, the fact is, we actually agree on much more than than the areas where we disagree. And here's an example. You know, if you look at the, the,the provincial opposition in a number of provinces to the Government of Canada's clean electricity regulations, you would think that, you know, we're on completely different pages here. But, you know, if you ignore some of the, you know, saber rattling, and the point scoring, you actually can see that there is general agreement provincially. And federally, that electrification is going to be, you know, the long term solution to our climate crisis. In fact, the only thing that's in dispute is sort of the deadline and the methods that we're getting there. So, you know, there, there are expressions in some provincial capitals, about the clean electricity regulations as the method and you know, and dispute as to whether or not it should be 2035, or a different time frame, but everybody is on the same page of, you know, an aspiration to have a non omitting sort of a clean system throughout the economy by 2050. And so, you know, that's the starting point that we work from, is that, oh, yes, there are certainly disparate views on some of the methods and some of the policies, but objectively, we are all attempting to head essentially in the same direction. We're all heading towards, like this net zero future. It's just a question of, how are we going to get there and, and with the time you're going to be,   Trevor Freeman  13:18 it's interesting to hear you say that, because that's, you know, a couple episodes back, I talked to David Caletto, from abacus, and he was talking about just the general populations opinion on things, and it mirrors that exactly. So it's not just our sort of various jurisdictions and levels of government that kind of agree, where we need to get to, they just don't know how we're gonna get there. They don't agree and how we're gonna get there.   Francis Bradley  13:40 Yep.   Trevor Freeman  13:41 Your average Canadian also agrees with that. Canadians feel that a an electrified energy sector energy system is better than a fossil fuel one.   Francis Bradley  13:50 Yep.   Trevor Freeman  13:51 We just don't agree on how we're going to get there. So yeah, that's great. Great to hear. And that leaves you guys to sort of thread that needle and find the common points and amplify that I imagine.   Francis Bradley  14:00 Absolutely. And, you know, and, and attempt to come up with solutions. You know, given that our principal role is, is is in advocacy, you know, that that means that we're in the public policy, loop solutions business, and trying to attempt to find ways to to, as you say, thread that thread that needle, but also, you know, figure out ways that that we can make sure that we have policies that are supportive of that future that, you know, as you said, even even the polling work that the David Caletto discussed with you. They agree that that's the destination as well. So, like, what's one of the public policy specific initiatives apart from the overall objective that we should be seeking to, you know, seeking to pursue?   Trevor Freeman  14:51 So if I could pick on one of those specific issues, you know, keeping on this theme of regional differences and regional challenges, we have different relationships with the fossil fuel industry in Canada. And that includes both our electricity generation, some of our provinces have predominantly carbon free generation and some don't. And in terms of our economy, so I mean, West fossil fuel is weaved into the economy and a pretty integrated way. How can we navigate this move to cleaner electricity, collectively as a country, knowing that different areas of the country have to do different things to get there, and it's going to impact them in different ways?   Francis Bradley  15:31 Yeah, and it isn't surprising that different parts of the country have a different approach to this, and they're coming from a different starting point. You know, it's kind of the luck of the draw, when, you know, when, when the geography prior to, you know, it prior to prior to anything like this, it was all determined by geography, if you happen to be in a jurisdiction today, that has a lot of water and a lot of different elevations so that the water is falling, you know, you're starting it certainly in a in a in a better place. That, you know, that the challenge overall is to is to really try and figure out how we we make this work across the country? You know, you're you're absolutely right, there are some parts of this country that have historically been very reliant on fossil fuels for the production of electricity. Why? Well, because they didn't have any falling water, or they're relatively flat. And so you know, that that was the certainly the case. And it continues to be the case and the challenge for some jurisdictions, so, you know, take the example of the draft clean electricity regulations that, you know, we've been, we've been talking about, and we're spending a lot of time focused on they, they hit different jurisdictions very differently, this objective to try and reach a netzero grid by 2035 is not a huge stretch, if you happen to be, you know, in in, in Quebec, or in British Columbia, or in Manitoba, it's a lift, but it's not a huge lift. You know, however, if you're, if you're elsewhere, it, it can be quite challenging. So the problem that we have there is, but you know, when the government of Canada began putting together their work on the clean electricity regulations, they use modeling that looked at the national average, and, you know, nationally, they were 84%, non emitting as a country. That's great.   Trevor Freeman  17:31 Right.   Francis Bradley  17:32 But, you know, they really should have taken a hard look at what the differences were between different jurisdictions in the country. And they should have done their modeling that was much more local. You know, Canada is a big, diverse country. And, you know, you hinted at that. So, you know, exactly nowhere in Canada is average. Right, and so we shouldn't be modeling nowhere. Because then that simply doesn't work. You know, and, and the, the simple illustration, I will often say is, if you've got two lobsters, and one of them is in the freezer, and the other one is in the pod on your stove, on average, the temperature is pretty good for the lobsters. But it isn't for either of them, right? Yeah. So, you know, listen, why does this matter? Well, if we get the modeling wrong, and if we don't understand the differences between the different regions of the country, we're going to be making decisions on how to allocate because, you know, we talk about 2050, and what is Net Zero 2050 Looks like, looks like it's going to be, you know, trillions of dollars worth of investments are going to be required. And if they're leaning on models that are not right, that becomes problematic. It's a huge bet that we're making, you know, if the models we base our decision making on and where we're going to be putting our investments aren't accurate. If the regulations are wrong, you know, these clean electricity regulations, because they didn't take into consideration the regional differences. Compliance is going to be expensive. It could in some jurisdictions, you know, make blackouts or brownouts more common with bigger impacts, and it might have disproportionately more significant impact on on the rates in most jurisdictions. So, you know, the reality is, it's four provinces in, in in Canada, that have a starting point with respect to decarbonisation, that's substantially lower than then the rest of the country. They've got much more significant lift if you happen to be in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. That's just the reality. So you know, we need to move forward with the with decarbonisation, but we need to be realistic that moving us from what we have today and 84% carbon free system to 100% is going to be far far more complicated than it's assumed. Again, looking at it on a national average, it seems like only a small numbers, you know, we're at 84%. It's not a stretch to 100. Except if you're in a jurisdiction where it's, you know, 10%. Yeah, then it's a problem.   Trevor Freeman  20:09 Okay, so 11 years, we got our work cut out for us. And we'll kind of see how we move forward. A big part of what we're going to talk about today is electricity, Canada's recent report that you've called Getting to Yes. The 2024 state of the Canadian electricity industry. So in the very first lines of the report, you talk about how there's this culture of No. Which is creating these major obstacles to progress. The report highlights that there have been all these funding pledges from the federal government. But projects are not getting off the ground. They're hitting barriers. Can you elaborate on what some of those barriers are?   Francis Bradley  20:48 Sure, absolutely. Happy to. This is, this is something that we've been very focused on since we released a report earlier this year, is is an initiative we do each year, we try and kind of sum up what we see as the most significant challenge for the sector. And, yeah, the challenge for this sector is we need to, we need to figure out how to how to get to yes. This year, earlier this year, we saw the release of RBC, the RBC climate action Institute report that charted this massive growth for electricity, particularly with the rise of electric vehicles, and home heating. But the reports word of the year for the electricity sector is moratorium that because that was, you know, such a significant event, in the past year 2023 was a difficult year, frankly, you know, we've seen some projects that were halted temporarily like that six month moratorium, the pause on renewables in Alberta, we saw some projects, you know, like the Atlantic loop in the Maritimes, that were halted in indefinitely. And, you know, what's moving forward now is, is a piece of what would have been the Atlantic loop, but the Atlantic loop just just hasn't moved forward. So, you know, there, there is a very significant challenge, right now, with respect to being able to ensure that we have the policy frameworks in place. So that we can can get beyond these challenges with respect to moving through the regulatory frameworks. And at the same time, we need to make sure that we get the financing and the financials in place. I mentioned that RBC report, the title of the report, this year was double or treble, they estimate that we should be investing to be able to meet our aspirations, we should be investing at a rate of about $60 billion a year, in clean energy on an annual basis, were investing at a rate of barely 20 billion a year. So we need to more than double, almost triple the investment that we're putting in place to be able to meet those those targets. It's interesting, it's very consistent with the recent plan that Hydro Quebec came up with, to meet its 2035 objectives,  it's estimating that it's going to close, you know, close to triple its capital investment to be able to to meet those. So we're well below what needs to be invested. And part of the problem is, is this, you know, we had a culture of, of no, you know, we we kind of have the technology to be able to do this. And we have, you know, the the financing, there are people who were are willing to invest in this space, because this is a good space to invest in. We have, you know, commitments and agreements in terms of what the overall target is that just that we seem to have set ourselves up with, you know, overall regulatory frameworks, that that slow things down. And by the same token, you know, we're waiting on final details for, you know, some of the financial incentives the Government of Canada has promised, like the investment tax credits, we're still waiting for the final details on that. And, and this is stuff that was promised almost two years ago.   Trevor Freeman  24:12 Yeah. And I mean, these projects are not quick projects, they're not short projects, they take a long time to get off the ground. So every absolutely moment that's lost as an impact. There's a lot to pick apart and what you just said, and I there's a few things I want to pull on that maybe to start with, is anybody getting it right, right now in Canada? That's like a Canada just specifically, is this going well, anywhere in terms of getting projects up and running and off the ground?   Francis Bradley  24:36 Well, our our focus as it associations is at the national level. And so at the national level, no, we're not getting it. Right. You know, there's a number of things that we need to do to be able to improve this and some things that we've been, we've been asking for so you know, like in terms of some some concrete steps at a national level. We need to coordinate federal impact assessments and project permitting through a central federal office. Again, this is something that that has been proposed, but isn't there. Second, we need to build capacity of regulators to deliver on our netzero goals and their decisions. They need to do prompt to so promptly they need to do it effectively. And third, you know, there was a one project, one assessment framework that the federal government promised in budget 2023. And then it promised that again, in budget 2024, that would be great to see that coming forward, like in this year's Federal Budget, it was teased, that, you know, many of the things that we would like to see are going to be addressed. But, you know, how long is it going to take? And, you know, are we actually going to be able to, to see some of those things implemented and implemented in a timely manner are open questions. And I've been I've been in front of parliamentary committees trying to get some of the move forward, some of the budget implementation details like the investment tax credits, move forward, but they we don't have all of the investment tax credit details yet in front of us much less moving them forward. And, and the clock is ticking, you know, that we keep getting closer and closer to to our targets, and we haven't made it any easier to get projects built.   Trevor Freeman  26:32 You mentioned regulatory hurdles as one of those obstacles. What are you talking about when it comes to regulatory hurdles? I mean, like you said, you kind of focus at the national level, there's the provincial level. Talk us through what some of those hurdles are.   Francis Bradley  26:44 Sure. Okay. Well, let me let me let me start with the the Impact Assessment Act, it's it's one of the biggest examples, frankly, of what up until now has been a culture of No, and this isn't a knock on the the individuals involved. It's just how the legislation is structured and how it works. Electricity, infrastructure projects are logistically complex, they require long lead times, they can take years to design to build construct. And that's even outside of the government approval process. At the current rate of regulatory approvals, new projects may take as much as 10 or more years to complete the, you know, the Federal provincial and territorial impact assessment processes, and obtain those relevant regulatory permits from various governments and regulators, you know, in Florida to have like, fully decarbonize, and, you know, double it grid capacity in a little over 25 years. This is going to be a challenge if it's going to take us a decade to get through these these processes. So when we were researching our state of the industry this year, we did a search of the open applications on the impact assessment act's website, what we found is that six projects, including electricity projects have been suspended indefinitely, because the information gathering effort to proceed with the federal Impact Assessment were enough to force a pause on the process. So it's possible that some proponents might reengage with the process, but what we found was that the paper exercise associated just the paper exercise with the impact assessment was enough of a deterrent to cancel or you know, otherwise viable projects, including, you know, in one case building a natural gas and hydrogen fueled electricity generating facilities and hydroelectric facilities. If just the time to go through the Paperchase is so long. This is problematic and something that needs to be addressed now, we're we have a revisions and amendments that have been introduced to the Impact Assessment Act as a result of the Supreme Court decision. I have appeared before parliamentary committee a couple of weeks ago, to speak specifically about that, and in hopes that we're actually going to see this move forward in a more of a timely fashion. But it was made clear by one of the other representatives that was giving evidence to the committee that that their expectation, this is from another province, their expectation is that they will once again be challenging this version of the Impact Assessment Act. So So even that creates further uncertainty. And just the uncertainty, the last thing that the business wants to be able to make generational investments is, you know, a stable, uncertain environment within which to operate.   Trevor Freeman  29:41 So, on that topic of investment, you talk about the need for major investment in both transmission and distribution infrastructure. And just as a reminder for our listeners, that's the poles and the wires and the transformers. That's the real hardware of the electricity system. Those are already really big buckets. So help us understand I got a couple questions around this, you know, what kind of investment are we talking about? Is it building more of those poles and wires? Is there something else in there? What size of investment? I mean, you mentioned $60 billion and clean energy. And who should be making this investment? Who are we looking to hear to be making this investment?   Francis Bradley  30:20 Yeah, I mean, that these are these, these are great questions in terms of what the investments are going to look like. And so, you know, we're looking at, as I said, earlier, doubling, doubling the grid, we're going to need at least two times more kilowatt hours when we get to the future. So you know, that's the level of investment that we need to be thinking about. There have been different organizations that have tried to kind of get a scope and scale of what that actually looks like, again, I mentioned the the RBC climate Institute. Last year, it had a study that came out, and I believe they, they paid this, I think it was $2 trillion, was the was the amount that they expected this to cost. Where's the money coming from? Well, you know, that's a really good question. And it's one that we've been engaging in for a number of years now. And, you know, not to be a little too much. I'll try. I'll try not to be like totally pedantic on this. But, you know, if you, if you consider, from a public policy standpoint, if if we believe that expanding the electricity system is necessary to decarbonize the Canadian economy, then essentially, what you're saying is that expanding the electricity system is a public good. from a, from an economic theory standpoint, if it's a public good, well, then it is something that should be borne by that taxpayer, not the ratepayer. Right. And so, you know, part of this discussion is, who needs to bear the costs for building out a clean non emitting electricity system, so that the rest of the economy can decarbonize? Should it be the electricity customer? Or are there parts of this, this core infrastructure that, that are regarded as a public good, and it's something that is paid for by the taxpayer, you know, and we see this in, in, in other sectors, other sectors as well, where, you know, certain things are perceived to be public good, and they're taxpayer supported. And we saw a bit of a recognition and a realization that this made sense to a degree in the federal government's budget in 2023, where, you know, they essentially pledged, one in every $8, in new spending was going to go to clean electricity projects through a variety of needs, you know, the investment tax credits, the candidate infrastructure bank, a number of funding mechanisms. So I mean, that those kinds of dollars from the federal government was a commitment to building infrastructure that that really is unheard of, at a national level since the Second World War. So you know, it really kind of moved clean energy and electrification into the category of well, I guess it's a public good, because, you know, there's a recognition that if the federal government wants to achieve these policy objectives, it needs to put some federal dollars in there. So, you know, that determination is, and whether it's a public good or not, as has been made in favor of the taxpayer versus the rate payer. Now, again, you know, you could easily say, Well, hang on a second, the rate payer, the taxpayer, the same person, except that it doesn't quite work the same way. We, you know, do do we want to attach to the customers bills, every single customer, that the cost of, you know, this, this expansion of our infrastructure or not, and, you know, electricity bills, are not something that, that, that fall, as taxes do disproportionately on those that are more wealthy. Right. And so, it's a little more fair. Now, you know, in terms of the specific investments, you know, I think, I think exactly how this is going to happen, and how it's going to roll out, those details are still being worked out by by some of our members, but I do want to highlight that, you know, the, the approach here, that we're seeing from the government, which we appreciate, is, you know, a one that is so far technology agnostic, which we think is the right way to go. So, you know, there isn't like a right way or a wrong way to generate electricity. So, you know, the future that we see is going to be an all of the above future, that will encompass wind and solar and nuclear and traditional hydro and, and, and hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. And more, not only does that give us, you know, the greatest flexibility and gives us the ability to to balance different types of generation of dispatchable versus non dispatchable. But it also gives us you know, overall, a far more flexible system. So, you know, That's the what the future is going to look like. So to, you know, to, to give you the short answer, it'll be all of the above, and it'll be probably $2 trillion.   Trevor Freeman  35:08 What's the role of private equity and all of this?   Francis Bradley  35:10 Oh, I mean, it's going to have, it's going to have to play a significant role, that there's no doubt about it. And in fact, that's one of the things that are BC has pointed their finger at when they when they identify the lack of investment right now, in this space, they note that the vast majority of it is public money. And the vast majority of that public money right now is federal public money. And so what they have said is they expect that there's going to have to be significantly more dollars coming from different levels of government, but also from private private investment and private investors as well. And this kind of a, you know, this is good news and bad news on that. I mean, the good news is, you know, their sense is that if we get the economics and the policy environment, right, that it won't be a problem, attracting capital. On the one hand, on the other hand, man, we're competing, you know, we're not an island here, and like, even now, where it's been taking us such a very long time to get the investment tax credit regime in place, and it's not in place yet. Whereas south of the border, the inflation Reduction Act, was developed and rolled out in short order. And what I'm concerned about is that, you know, people that want to invest in clean energy projects, I mean, I don't want to hear the sucking sound of those investment dollars flowing from Canada into the United States. But, you know, there has been more private investment in this space in the US than in Canada, because they've already established the regime that this is going to discuss, you know, production tax credits and, and, and other mechanisms. And we're still working out the details on ours. But yeah, you know, everything that we've heard is, there's a great deal of appetite, so long as we get things sorted out, as long as we get it, right. And that's why, by the way, one of the other things that's interesting for us as an association, is because our members are of, you know, a wide variety of types, a number of my members are investor owned companies. And so, you know, some Canadian companies that have become international players and international leaders, so, you know, Nova Scotia Power, it's now under a holding company called Amera, that is a major player, there's all of the Fortis companies, for US companies are our major players internationally. Afco is one of our members, and they're a big international player, you know, Transalta, again, you know, there's these are very significant players, capital power. So these are all all members of our organization. But it also gives us an ability to kind of get some insight into, into what the business looks like, for private investors as well. And, yeah, you know, what, what we're seeing and what we're hearing us, we need to get the policy, environment and the regulatory environment, right, because that right now is proving to be a barrier. And it's not just not just not not just us saying, you know, they'll see that reflected in other reports, including the RBC report where they talk about these the same sorts of things. And, you know, there's a recent reliability report by the North American Electric Reliability corporation that they've mentioned, as well, you know, one of the risks it sees over the longer term is, is a risk with respect to policy, and lack of policy and bow policy alignment.   Trevor Freeman  38:40 I think I mean, you bring up the inflation Reduction Act, that highlights the value of policy in the setting of the stage to allow for the types of investment and the types of projects that we need going forward and the critical role that governments and policymakers can play there. And actually, my previous guests, and I talked quite a bit about policy. So that's timely. When we talk about these major investments, and you start talking about these major dollar values. You know, you're no stranger to this, I'm sure, electricity prices, the cost of electricity is a sensitive subject and has been for some time now across the country in many different jurisdictions. We often look at as a distribution company, Hydro Ottawa, we look at what we call our social licence. And that's not a term that's unique to the electricity sector, to essentially the the permission our customers give us to operate our business. As we look at these investments, as we look at the amount of dollars that have to be invested in our in our sector and our industry. We know that there's an affordability crisis in Canada right now, lots of people are struggling with cost of living. And those two things can seem at odds. So I want to get your thoughts on how do we continue to hold on to that social licence that we have and in fact grow it and build it because electricity as we know it and your utility as you know it are going to be Change. And how do we get people on board with that, while still making the level of investment that we're talking about here?   Francis Bradley  40:06 Okay. All right. So, you know, I kind of touched on this a couple of times. But know, first and foremost, the energy transition, if you will, as I noted earlier, can't be paid exclusively by the ratepayers right? At be, you know, this is this is an overall objective that we have. And so, you know, the the infrastructure built is so large, that it needs to be certainly parts of it need to be paid through the tax system, and that that is progressive in a way that, that that rates are not progressive to begin with them, you know, but boy addressing vulnerable customers absolutely critical. You know, there's a variety of things that that could be tried, you know, in the United States that there's a Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, that it helps keep families safe and healthy through initiatives that assist families with energy costs this, I think they call it the LIHEAP provides federally funded assistance, to reduce the costs associated with home energy bills, energy crises, weatherization, and minor energy related home repairs. So you know, a similar initiative in Canada, could be there to assist the the most vulnerable, you know, as as, as you're aware that, you know, your your, your most vulnerable customers are the ones that have the least capacity to do things like weatherization. And so, you know, there's an example of a national program that we could look at as a model. You know, one of the other is let's, let's try not do dumb things at the same time from a public policy standpoint. And one of the areas that we've been lobbying and has been something called the excessive interest and financing expenses limitation, we call it Eifel. And now it is not going to impact your customers, but in some jurisdictions of this country, it is actually going to bite the customer. So this is a this is a change in financial rules that will limit the amount of interest paid interest expenses that can be deducted from taxable income for existing and new borrowings. Now, it sounds complex, but basically every dollar that is denied interest, it winds up getting passed on to the customers, and it increases the cost of capital. Now, it only affects a smaller number of jurisdictions in this country. But you know, in the US and the UK and other countries, they have exemptions for this role. So they don't apply to utilities, but it will apply to to utilities here in Canada. And so like, right now, the only exemption offered to this is for investments in rental housing, which, you know, we see, but you know, that that's a, that is a program that some of your listeners though, not the hydro Ottawa customers will will likely be aware of, but you know, there's also an important role for energy efficiency and conservation programs in this space, right? You know, energy equity programs, thermostat installations, insulation rebates, and direct install for low income customers, they all help people to reduce their energy costs consumption and, and help them reduce their energy bills. But you know, you're absolutely right, we need to make sure that we keep our eye on the most vulnerable as we go through this transition. And there are ways that we can do that. And there, there are examples like that program I talked about in the US, even at a national at a federal level, where there are programs that we could put in place.   Trevor Freeman  43:39 Yeah, we do have I mean, there's, like you say, there's national programs that could be rolled out, we do have more local programs and Ontario, there are some assistance for low income customers that that we can support on the electricity bills. Federally, we've seen that investment in kind of on let's call it the supply side, helping helping homeowners access capital for low carbonization upgrades. So whether that's weatherization or putting heat pumps in, you know, the current program is oversubscribed and pause as a result, but seeing more of that and more directed to electricity specifically, I think would be would be great. When it comes to emerging technologies, so things like energy storage, smart grids, shaping the future of our sector, and let's break that apart a little bit. Let's talk about that at the macro level first. So kind of the grid level, and then we'll talk about it maybe on a behind the meter on the customer side of things. What do you see the role is for these new emerging technologies?   Francis Bradley  44:40 Right. Well, you know, I mean, you know, as I said, as I said earlier, I think the the future is going to be an all of the above approach. And emerging technologies absolutely are going to be a critical part of this. But you know, we need to be realistic too. So you know, there's technologies that that may be able to replace fuel base generation but they're not yet commercially available, and they're dependent upon supply chains that are not yet at scale. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic, for example, about the role that small modular reactors are going to play or the battery storage will play in our electricity nicks out to 2050. But is it realistic to assume that they'll be deployed on a large scale between now and 2035? You know, we need to look at both the the medium term and the long term solutions. And so I think a lot of these technologies hold a great deal of promise, when talking about a 2050 timeframe, the 2035 timeframe is a little bit more more challenging, you know, one of the emerging technologies I mentioned in a minute ago, small modular reactors. And so, you know, we we see, Ontario Power Generation moving very aggressively hoping to complete their build by 2028. Get to grid by 2029. But, you know, if you happen to be Saskatchewan, and you're hoping that small modular reactors will be your solution over the longer term, you may not be in the 2035 timeframe. So, you know, that's, that's the challenge there. So I have a great deal of confidence in our ability to develop those technologies. And I think there's going to be some huge advantages as well, right? I look back, because I've been around the sector long enough to, you know, the early days of, you know, candu and the build out of the CANDU reactors, principally in Ontario, but although, you know, we have a plant operating in New Brunswick, and we did have one in Quebec for a time, but we built an ecosystem to support that as well. And, you know, I'm very bullish on our ability to develop these new technologies, hopefully develop them here in Canada, and develop the ecosystems and the supply chains here in Canada, not only to the benefit of sort of Canadians and Canadian customers, but I think, you know, much like can do this could be technology that we'd be able to, to market around the world. So small modular reactors, carbon capture, you know, this is there's so much work that's being done in this space, that, that, that I'm confident that they will be important technologies, and they will be important for our supply in the future. We just need to be realistic about when we can rely on them. Because you know, that the one thing that that we can never sacrifice, of course, is the reliability of the system that's customer will never accept that.   Trevor Freeman  47:35 Yeah, of course, we're so intertwined. I mean, everybody that's listening knows this. This isn't any kind of insight, but we're so intertwined that yeah, we can't sacrifice that reliability. And it does, it touches on this idea that we have the technology that we need today, in the in the sort of near and medium term to get going on this stuff. And we're already going on this stuff. And then there are these nascent technologies that some of them may succeed, some of them may not, but we, we do need to invest in those. And we need to figure out which one of those is going to help us in that sort of medium to long term to get over that last 5, 10, 15%. Who knows what, but help us get there? What about on the sort of smaller scale behind the meter side of things when we talk about these emerging technologies? So distributed energy resources, you know, solar storage at the home level? Do you see that playing a big role in how we move forward here?   Francis Bradley  48:32 Yeah. Like not tomorrow or next week? But you know, when you when you're looking over the longer term? Absolutely, I mean, I think, you know, we're already seeing changes in terms of how the customer interacts with the, with the supplier, in some jurisdictions, where, you know, you'll look at, you'll look at Hawaii, you'll look at Australia, where we see massive penetration of rooftop solar, for example. But what what that's given us is, it's given us the ability to get insights in terms of how that change in the relationship between the supplier and the customer that's going to evolve. Absolutely, and it is clearly something that, you know, as we've seen, in in, in those jurisdictions, that there is a, there's a significant amount of interest in, in in pursuing this. And there's a great deal of interest when the opportunity arises on the part of customers to be able to access technologies that allow them to feel like they they have more agency, sort of in the relationship and how they relate to electricity. So yeah, absolutely. When you when you go out to, you know, the longer term, distributed generation rooftop solar mine, I'm a, you know, an EV driver now, but like 10 years from now, you know, hopefully we will have figured out how to use vehicle to grid. You know, again, you know, when I talk about it you're going to need two to three times more kilowatt hours. I'm not saying we necessarily need two to three times more generation, because a lot of these technologies are going to give us the ability to have a more flexible, and more efficient electricity system. And a number of those are at the customer level. So you know, if you think of an electric vehicle, that is probably charging 2% of the time, or 4%, of the time, and the rest of the time when it's not being driven, it's plugged in. And that's a I've got an 82 kilowatt hour battery, that, you know, at some time in the future, me and all of my neighbors will have 82 kilowatt hour batteries. And so like how many megawatts on my block that that we could tap into, that can not only give the customer the ability to, as I say, have more agency in the relationship, but man the kind of flexibility we'd get for the distribution system operators, to be able to tap into that the greater resilience that we would have. So you know, that's just one example of a technology that that I think holds a huge amount of promise and that one aint pie in the sky, because I'm driving around with with a 82 kilowatt hour battery today.   Trevor Freeman  51:11 Yeah. And I mean, the other side of that is also happening, the utilities are getting ready for that, and putting in the foundation and the building blocks that we need now, to do what you just described, to be able to look out there in our service territory and say, what are all the assets that I can use not just the incoming power from the grid, not just our switches and transformers? But what are all the assets that I can call on? And how do I incentivize this customer to do this behavior? You know, a couple episodes ago, we talked about what's our grid modernization roadmap, and it is designed very much around that, that capability. So I mean, that was a bit of a loaded question. I'm, that's kind of the answer I was expecting. For sure. But yeah, that's something that we're super keen on and super interested in. So Francis, as we kind of wrap up today, you know, maybe sum up some of the major steps that you want to see us take nationally in terms of policy to get out of this culture of No, as you call it. And into the you know, getting to yes, that towards the name of your report.   Francis Bradley  52:15 Sure. Okay. So to get to that place, we would have that one project, one assessment framework that's been promised in two consecutive federal budgets, we'd have it and we'd have it up and running, we have significant changes to the Impact Assessment Act, we would have a clean electricity strategy. That's been one of the things that, that we've been asking of the federal government for the past several years, you know, we have similar strategies, we've got a national strategy for hydrogen, we've got a national strategy for minerals, we've got, you know, national strategies in a whole bunch of areas. We had a commitment last year by the federal government to have a national strategy for for clean electricity. So we're hoping to see that this year, we would engage indigenous communities at the start of a process and we'd work to split equally in favorable ways like Hydro One, and for desync have done in Ontario. And we would have collaboration at all levels of government, federal, provincial, indigenous, as well as regulators. That would be that would be my wish list.   Trevor Freeman  53:11 That's, that's no small list. Well, Francis, it was really great talking to you today. We do always end our interviews with a series of questions. So if you're ready, I'll dive right into that   Francis Bradley  53:22 A series of questions. Uh oh. Okay   Trevor Freeman  53:24 We'll see how you do here. What is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read?   Francis Bradley  53:30 Okay, well, it is a book that I have not read yet. I've just begun reading it because somebody pointed me in this direction. So I just got it. It's called the parrot and the igloo. And that the subtitle is climate and the science of denial. It is a it is a sofar, a very, very interesting book by the author David Lipski. So, I've just started reading this, but so far, it's proving to be a really great read.   Trevor Freeman  54:03 If our listeners can hear me typing here, every once in a while, actually, you know, maybe half the time I hear about a book that I haven't come across yet. So I'm taking notes here. That's a good one.   Francis Bradley  54:12 There you go. Yeah, the parent and the igloo.   Trevor Freeman  54:15 So same question, but what's a movie or a show that you would recommend?   Francis Bradley  54:19 Oh, okay. Well has nothing to do with energy or electricity or climate change. But But Mad Man. the I think the greatest the greatest series that they did ever been produced and television. Love it. Yeah. I wish I would have been there. They just seem to be such weird and creative meetings that they that they wind up in terms of figuring out the advertising back in the 1960s.   Trevor Freeman  54:42 Yeah, totally. There's, there's no shows out there that you can go back to several times, if not indefinitely, and that's, that's certainly one of them   Francis Bradley  54:49 that's one of the ones for me.   Trevor Freeman  54:50 Yeah. If somebody offered you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go, if you could offset the carbon   Francis Bradley  54:59 I would I would, I would go to Ireland, I had been planning a trip to Ireland in April 2020. With with two of my kids. It never happened that we've never been so, you know, one one side of our family the roots go back there. But I have never been so it would absolutely be to Ireland.   Trevor Freeman  55:22 Very cool. It is amazing how many times I hear that sort of there's those 2020 2021 trips that were planned that never happened. Yeah. are on the list for everybody. That's great. Who is someone that you admire?   Francis Bradley  55:36 Niko Tesla. Yeah, Tesla, who is I think one of the real unsung heroes of the of the past, you know, people know all about, you know, Edison and Westinghouse. But very few people know about Tesla. And and I think I think he had significantly more patents than either either of those two guys. Everybody knows the car, but very few people know the man.   Trevor Freeman  56:03 Okay, so last question, what is something that you are excited about when it comes to the energy sector and its future?   Francis Bradley  56:10 Everything   Trevor Freeman  56:11 Great  The future is bright. I mean, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now. Specifically, you asked about the energy sector, but specifically electricity, I'm, I'm really looking forward to the future. You know, I talk a lot about, you know, we're going to have to build in the next 25, 26 years, a system that is twice as large as the system we had, you know, 120, 130 years ago. But if you look at how much a society has changed, because of electrification in the past century, society is well is going to change even more significantly, in the next 25 years. As we move forward. And we double, I'm really, you know, it's just like everything about what's going to happen in the sector. And, and, and our utilization and the new technologies that will, we'll have access to is, I find it endlessly fascinating to see what that future is going to look like I'd listened 15 years ago, nobody had iPhones and iPads, and all of these new technologies. And we used to have to watch TV shows when they were scheduled. And, and, you know, when I started working back in the day, if you if you wanted money, it would be cash, and you'd have to go to the bank. And if you didn't get there by Friday afternoon, you were stuck for the weekend. So yeah, you know, now I pay everything with my with my watch, right? Yeah, it's not even a tap. I just, I just use the watch. And so like, what's going to change in the next 25 years? It's going to be endlessly fascinating.  It does feel like it, you know, and I've been in this industry a little while now. And it seems like the rate of change, specifically on climate on the energy transition on decarbonizing feels like it's picking up speed and getting momentum, and people are kind of getting behind it, not to say we've solved all the problems, but Right. That's the optimistic piece for me that I look at and say, Yes, stuff is happening. And this is a really cool spot to be I agree.   Francis Bradley  58:16 Absolutely.   Trevor Freeman  58:16 Well, Francis, this is a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your insights with us. And this was number two on the podcast, so I'm sure there'll be a third at some point.   Francis Bradley  58:25 Excellent. Thanks a lot, Trevor. It was great to chat with you take care.   Trevor Freeman  58:28 Yeah. Thanks.   Francis Bradley  58:29 Cheers.   Trevor Freeman  58:31 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  

In this episode, we speak with Ken Brinsden, who is the CEO and Managing Director at Patriot Battery Metals, who are a hard-rock lithium exploration company focused on advancing its district-scale 100% owned Corvette Property located in the James Bay region of Quebec. Ken is a mining engineer from the Western Australia School of Mines with over 25 years of experience in surface and underground mines and has been involved in the development of Atlas Iron Limited and more recently, discovering the world's largest hard rock lithium deposit for Pilbara Minerals in Western Australia. Ken gives an overview of the company and the resources they have discovered with the excellent geology around the Quebec region. He discusses the current lithium market and the positive outlook of the sector he believes is around the corner. A must listen to all in the Lithium space. KEY TAKEAWAYS The Corvette project in Quebec benefits from a favourable infrastructure, including proximity to Hydro-Quebec's dams and distribution networks, which will support the development of the mine. Quebec's mining industry, with a history dating back to the 1840s, provides a strong foundation for the development of mining projects like Corvette, with a skilled workforce and supportive regulatory environment. The lithium market, despite recent price fluctuations, shows promise for growth, especially with the increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and energy storage solutions. Patriot Battery Metals is focused on delivering an upgraded resource, completing feasibility studies, and obtaining environmental approvals to commence construction at Corvette in the next three to three and a half years. BEST MOMENTS "The life of mine is shy of 22 years, currently at 800,000 tons per annum of spodumene production, which would make it the second biggest mine in the world currently." "I think the growth in China is material. Their moves to dominate the lithium-ion battery industry are very, very significant. And I cannot see them slowing down." "There's a lot of positives around lithium for the future. So obviously don't be disheartened with the price of lithium at the moment."  VALUABLE RESOURCES Mail:        rob@mining-international.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ X:              https://twitter.com/MiningRobTyson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DigDeepTheMiningPodcast  Web:        http://www.mining-international.org Website: www.patriotbatterymetals.com Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Patriot_Battery  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/patriot-battery-metals/ ABOUT THE HOST Rob Tyson is the Founder and Director of Mining International Ltd, a leading global recruitment and headhunting consultancy based in the UK specialising in all areas of mining across the globe from first-world to third-world countries from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. We source, headhunt, and discover new and top talent through a targeted approach and search methodology and have a proven track record in sourcing and positioning exceptional candidates into our clients' organisations in any mining discipline or level. Mining International provides a transparent, informative, and trusted consultancy service to our candidates and clients to help them develop their careers and business goals and objectives in this ever-changing marketplace. CONTACT METHOD rob@mining-international.org https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ Podcast Description Rob Tyson is an established recruiter in the mining and quarrying sector and decided to produce the “Dig Deep” The Mining Podcast to provide valuable and informative content around the mining industry. He has a passion and desire to promote the industry and the podcast aims to offer the mining community an insight into people's experiences and careers covering any mining discipline, giving the listeners helpful advice and guidance on industry topics. 

We're looking at climate jobs - specifically how the concept of a green job has evolved across various industries and how governments and the private sector have adapted to changing labor circumstances in the energy transition. First, Climate Group's Executive Director for North America Angela Barranco joins with Maggie Thomas, Special Assistant to the President for Climate at the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy for the inside scoop on what to expect from some new federal labor initiatives like the American Climate Corps. Then, guest correspondent Liisa Kaufman, our Senior Manager of North America Industry, speaks to Climate Group CEO Helen Clarkson and Pete Rose, Senior Director of Stakeholder Relations at Hydro Quebec, to discuss how new climate jobs are shaping the transition to net zero.   

Waterpower is Canada's most abundant renewable resource, providing 60 per cent of our electricity. But here's the big question: as Canada looks to an emissions-free future, how can waterpower, one of the oldest power sources on the planet, help us get there? And what do we need to consider? To learn more about our hydroelectric future, we sat down with Gilbert Bennett, President and CEO of WaterPower Canada. Tune in.   Related links   Gilbert Bennett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbert-bennett-86166529/ WaterPower Canada: https://waterpowercanada.ca/  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 on YouTube   Follow along on Instagram   Stay in the know on Facebook   Keep up with the posts on X (Formerly Twitter) --- 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, Happy New Year and welcome back. Here's a fun fact. Canada's electricity sector is one of the cleanest in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Now today, we're going to focus on one of the oldest power sources on the planet. Hydropower generates power when flowing water spins a wheel or turbine. It was used by farmers as far back as ancient Greece for mechanical tasks like grinding grain. Canada's oldest hydroelectric generating station that still is in operation today was commissioned right here in Canada's nation's capital in 1891. Generating Station Number 2 is located on Victoria Island in the heart of downtown Ottawa is a stone's throw away from Parliament Hill. It's been providing clean, renewable electricity for more than 130 years. While hydroelectricity first powered our great city and country, it was fossil fuels that quickly became the dominant energy source during the Industrial Age of the 20th century, until nuclear power arrived on the scene in the early 1960s. Now, because Canada is a water rich country, it's not surprising that our water power is our most abundant renewable resource, providing 60% of our country's total electricity. That means six out of every 10 homes in Canada are powered by water. This makes Canada the third largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world, after China and Brazil. To reduce Canada's emissions of greenhouse gasses that cause climate change, we must continue to increase the amount of zero emissions electricity we produce and strategically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in other sectors. So here is today's big question. Can one of the world's oldest renewable power sources play a major role in Canada's Net Zero future? So, joining us today on the podcast is Gilbert Bennett. He is the president and CEO of WaterPower Canada, founded in 1998. WaterPower Canada is the national nonprofit trade association dedicated to representing the water power industry. Gilbert, welcome to the show.   Gilbert Bennett  03:21 Good morning, Daniel. Great to be here.   Dan Seguin  03:23 Now, you've joined WaterPower Canada at a very interesting time where there's a lot of national and international conversations about developments in hydroelectricity, as countries strive to meet their net zero targets. What is your vision on how water power Canada can participate in Canada's energy transformation and decarbonization?   Gilbert Bennett  03:49 So, we at WaterPower Canada represent the Canadian hydro electric industry, so the owners and operators were the vast majority of the Canadian hydropower fleet. So all the major utilities are members of the association. And we also have our industry partners that design manufacturing constructs for the industry. So given the hydropower provided, over 60% of Canada's electricity supply is going to be the backbone of the electricity industry for decades to come. Our role is to make sure that industry, governments, and the federal government, in particular, understand the important role that we play in the electricity system, and why hydropower is a key advantage of building a renewable future for Canada. So we're going to be aware that we're the dominant renewable supply for the Canadian electricity system. We have important value that's provided in terms of reliability. And I guess the ability to integrate other renewables in the system. So, we're going to be here for decades. We're going to be playing a major role in that transformation and the decarbonization of our economy.   Dan Seguin  04:57 Now, what's the value proposition that hydroelectric power brings to a clean, affordable and NetZero future?   05:07 Right. So, most importantly, we have key attributes. And I sort of touched on that in our last question there, we're firm and reliable. So, think about hydropower, just firm generation, there's water in the reservoir, we're going to be producing power at the power plant. It's not a question of is the wind blowing, is the sun shining? It's long term, high capacity, firm generation. And when I think about high-capacity storage for hydropower, in larger, the larger hydro systems, we're talking about 1000s of megawatts of power generation, delivered for months on end with large reservoir storage. So that's an important attribute that contributes to the reliability of our Canadian electricity system. And secondly, is dispatchable. So, we can adjust output of the plant as necessary to meet needs as they change your day to day order in order to balance out the deliveries from other renewables. So, in the absence of a fossil fuel fleet, hydropower with those capabilities is really important for us to maintain reliability and deliveries on our electricity system.   Dan Seguin  06:18 Gilbert, some people still believe that investments in renewable energy translate to higher electricity costs. But I read on your website that provinces with the highest hydropower installed capacity have the lowest electricity costs, perhaps you can break down why that is and what you think the public should know about hydropower that they may not already know.   Gilbert Bennett  06:48 So, if we look at the provinces of Canada with the highest installed base hydropower, they have facilities that were built with large scale capacity and large-scale storage, and they were built in the 60s and 70s. And they still operate reliably today. So, we look back to sort of the major construction that happened in the Canadian hydropower sector. Several decades ago, those long-term reliable assets are now producing really low cost energy, a lot of financing has been addressed from those facilities, and they have low operating costs, the cost of maintaining those facilities is, is a lot lower than the cost of building new ones today. So those those legacy assets are really important contributors to the low rates, we see in the, what I'll call the hydro dependent jurisdictions.   Dan Seguin  07:37 Very insightful. Thanks, Gilbert. Now, I know water power, Canada has commissioned some research projects. Can you maybe talk about some of those, and what makes them important to your sector and your goals?   Gilbert Bennett  07:53 So those studies, and there were four of them that were completed through last year with important financial support from Natural Resources Canada, and fortunately, they address some important topics to discuss hydropower in general. So, the first one deals with this question that we just talked about, what's the role that hydropower facilities play in ensuring reliable service for customers. So now we're getting into some technical points, inertia load, following regulation, frequency and voltage control. So those are things that customers don't think about and don't have to worry about, because they're really important questions or system operators, the people who manage and operate electricity grids. So, it's important for policymakers who are drafting the rules through the electricity sector to understand that these capabilities are essential to delivering reliable service. And in the absence of fossil generation, delivering those capabilities to a large extent is going to fall to the hydro fleet. It's important to understand the services that are uniquely provided by hydro facilities, some of the variable renewables don't have these capabilities. And the services that are provided by the hydro fleet are going to be much more important in the future as we retire the fossil fuel fleet across Canada. So that's, that's the first one. The second study looked at the potential for pumped storage hydro in Canada. And that's a topic that we haven't talked about a lot. It's a mature technology that's used in many places in the world. But with our conventional hydropower fleet here in Canada, we haven't had to worry about too much, but it is becoming an issue as a way to store energy from variable renewables and make it available when needed factor projects under consideration in Ontario. Today, there are two major projects in Ontario, one led by OPG and Northland power, and the TC energy's project in Georgian Bay is another one that probably would be familiar to listeners in Ontario for sure. There are also projects in Alberta. They're looking at that technology. So potential for pump storage as a large-scale storage opportunity to firm up variable renewables. It's an important topic elsewhere in the world. And it's one that we thought would be useful to highlight attention here in Canada. Third study looks at the potential for updating our existing facilities to increase the output of those facilities. So, we've identified 1000s of megawatts of potential that can be realized by replacing the existing turbines and generators and existing plants. So, the point here is that we're using existing dams, reservoirs and structures, while updating the technology inside the plant. So that's a cost-effective way to increase the efficiency of the plant or to increase capacity on the grid. And then finally, the last report looks at the cost of energy from previous generation sources. And we introduced the point here that variable renewables are inexpensive energy sources, but there are additional costs that will be incurred in the electricity systems making them dispatchable and available. And those are, those are features that are built into hydro generation. So, we want to raise the point here that the grid services that I talked about a second ago, need to be factored in when we're comparing various generation sources. So these points are really important for policymakers to understand, well, they're drafting the rules for the industry, and ultimately, for the services that our customers are gonna be relying on. Lots and lots of detail there. And if anybody's interested in taking a look at those reports, are all posted on our website at waterpowercanada.ca.   Dan Seguin  11:28 Okay, I really like this next question here. What are some projects and innovations that you're seeing from your members that you feel may usher in a new era for waterpower?   Gilbert Bennett  11:42 I think we look back at our aspirational goal in Canada to be net zero by 2050. So, talk about that on a fairly regular basis. Various experts have said that we'll need to double our electricity supply to achieve that goal. So just think about that for a second 25 or 30 years, we're going to rebuild the industry that's taken 125 years to build the infrastructure Canada that we have today. So, you know, that's a daunting challenge. And I think it'd be the first sign of the scale of that effort is probably from Hydro Quebec, where they've indicated that they plan to spend somewhere between 155 and $185 billion dollars on their electricity system between now and 2035, in order to set the stage and Quebec to be net zero by 2050. That level of investment, that scale of development of their electricity system, I think is a huge one. And it's one that if we're going to achieve our or aspirational goal is going to be replicated in multiple jurisdictions when we look at significant investments required to set the stage to electrify our economy. So that in itself is a, you know, is a hugely important error for I see the electricity sector in general, feel comfortable saying that water power is going to be an important piece of that.   Dan Seguin  13:07 Now, if memory serves me right, your organization released a collection of success stories of partnerships between utilities, energy companies, indigenous businesses, and organizations affiliated with First Nations. Gilbert, what can you tell us about the path forward? And its intersection is clean energy and reconciliation?   Gilbert Bennett  13:34 Right. So that report, branding indigenous businesses is also on our website. And it's a collection of case studies from members from our member companies that provide concrete examples of how WaterPower Canada member companies are working with indigenous businesses, First Nations, both as partners and owners and developers of projects. So, I think in the context of reconciliation, it should be fairly clear that projects and activities that happen on traditional land should benefit people who you know, who own that land. And here we have some specific examples of how things can be done and are being done to benefit indigenous communities and businesses. So, it's the way we need to move forward with development. It's an opportunity to work together, it's an opportunity to jointly understand issues, opportunities, challenges with projects, and to really come to a common understanding of how to do business together, both between, you know, our member companies and indigenous communities, important step forward. And I think the way things are going to be done in the future.   Dan Seguin  14:43 Okay, moving on to some challenges. It seems that the International Energy Agency expects hydropower generation to increase 50% by 2040. Is the hydropower sector, like many, having difficulty attracting new talent? What are the ways your sector is working to entice youth to consider hydroelectricity to keep up with the growing demand?   Gilbert Bennett  15:14 So, this is a huge challenge for not just our industry, but the Canadian economy in general, we have a retiring workforce, as our population ages. And we're not replacing people across multiple sectors in our economy. Certainly, an issue in the trades for construction and operations. So, a concern in engineering is a concern in most professions, that we're not replacing our workforce. And for our industry, we have a couple of associations that are really focused on this question. So, shout out for electricity, Human Resources, Canada here, they are playing a key role in highlighting opportunities, and reasons why people who are entering the workforce, you know, should look at a career in our sector. It's a common theme from trade unions to say, look, you know, here are these unionized positions, and the trades and the construction trades. And then the operating trades are high paying jobs, they have great working conditions. And they're a great way to build people's career. And it's probably something that we haven't talked about for a long time. These are ways to highlight opportunities in the industry, apprentice programs on projects are another way to highlight opportunities to get people entering the workforce. And then finally, you can link back to our discussion on indigenous communities where training, education, employment opportunities associated with projects are available for residents in nearby communities. But that's as most project developers today would look at that as a key way to both build workforce, and to build economic capability in the, in the communities where they're doing work. It's a big challenge. And we certainly have to, you know, find ways to get people into the trains to get things done. We're going to be talking about this one a lot.   Dan Seguin  17:04 Now, I'm curious to find out what makes our hydropower unique, isn't our production generation water rich reserves, or our cold climate that sets Canada's hydropower apart from other countries?   Gilbert Bennett  17:20 So, first of all, we look at the resource that we have, we have 7% of the world's renewable freshwater. So, 7% of the water that falls on the face of the planet, lands in Canada, and we have 5% of the world's population. So those were important to have the raw resources in the first place. So that certainly we have that in spades, but also the large landmass, we have favorable topography for hydropower sites, so the right to the terrain and most of Canada is favorable to hydropower development. We're a large country with a small population, but lots of water. So, we have a great resource. And I think that that's probably the key reason why we've, you know, got to where we are.   Dan Seguin  18:08 Okay, that's good, Gilbert. Now, do you expect hydropower to remain Canada's largest source of reliable, renewable power for the foreseeable future? What is something you want the government to know right now about how investing in hydroelectricity can help it achieve its netzero goals?   Gilbert Bennett  18:32 Okay, so the first, the first most important point is that the attributes of your hydropower fleet, the technical capabilities are really important in continuing to ensure that electricity, services for customers are reliable, cost effective and renewable. Now, our future is going to be all in with every non emitting and renewable option. So hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen, all of these alternatives to fossil fuels, and others are going to be critical for us to achieve our net zero, or near zero aspiration. Hydro today is the backbone of our fleet. It has important services, and it's important to glue the rest of the system together. So that's probably the most important point and then we would say that development of hydropower facilities are long term investments, they have long term development cycles. So we need to be able to find ways to move forward with project approvals with upgrades with expansions you know that deliver low cost service to customers. Now we also recommend with note that our generator members are either major utilities or their producers themselves. So, getting the maximum value from our assets is going to be really important as well and the industry is going to continue to look at existing assets to see how we can get more out of those. So that may be increasing the capacity of sites using, you know, improving efficiency, being strategic about where you know where projects get built. And then finally understanding where hydro fits compared to other technologies. And there's a given that there will be opportunities for those other technologies to play important roles in this electricity system as well. When we look at sort of doubling the electricity system, there's going to be a lot of investment all around. And I think what we would say is that, you know, back to the fundamental point, hydropower is the backbone of the generating fleet in Canada. And it provides, you know, key services that are going to be needed now, well into the future.   Dan Seguin  20:35 Finally, Gilbert, we always end our interviews with some rapid-fire questions. We've got some new ones for you. Are you ready?   Gilbert Bennett  20:44 Let's go. Okay.   Dan Seguin  20:46 What are you reading right now?   Gilbert Bennett  20:48 Nothing on the bookshelf today. So, I will say the last binge read I had was on vacation last summer, and it would have been one of Tom Clancy novels.   Dan Seguin  20:57 Okay, good. Now, Gilbert, what would you name your boat? If you had one? Or maybe you do have one?   Gilbert Bennett  21:04 I don't. We don't have one. This one is a standing family joke. The name of the boat would be Ylime, which is my daughter Emily's name spelled backwards. That's a standing joke for a while with the family.   Dan Seguin  21:18 Here's another question, Gilbert. Who is someone that you truly admire?   Gilbert Bennett  21:23 All right, so let's look back in history to someone who dealt with challenges on a similar scale to what we're talking about now. And I think I'd have to look to maybe someone like General Leslie Groves, from the Manhattan Project. So those of you have seen Oppenheimer would have a pretty clear handle about how he got things moving to that project.   Dan Seguin  21:46 Okay, moving on here. What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Gilbert Bennett  21:52 Oh wow. Okay, so I'm an electrical engineer. So, some real things are more like magic to a lot of people. I would say for me, 15 years of effort of the Muskrat Falls project in Labrador, close to the breaker to put the first unit online, looks like magic after all that effort.   Dan Seguin  22:11 What has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Gilbert Bennett  22:18 Oh, well, I would say switching from a large office setting to a virtual team. And you know, of course, during my time on the Muskrat Project, we had, you know, 300 people on our team, and you're interacting with them on a daily basis. And now you go to a virtual team, and you're doing pretty well, everything like we're doing here today remotely. That was a major adjustment for me.   Dan Seguin  22:40 Okay. Now, we've all been watching a little more TV, a little more Netflix. What is your favorite show? Or series?   Gilbert Bennett  22:49 Oh, I just got through the last season of Slow Horses on Apple TV. So Misfits, that and MI five, who find a way to get things done. It was a pretty, pretty enjoyable series for me.   Dan Seguin  23:03 Lastly, what's exciting you about your industry right now?   Gilbert Bennett  23:08 Oh, wow. I would say in a nutshell, everything. Sort of the scope, the scale, the challenges, the opportunities that we've talked about, I think are all are all exciting, and helping to, you know, find a way to retool our, our entire society so that it runs on renewables, I think is a huge is a huge challenge. And it was definitely pretty exciting.   Dan Seguin  23:30 Well, Gilbert, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the think energy podcast. If our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect?   Gilbert Bennett  23:42 Oh, two ways. Visit our website waterpowercanada.ca. And we're on LinkedIn as well. So follow the association. And keep up with what's going on in the industry.   Dan Seguin  23:54 Again, Gilbert, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.,   Gilbert Bennett  23:59 Oh this was great. It was great to be with you Daniel. Thanks so much.   Dan Seguin  24:06 Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. 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 will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

On this episode of the Energy Security Cubed Podcast, Joe Calnan talks with Yvan Cliche about adaptations to geopolitics and climate in global and European energy, as well as consideration of Hydro Quebec's new strategy. For the intro session, Kelly and Joe Calnan chat about recent events in energy, including the upcoming OPEC+ meeting, the shutdown of the Cobre Panama mine, and the conflict between the Federal and Alberta government over the Clean Electricity Regulations and the Sovereignty Act. You can find CGAI Fellow Rory Johnston's newsletter mentioned in the intro here: https://www.commoditycontext.com/ Guest Bio: - Yvan Cliche is a CGAI Fellow and a Fellow at the University of Montreal's CÉRIUM Host Bio: - Joe Calnan is the Energy Security Forum Manager and a Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute Reading recommendations: - "Quill of the Dove", by Ian Thomas Shaw: https://www.amazon.ca/Quill-Dove-Ian-Shaw/dp/1771833785 Interview recording Date: November 27, 2023 Energy Security Cubed is part of the CGAI Podcast Network. Follow the Canadian Global Affairs Institute on Facebook, Twitter (@CAGlobalAffairs), or on LinkedIn. Head over to our website at www.cgai.ca for more commentary. Produced by Joe Calnan. Music credits to Drew Phillips.

In this episode, the Saint Jerome Project Saga continues to unfold as Axel Monsaingeon delves into the ongoing challenge of gaining access to the land for necessary pilings, obstructed by Hydro Quebec's demand for a substantial fee, originally at 2.2 million dollars. He recounts a fascinating encounter at an event in Saint-Jérôme, where he gained valuable insights into the city's changing zoning regulations. The city's intention to encourage densification in the downtown core by building upwards hints at exciting possibilities for his project.  Dive in to understand why attending public events and engaging with city decision-makers are crucial for any developer in the real estate market. Discover the pivotal role of vision in real estate development. If you want to attend the 2nd annual event: Revolutionizing Industrial Real Estate Investing on September 21st, please go HERE What you will learn if you listen to the episode: Axel's experience attending an event in Saint-Jérôme, where he learns about the city's changing zoning regulations and their potential impact on his project. The city's goal of encouraging densification in the downtown core by building upwards, and how this aligns with Axel's project. The significance of attending public events, engaging with city decision-makers, and building connections for real estate development. The role of vision in real estate development, as Axel discusses the importance of having a clear vision for your project's purpose and contribution to the community. Axel's excitement about the prospect of adding more floors to the project and the impact this can have on its viability. The challenges and rewards of real estate development, including the need to adapt to changing circumstances and seize new opportunities.   SUPPORT US ON PATREON! patreon.com/realestateeffect and become a part of our real estate family! You'll get access to exclusive content, monthly virtual meetings [Ask me anything!], special events and more!   And please subscribe to the show, share it with a friend and send us feedback. Visit www.realestateeffect.ca and follow me on IG @monsaxel  

On this edition of the Big 5...Dan Delmar fills in for Elias Makos and he is joined by Justine McIntyre, consultant and former city councillor and David Heurtel, Former Quebec liberal cabinet minister, Council at Fasken and political analyst. It's a troubling sign for the Liberals – the Atlantic ‘red wall' is looking less sturdy.. Provincial premieres are requesting a summit with Justin Trudeau to take stock of the investment needed over the next few years to meet housing needs. Quebec's new boss at Hydro-Quebec thinks he has the answer to the province's power needs. 

Meeker Guerrier, Weekend News Anchor at Noovo and a commentator at RDS and Jonathan Kalles, Senior Consultant at McMillan Vantage, a national public affairs firm, and former advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau join Elias Makos on The Big Five to discuss: A TikTok video showing a motorist throwing orange cones and a traffic sign from the street has gone viral A religious group is suing the Quebec government for blocking an event over abortion concerns Mayor Valerie Plante says she ‘wants to continue to work' to decriminalise the simple possession of drugs in the city Quebec's new boss at Hydro-Quebec thinks he has the answer to the province's power needs

Sue Montgomery, former journalist and former mayor of CDN-NDG & Lionel Perez, Former city councilor and leader of the Official Opposition at Montreal City Hall join David Heurtel to discuss: Two proposals by Bloc Québécois activists being put to a vote at the national political party convention this weekend The Globe and Mail revealed the content of Canadian intelligence documents reporting on the "Chinese strategy" to influence the 2021 federal election What's open and closed in Montreal on Victoria Day/Patriots' Day Industrial promoters who have submitted requests to Hydro-Québec for large blocks of electrical power A funeral complex in Montérégie to offer its customers to rent its showroom to receive medical aid in dying

It might not rain or snow in space, but our solar system is pretty active. Auroras are inspiring, but the conditions that cause them can impact our planet and technology. NASA Ambassador Tony Rice discusses space weather, and how bursts of solar energy can impact aviation, agriculture, and the electric grid. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette and welcome to Across the Sky, our National Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital operations in 77 locations across the country, including my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined this week by my meteorologist colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago and Joe Martucci in Atlantic City and all across the Jersey Shore. Our colleague Kirsten Lang is taking us through a few weeks off to be with family and fellows. We've got a fabulous guest this week, our buddy Tony Rice, a Nassau ambassador. We go to him for all things about astronomy. We've had all the Aurora talk recently, so we're going to get into that and all things space, weather and space weather is something that it's hard to explain. I mean, it's what's going on the sun and how it affects what's going here on Earth. But it's not it's not weather the way we think of of weather. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's no seven day forecast that you put out with the high and low temperatures on this stuff. But it's about the interaction of the, you know, proverbial world around us and the worlds around us. Right. Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, they all have their own types of weather. In this case, we're talking a lot about the sun and how the sun, you know, and its interaction with the air or lack thereof, you know, whether it's Earth or in outer space and how it impacts us. So. Tony, Tony, also, we should say Sean has been on a number of our podcasts. He has given us the astronomy report usually towards the end. So we are we're happy to have him and actually speak to us for more than the 60 seconds, you know, a little blurb he has. So we have a whole half hour with him and I think everyone's going to enjoy it, you know, if you like space, I think most people do. NASA's always rates very highly as the government organizations with high favorability ratings think. You will like this podcast episode. Can we get. Yeah, I've really enjoyed Tony's astronomy reports. I always enjoyed that segment. As always. Is going out with something that's just super interesting, you know, whether it's something to look at in the sky or talking about the auroras. And so like we knew that just off those little minute segments that he does, the guy is just fascinating. We've got to bring him on, do a whole episode with him. And that's what we did. And sure enough, it ended up being a pretty fascinating conversation. Yeah, we're going to so we're going to jump right into it from auroras to space, weather, radio, blackouts, all that stuff. Here's our conversation with NASA Ambassador Tony Rice. Our guest this week is Tony Rice, NASA ambassador, which means there's a lot of education and outreach about astronomy and space science. Tony, thanks for taking some time with us on the Across the Sky podcast. It's good talking to you again, man. Yeah, it's been a little while since we've run into each other. I appreciate the invite. You bet. You bet. Before we get into all the good stuff, Auroras gpps a coronal mass ejections can you explain to the listeners what what a NASA ambassador is? So it's a volunteer program through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and it dates back to the Galileo probe, actually, and was an outreach program that was started on that. It's really expanded a lot. And what we do is just basically try to get people interested in all the cool things that are happening in the sky. And there's ambassadors all over the country. So if you are a meteorologist, a broadcast meteorologist, go on the JPL website and look for NASA ambassadors and reach out to your local ambassador, especially if you're a teacher or a scoutmaster or, you know, anybody that's that's working with formal and informal education. Reach out to your local ambassador and they can bring some really cool resources and resources and and and share some really cool things, not just about astronomy, but about all these cool missions that are happening right now that are teaching us so much about the universe. There is so much the Auroras have gotten a lot of press recently and with good reason, and I do want to get into those. But first I want to step back about the cause of the Auroras in the first place. We know Earth has this, you know, magnetic sphere and it bends and particles and stuff like that. But I want to go back to the sun first, kind of where where the energy is coming from. These come from things called solar flares, coronal mass ejections. Can you tell people what the difference between those two events are? They're very much related. And when we we think about the sun and we we take a glance at the sun when it's directly overhead or especially when we see it down on on the horizon at sunset, it looks very static. It just looks like this this orange disk, you know, there on the horizon. But the sun is a very, very dynamic thing. It rotates like our planet rotates, too. So we're keeping an eye on all this dynamism that's going on there. You might have heard of sunspots. We probably heard of some of the solar flares. You mentioned coronal mass ejections. There are all of these things that are going on there that when they reach a peak, when they reach kind of a critical mass, they can create events that are very much going to impact us here on the earth. So a sunspot is actually a cooler spot on the surface. I'm using the surface very, very generously because this is, of course, the boiling hot gases there on the on the surface of the sun, that cooler spot. All this energy is coming up from the center of the sun. Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist Shaun Sublets and welcome to Across the Sky our national Lee Enterprises weather podcast Lee Enterprises has print and digital operations in 77 locations across the country, including my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined this week by my meteorologist colleagues from across the sky, Matt Hollander in Chicago and Joe Martucci in Atlantic City and all across the Jersey Shore. Our colleague Kirsten Lang is taking a few weeks off to be with Stanley And Fellows, we've got a fabulous guest this week, our buddy Tony Rice, a niassa ambassador. We go to him for all things about astronomy. We've had all the Aurora talk recently, so we're going to get into that and all things space, weather and space weather is something that it's hard to explain. I mean, it's what's going on the sun and how it affects what's going here on earth. But it's not it's not weather the way we think of of weather, you know what I mean? Yeah, there's no seven day forecast. So you put out with the high and low temperatures on this stuff, but it's about the interaction of the, you know, proverbial world around us and the worlds around us. Right. Jupiter, Mars, nothing. They all have their own types of weather. In this case, we're talking a lot about the sign and how the sun, you know, and its interaction with the air or lack thereof, you know, whether it's earth or in outer space and how it impacts us. So, Tony, Tony, also, we should say Sean has been on a number of our podcasts. He has given us the astronomy report, usually towards the end. So we are we're happy to have him and actually speak to us for more than the 62nd little blurb he has. So we have a whole half hour with him in. I think everyone's going to enjoy it, you know, if you like space, I think most people do. That's always rates very highly as the government organizations with high favorability ratings think. You will like this podcast episode than we get. Yeah, I've really enjoyed Tony's astronomy reports. I always enjoy that segment. History always is going out with something that's just super interesting, you know, whether it's something to look at in the sky or talking about the auroras. And so like we knew that just off those little minute segments that he does, the guy is just faceted and we've got to bring him on, do a whole episode with him. And that's what we did. And sure enough, it ended up being a pretty fascinating conversation. Yeah, we're going to so we're going to jump right into it from auroras to space, weather, radio blackouts, all that stuff. Here's our conversation with NASA Ambassador Tony Rice. Our guest this week is Tony Rice, NASA ambassador, which means he does a lot of education and outreach about astronomy and space science. Tony, thanks for taking some time with us on the Across the Sky podcast. It's good talking to you again, man. Yeah, it's been a little while since we've run into each other. I appreciate him invite You bet. You bet. Before we get into all the good stuff, Auroras gpps coronal mass ejections. Can you explain to the listeners what what a NASA ambassador is? So it's a volunteer program through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and it dates back to the Galileo probe, actually, and was an outreach program that was started on that. It's really expanded a lot. And what we do is just basically try to get people interested in all the cool things that are happening in the sky. And there's ambassadors all over the country. So if you are a meteorologist, a broadcast meteorologist, go on the JPL website and look for NASA's ambassadors and reach out to your local ambassador, especially if you're a teacher or a scoutmaster or, you know, anybody that's that's working with formal and informal education. Reach out to your local ambassador and they can bring some really cool resources and resources and and and share some really cool things, not just about astronomy. What about all these cool missions that are happening right now that are teaching us so much about the universe? There is so much. The Auroras have gotten a lot of press recently and with good reason, and I do want to get into those. But first I want to step back about the cause of the Auroras in the first place. We know Earth has this, you know, magnetosphere and it bends and particles and stuff like that. But I want to go back to the sun first, kind of where where the energy is coming from. These come from things called solar flares, coronal mass ejections. Can you tell people what the difference between those two events are? They're very much related and when we we think about the sun and we we take a glance at the sun when it's directly overhead or especially when we see it down on on the horizon at sunset, it looks very static. It just looks like this this orange disk, you know, there on the horizon. But the sun is a very, very dynamic thing. It rotates like our planet rotates, too. So we're keeping an eye on all this dynamism that's going on there. You might have heard of sunspots. We probably heard of some of the solar flares. You mentioned coronal mass ejections. There are all of these things that are going on there that when they reach a peak, when they reach kind of a critical mass, they can create events that are very much going to impact us here on the earth. So a sunspot is actually a cooler spot on the surface. I'm using the surface very, very generously because this is, of course, the boiling hot gases there on the on the surface of the sun, that cooler spot. All this energy is coming up from the center of the sun. It's got to get its way out and it makes its way around that cooler spot. And there's a lot of magnetic forces that are happening at the same time on the sun. So it's going to follow those magnetic lines. The energy is strong enough. It can follow those magnetic lines upwards and creates these kind of ropes, almost looks like twisted rubber bands. And we're talking a scale of of several several Earths long, huge, huge scale. And as those ropes continue to twist back on themselves, they can snap. And when that snaps, there's a bunch of energy that is released in something called a coronal mass ejection. And it's going to push the the normal amount of solar wind that happens all the time. Just that energy and the particles that are being pushed out by the sun just by continuing to burn its fuel, it's going to push it out in a much more violent fashion and and create some of the effects that I'm sure we're going to talk about here in the next couple of minutes. Okay. So so again, so how is that a little different from a flare or That is a flare. Yeah, that's the flare in a coronal mass ejection is a very significant flare, we'll call it. Okay. All right. Very cool. Just continue to walk us through the process here because we have this huge it's a big pulse of magnetic energy, right, that's coming towards Earth. Right. And so the Earth's magnetic field is helping to drive these auroras. But what would happen if the Earth didn't have that magnetic field? Well, we'd all see auroras, that's one thing. And we'll talk about why the upper latitudes are the ones that see them most often. If the magnetic field didn't exist, we'd all see auroras, but also all of you would be out of a job because we'd have no atmosphere, there'd be no meteorology, we'd be Mars. And that's one of the big things about all the talk we have about going to Mars that sometimes gets glossed over is Mars doesn't have an appreciable atmosphere. It's like 1/100 out of earth. And the reason it doesn't have an appreciable atmosphere is because it does not have that magnetic field that we have here on Earth. So pitcher, pitcher, Earth now pitcher, a big now shot. You'll appreciate this because I'm going to use a Southern reference. I think you've got it up there in New Jersey. You know, I don't know if you've been blessed with it yet in Chicago, but pitcher giant Krispy Kreme donut, really big earth sized. Okay. You're you're in good shape, though. Yes. So picture a giant Krispy Kreme donut surrounding Earth. And we're down in that hole. That is the shape of the magnetosphere, roughly. It's a Taurus. It's this donut shape. And it's not perfectly shaped because that solar wind actually causes the the backside of of the donut to stretch outward. But anyway, so as the solar wind is coming in and all that energy, all that magnetism and the charged particles and all of that, it's being deflected away from particularly the lower latitudes now, the upper latitudes that magnetosphere is, as the name suggests, it's magnetic. Those particles can follow those magnetic field lines down into the donut. And as it moves farther down into the donut, that's when we start to see more effects of it, such as the aurora. So, you know, we had this big Aurora event just about what day was. I believe it was April 23rd going into the 24th. That's Sunday night. And here in New Jersey, we're about 40 degrees latitude, you know, north latitude here. We did actually get to, quote unquote, see the aurora. But many people, I think, were disappointed that they couldn't see it with a naked eye. You can only see it with a long exposure camera at least in the southern part of the state where I am. Tell us about in that specific event, how far south could you have seen that Aurora, both with and without the naked eye? Because it really captured the attention of the country that Monday. This was a naked eye event farther up into the upper latitudes. So let me ask you this one question. The pictures that you saw, that long exposure that you saw, was it overhead or was it closer to the horizon? It was closer to the horizon. It was in Wildwood in New Jersey, which is actually about just about 39 degrees north latitude, if are really splitting hairs. But I did actually get a report, Tony, up in the far northwest corner of the state, about 41 degrees latitude that you could very faintly make it out with the naked eye there, because I'm wondering if that was about what you heard of across your findings over the over that day. The most beautiful pictures I saw were actually taken near Asheville, North Carolina. So it did. Visibility was that far south. But again, those were long exposures, long exposure photography can create some some really amazing images. It's worth pointing out that all those beautiful space images that we see, whether it's taken with something like the James Webb Space Telescope or any of the amazing images that we can see taken from the ground. Almost all of those are stacked images. They're long exposures and many, many, many of them dozens, sometimes hundreds of them stacked on top of each other because it's just you see things when a photon of light hits your eye and there's just not that many photons that are available to you when it's something that far away. If I ask about where you saw it and relative to the position in the sky, what you were seeing there in New Jersey was probably directly overhead, much even closer to the Canadian border. These things are happening very high up in even past the stratosphere. So when you see something that low on the horizon, you know that you're actually looking quite a bit farther away and that's the reason it appears so low. Also, keep in mind, you know, I mentioned looking at the sun directly overhead, how very bright it is now we can look at it when it is sunset because we're looking through 40, 50, 60, 80 thicknesses of atmosphere there. So when you see it on the horizon, it's so very much dimmer because you're looking through so much more atmosphere and that's causing those photons not to make it to your eye. We'll make it to your camera lens. And your camera lens can have a whole lot longer exposure than your eye can. So you're really up against the distance there. And I'll just say to Tony, this was that long exposure camera was also taken by a fellow Narsa and Vasser. His name is Chris Bagley, who's over here in Cape May County. And it was a phenomenal photo he took. But I appreciate the insight into that because I was curious to know, and that's not something you can walk out with your iPhone and snap a picture and not the right kind of images. Take a lot of practice to get to do right. It's beyond me. I really lean on a lot of friends that are really into that to get some of those incredible pictures that I share myself on Twitter and other places. And Tony, with this most recent bill, was there anything for us to be concerned about? Of course, you get these wonderful images and everybody gets excited about seeing something. They usually don't get to see. But then the other thing that usually is associated with it is the buzzword, a solar storm. So was there any danger to anywhere in the planet with this most recent and what kind of a solar storm would we be talking about to really cause disruptions and problems? Aware? Yes. Concern, no. And the word solar storm, it aligns really well with we'll call it terrestrial meteorology. Y'all are not the only ones making predictions out there. We've got our Space Weather Prediction Center, also run by Noah. There's watching these kind of things. Nothing to be concerned about there for most folks, but these kind of impacts, you know, when we see the additional auroral activity and see it that far south, the reason it is making that far south is because it's diving deeper into that donut that I was talking about. It has the energy to push further south and that additional energy does create some additional risk for particularly something like an airline pilot or even the passengers that would be flying in one of those polar routes. I know there's a lot of polar routes that are flown out of Chicago into some of the Chinese destinations and and in other parts of of Asia, Airlines will delay and sometimes even forego a flight that's going polar. There's following the polar route when there is a solar storm that is predicted because of the increased radiation exposure. So disruptive for the airlines. What about a communication? You know, as far as like GPS communication, satellite communication, does it interfere? Could there be a solar storm capable of disrupting cell phone signals for, for example, you know what? What would it take for that to happen? Or is it not possible at all? Probably the cell phone signals, because most of the impacts are happening in the upper atmosphere. There are two areas you mentioned. One of them, GPS is one high frequency communications, particularly the ones that the airlines use when they're flying over water, when they don't have towers near them, they will communicate using high frequency radio. It's up to individual planes to report their their positions to each other. Some of that's done via satellites as well as signals can be disrupted by solar storms because of of what these storms due to the atmosphere, they can make the upper atmosphere denser. They can make it more lumpy. And that's going to introduce errors into the GPS signals that could cause a blackout for a period of time. And we've got to remember that in today's world, Gypsies isn't just something we use to get to the grocery store in our cars. It's critical to aviation. It's even critical to agriculture. So many of the tractors now are driven by GPS and they're they're planning things and they are they're they're watering their fertilizing based on down to the centimeter level of accuracy. And when that's lost, you know, farmers are parking these tractors for a period of time until the solar storm threat is over. Yeah. I want to talk more about those when we come back after the break. But before I toss to break, Tony, one other question I want to just to get out there is about the colors of the aurora. I mean, you know, my understanding is that, you know, you have high energy particles. They're coming into the atmosphere. They slow down and they and depending on what the is, once they release energy, it comes out in a photon of light. Is that a belt? Right, Or is there something a little more accurate about that? That's that's a pretty good way to describe it. Another way of thinking about it is we've all seen fireworks and there's different colors of fireworks. It's different elements that are reacting in the upper atmosphere. In the case of the aurora. And those are the elements that are a part of the atmosphere itself. All the the sun is contributing here is the energy and the charged particles. And comparing that to fireworks, the fireworks themselves are made up of different elements so they burn different colors. Is green nitrogen or oxygen. I get them mixed up. I don't have to look it up in my head. That's fine. That's why we have Google. All right. So we're going to take a quick break. And on the other side, I want to talk more with Tony Rice, our NASA ambassador, about space weather and some of the other issues that space weather presents with for life here on Earth. So stay with us. We'll be right back with more on the Across the Sky podcast. And welcome back to the Across the Sky podcast. I'm here with NASA's ambassador, Tony Rice, talking to all things auroras and space weather. One of the great things or resources that we do have, Tony, is the space weather Prediction Center. And this is part of part of Noa, right? They do all of our our terrestrial weather gathering or data gathering. You go to the the WPC Noa dot gov site and you see space weather conditions. Okay, this is great, but you see r. S g which is, you know, radio blackout, solar radiation storms, geomagnetic storms. What's the best way to interpret what those three categories are and what they impact and impact is? The answer. Each one of those areas has a different impact or has a different area where the impact is felt the most. So you can have a green condition on R for radio blackouts and a red, yellow or red condition on the SE component of that, which is solar radiation. They want to reduce R for for obvious reasons, and that's going to be looked at by somebody like an airline differently. Okay. So there's no radio blackout conditions expected in the next 24 hours. So that's green. So all of my transatlantic flights are probably okay. Their high frequency communications are probably not going to be impacted by anything. Solar, though. The solar radiation right out there is is showing a yellow or a red. I might want to rethink some of those over over the pole flights that we were talking about earlier. And then the G is stands for geomagnetic storming. That's how much of a risk that we might see in the next 24 hours of a geomagnetic storm occurring. Now when we see that go above a green, that's when we start looking for auroral activity. So some of these things have some positive connotations and some of them have some negative connotation. When it comes to the aurora. All right. So so to follow on that, we know that the higher energy storms are going to produce broader auroras and they do have the potential to do some damage. So I'm sure you're familiar with the term Carrington event. Oh, yeah, definitely. Without getting too deep in the weeds, that was a very, very, very bad solar storm that took out power grids and what the late 19th century, I think it was, or early 20th century. I forget exactly what. So here's the thing. For those of us who study disasters, is that something we should really worry about? Is that is that something we should kind of have in the back of our minds? There's so much stuff to worry about nowadays. How much do we need to think about solar storms and electrical grids in this day and age? And now anybody listening to this podcast probably doesn't need to worry about it. Again, awareness, not concern. But right now, you know, go to your pile of bills and go look for the power bill. Get that name of that power company. That power company has somebody sitting in it right now or maybe their parent company or somebody is overlooking their power grid, is probably sitting in a mission control type room with lots of really pretty maps up on the wall with with projectors showing them. And probably one of those maps is coming from the Space Weather Prediction Center. And there may be another image of the sun that's coming from one of the the NSA assets. And we can talk about I'd like to talk about it. Some of the instrumentation is out there that helps us do these predictions. They are worrying about this and they are very interested in the kind of forecast that the Space Weather Prediction Center is putting out so that they can get ahead of any solar storms that are coming that might create a Carrington event. And I wouldn't worry so much about a Carrington event. These kind of events are very much like floods. They're very much like hurricanes. They come in different strengths and there's hundred years events, there's a thousand years events that kind of thing. It's all about risk and probability. So you mentioned the character of it. That's probably the biggest one that we have on the books. You know, that there was a a power grid failed back in 1989 because of a solar storm. Hydro-Quebec, their power grid, which serves both Ontario and upstate New York and some other areas, well, it went offline because of a solar storm. Now we've got a lot more assets up there in space that help us watch for these things. We've got things like the Space Weather Prediction Center that Noah runs. There's a space weather group at Natural Resources Canada that's keeping an eye on these things. So long winded answer, you don't need to worry about it because there are people that are definitely on top of this. Okay, So that makes me feel better. But yeah, do tell me a little bit about about what we have up there in orbit to monitor. I mean, I've heard of Soho, I've heard of a couple of other things, but what other one of the craft do we have up there to monitor? What's going on in the sun? So it kind of comes down to, to measurement techniques. It's really not that different from, you know, anything else in meteorology or a lot of other science. There's observation and then there's in-situ measurements. It's actually measuring the solar wind and its components as it passes that spacecraft. So we do monitor the sun from the ground using optical instruments and watch it for things like counts of sunspots. That's where these things happen. So we want to stay on top of that. And we do watch it with a couple of NASA assets, specifically Soho and Stereo, which are they're looking at the sun 100% of the time. Soho in particular is really interesting because it has a camera on board that creates what they call an artificial eclipse. It is covering up the brightest part of the sun at all times so that it can watch the atmosphere around the sun called the corona. And that's where we see things happen. That's where we see these coronal mass ejections as they occur. We see changes in magnetic fields around the sun. But the the instruments aboard the Solar Heliophysics Observatory are really, really important because they don't eclipse the sun. They are looking directly at it. And those are the ones that we really want to see, those kind of CME, those coronal mass ejections, because those look like they call them crown events, they call them Halo events because you see the circle of of influences this this ball of energy gets pushed out. And what you're seeing is it's coming right at us. Those are the really, really important ones. Those are the ones that are going to possibly impact Earth. This means they can happen anywhere on the sun. And keep in mind, this is all happening in three dimensions. So some of those CMEs might be directed directly up, not in Earth's path, but it's those ones that are directed directly at us that are a problem. So I mentioned some of those in situ measurements. There's really two instruments out there, two spacecraft that we use to to measure those things. One is ACE, and it is all about the solar wind. It's measuring various components of the solar wind, the the density of it, the temperature, the polarity, the polarity of the magnetism at that point can impact how deeply that energy is going to make it into that donut that we've been talking about. But the really important one is Discover, and that's a joint NASA's NOA mission. It's located out at L1. So there's a couple of Lagrange points. There are points of balance, really great place to put a spacecraft because it's the point of balance of gravity between the sun and the earth. L1 is where discovery is. It's between the earth and the sun. And we've also got the James Webb Space Telescope is one of the other points we can kind of think of these like buoys, buoys out in the ocean that are waiting for that solar wind to pass over. And until that solar wind and or CME or all those charged particles that the sun is spit out, wash over that that discover spacecraft, we really don't have a super good idea of what is about to hit us and can't really make really pinpoint predictions or descriptions of what that is made up of again, until it passes over that. So less than a day's warning is a way to look at it, too, because it's about a million miles out, which is not a whole lot when you're talking the the distance between the earth and the sun. Real quick, before I toss it to Matt, let him go. So if we can detect one on the sun, at least we see something's out there, then it has to pass the Lagrange point. And then we have the final warning. But what? How fast is the solar wind going when we have one of these CMEs? Is that I mean, it's not light speed. Obviously they vary. Yeah, it's a couple of days. I mean, what is the variance in these and the speeds of these things? The fastest ones can make it to earth in about 15 hours and the slower ones, four or five days. And that's part of of what is what's one of the components of the of the predictions, you know, based on what we're seeing during that event optically through Soho or Stereo or SDO. And Tony, you mentioned the word Eclipse. And immediately in my mind I'm thinking the next total solar eclipse next year, next April. You know, I happened to see the one in 2017. I got in the path of totality and it was absolutely incredible. It's one of those moments that I'll just never forget. It is literally one of those moments. You can't overstate it. It was truly amazing. And so I definitely want to check out the next one because I want to repeat that feeling in that moment of awe. So what can you tell us about next year's total solar eclipse? Well, I think that's a whole show right there. We should come back and talk about that because I've got some some some tips and tricks from folks that that go out to see every one of these because it is very dependent on the weather, on what kind of experience or what experience you're going to have at all. So we've got two coming up, actually, we've got one in October, and that is going to be an annular solar eclipse. It was just an annular eclipse a week or two ago that was visible down in Australia. And actually eclipses occur when the moon is just far enough away that it can't completely cover the sun. So you're left with a ring of fire around. That annular eclipse is going to run from Oregon down through Texas. And when you're thinking of will be April of 2024, that's going to run through Mexico, into Texas, go up through kind of the Ohio Valley and then out to the Canadian Maritimes. So we can have a whole long discussion about that. It is it is impossible to overstate how cool a total solar eclipse is. I totally agree with you there. And I think, yes, we're going to have to have a follow up episode as we get closer with lots of tips and tricks. Right. To take advantage of and maybe also how to deal with the traffic, because I would also mention the last one, it was incredible traffic, their early plan to stay late. That was really the only advice. So yeah, I think we have another episode as we get closer to that event. Joe, what do you have? Yeah, so it's not so much about eclipses, but I'll keep on on on the sun here. So I sort of we have an increase in solar activity and we'll continue to see that through 2025. What does that mean in terms of auroras or, you know, anything for Earth in general? We're probably going to see more auroras and farther south. Not only is there an increase in activity, the storms are getting more energetic, so they're punching further south into that donut, which makes them visible further south. So the event we saw a couple of weeks ago that was described as I forget on top of my head, I want to say it was 100 year event. You know how that works with floods. Just because it's 100 year event doesn't mean it's not going to happen for another hundred years. We're seeing these things happen more frequently. The sun runs on a 11 year cycle. It's called the solar cycle, and we see an ebb and flow of the number of CME as it's counted based on on sunspots. You know, we're seeing more sunspots than we expected for this point in the solar cycle. We're coming off of a solar minimum a couple of years ago, and it'll be a little while before we reach that solar maximum where we see the maximum number of sunspots across the surface of the sun. But, you know, like I say, it's outperforming. We're seeing more sunspots than than we expect. What that means in the big picture of things, that's for heliophysics just a whole lot smarter than me. And they are absolutely studying these things and seeing the papers come through fast and furious. It's something that's definitely worth keeping an eye on for many of the reasons that we've talked about today, the impact that space weather can have on us. Very cool. And then I think I got the last question here, so I want to circle back to what would happen if Earth didn't have this magnetic field and you were talking about Mars. And I'm wondering in regards to developing Mars, colonizing Mars, what can be done? Yeah, we don't talk about how much money it'll take, but what could be done to actually make Mars habitable in regards to not having any kind of real magnetic field? Yeah, I've seen a lot of proposals thrown out there. You know, everything from, you know, bringing the atmosphere with us to purposely creating a greenhouse effect by releasing a nuclear weapon and punching a bunch of dust up into the atmosphere. I think this is me speaking. I think the the thing that makes the most sense to me is probably going underground. It's probably using the soil itself as that tool for blocking the radiation. Now, standing here on Earth, everybody, you know, whether you're you're taking a flight to London or you're just working at home like all of us have done for the past, what seems like decade, we're getting the equivalent of a chest x ray about every 20 days. Now that's ten times more just on a normal air flight. If you ignore the space weather prediction centers warnings during one of these events and you do fly over the poles, that's 100 times. It's many, many, many times worse than that on the surface of Mars again, because of that lack of a magnetosphere. So protect the lack of an atmosphere is a problem unto itself. But that lack of a magnetosphere is something that's going to have to be addressed. There's know you just can't stay there very long without succumbing to some sort of radiation sickness. Very cool. I do not know that. I'll appreciate the info, Tony. Anything else? Anything else you wanted to share before we before we close up shop this week? So you mentioned the Space Weather Prediction Center. And I really encourage everybody to go out and take a look at that. It's it's WPC dot note, dot gov, the home page. You're going to see some of those letters that that Sean mentioned there. Your first click needs to be dashboards and the the one that is going to give you information about if you hear that there's Aurora coming, click on that Aurora dashboard and you'll see the maps that show the prediction. And it's this big green blob and it's the prediction over the next couple of hours of when Aurora might be seen. Note that red line there, the red line that is beneath that green blob that is your horizon line. You know, if you're above that red line and look to your northern horizon, you might be able to see it. Some of the other dashboards that are there that are worth looking at are the space weather enthusiasts. That's kind of got a bunch of of different readouts from some of these satellites we talked about. But click on some of the others Emergency management, aviation, electrical power, global positioning. This will give you an idea for how these things are being looked at and what the impact are to these these various areas. Now, what the electrical power dashboard is probably on the wall in that mission control and your local power company that I mentioned earlier. So it's a great resource. There's some media and resources. There's some videos that Noah has created that talk more about this and educate more about the different components of space weather. Tony, thanks so much, man. We're working people find you on on social media. And to learn more about about the stuff you do so I'm RTP. Hokie okay. Eii well, proud Virginia Tech alum where we're at very well. So I'm RTP hockey on Twitter. And you can also reach out to me through JPL, through the Solar System Ambassadors website there. And if there's any broadcast meteorologist listening, I love to get in touch with you guys and visit with you and try to get some of this information out so that you can spread it out to your communities as well. It is always good to to let people know what's up in the sky. That's kind of our mantra here as well. Tony, thanks so much for joining us. We are absolutely going to have you back in front of the 2020 for solar eclipse because I'm going to go see it. I just don't know where. Yes, Texas. That's what I'm thinking, because I don't want to be in a place that's going to be climate illogically cloudy. So that. Yes, sir, for sure. I thought we all said we were staying at Matt's mom's house in San Antonio. Yes. And we agree on that. Yeah. I might have to make a trip back home. We might have to clear out some extra space and make room for a few other people. Are we going to let Tony go? We'll be back with a few more closing thoughts on our Cisco podcast. Looking beyond the atmosphere, here's Tony Rice with your astronomy outlook. No Space Weather Prediction Center forecasted another moderate geomagnetic storm this past Sunday evening. You might have noticed that these tend to be coming a little more often, prompting to wonder what's going on. You know, it's a very natural upswing that we see every solar cycle. A solar cycle is an 11 year ebb and flow of activity on the sun. It's measured by a count of sunspots. Sunspots are cool spots on the sun's surface that all that energy coming out of the core must root around. And this creates some stress on the magnetic fields, causing filaments and prominences many times longer than the Earth is wide to either fall back onto the solar surface and be reabsorbed or sometimes break, causing coronal mass ejections or CMEs. The last solar minimum was in late 2020 when nary a sunspot was visible, ending solar cycle 24 and beginning the current solar cycle of 25. It's not a puff of white smoke that announces the next solar cycle, but a flip of the sun's magnetic fields. The sun's north and south poles switch. Over the next five years or so, activity increases until solar maximum is reached. Along the way, you'll see more coronal mass ejections, solar flares and all that other space weather that the WPC keeps an eye on. Though most of the spacecraft and methodologies used to drive those forecasts are relatively new. The technology to monitor those sunspots has been around a long time. And when you look across the 400 years of records that are available, there are cycles that appear within those cycles. Solar maximums have tended to get more maximum for a couple of solar cycles and then less so for a few more solar cycles. Interestingly, they also tend to vacillate between big solar maximums and then smaller solar maximums. Keep in mind that these are separated by 11 years. The patterns.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it's been tough sledding for US regional banks… and investors worry that First Republic could be the next to fall. Like a university student with a full course load, Hydro-Québec has taken on too much and is running low on energy… literally. Is commercial real estate the next domino to fall in our creaking global economy? A growing number of signs point to very possibly. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO

"Read the Manual" and the ransomware-as-a-service market. Bitter APT may be targeting Asia-Pacific energy companies. A Cozy Bear sighting. Hacktivist auxiliaries hit Canadian targets. Deepen Desai of Zscaler describes job scams following tech layoffs. Our guest is Kelly Shortridge from Fastly with insights on the risks from bots. And there's been an arrest in the Discord Papers case. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news briefing: https://thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/12/72 Selected reading. Read The Manual Locker: A Private RaaS Provider (Trellix) Phishing Campaign Targets Chinese Nuclear Energy Industry (Intezer) Espionage campaign linked to Russian intelligence services (Baza wiedzy) Russian cyberspies hit NATO and EU organizations with new malware toolset (CSO Online) Pro-Russia hackers say they were behind Hydro-Quebec cyberattack (Montreal CTV News - 04-13-2023) Cyberattack knocks out website and mobile app for Quebec's hydro utility (Toronto Star) F.B.I. Arrests National Guardsman in Leak of Classified Document (New York Times) DOD Calls Document Leak 'a Criminal Act' (U.S. Department of Defense)

Today's podcast: The housing crisis – why Canadians are considering co-op housing as rent prices continue to rise. Guest: Tim Ross, executive director of the Co-op housing federation of Canada. Tax Deadline is fast approaching, but some developments are happening at the same time. This past Friday, workers at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) voted in favour of a strike ahead of mediation that takes place later this month. The union wants a pay increase, more flexibility on remote-work, and improved job security and work/life balance. If this happens, it could have a big effect on a lot of things such as your tax refund. Guest: Kelsey Campbell. Network Executive Producer, CKNW. About 100,000 customers in Quebec are without power as Hydro Quebec works on its damaged energy grid after last weeks deadly ice storm. So far this storm is linked to 3 deaths and has left Southern Quebec and Eastern Ontario under a coat of ice. To get a look on the ground, Martin's daughter Ruby (who lives in Quebec) joins us today. Ruby Strong. Roy Ratnavel's memoir about how he fled torture and imprisonment in Sri Lanka, arrived in Canada all alone at the age of eighteen with $50 in his pocket, and rose from the mailroom to the executive suite of the country's largest independent asset management company. - book is released on April 18th. Roy Ratnavel. Author “Prisoner #1056”. Executive VP, CI Financial. --------------------------------------------- Host – Martin Strong Executive Producer – Kelsey Campbell Content Producer – Demi Knight Technical Producer – Phil Figueiredo Podcast Producer – Tom McKay If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Roy Green Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/roygreen/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 100,000 customers in Quebec are without power as Hydro Quebec works on its damaged energy grid after last weeks deadly ice storm. So far this storm is linked to 3 deaths and has left Southern Quebec and Eastern Ontario under a coat of ice. To get a look on the ground, Martin's daughter Ruby (who lives in Quebec) joins us today. Ruby Strong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elias Makos returns with Paul Gott, Lead singer and guitarist for Montreal Punk Rock band the Ripcordz and a journalism professor at Concordia and David Heurtel, Former Quebec liberal cabinet minister, Council at Fasken and political analyst.  Quebec's 2023 ice storm. Legault pleads for patience, Montreal opens shelters. Several communities have opened warming centres. Montreal promises emergency overnight shelters Should we consider having underground power cables? Quebec cabinet names new SAAQ president and Hydro-Québec interim CEO

Join me today for Episode 661 of Bitcoin And . . . Topics for today: - Binance whoopsied - Bitcoin ATM consolidation - Hunting Sats contest - Uniswap ditching etherium for BNB Chain - CEO of Hydro-Quebec leaves post #Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd $BTC You can find me at My Tippin.me page: tippin.me/@GhostOfNunya Instagram: Bitcoin_And Mastodon: @NunyaBidness@bitcoinhackers.org Facebook: @bitcoinAnd Music by: Flutey Funk Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Troilus Gold Corporation is a Canadian copper and gold development company focused on the advancement of the Troilus Gold Mine located northeast of the Val-d'Or district in Northern Quebec. The Troilus project has access to infrastructure which includes a network of maintained roads, a substation and tension power lines maintained by Hydro-Quebec. The project also has a permitted tailings facility as well as an operating water treatment plant. 

Electric truck stops will need as much power as a small town. Heat pumps mandatory in new homes in Washington State. Indoor hydroponic wheat produces 6 crops per year on the same land. LaGuardia Airport will host a pilot project that uses a flywheel to speed up EV charging. SpaceX buys ads on Twitter. Could Tesla be next? Battery espionage in Canada by China.  Tesla proposes a North American charging standard. Should ICE trucks pay highway tolls? New study could show how batteries can have 20% more life cycles (and therefore lower prices). Half the world's fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036. The price of hydrogen at the pump in California has risen 33%. We compare gas and electric alternatives. Tony Seba has our Tweet of the Week: Percision fermentation land area to replace all the cows. Thanks for listening to our show! Consider rating The Clean Energy Show on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Follow us on TikTok! @cleanenergypod Check out our YouTube Channel! @CleanEnergyShow Follow us on Twitter! @CleanEnergyPod Your hosts: James Whittingham https://twitter.com/jewhittingham Brian Stockton: https://twitter.com/brianstockton Email us at cleanenergyshow@gmail.com Leave us an online voicemail at http://speakpipe.com/cleanenergyshow Transcript Hello, and welcome to Episode 139 of the Clean Energy Show. I'm Brian Stockton. I'm James Whittingham. This week, an indoor wheat experiment is a big success. A new crop is harvested six times a year. Wish my hair did that. Heat pumps are now mandatory in new homes in Washington state. Also mandatory cheering for the Seattle Kraken electric truck stops will need more power than a small town. What about the same amount of meth? LaGuardia Airport will host a pilot project that uses a flywheel to speed up EV charging. This partnership makes perfect sense, because if there's one thing LaGuardia is known for, its speed. All that and more on this week's edition of The Clean Energy Show. Welcome, everyone, to what I think is the best podcast on the Internet everywhere. It's objectively true. Objectively true. I think so. Right now, this is a particular moment. And also on this week's show, Brian, we also have stuff about SpaceX. It's buying ads on Twitter because it's CEO bought Twitter. And we wonder if Tesla could be next, because Tesla has never advertised near her SpaceX. So maybe this could break ground for that. We'll see. The first case of battery espionage has been discovered in Canada. Hydrogen pump prices are going up 33% in California, half the world's fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036. So keep that in mind when investing today. How are you? I'm good. So just an update on my house. So I applied for the Greener Homes grant here in Canada to do energy upgrades to my house. All right. Hoping to put in an air source heat pump, get rid of my natural gas. And so the first step of that is the blower door test and kind of home energy evaluation. And that all happened today. So that was fun. They put the big blower in the door. They test the air tightness of the house. So they got this doorshaped mass that goes all over the door with a hole for the blower. And the blower only, right? Yeah. And it blows air in or out, I can't remember. And then they could also go around the house with the sort of infrared camera thing and with the blower on, kind of show you where the leaks are in the house. It's wintertime now. It's super cold out. Oh, well, then it will be sucking. It will be sucking it. And the air will be coming in through the window cracks and things like that. Yeah. So did they go around with a smoker? No smoker. Just this infrared thing. Maybe they use a smoker more in the summer. Okay, well, they didn't use a smoker on mine, and they didn't do that on mine. They didn't go around. So what did you find out? Not too much yet. They have to sort of crunch all the numbers because they do a volumetric assessment of the house where they calculate the interior volume of the house. So then they have to go and take the measurements that they got from the blower door, do some calculations, figure it out, and you get kind of like an Energy Star rating for your home. And we did this about ten years ago when we did some upgrades. It was a similar program. So they give you a number, I think it's out of 100 of what your energy efficiency is, and then as you make improvements, you hope to they do the blower door test again when you're all done, and you hope to increase the sort of Energy Star rating of your house. This is mostly for air ceiling, right? Yeah, and we could see that a little bit with the infrared camera. But we will hopefully do some more upgrades. It's the main thing we want to do is the air source heat pump, and we should get the grant for that kind of regardless of what the blower door result is. I told you last week there's a TV series shooting across the street from me, and they were actually outdoors shooting today, so I was worried the blower would they come knock on our door. Because you're a film, you know, the film community. Old man stalked and wanting money to shut down his blowers so we could continue our production, because people do that on the streets. They'll run their muscle cars and have to get paid off get paid off to shut it down because the film crew needs quiet. And I watched The Godfather yesterday, which I hadn't seen in many, many years. Let me guess. Blue Ray, 4k? Exactly. It's this restored version. It's quite cool. They did extensive restoration, but a lot of that movie is ADR. I sort of didn't remember that, but ADR being dialogue replacement, where a lot of the dialogue was replaced in post production. Like, a lot of it, like, way more than half, I think. Wow. So it was a low budget film, more or less, wasn't it? Yeah, I guess that would be the reason. Like, lots of location shooting and lots of extraneous noises. But yeah, that was sort of the surprise on that one for me. Did you just notice it more this time, or what? Yes, I haven't seen it in 2030 years. You were just a child then, really. I mean, you naive. You accepted everything as reality. Yes. I wish I was that. It's a fascinating if you're interested, on the Bluray, and there's these special features about how they had to restore it because the film, when it came out in 72, was just wildly more popular than anybody expected. And whenever that happens, they have to run more prints so that they have to make more prints of the film. So the original negative, even though it's only 50 years old, I ended up getting totally ruined. And the restoration that they had to do was to the point where they were going and taking outtakes they were taking outtakes and cutting them back into the film because certain shots were damaged. And with the approval of the director, you can do that kind of weird thing. Oh, wow. I don't know how I feel about that. You get used to a film that would stand out to you. It shouldn't be in any way that you notice it's like literally like just a shot of somebody walking down the hallway or okay, that's different. It's nothing important. You know, my childhood home has been destroyed. There was an explosion in Regina. That was your childhood home. No, it wasn't, but it was built next to my childhood home. And when I say childhood home, I mean I lived there for three months with great eight. My brother lived there, and I left home in grade eight and went and lived with him and found out he had a girlfriend who became his wife, who eventually became his ex wife. That building, which is a brick, three story apartment building with, I think, you know, twelve suites, and it was, has to be demolished now because the house next door blew out. Well, it was kind of like an apartment building that they were building right when I was living there, I think. And it's like a four suite housing, but nobody was living there. The whole thing blew up, rain off the ground, boom. And the only person who was injured was somebody who didn't live there, who lived somewhere. That window broke. But this is a story. Kids at Natural Gas caused this explosion with solar and wind have never caused an explosion. You know, I had my first clean energy show dream the other night, and it was a paraphrase in the first one. Brian, I was in the backseat of your Tesla. You got out and I was concerned. Did he hit the brake? You got in front of the car and the car ran over you. And I think I was watching Breaking Bad because I'm just now watching Breaking Bad, and there was a scene of a car running over somebody. So the same crunch for Breaking Bad was there, and I didn't think it went well for you. There's another part of the dream. For some reason, I was in this giant mansion with all kinds of celebrities around people, and I was ready to record my end of the podcast. And we couldn't find you. It was just not to be found. Like I said earlier, SpaceX, as a guest, has bought a package to advertise its Starlink Internet service on Twitter. Now, SpaceX has never advertised before. Starlink has never advertised before. Tesla famously does not advertise because its CEO has always said that the car sells itself. Until this point, it continues to do so. But I wonder, Brian, I wonder if either to prop up the company he bought, or could this be the first time that Tesla actually buys advertising on Twitter? Could that happen one of these days. Well, the explanation I heard was that he wanted to test the efficacy of advertising on Twitter. So they also bought ads on, like, Facebook and Instagram at the same time to kind of see how the Twitter kind of advertising scheme works. But it is a sort of demand lever that Tesla could employ. They still have a big backlog of orders, so demand is super strong. But if demand ever starts to slip, once they start producing more and more vehicles, they could start advertising to if the demand ever does start to slip, I guess the first thing they would probably do is lower prices because they've been raising prices because the demand has been too high. The first thing they would do is back off in those price increases and maybe go even a bit further if they had to. I imagine they're going to I mean, they've got three factories around the world which are going to hit their stride pretty soon, right? Or is it more than 03:00 a.m. I counting wrong, I guess technically four, if you count three months. Yeah. And there was an Arranium, what people think is an Iranians report that Tesla was going to sell the Chinese made cars in the United States. Some of them. I've long predicted that ever since I saw what's his name? Sandy Monroe. Sandy Monroe live his channel. Yeah, he said that from what he understood and he has expertise in Chinese manufacturing and has consulted with automakers over there that 20% less is what the Tesla can make in China. Like, they'll save 20% on the price of the car. And it turns out that the Chinese manufacturing is really good because they're bringing the Chinese manufacturing people over to the States to say, why can't we be as productive as you? Did you ever see that documentary called what was it called? I don't know. It was a factory. It was produced by Obama, and it was about Chinese companies that decided to take advantage of tax breaks in Ohio or somewhere to bring back an automotive factory or a factory that was in an automotive town in, I don't want to say Ohio, somewhere like that. And they just could not get the productivity. They couldn't understand it, but they couldn't no matter what they did, they finally threw in the towel, I think, and went home, and they visited the factory in China and man, what a different culture. What a different work culture. Everything is like calisthenics and unanimity and one team. I don't like that. I wouldn't want to work there. But as a manufacturer, it seems like quite an advantage, and it seems to be effective. Yeah. Well, the Tesla Shanghai factory is now operating at a run rate of about a million vehicles a year, so it is likely the largest car factory in the world. And they've gotten there in pretty short time. It's only been a couple of years that they've been producing cars. And it's true that demand in China is down a little bit, and they did cut the prices in Japan a little bit, or sorry, in China a little bit too, because the demand is slipping. But yeah, and they export those cars currently to Europe, but the Germany factory is going to start filling those orders. So those Chinese cars, if there's too many of them for the Chinese market, will have to go somewhere. I don't think it would be North America, because the Texas factory will start filling that in, but more cars to go to Australia or Japan or wherever. But on the other hand, Brian, you've got the Cyber truck coming and the Tesla semi. So maybe you could take one of those lines and start spitting out Model YS or something from China. Or maybe you make the X and the S, which are lower volume. It's more likely, like the next model that's coming, like they'll eventually be a lower cost model. So I assume they're planning for that in China, and they could start making more variants, too, like longer range variants as well. Sure. So, from Bloomberg, a 35 year old Hydro Quebec employee who worked on battery materials research has been charged with espionage for allegedly obtaining trade secrets for China. Well, he's in Kandiac, Quebec. He has a Chinese sounding name. So I don't know if he was originally from China or if he's an immigrant worker or what his nationality is for sure, but he was arrested following an investigation that they get in August. I'm concerned about the Chinese government. They have no shame when it comes to these things. There's some car companies in China accused of duplicating Tesla's, blatantly copying them, and a lot, even down to the software, this is the first time this happened. But it seems like they'll do anything to be competitive. And as we've mentioned before so Hydro Quebec, that's the electricity utility in Quebec, the provincially owned utility, but they've done a lot of research into batteries and battery materials, and they own a lot of patents in that. So I guess whatever they own there at Hydro Quebec was valuable enough to be espionaged. And it's a highly competitive batteries are highly competitive. But if they have, who knows what hasn't been caught? Because it seems like there's been more and more instances of this. And of course there's computer espionage and all that sort of thing. That's a concern for all countries, it seems like you have to put a lot of money into that. What do you think? This is why I asked, Brian. What do you think about things that I don't know what to think about? So, Brian Tesla has proposed a North American charging standard. Now, those of you who are new to the game, there is basically two charging ports in North America, CCS and Tesla. Tesla has its own charging network, which is the largest and most consistent, but it's got a different connector, so that's a problem. But it's amazing how great that connector is, right? Because it's small. If you compare it side by side to what everybody else is using for all the other cars, my car included, it's like half the size, but it's basically when you charge your car, you can do DC Direct, fast current fast charging at public charging stations, or you can AC charge at home. But what I didn't realize until today is they only have two pins on there that does both. So that's why it's lighter and smaller. They've figured out a way to do both now and the connector, it's more like a quarter the size of the CCS connector. So I think it'd be a fantastic idea. It's definitely the better standard of the two. So if North America were to standardize on the Tesla charging socket, I think that would be fantastic. Question is it might be a bit too late. Like Tesla could have maybe released this a couple of years ago, a couple of years ago, five years ago. A better chance at this. Yeah. So disappointing. Too little, too late, because it's probably not going to happen now. Probably not. But what Tesla said in their press release was that some of the, they've been talking already to the companies that make the charging networks, the chargers for the third party networks that normally are CCS. And it sounds like they have some plans already to incorporate the Tesla connector onto those. So, I don't know, there is some hope, but it's probably too late. And CCS will likely be two standards in North America, CCS and Tesla. Part of this is the federal government in the United States is giving a lot of money to expand the charging networks. But when you do that, you have to have more than one charging standard, more than one car company that uses it. So if just one car company, any car company that sells maybe ten cars a year adopted Tesla's in the clear, they don't have to make the GCs ones, and they could get all the government subsidies for just making their charges that they already make. Now the government could go and tweak that fine print. Okay, so here's another one for you. This is a clean technical op ed. It says Tolling the highway to green trucking. Should tolls be implemented on combustion semi trailers once EVs are on the road. Do you think that would be an effective way to do it? Well, I don't think you'll have to. It's kind of like the cost of running a combustion truck will already be more expensive, so there's already a kind of a penalty just for using one. So an extra toll probably not needed. I mean, what's needed is faster production of the electric trucks and get those on the road. That's the thing. This is assuming price parity, that the cost of ownership is going to be the same, right? Well, charging lithium ion cells at different rates boost the lifetime of battery packs for electric vehicles. So says yet another Stanford study. We have so many Stanford studies on the show. According to the study, batteries managed with this new technology could handle at least 20% more charge discharge cycles, even with frequent fast charging, which puts an extra strain on the battery. So basically they're saying don't charge each of the individual cells at the same rate all the time. And that actually gives you 20% longer life. And 20% longer life if you're talking about a fleet of cars of a million cars and a robotxis, or storage for the electrical grid that lasts twelve years instead of ten, the costs on those greatly changes with doing this basically a software tweak. So that seems quite to me, it seems like it's got a lot of potential if it works, yes. That's exciting. There's a lot that can be done with software. It isn't just the hardware components of a battery or the chemistry's, or the chemistry is where you can improve the life. Yeah, the software can have a big benefit. So Ford is officially the number two electric vehicle seller in the United States. And if you extrapolate out the twelve months of a year, based on what they had in October, ford would achieve 75,000 EV sales. Which is what's, Tesla right now? Close to a million. Close to a million. So that's not much, but that's what your number two is. A lot of people wouldn't have picked for it to be number two right now. They would have took GM or more likely Volkswagen. And that points back to our previous conversations about the connectors. Standardizing on the Tesla connector has a fighting chance just because Tesla vehicles are so ubiquitous in North America in terms of EVs. Another thing I wanted to talk about is electric truck stops will need as much power as a small town. So as Tesla rose out, it's semi next month, hopefully, I think December 1 is when they're having the release. Are you looking forward to that one? Yeah. Do you think something special could roll out of the back of that truck? I hadn't thought of that. The tesla ebike. The robotic musk. I don't know. I do. Social media platform and we'll roll out the back of the truck. Yeah. So it's adding pressure on the truck industry to go green. But the grid upgrades must start now if the new era is to last. This is from Bloomberg, and sometimes these stories make me wonder if that is all accurate. But a sweeping new study. This is another study of highway charging requirements conducted by utility company National Grid Plc. Researchers found that by 2030 electrifying, a typical highway gas station will require as much power as a professional sports stadium. And I would think sports stadiums use less now with all the Led lighting, but it's probably better. But I know our city built a new football stadium a few years ago, and I don't know if you noticed, but they're all kinds of electrical transformer boxes outside the stadium. They hid them in the park. There's a park next to the stadium and they had to try and hide all of these electrical transformer boxes. And there's a lot of them. And the power used to go out on the old stadium we had here. This is a stadium we have for the Canadian Football League, by the way. Okay, so this is just for electrified passenger vehicles. As more electric trucks hit the road, the projected power needs for a big truck stop by 2035 will equal that of a small town. And they think that lots of wiring will have to be done. Nobody really knows how this is going to play out with trucks. Like, is there going to be specialized newly built truck stops? Because truck stops are a thing. You have a shower, you park the truck for a while. It's a truck resting stop as well. So I don't know. How do you think that will play out, if you had to guess? Well, there's usually a decent amount of space at existing truck stops, so I assume there's enough room at the existing truck stops to kind of transform them and have both fuel and electric. Hopefully they have started working on that already. Now, just to tag onto that, I want to skip ahead to the story about LaGuardia Airport. Sure. Because I think it sort of makes me think of the same issue. So there's a story here from Electrac about zoo's power that's got this machine with a flywheel. And this is being installed at LaGuardia Airport to facilitate fast charging of cars, rental cars particularly. And yeah, I bring it up because the reason this machine exists is that the power available in certain locations can be limited. Right. Like if these truck stops are going to need all the power of a small town, well, you don't necessarily have the grid infrastructure where you need it. I don't think this does an enormous amount. Like, it's not going to triple or quadruple the amount of power available. But the idea behind this zoos flywheel machine is that it literally uses flywheels. And we talked about this before. Some power plants use flywheels as well. It's literally just the momentum of a spinning wheel to help kind of even the power output of your hydroelectric dam or whatever. Anyway, so I guess the idea being that you take a limited amount of power that might be available in a parking lot at an airport, and then you use this flywheel machine. And some by spinning up the flywheels, you can increase the amount of power available. It's sort of similar to having batteries on site. I would think that's going to be the more normal solution. Like at these truck stops, would be to put a big battery pack, a grid storage battery pack at a truck stop. But this is a kind of a smaller and cheaper way to add just a bit more power to what's available for your fast chargers. So with hertz ordering a couple of hundred thousand electric vehicles from Tesla and GM, I wonder how the infrastructure at airports is going to go. I mean, nobody is panicking about that, but I mean that's going to have to be built up presumably, and larger airports will have a lot of cars sitting there with batteries. You would have the chance in the low demand because most flights happen 06:00 a.m. To midnight or whatever. You could have 6 hours to when people aren't taking those cars, maybe to charge off the batteries for the next day. And that would yeah, I can see that being an important thing unless they have some off site, like just off the airport type of parking spaces for charging. Yeah, and like our parking spaces here in Canada at our airports, a lot of them are probably already electrified where we live because it's super cold in the winter and so you have plugins for block heaters. So at least there's power running to these parking lots. Whereas of course, in many places there would be no power running there at all. Half the world's fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 in a net zero transition. So says an article in the Guardian that I read. $11 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Asset Crash could Cause a 2008 financial crisis, warrants a new study. I don't care. Yeah, that's my hot. Take it. Yeah. It's something I really wonder about and think about. Like, obviously these assets are going to become stranded and worthless at some point or at least the value start crashing at some point. But what point does that start to happen? Is it two years from now? Is it six years from now? Is it 20 years from now? It's hard to say, but I wouldn't want to be holding a lot of fossil fuel investments longer than the next couple of years, that's for sure. I think the big question is when will EVs really take off where there's not a battery constraint? And it sure seems like it's going to be within five years. It could be two years, it could be five years, but somewhere in that period I think it's really going to grab momentum. Yeah, but also too, like, as we've discussed, like last week and other weeks, there's not a lot of new money being spent on new oil exploration because they can kind of foresee, okay, there's not really going to be the demand. It's not worth it to spend this money building. So that does mean that the supply of oil will be kind of naturally constrained if the system doesn't expand. So it could be that as the oil industry shrinks, the production shrinks and if the production shrinks enough, then the price stays up. So countries that are slow to decarbonise will suffer, but early movers will profit. This is something we say on the show all the time. You have to move now. And our jurisdiction is not great where we live. We live in fossil fuel country with a mentality thereof and our country as a whole starting to make some moves. But we're basically a fossil fuel country in Canada and even the United States to some extent. But it finds that renewables that are freed up investment will more than make up for the losses of the global economy. You're freeing up a whole lack of investment that was going into fossil fuels that can go into other things and expand the economy that way. And just the renewables themselves will save money, of course. So it highlights the risk of producing far more oil and gas than required for future demand, which is estimated to leave 11 trillion to 14 trillion in stranded assets, which is a lot of stranded assets. Brian. Also, as we always say, we predict that governments are going to have to, and therefore you and I are going to have to pay for the clean up of some of these wells as well. So the most vulnerable assets are those in remote regions are technically challenging environments. Most exposed are Canadian tar sands in northern Alberta, us shale and the Russian Arctic, followed by deep offshore wells in Brazil and elsewhere. And North Sea oil is also relatively expensive to extract and it's going to be hit when demand falls. I'm worried about this because it could affect us as being an oil part of the world, it says. In contrast, current oil, gas and coal importers such as the EU, japan, India and South Korea will reap hefty economic dividends from the transition because they will be able to use the money they save on spending those places, spending gobs of money. We get our gas cheap here in North America, but they're spending gobs of money on fuel purchases and they'll be able to use that money to invest in their own economies. The lead author of the report said in the worst case scenario, people will keep investing in fossil fuels until suddenly the man they expected does not materialize and they realize that what they own is worthless. And we could see a financial crisis on the scale of 2008. Houston Detroit could have the same phase detroit did in the car industry collapsed earlier in this century. So yeah, it's got to be carefully managed. If you don't accept that all this is going to happen like people around here, yeah, it's going to be a problem. That's what I have to say about that. Yeah. And when your oil is expensive to extract like it is in the Alberta oil sands, that stuff will be the first to go because you won't be able to sell it at. A profit. So you've got another heat pump story. Heat pumps are the item of the year. I say yes, absolutely. No, it's amazing how even when this podcast started a couple of years ago, it was barely in our vernacular. It was barely in the vernacular. Yes. And now it's everywhere. So yes, electric is reporting heat pumps are now mandatory in Washington State for new homes and apartments as well from July 2023 onward. But the thing that I think is interesting about this, and it's not really mentioned in the story, we talked about the incredible heatwave that happened last summer on the west coast of North America. So Seattle area, Vancouver area, they're just an unprecedented heatwave because of climate change. And so many of those homes and places and businesses and apartments are not cooled. So this is the other benefit of this. So not only do you start heating your homes with electricity, but you also in Washington State now are adding essentially mandatory air conditioning, which, especially if it's low income apartments or something, would be a godsend for people who are hopefully won't. I mean, there was literally thousands of people died from the heat stroke on the west coast last summer. Well, that's an interesting take in a region that doesn't have air conditioning. And yet with climate change, we can see this happening a lot more often and now they'll be prepared. That's an interesting aspect of the story and I have to wonder if it was even part of the planning. No, I'm not sure. I mean, it depends on when they started talking about this. But one of the great benefits is of a heat pump heating and cooling. You get both in the same machine. So why just put in an air conditioner when you can put in an air conditioner that also runs in reverse and can heat your home as well? And for people who are new to the podcast or this type of thing, heat pumps are reverse air conditioners, essentially that transfer heat from one place to another, like inside the house to outside. And air conditioning or outside, even if there's a little bit of energy in that area, it takes it out. And the idea is to use electricity, which instead of natural gas, right, if you're heating, you want to use electricity and this is the most efficient way to do it. Yes, and in a place like Washington State, a lot of homes are already heated with electricity. Like it's not a frigid cold place like here. So there are more like 99% of homes where we live are heated by natural gas because it's so ridiculously cold. But in a milder climate, you might have electric baseboards in a lot of homes. So it is something like 50% already are heated with electricity in Washington state and this will eventually get it up to 100%. Yeah, that's very interesting. And a very interesting side effect of going green using solar and wind and so forth for your heating, that you will actually probably save lives from a government policy in future heatwaves. Who knows when those heat waves will come, but they're going to come more often, those once in a century type heat waves, or once in a thousand years or 500 years, whatever it was. I want to talk about indoor wheat because we live in a heart of wheat country. You can't swing a cat with a wheat chief. It's on symbols for everything. Where we live, we're the breadbasket of Canada. And what was the name of your first feature film? I made a film called Wheat Soup. There you go. It had to be in the title. It had to be. So this is interesting to us because you know how there's hydroponics like indoor gardening, which I'm fascinated with. They do it in containers, they do it in buildings where they're basically using fertilized water and no soil to grow tomatoes or whatever in greenhouse like conditions. And I find that very interesting, especially when they can do it up north. And by the way, I saw another article in Blueberg about the Yukon. The climate changing, and the people are up there growing potatoes and things that they never used to grow before, and wheat as well, which required a lot of cabbage. And things like that require a lot of sunlight when they have 20 hours sunlight days in June. But, you know, it costs a lot to transport fresh food up there. So it's very expensive and very not fresh. Carrots is another thing that they're growing a lot of potatoes and carrots. So that's great. It's great in one sense because there's an advantage to them. But in this case, indoor wheat. Amsterdam based startup In Farm grew wheat without using soil or chemical pesticides, which is nice, and with far less water than conventional farming, which is also nice. So the first indoor farming company to grow a stable staple crop in a milestone for an Asian industry that has attracted venture capital funding on its promise that its technology can help feed the planet if delivered at scale. Growing a staple crop indoors has the potential to become a game changer. Supplies have increasingly been challenged by climate change and logistical issues. So you could grow well, you could grow wheat in Antarctica if you wanted to, right? If you got this technology down. And Infarm says that its first trial shows that projected annual wheat yields of 117 tons a hectare, okay? Now, that compares to the average 2022 yields of 5.6. So let me give you that again. Indoors, 117 tons hectare annually. Outdoors, 5.6. And in the European Union, it's 3.1. So that's in the European Union, it's actually less than the United States, which surprises me. It's only 3.1. Now, part of that reason of the higher yields is they have six crops a year. Okay? But if you times 3.1 times six, you still don't get 117 tons. So it's just a lot more dense and efficient to do it that way. I mean, it's not easy. We're probably decades away from this being a regular thing and getting the efficiencies and the cost down maybe a couple of decades, it's hard to tell. But, you know, it depends on what the need is, too. But this is interesting. It's going to be perfect, right? You don't spread pesticides on it. You're not going to have to worry about weeds. It's just going to be pure indoor stuff and locally delivered. No. And the more things, of course, you can do locally, then the more transportation that you can eliminate. You know, so many things now that, you know, our produce at the grocery stores just shipped in from incredible distances here. But if all that stuff could be grown locally, it would just be so much more efficient and just kind of save all that energy. I mean, theoretically, you could, in the middle of a desert in Africa, start up an operation like this and make flour or make proteins for food. Basically, you would need water, but you wouldn't need as much of it. So if you could use solar to desalinate water, you could put it anywhere. You could put it in there because we transport all of our grain by ship, which goes by train from the center of the continent out to the coasts and then onto ships. I don't think that this is going to completely replace green farming, but it could augment it. Maybe 100 years from now, it could replace it, but in the near term, this is basically saying that it could just fit in, reduce the challenges of supply, and in certain situations, a lot of land will be required to produce this. Wheat cultivation takes more than 216,000,000 land, more than any other crop. So, yeah, wheat takes a lot of land, which we have a lot of land here. A lot of land. Most of our province is filled with wheat fields. It's kind of insane. So, yeah, they would require very large indoor farms exceeding the area of all the wheat in France, I think. But they said it could potentially increase its yield by another 50% in the coming years, thanks to better technology. So it could even be 200 times or 200 tons instead of three tons. So that's interesting. Yeah. Once they learn what they're doing and tweak it and software can play a part, perhaps. Yeah, it could be amazing. Okay, so starting here from Hydrogen Insight, and this is about hydrogen pump prices in California. So this was something I just had never thought about before now. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do exist. James, take a guess. How many hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do you think there are in California, which is currently one of the main markets for them? 410. There's $10,000. Okay. Which is not bad. It's kind of more than I expected. And there's a series of hydra. They're not all the Toyota Mariah. What are these vehicles? There's a Toyota Mirai there's a Hyundai. That's really nice. I forget the name of it, but there's a big Hyundai SUV. That's a hydrogen vehicle. They've sold a few of those for sure. Okay. But yeah. So there's hydrogen fueling stations in California, not in too many other places. But I just was interested in this because, yes, recently they had to hike up the price at the pump of these hydrogen, up 33% in California. This is a fairly big price jump. So just in terms of the price per mile, I thought this was really interesting. So right now is basically what it costs you to drive a hydrogen vehicle in California, roughly in a gasoline vehicle down to California has the most expensive gasoline in North America. Yeah, well, no, it's probably more expensive here in Canada. Is it? Because I went there, it was pretty damn expensive. That was a few years ago. So $0.22 for gas per mile and for hydrogen. Plus, you spend a whole bunch more money on your hydrogen car than you do a gas car. It's a serious technology. And then if you're driving an EV and you charge it off the grid, you're down to if you have to use a fast charger like a Tesla Supercharger, then you're up to but that's compared to for driving a hydrogen car. So I just wasn't totally clear on that until now. The actual cost of driving a hydrogen vehicle is more than gas, way more than electricity. Now, theoretically, if we were to SuperBuild out the hydrogen infrastructure and kind of get that all pumping again, locality is a key to that. Like, if each city had its own hydrogen plant or whatever, you had even smaller ones at the filling stations, making the hydrogen there, that would reduce costs a lot. But for right now, it's super expensive to fill up with hydrogen. And I don't see that coming down anytime soon. And the days of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is probably numbered. If we had no other option, we would be going full steam ahead with hydrogen and trying to get that that still take a while, but we would be trying to get green hydrogen, and then we'll be trying to get that green hydrogen price down so that it would be cost effective. But since we have an alternative to that called battery electric vehicles, electricity is also expensive in California. So if you compare it to other places, it would be even a larger variation there. And as we said, so obviously the electricity for charging your electric car comes from the grid. And there are certain shortfalls at places, perhaps like truck stops that don't have enough grid infrastructure. So it's far from perfect. But any electrical outlet anywhere in the world can charge an electric vehicle. So that's just an insane advantage over these very rare hydrogen stations. Yeah, they're expensive. And transportation and processing of hydrogen is also an issue. So Amazon is getting heat. We get heat for not talking about ebikes sometimes. Well, Amazon is getting heat for selling kits to override speed limits of ebikes. Now, this is mostly happening in Europe, right? Because there's more restrictions in Europe. Europe has strict electric bike laws that limit electric bicycles to a sluggish 25 km an hour or 15.5 mph. Even an old man like me can go well, I can't go 25, actually. It takes the work to go 25. Yeah, that is kind of cool. But solutions range from an electromagnetic modifications or chipping, quote unquote, that can remove digital speed limits. So people do that with cars sometimes, to hardware hacks to trick the bike speed sensors into thinking it's going slower than it truly is. And I haven't been able to find out exactly how that works. So I'm kind of curious. Yeah, I thought maybe you had done that on your bike where it's like you change the setting and it messes up the speedometer, so it ends up sending you faster than it's what you do is you change the wheel size on your bike. Didn't work for mine. It was supposed to, but my bike manufacturer has been kind of savvy to all the tricks, so by the time I get to them, they've figured it out and have eliminated that. But yeah, if you have like a 29 inch wheel and then you tell that it's a kid's wheel of half that size, then it thinks that one rotation is actually going a shorter distance and yes, and then you won't have a proper speed. And I have that FETO electric folding bike and I looked on the Internet and apparently there is a hack that you can do by pressing a certain combination of buttons on the little kind of remote screen there where you can hack it to go faster. But I haven't tried it. And with mine it was a code. It was like an eight digit code that you could type in at a certain place. And that one also did not work. I was curious, but I think the longevity of James is more important than the thrill of maybe trying out a 50 kilometer an hour. That's probably all my bike could do if it really wanted to. It would take a while to get there too. The important thing to remember in all this is you probably don't need your bike to go any faster. No, but what does my bike do? My bike does 32 instead of 25. So that's the next level. I think that's about what mine does. And that's pretty fast. And like I've said before in the show, I get kind of uncomfortable at that speed, and yet some other bastard on an ebike passes me and I think, I wish I had more speed. I start pedaling, which you can do. Apparently you can pedal and use the Ebike part. Well, anyway, I guess Ebike hot rodding as it's called, is much less common in the United States, where E bikes are permitted to go up to 45 km an hour. That's the United States. You can have guns and fast Ebikes or whatever you want. Tanks, cruise missiles, no. And modifying your car. Take out the pollution controls, although they have been cracking down on that lately. Oh, it's time for the Tweet of the week. This is where we pick a Tweet. And this last week was for Tony Siba. It's going to be for Tony Siba again. Okay, I'm sorry. Tony Siba is kind of one of our main people that we follow on the show here. Now, this was a person who was responding to how 5 million, what Tony calls precision fermentation. This is the future of food. He believes that will be disruptive based on price. This is one of the ways that is like beyond meat, that's one aspect. And then there's cellular meat, which will actually resemble steak and the texture of steak in the future, maybe ten years from now, that will be viable financially. But dairy is the first one that's going to be disrupted because glass of milk is 90% water and 3% of that is protein from the milk. So that's really all you're dealing with is that protein because the rest is fat and sugars, which you can get from other places. It doesn't have to be from a cow. So as they make these things in like brewery like buildings and disrupt milk. He says there are 5 million dairy cows in New Zealand. And so that would require 100 precision fermentation factories to replace all the cows. Less if they're bigger, which they will be. So it's just a matter of time and probably less time than most people expect. And Tony. Steve assisted that tweet. Correct. The total land needed to replace all the cows in New Zealand, 5 million of them, which is more than Canada, by the way. I believe we only have a million cows in Canada. I haven't counted lately, but I'm told that it's around a million. The total land needed would be around 1700 acres. But you compare that with the Auckland airport, it's 3700 acres. So basically half the Auckland airport could replace all the dairy cows the land wise. And then you have all that land. You can put solar on and do other things. This is a huge disruption of the world. Yes. If you think of a cow as basically a type of food technology, well, it can be delicious. It's the least efficient food technology. In fact, I think Tony said that the cow in particular is the least efficient of all of the kind of animal food technologies. So we get a lot of things from a cow, but the resources and the land and everything needed to get that is kind of insane and is ripe for disruption. So, as Tony points out, the first disruption will happen in just a few years. And he thinks that dairy will be bankrupt by 2030. And the reason is 30% of his business is business to business. So if you buy a protein shake, you're buying protein powder. Okay? And if it's cheaper to come from this fake stuff, if you can call it that, fermentation than it is from a real dairy cow, and you're greener people are just going to go, where the cheapest? If you want to buy bulk for a protein bar or a protein shake or whatever, all these things that have chocolate bars and everything and all kinds of foods that are processed will have first that will go and then 30% of dairy's gone. Yeah. No. And he mentioned, too, in his latest video, just the switch, like Coke and Pepsi switched from cane sugar to corn sugar back in the 80s. Basically, their entire product lines switching over to corn as the source for sugar. And while there is probably some taste difference, they was definitely not enough taste difference to stop what they were doing, because they completely four years. Four years. They did it in just both yeah. In four years. Complete switch over. And this is the main ingredient in their products? Yes. That means it's time for the lightning round. A quick look at fast paced energy news and climate news from this past week. Growing EV dem demand helps Volkswagen reach half a million ID deliveries one year early. Brian, that is a good news story, isn't it? Yeah, we talked about that a few weeks ago. They're on track for 500,000 deliveries. That's Volkswagen this year of EVs, and that's a huge number. Volvo debuts its first electric trucks made with fossil free steel. That is steel made with green electricity, and it is also 90% recyclable. So that's cool. Yeah. So Volvo was trying to green their whole lineup of vehicles, and they're doing it partly by switching over to electric, but they're also doing it by going with fossil free steel in their cars, which increasingly more and more manufacturers are going to do. Cough 27 news, 41 signatories have joined the pledge to stop funding fossil fuels by the end of year. But problematically. Brian, four large signatories are not signing. Germany, Italy, the United States and your favorite country in the world, canada. No, I'm sorry. Damn, it just sad. Can't overuse that, can I? Okay, it's time for a CS festival. Toyota has sold 4.7 million Priuses to date. That's no easy feat. Tesla did 3 million. But total yeah, that's to date, over the last ten plus years, 4.7 million Priuses are on the road, but nobody buys them anymore. No. Did you see the stat of, like, at one time they were selling 500,000 Priuses a year and it's down to 86,000? Yeah. People who bought them initially wanted an environmentally friendly car or to save money. Best way to be environmentally friendly or to save money is to buy electric now. Or at least electric hybrid. But anyway, solar power already saved China, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. $34 billion American in potential fossil fuel costs went in the first half of this year. First half of 2022. We're just getting started. That's astonishing. Yeah. I mean, spend your money on solar and then you won't have to spend it on fossil fuels. The US will finance about a third of the $9 billion rooms romania needs to build two nuclear reactors. That's a lot of money. They're getting it from the United States, which seems like a bad investment. I thought I would mention this. Globally up 13%. Okay. That's everywhere in the world. Europe is up 35%. I wonder why. Vladimir, the US is up 15% and China 13%. So this heat pump thing is, whoever makes the most of the best heat pumps, put your money in them because they're going to pay back. No, and I assume that I haven't seen announcements, but I assume that there are heat pump factories being built as we speak. And I don't know, we always hear battery factory announcements and things like that. I don't hear heat pump factory announcements, but presumably it's going on. The demand is huge. Inflation Reduction Act had money for developing better heat pumps, too, so there's going to be some R and D in there. Friend of the show, Greta Thuneburg thoonberg rather. I'm kidding. She's not a friend of the show, but we're working on it slowly. Global Witness found that more than 600 people are at the talks in Egypt at Cop 27. They're linked to fossil fuels. And, Brian, that is more than the combined delegations from the ten most climate impacted countries. Barf, we're at a critical stage now where we got to say no to fossil fuels. Just say no. And we got to stop the green washer, we got to stop the BS right now. Right now. No time left. From Tennessee Valley Authority, that is one of the grids in the southern US. The three giant cooling towers at the retired paradise coal plant in Kentucky came down this morning, was a few mornings ago now as demolition efforts continued at the site. And they say we are striving for a cleaner and more efficient energy future as we are building the energy system of the future. And by God, Brian, we have a clip. Fantastic. Here's the initial charge. The towers are collapsing. They're coming down completely now. And they're gone by the doctor. Goodbye, coal plants. Three cooling towers in Kentucky, a grave risk of winter blackout speaking of nuclear, is happening in France because electricity prices have surged past $1,000 or, pardon me, €1000 per megawatt hour as more nuclear reactors, more are closing in France, as if enough hadn't closed already. What this means, Brian, is, on a cold January day, france needs around 45 gigawatts of nuclear energy, and one day last week, there was only 25 available. Yeah, and there was a lot of reactors down, or at least down partially for repairs. So the amount of electricity from nuclear in France dropped 34% year over year in October. Just less power available from nuclear, which everyone always says it's like reliable base load power. That's one of the reasons it's promoting this is not reliable here. But it's not exactly that. You know, it's the pipes, the cooling pipes that are structurally problematic and cracked, and they realize that they're all bad. So they have this, and it apparently takes a while. They've hired like, 100 contractors to go in and fix this, but it's not that easy. Finally this week, Brian japan's government wants to remotely control private air conditioners to avoid power outages. The Japan Time points out that the government committee is currently working under the concept that the government would only be able to turn down AC units if individual owners have agreed in advance to grant them that authority. This is something we've seen, or, what, the third time now on the show? Yeah. And in Ontario, they're working on this. Here in Canada where remote control california, they do it with text messages where they just tell everybody to stop using so much AC. But this works. And no one really suffers if you shave a degree or two off your air conditioning for an hour and say it's much better than a blackout where you have no air conditioning. So that's not so bad. That is our show for this week. Next week I'll be talking about the new Toyota Prius lineup that will be announced between now and then and what excitement that will be. Because I need a car badly, Brian. Mine's starting to fall apart. My FUS is getting long on the tooth. How disappointed will I be? Tune in to find out. Maybe I should sell you my car. Would you buy my Tesla? Well, the street price for that Tesla, unless there's a murder in it, is not going to be good for me. What if I gave you a really good deal? I'll take two. Why would you want to? It's not the form factor you want, I guess, but I don't care. I would take a Tesla. What would you do for a new car? Buy a why? Yeah, something like that. You think I want to start? What's interesting, what are your interest rates? How quickly do you break legs? We'll sign over. Like making a 20 year loan? Pretty much what it would have to be, I think. Anyway, everyone out there, we thank you for listening. We do appreciate you and we'd love to hear from you. So contact us with anything that's on your mind Cleanenergy show@gmail.com. We are on social media with the handle Clean Energy Pod. We're on TikTok. Check out our TikTok channel. Don't forget to check out our YouTube channel, too, because you know why not? Sometimes you might want to look at things that are shiny. And you can even leave us a voicemail where we get to hear your voice, which is always a thrill for us. Speakpipe.com cleanenergyshow. Remember, subscribe if you're new to the podcast so that you can get new episodes delivered every week. And, Brian, I look forward to next week. you.

The Bank of Canada (BoC) is on track to give “monetary tightening” a whole new meaning by losing between $5 billion and $6 billion over the next few years. As Black Friday rears its head, the world's largest retailer is showing signs that the doom and gloom facing the retail sector this year may have been (at least a little) overhyped. A former researcher who worked in its electric batteries unit at Hydro-Quebec has been accused of collecting trade secrets and passing them on to China. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Steve Kornacki Republicans Lost In States That Will Be Critical In 2024 Only 21, but on Ukraines front line to keep heroes alive Princess Anne and Prince Edward to become stand ins for King Thousands of UC workers strike at UC campuses CBS 8 San Diego Police identify 4 University of Idaho students found dead inside a home near campus homicide investigation underway Hear Pences answer when asked if Trump should be president again Ukraine Zelensky tells G20 leaders war must end now UVA shooting Three members of football team killed, suspect in custody 3 University of Virginia football players killed in shooting hundreds mourn on campus Monday night Four in critical condition after Magoffin County school bus with students on board crashes Global population hits 8 billion as growth poses more challenges for the planet US midterms Race to control House majority down to the wire Ukraine war US and Russian spy chiefs meet face to face in Turkey Donald Trump dealt another blow as election denier Kari Lake loses in Arizona Timed Teaser What did Melania Trumps former lawyer do Canada police charge Hydro Quebec employee with China espionage Ukraine Zelensky snubs Russia as he addresses G19 at G20 China zero Covid Violent protests in Guangzhou put curbs under strain G20 to focus on food security after Biden Xi meeting

This week, co-hosts Steve Paikin and John Michael McGrath discuss news that Ontario could be walking away from an energy deal with Hydro Quebec. They also expand on why a doctor-turned-Liberal-MPP calls the crisis in our hospitals "historic." Also, for our third week of municipal elections programming, Cheryll Case of CP Planning and Alex Hemingway of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discuss what city halls can do to help us afford housing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A breakdown of the U.S. Senate debate between Gerald Malloy and Rep. Peter Welch. Plus, Hydro Quebec buys 13 dams in New England, the Burlington School District plans to sue Monsanto, and a brook gets a new name.

Troilus Gold Corporation is a Canadian copper and gold development company focused on the advancement of the Troilus Gold Mine located northeast of the Val-d'Or district in Northern Quebec. The Troilus project has access to infrastructure which includes a network of maintained roads, a substation and tension power lines maintained by Hydro-Quebec. The project also has a permitted tailings facility as well as an operating water treatment plant. The junior gold environment currently faces a lack of liquidity due to the retail investment community investing less. Reid believes that the disconnect between a company readily receiving institutional investment and the lack of retail investors may be accredited to a decrease in disposable income, leading to retail investors being hesitant to invest in junior companies. Reid believes that there will be a shortage of gold stockpiles in the future, creating an opportunity for junior developers. He believes that a retail investor should look for companies that have assets in safe jurisdictions, which show size and scalability and are also well capitalised for the advancement of their projects.Troilus Gold Corporation recently announced assay results from the Southwest and Gap Zones at the Troilus project. The highlights of the assay results include high-grade gold mineralisation at the Southwest Zone of 92 g/t and 68 g/t gold over 1 m and 3.07 g/t AuEq over 15 m. The Gap Zone drilling results show mineralisation of 4.2 g/t AuEq Over 7 m, which includes a 1 m intercept of 22.81 g/t AuEq. The company is preparing to initiate an 11,000 m drilling program at the Gap Zone which will be aimed at identifying and better understanding the zone's mineralisation. 

This week, Simone examines some of the gaps in our campaign finance laws that have allowed foreign entities to spend money to influence our elections.She focuses on a recent story that took place in Maine, speaking with two state legislators who introduced bills to combat foreign interference in their state – a bigger concern than most would expect, especially considering the cause of their concern comes not from a hostile foreign government, but from one of our closest allies.Guests:Aaron McKean serves as Legal Counsel for State and Local Reform at Campaign Legal Center, working with state and local partners to develop and advocate for campaign finance reforms that lift the voices of voters and lead to a more transparent democracy. Prior to joining CLC, Aaron was a legislative attorney at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan legislative service agency, drafting legislation for members of the Wisconsin Legislature. He also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Azerbaijan from 2009 to 2011. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.Senator Richard A. Bennett a former President of the Maine Senate, has 14 years of public service in the Senate and House. He has represented western Maine since 2020 and earlier for four terms in the Maine Senate, from 1996 to 2004. From 1990 to 1994 he served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives. He has earned a reputation as a reformer and staunch advocate for fiscal discipline, balanced budgets, term limits, governmental accountability, and Maine's precious outdoors heritage. Senator Bennett is a Maine native and has family roots in Oxford County going back over two centuries.Kyle Bailey is a former state legislator and social entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience managing candidate campaigns, ballot measure campaigns, and start-up nonprofits. Kyle managed the ballot campaign that won the nation's first statewide ranked choice voting law in Maine in 2016, and the 2018 ballot measure campaign that protected the voter-approved law from legislative repeal. In 2012, he led in-state fundraising for the 2012 campaign that won the nation's first statewide ballot measure campaign for the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. Links:“Maine Misses Chance to Fight Foreign Election Interference” (Campaign Legal Center)“Maine judge quashes Hydro-Quebec power line plan for now” (Marketplace)“Mainers Again Flex Their Independence to Protect Their Vote” (The American Leader)Protect Maine ElectionsAbout CLCDemocracy Decoded is a production of Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization which advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every American's right to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic process. You can visit us on the web at campaignlegalcenter.org.

Troilus Gold Corp. is a Canada-based exploration and early-development company. The Company is focused on the mineral expansion and mine re-start of the former gold and copper Troilus mine. The Company's Troilus Mine located northeast of the Val-d'Or district of Quebec. The Troilus property has established infrastructure, including a network of maintained roads, a substation and tension power lines maintained by Hydro-Quebec, a permitted tailings facility, and operating water treatment plant. The Troilus mine produces gold and copper.