Podcasts about hydro quebec

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  

Caroline Des Rosiers is a Hydro-Quebec spokesperson. She spoke to Andrew Carter about the power outages.

Hydro-Quebec's Maxence Huard-Lefebvre provides an update on when customers should expect to have their power back following the latest snowfall. Check out the CJAD 800 Stormwatch page for continuining coverage.

Trudie Mason, John Moore, Tom Mulcair, Dr. Mitch Shulman, Tony Chapman

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. 

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

Caroline Desrosiers of Hydro-Quebec updates Andrew Carter on the power outages after a very windy night.

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.   

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, professor at HEC MTL and co-author of their 2024 Quebec energy report

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

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

With goals like net zero by 2050, Canada is a leader in the energy transition movement. But another deadline looms – decarbonization of the electricity sector by 2035. It's 82% emissions-free now, but big challenges remain. Multiple grids governed by individual provinces and territories, regional resources, politics and economics. In thinkenergy episode 105, Moe Kabbara, Vice President of The Transition Accelerator, unpacks the value of an integrated electricity grid and the Electrifying Canada initiative.   Related links   The Transition Accelerator: https://transitionaccelerator.ca/ The Transition Accelerator, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transition-accelerator/  The Transition Accelerator, Twitter: https://twitter.com/CanAccelerator   Electrifying Canada: https://transitionaccelerator.ca/electrifying-canada/  Moe Kabbara, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moekabbara/   To subscribe using Apple Podcasts To subscribe using Spotify To subscribe on Libsyn --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: YouTube Check out our cool pics on Instagram More to Learn on Facebook Keep up with the Tweets on Twitter ----------------------------   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is think energy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Meaning Canada's long term climate goals will require a profound transformation of contemporary systems in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One of these major transitions we're seeing around the world is with the energy sector. Canada is certainly at the forefront of the energy transition movement, and seen as a leader on the world stage thanks to its targets to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. But there's another much closer interim deadline looming with respect to Canada's Net Zero targets. And that's the decarbonisation of Canada's entire electricity sector by 2035. If we don't achieve that, it's very unlikely we will meet our 2050 Climate goal. In fact, many experts believe there is no pathway to net zero without zero emission electricity. Although Canada's electricity sector is currently at 2% emission free today, removing the remaining fossil fuels from our system is still an ambitious goal to achieve in under 12 years, mainly because we don't have one national electricity grid, we have multiple electricity grids overseen by their respective province, or territory. To further complicate matters, different regions in Canada have different resources. Some are water rich, while others are rich in oil and gas. And of course, there is also reasonable politics and economics at play. As we move forward in the new world of electrification, from transportation to how we heat and cool our homes and businesses, it's believed that we will need a lot more electricity than currently produced. So here's today's big question. What is it going to take to achieve the federal government's target to have 100% emission free electricity by 2035? Today, my special guest is Mo Kibera, Vice President of the transition accelerator, a national not for profit organization that is working to advance Canada's 2050 climate targets in multiple sectors. Our guest oversees a new initiative called electrifying Canada. And we're going to talk about that and the need for an integrated electricity grid in Canada. Moe, welcome to the show. Now, perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself and how the transition accelerator came to be.   Moe Kibera  03:26 Yeah, so my name is Moe Kibera. I'm the Vice President at the transition accelerator. My background has been in clean energy and climate for you know, over a decade now started working in sort of applied research context on renewables and energy storage. I had a thermal energy storage startup in Atlantic Canada, and that I worked in energy efficiency consulting, I worked in Investment Attraction for automotive sector and batteries, specifically related to EVs, that I also I went back into consulting worked on various projects when it comes to like electricity, electric vehicles, battery supply chain. And, yeah, I've been with the accelerator, you know, for since last year, and, you know, the accelerator came to be around 2019, really, with the idea or the basic philosophy that, but it emphasizes that, you know, LinkedIn climate concerns, the broader efforts to really improve society and your disruptive and transformative changes that are going to be reshaping the world around us. So it's really based on the idea of transition. And the idea of transition is not necessarily just about the technology itself, but it's about all the different political, social, economic aspects that come with it. So really, the methodology that the Accelerator has established which is basically methodology or theory of pain of how do we actually get you know, We get to transition out of the systems that we need to bring, you know, new systems that we need to bring forward. And it really starts with examining the issue. So that's really starting with our first kind of approach is understanding. So understanding what are the current systems that we use? How did they come to be, and, and basically, understand the forces that are disrupting the way that we do things. The second approach is called developing or working with stakeholders to co develop the pathways for the future. The number three is analyzing those pathways, and assessing things like costs and benefits and trade offs and public accessibility barriers and bottlenecks. And then the fourth thing, which is how do we get things into the real world, which is advancing, and we've been working on kind of putting off consortia and alliances, that actually are supposed to be implementing the pathways. So it's not about we're not like we like to say we're not a think tank, we're a do tank. So that's kind of our approach and possibly overall.   Moe Kibera  06:13     Dan Seguin  06:13 Okay, how about we dive into your newly launched initiative, electrifying Canada? What is it all about?   Moe Kibera  06:22 Yeah, I mean, the idea is really going to be that electrifying Canada is an initiative that brings together stakeholders, from industry, labor, indigenous groups, civil society, all have a vested interest in accelerating and use electrification, and the build out of a netzero electricity system. And basically, our vision is that we see that widespread electrification can enable an affordable and resilient, clean energy system that powers Canada's economy and kind of gives us a competitive edge when it comes to industrial activities as well. So really, the idea there is that we know electrification is going to be a critical path to get to zero. We can talk about all the other solutions like hydrogen and r&g and the role that they can play, which is great, but what we really know right now is that if occasion is ready to go solution that we need to start on regardless. So it's really about trying to get different stakeholders together, the right voices, the key voices that are needed for action. And that includes, you know, the major TriCity users. So the we needed we needed voice, you know that companies that need electricity or or sectors like transportation and buildings that are going to be in need of electricity to decarbonize, but also includes the supply side of the compensation. So the utilities and the developers and the regulators, that's the we can build it voice. And then the finance community that is looking for investment opportunities in the face, you can finance this, for the bank, the pension fund is the financial institution. But then also bringing into overtime, NGOs, think tanks, the you know, that are working on advancing solutions in the space. So it's really, um, you can think of it as an umbrella initiative, trying to bring everybody that's working on this topic under its wings. And we've we've successfully done that we have 28 partners, that includes all the major players in this in the country working on electrification. And then the sort of activities that we're going to be looking at are research analysis, public outreach, engagement, developing policy frameworks. So we are going to be going across the country this month, starting next week, until April, we're going to be visiting eight cities. So we're going to actually meet people in person where they need them where they're at both physically and metaphorically speaking. And that's going to be the first step to establish the form, which is working as, you know, not just a one off conversation, but as an extended form, to have collaboration, ordination and partnerships. So we're very excited about this initiative. And, yeah, very quickly, we're at/   Dan Seguin  09:22 Mo, can you remind us what some of Canada's key target dates are?   Moe Kibera  09:27 Yeah, I mean, just the very, very big picture. Canada has committed to reaching that zero cross architecture by 2050. And then when we look at some of the sectoral target, we have a target to get to a net zero electricity grid by 2030 500%. New sales of vehicles being zero emissions by 2035 60% of new vehicles being zero emissions by 2030. building sector sector oil contribution Uh, you know, readmission reduction 40% reduction by 2030. So a lot of these different targets when it comes to decarbonisation in the building sector and transportation sector and electricity system, all going to require a huge effort today, and two, that we need to get, get get working on right away. So these are very, you know, ambitious target, and we definitely support them. But that means that we really need to understand the barriers and advanced solutions very quickly, because we're going to meet the target, we're going to be, you know, we need everybody to come on board, and to really have a concrete strategic strategic approach to the widespread electrification and the build out of electricity systems.   Dan Seguin  10:52 Okay, for a follow up question Mo. What does electrification mean? And are these targets driving it?   Moe Kibera  11:00 Yeah, so I mean, I think that really, if you think about it, electrification is basically moving away from technology, that use of your, that coal, oil or natural gas, with technology, they use electricity as a form of energy. So depending on, you know, how you generate electricity, electrification can be zero emission, right. So the idea is that, if I have electricity coming from solar, and I use that solar, they use electricity to write to charge my Eevee, then my Eevee is Eurovision both at the source and also in terms of the upstream emissions. But if I have gasoline in my vehicle, there's really no net zero compatible pathway to getting like I can continue on in improving the emission standards of the vehicle. But at the end of the day, I'm limited by laws of thermodynamics, that I'm always going to have emissions and, and low efficiency for internal combustion engines. So electrification is really using electricity as a source of energy, as opposed to fossil fuels or molecule fuels. And in basically the notion of like, well, we can get electrons that have molecules of fuel. And if we can get the electrons to be centralized in terms of production, and clean electricity, then we can use that to decarbonize our sectors. So a target that I mentioned, they're not necessarily prescriptive, exactly how to decarbonize. So zero emission vehicles include things like, like fuel cell vehicles, and it just, you know, like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. But the clearest pathway right now, in terms of what are some of the ready to go solutions that we can implement today would be electrification. So that's why those targets are driving the need to electrify because it is something that we can get started right away and technology is available. So electric vehicles have ramped up significantly over the last two years, battery costs went down by 90%. In the last 10 years. Heat pumps are also available and ready to go. decarbonize our buildings. So I think that's really what's driving expectations, because it's a very clear path to get started on right now.   Dan Seguin  13:34 So will electrification mean that we will need more electricity? And if so, how much more?   Moe Kibera  13:43 Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. Definitely, it's going to mean that we're, we're going to need more electricity, because we're going to be, you know, displacing fossil fuel use without with with another source of energy, which is electricity. So that come from somewhere. debate. And it's not very clear that part of what we're doing now with electron now that we're doing a meta analysis of all the studies that have been published over the last 18 months to look at, what is the expected demand growth, you know, just a quick scan of literature and Canadian analysis, and I've been done, you know, we're looking at like, maybe doubling or activity grid, and some people say, we're going to triple it. I'm not too concerned about whether it's double or triple right now. I mean, obviously, a very big difference. But what's clear that we need to get started on the pathway over the next few years is going to be the same whether it's double or triple, that we need to really understand what are what are some of the near term opportunity, the near term challenges. So we're gonna need a lot more electricity, but also, some, some of the need for electricity is not going to materialize overnight, right. So people are like, well, we can't electrify a petition because we don't have enough electricity, but transcription transitioning our petition stuff T V doesn't happen overnight. It's something that is as follows sort of a technology diffusion theory of, you know, it's not every neighbor, every vehicle in one neighborhood is going to become a view overnight and plug in. So the idea is that we can actually plan for the certifications like electricity demand. And things like energy efficiency and demand side management and demand response and distributed energy refer to all of the all of these different measures, and be very, very critical to reduce our increased demand. So that, you know, we don't, we don't know, I think that that's the cheapest resource, we can avoid using electricity. That's going to be our first cheapest resource. And then we can build out the delta between what we can basically Well, we can reduce completely right. So the idea is that we're gonna need a lot more electricity. But although there are ways to basically mitigate, you know, the impact on the grid and make sure that it's not necessarily very possibly well, to the to the baseline scenario,   Dan Seguin  16:16 Who are some of the partners in the electrifying Canada initiative? And what does their involvement mean to achieve your overall mission?   Moe Kibera  16:26 Yeah, I mean, so brought together as I mentioned, on the demand side, companies like tech resources and Rio Tinto, on the supply side, you know, we have the electricity alliance of Canada, which includes the industry associations, that electricity Canada, the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, the Canadian Nuclear Association, Marina Renewables, Water Power Canada and Electricity HR. And you know, also we have individual companies like Energetic OPG, as well as organizations like OPG Hydro One. And then on the civil society front, we got Pembina Instituten Netzero Atlantic. On labor, we got maybe EW, that comes from Brotherhood's Electric Workers. Also, we have First Nation major project coalition. It's really a broad coalition, and in terms of their involvement, really, it's about bringing, bringing the different voices together that are needed for action. So understanding the barrier, prioritizing those barriers, understanding the solution, prioritizing the solution, and getting through to have a shared vision of what we need to be working on, you know, on a national level, but also at the regional level. So that's why we're doing a regional approach in terms of, you know, figuring out for each province, what is the framework that we need to be working on for it to get to net zero electricity? So we're very happy to bring together you know, as I mentioned, 28 organizations, that's been, you know, the whole supply chain of electricity, but also include civil society, indigenous people, labor, and also the finance community.   Dan Seguin  18:10 Now, in addition to affordable, resilient and clean, what are some of the other qualities you're looking to achieve in your mission to electrify Canada?   Moe Kibera  18:20 Well, I think that, you know, really thinking through accessibility, and, and, and making sure that the electricity is available to everybody, in terms of, you know, different regional perspectives and different regional representation. So I think that we can get an electricity system that is actually affordable. So we don't have, you know, we don't bankrupt people for energy, which is really critical for us. So that's kind of like a trilemma there. And I think valid, there is a balance there to be struck between affordable, resilient, so resilient and reliable, put them in a box, and they clean. So for me, really, the vision is quite simple. And you wanted to keep it simple, because it's simple, but it's not easy, right? So we know what we need to do. We know what kind of characteristics we want our future electricity system to look like and our future energy system to have. But getting there, it's going to be a challenge. So our philosophy of the accelerator is we're starting with the end state, knowing that we need an electricity system that is affordable Atlantic clean, and then working backwards from there.   Dan Seguin  19:35 Okay. Maybe you can unpack your plans for public outreach and what are you hoping to learn from these more regional conversations?   Moe Kibera  19:46 Yeah, so I mean, we're going to be going to Vancouver Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, St. John's and we're going to be doing also in northern communities and indigenous communities. Some online workshops, to start off, really what we want to do is establish a baseline. So one is we want to understand where each region is in terms of their understanding of the look, the challenge at the regional level. So we're sort of established something called the, we want to start with something called the real world overlay. And it's a framework to really ground everything that we know is a barrier or an issue that will stop us from getting electricity. So that, that includes things like rate increases that include things like lighting constraints, labor constraints, skill needed, the all of these different barriers, we talked about, they're around, people keep mentioning them, but they're not gonna floating in the air, like, like I imagine the the more like floating with the cloud, and part of our objective is to really round them somewhere, so we can actually keep track of them. So what we're hoping to establish is this framework that will be public or developed. So it's not just us doing it. It's the stakeholders, informing it through the sessions that we're hosting, and through the relationships that we're building and the partners that we brought into the initiative, and then having it be evergreen and public. So that, really, if you think of it, this can be the sort of centralized forum for tracking all the barriers and solutions that are being implemented to address those barriers of Quebec. or BC, wants to implement a trial rate structure for low income households. With this framework, we track that over time, so that others who are working on these issues can go in and learn from that in a very kind of centralized and consolidated framework.   Dan Seguin  21:48 Now, why are Canada's electricity systems central to the country's netzero 2050 goals? Do we have a clean energy advantage?   Dan Seguin  22:01 Yeah, I mean, more than 80% of our electricity is already non emitting, which is great. Like relatively to other countries. So that's really gonna, it's one of our biggest value propositions as well, like when thinking about attracting new supply chains like battery manufacturing, and critical minerals extraction, for example. And the idea there is we want to retain that advantage, as we, you know, potentially double or triple our grid, right. So the the core thesis there is that we want to basically build a future electricity system that build on the community connected to the event that we have retained that, and it's going to be as I mentioned, if we're going to use electrification as a key pathway to get to net zero, then that electricity has to be clean. So this is why it's critical,   Dan Seguin  22:54 Okay, well, what would you say, are some of the biggest challenges to the creation of a national strategy and a zero emission pan Canadian electricity grid?   Moe Kibera  23:07 Well, I think the idea there is that we don't have one grid. Right. So that's one of the challenges to start with is because we have sort of a decentralized Federation. So I think that to create a national strategy will require each province to understand where they're, where they're at, and where they want to get to. And right now, it's not a uniform. So we're not, we're not like in the uniform state in terms of every province, kind of understanding that the condition is so BC and Quebec, maybe maybe very different in Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. So we don't have any sort of clarity. So that common framework, so I would say, in terms of the biggest challenge of creating a national strategy is that we need to have each province kind of understand and get their ducks in a row. Before we can really put up, put all the pieces of the puzzle together.   Dan Seguin  24:10 Okay. And in your view, Mo, who leads this and is best positioned to address structural and regulatory obstacles?   Dan Seguin  24:19 Yeah, I mean, I think this is why we want to we wanted to bring and build this coalition, because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, we want you need industry at the table, you need to digitize people to the table, you need to verify the labor, you know, so it can't be just government on its own. It can't be just an industry on its own. So what we're hoping that this initiative will do is provide the sort of good framework to start tackling these issues. And in terms of the regulatory changes, I think there's a role obviously for the provinces or the provincial governments. There's a key role for the federal government and, you know, we're seeing things like the development of clean electricity regulation and the Feds playing that role. So I think that it can't just be a government and it has to be sort of a broader coalition. And that's kind of why we're as part of our fourth step in the accelerator, which is advancing solutions. It's building these consortiums and these alliances that really make sure that we converge on the next steps, and we're not really talking past each other. So I think that provincial governments, Crown corps utilities, vertically integrated utilities in certain provinces, you know, understanding where they're at, and modernizing the sort of regulatory framework so that putting electricity is also part of the mandate of the utilities, which is not necessarily the case right now. And it's something that is going to be critical.   Dan Seguin  25:57 Now, time for the crystal ball, what kinds of major investments need to be made to reach the 2035 timeline?   Moe Kibera  26:08 Well, I think it's really a lot of investments in new infrastructure. So generation, renewables and other non emitting electricity and transmission distribution, it's really about a fully integrated investment strategy that looks at, you know, how much more generation do we need? Can we offset some of that initial duration needs with transmission? Okay, but then at the distribution level, you know, what's going on there, when it comes to substations and transformers, like, a lot, like if you look at, for example, electric vehicle and option, you know, the could the bottleneck is not going to be what we have electricity at the director level bottleneck is going to be, we have the infrastructure at neighborhood levels, right, like, our little over the Transformers in the substation be able to handle all the things that are materializing. And it's going to be more critical, more of an issue in certain areas and than others. So I would say, really, the major investment are not going to be we need to build solar and wind, it's going to be you know, looking at all the solutions on generation solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, potentially, in terms of increasing some competence, some hydro capacity, using more efficient turbines, for example. And then storage, making sure that we have energy storage that can help offset or, you know, some of the increased generation needs so that we can have a more reliable facility. And then on the transmission side, looking at opportunities for regional transmission possible and that can help be a more cost effective way to get electricity added to the capacity of the system. And then on the division side, really looking at the local distribution networks and how it's, you know, the modernization of the assets there, basically meet the demand side, that materializing from transportation and building electrification.   Dan Seguin  28:22 And Mo, are intermittent renewable sources, district energy resources and non wire alternatives being considered. And at what scale?   Moe Kibera  28:34 Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think I think it's a great question. So I think that a lot of different jurisdictions, especially in the US, and even here at home, are considering things like non white alternatives and distributed energy resources as a way to mitigate some of the major investments required at the distribution level, potentially even the transmission level. So I think that, you know, we need to basically try to find as much cost savings as possible across the supply chain or across the ecosystem. So thinking through generation, we can't, we have to find sort of the most effective low cost electricity. But then thinking throughout the solution level of we can use things like demand response, non viable alternatives to build energy generation to mitigate some of the heavy, high costs of distribution RCEP, then I think that's something that is being considered and we're doing it I've been involved in sort of comparative analysis in the US to look at, you know, what would, what would it cost if we just kind of do traditional distribution and what would it cost if we did not write alternatives? And then what are the cost benefits there? So I think that is something it is one of the tools in the toolbox for sure.   Dan Seguin  29:56 Now, Canada is a major fossil fuel exporter. With the oil and gas sector generating substantial revenues and supporting 1000s of jobs, oil and gas also contribute 26% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions. How do we approach this issue thoughtfully to achieve our climate goals?   Moe Kibera  30:22 Yeah. So I mean, I think there are opportunities to really look at the upstream missions, from the oil and gas sector, and actually using electrification, to help decarbonize the oil and gas sector as well. So thinking through, you know, this, you have, you know, you have the actual emissions that come from burning gas, and then you have the actual emissions that come from producing it. So if we're thinking about the production emissions, you know, there's there are going to be a lot of opportunities to leverage new technologies like carbon capture electrification, but even thinking about the hydrogen that is currently using the oil and gas sector that maybe coming from what we call black hydrogen, turning that into blue or hydrogen. But there's a lot of actually low hanging fruits that can really help us reduce a lot of the oil and gas emissions from coming from production. And then I think about what we're interested in as well as understanding what are the opportunities coming up from an industrial strategy or industrial perspective that can help us, you know, grow sectors or the Canadian economy. So I'm the co-chair of the game battery Taskforce. So it's a taskforce that's focused on basically growing Canada's battery supply chain, and electric vehicle manufacturing. So in that sense, the auto sector contributes 500,000 jobs directly and indirectly, as a youth contributor to GDP. How do we make sure that we retain that advantage when retaining that contribution to the sectors but also grow it because, you know, we want to be able to diversify our economy and be part of an industrial green industrial future. At the accelerator, one things that we're very interested in is industrial policy that is focused on competitiveness, and understanding where that competitiveness comes from, in terms of the emerging sectors, so things like zero emission vehicles, biofuels, hydrogen, aviation, fuels, mass, timber, critical minerals, so we need to basically understand the opportunities that are emerging as part of this new world order of being industrial futures. And I understand how Canada can can play in that so that on the export table, you know, you know, that we're able to sort of elevate some of those protectors, to be able to cover the gap that, you know, will come into play as part of the natural world that is emerging in terms of decreasing reliance on fossil fuels.   Dan Seguin  32:53 Now, how does your initiative electrified Canada fit in the federal government's plan to create a pan Canadian grid Council?   Moe Kibera  33:04 Yeah, so we're, we're working very closely with natural resources, Canada, they're very supportive of this initiative. You know, and we're still kind of keeping our ear to the ground when it comes to the national grid Council. But we hope that basically, this initiative can be sort of a parallel process, in terms of really having INTEL RESEARCH, convening, that can feed into the group Council, because the idea of the good Council is not going to be able to bring together hundreds of people, right, it's going to be more, we don't know exactly what it will look like. But it will be a bit more stark, smaller scale. So the hope there is that the regional engagements that we're doing the sort of more granular analysis that we're doing, can help feed into some of the recommendations and feedback from the grid council. So it's kind of like a parallel process.   Dan Seguin  33:56 Okay. Now, let's go beyond the borders here. What can we learn from the EU or Denmark or other Nordic countries with respect to their cooperation, to expand the electricity grid and decarbonize it?   Moe Kibera  34:13 Yeah. So I mean, I think that for Denmark, and for the rest of Europe, really kind of showcasing the advantage they've had when it comes to renewable energy development. And focusing also on sort of the green electricity advantage. Some of the collaborations or integration that we've seen, even actually in Switzerland, you know, it's really about rent integration, and integrating different grids together. So, you know, in Switzerland, we had a little bit more of a decentralized structure and there was an initiative last few years to kind of bring it together into sort of digital using technology and digitize Vation and sort of modernization efforts to be able to, you know, integrate the math supply in Switzerland and make it a bit more of a national grid. So I think that the lessons there, there's a lot of lessons to be learned. The idea of electricity supply theory of supply is very big in Europe right now. And, and I think that there was a bit of a sort of force of hand, given the crisis in Ukraine, that kind of pushed or accelerated the need for integration. And I think that was a very critical aspect of what were some of the trends you're seeing in terms of good integration there.   Dan Seguin  35:48 Okay. Now, what about lessons from discussions happening with respect to the Atlantic loop? Do you have an update on that?   Moe Kibera  35:57 Well, I think the Atlantic loop, you know, it's gonna be, you know, it's very interesting to see, it really highlighted that there's a lot of challenges when it comes to actually building up a major project like that are still kind of waiting to see especially given you know, Nova Scotia Energy Board, basically put a cap on on a rate increases, which basically prompted Nova Scotia to say that, you know, they're they're going to be put in a position where they can't invest if they can't recover costs from ratepayers. So I think that it's still something that is very, it's going to be a very positive precedent for US and Canada that we can bring together these provinces, you know, multiple provinces together, people had Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, both were New Brunswick. So I think it's going to be obviously a critical project to reach the net zero targets for those for Atlantic Canada, right. So especially for Nova Scotia. So I think that you know, some of it's gonna be interesting to do like a little bit of a post mortem, hopefully, after we're done to basically dissect some of the lessons learned in terms of the barrier of bringing together you know, the different provinces in independent electricity system and also the different structures of the utility right? Nova Scotia has a different structure and then New Brunswick Power and BC Hydro and Hydro Quebec.   Dan Seguin  37:42 What are the biggest obstacles with our provinces when it comes to cooperation, and successfully achieving an integrated grid? How can electrifying Canada play a role?   Moe Kibera  37:56 So I think we don't want to over promise. And I think part of what we're trying to do, and we're very genuine, is to really help kind of, like I mentioned before, round all these different issues and put them somewhere that we can actually understand. And be clear that we're all looking at the same thing, while having a sort of shared understanding of the baseline of where we're at. So I think provinces a big part of it is communication and integration. So a lot of provinces don't necessarily know what other provinces are doing. So when I worked as a consultant, a big part of what we did, or a lot of our clients with fictional scans, so you'd be talking to utility in BC or utility in Alberta. And they'd be like, Why would somebody do it? What are they doing in Quebec? And I think that kind of knowledge sharing is not necessarily there sometimes. And so I think it's something very simple but, but it's something that is going to be very critical, because it's a way for us to turn the challenges of the decentralized Federation into an advantage in terms of running different experiments in different places, because we are able to do that. So trying different rate structures in different provinces trying different programs in different provinces. So what we're trying to do with with overcoming the provincial barriers, is to really offer those lessons learned and best practices and consolidating them into a framework that we're developing, ensuring that ensuring that we are kind of that conduit for information sharing and for integration collaboration,   39:35 Okay. polar opposites now, what are the biggest opportunities that provinces and territories could benefit from with an integrated grid?   Moe Kibera  39:47 Well, I think the biggest opportunity would be to really take advantage of, you know, the differences in the provincial system. So you know, a province that has A lot of when versus a province that has a lot of solar versus a province that has a lot of hydro, you can basically look at the system and try to develop an integrated approach to that. It will be overall cheaper for them to basically work together and take advantage of the different technology that they have. Right. I think really, at the end of the day, if cost reduction, and being able to meet their targets, you know, in a way that it's that that ensures the affordable, resilient, reliable, and clean electricity system.   Dan Seguin  40:39 Okay, so, does reaching the 2035 targets hinge on a unified and integrated grid across Canada? Or can it be achieved without it?   Moe Kibera  40:51 Well, no, I don't think it hinges on a unified electricity grid, I think I think we need to realise that we do have multiple grids and multiple systems. And that we need to start from that position. We need to look at a national approach that can basically help us reduce costs, ensure more reliability, and a cleaner system. But I don't think necessarily, you know, it's either or, it's not like we either have a national grid, or we're never getting there, I think it's more about integrating as much as possible to reduce barriers and to reduce costs.   Dan Seguin  41:36 Now, looking forward to your response to this next question. Is there a huge communication challenge to overcome? I read in the transition accelerators report building path to a sustainable future, that this shouldn't be framed as just about electricity or technology, or even net zero emissions. How do you think electrification, and the climate conversation should be positioned?   Moe Kibera  42:07 I think the climate conversation really at the end of the day, for us, it kind of eats up with the world moving very quickly. So we have things like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, and we have failed policies emerging in Europe. And all of that is leading us down a path of great green industrial growth and industrial future. So people are driving EVs. Yeah, sure, because of emissions, but really, because the more efficient, the more reliable in terms of, you can just come home and charge it, and you know, how you never have to go to a gas station? Yeah, sure, the issues range, but you know, 99% of the time, it's not really an issue. So we're thinking through a lot of technologies. And we kind of see the climate and that zero emission aspect is a sort of secondary or a, like a byproduct of, of the green industrial transition. And then the candidate position, you know, we want to be able to participate and get all of the economic benefits that come from this being an actual global leader in effectors. And we do have that opportunity, because they have access to critical minerals and metals, they have access to technology and intellectual property development that is happening here, boom, we have the electricity advantage. So for us, really, the framing is about, you know, how do we position Canada to be an economic powerhouse when it comes to green wind technology. Because we technology is obviously going to be needed for climate change. And that we're, you know, but but really, at the end of the day, it's about, you know, taking advantage of the economic benefits that come with that. And as well as the front of the same coin, and given how the world is shifting, and especially as I mentioned, Europe and Europe in the US the demand is there. And how do we basically position ourselves to be able to take advantage of that growing demand and, and be an exporter of different technologies? The world?   Dan Seguin  44:16 Okay, do you truly think we lack a shared vision as Canadians on the future? And how do we get there together? How do we fix it?   Moe Kibera  44:27 I think initiatives like the Canada initiative that we're doing as well, when it comes to the emission vehicle, light chain and building electrification and all these we were involved in several initiatives is the first step right. So I think it's really about understanding what the future could look like, where are the where, what are our strengths? What are what's our value proposition of the country, and then you're using the computations and forums and convening aspect to really sort of tool to create a shared vision. I think that also, you know, making sure that we have communication collaboration between provincial energy depictions is going to be critical. So, yeah, I mean, I think, for us, we really believe that advancing solutions means bringing in the actual people and the stakeholders that are involved in that and implementing the solutions together, and waiting, insistent for collaboration. So if you look at Europe, the Canadian battery, the European Battery Alliance, you know, they brought together hundreds of stakeholders, and they've successfully started to build out a very, you know, sophisticated battery supply chain in Europe. So this kind of private public partnership is, you know, through a third party intermediary, we see that as a very critical tool to actually reaching a shared vision.   Dan Seguin  46:04 Now, there is something I know that's on the top of the list of considerations, customer affordability. What are your thoughts on how we can achieve our goals, while maintaining costs for customers?   Moe Kibera  46:21 Yeah, I mean, I think part of it, part of the process that we're going through is to actually landlord solutions for that issue. And that those solutions can be different for different provinces and different regions. I think that I don't really have the answer. But there's a lot of different but a lot of smart people that we have brought together and part of this ultra pine Canada initiative, have ideas. And like I mentioned before, we need to basically consider those ideas, maybe do some trials. I'll give just one example. You know, one thing could be like a means tested rate structure for low low income households, right. So like, but also we're also thinking about and talking about how energy costs can be reduced because of efficiencies gained through electrification. So if you are somebody that drives a car, and has a baseboard heaters in Quebec, for example, you know, if you can, if you get an electric vehicle, and if you get heat pumps, your energy consumption will actually be reduced, or even a brace increase increased by a little bit, your overall energy costs could potentially be much lower than the existing energy costs. So there's a lot of nuance there. And I think that we need to be careful that nobody's left behind and design our structures to rate structures and how we manage energy costs, to make sure that affordability is top of mind, right? So I think this is something that there's no one answer for every single province or every single region in the country, there's going to be multiple solutions that we can try out multiple suites of solutions that are going to work hand in hand. And we're motivated that by bringing together the coalition that we brought together, we're basically going to be able to get to the answers and advanced solutions.   Dan Seguin  48:13 Now Mo, are you looking at opportunities to integrate our electricity grid with the US? What are the benefits that could help modernize and even optimize our grid with a US partnership?   Moe Kibera  48:28 I think that's a really great conversation. One of our partners, you know, was in the US recently had this exact conversation, I would say, at a high level, we should be exploring all opportunities when it comes to integration, whether it's regional within Canada or cross border, because at the end of the day, as I mentioned, it's about you know, it's very simple. If I have I have access, and you have demand. And then let's make sure that my access goes to your demand. If you have access, and I have demand, let's make sure that your access comes to my demand, and then as a way to reduce, you know, cost because then okay, well, I'm not going to overbuild my generation because there's there's sort of a pathway for me to meet my demand, knowing that there's excess electricity coming from across the border, or vice versa. So I think that the integration with the US is something that is critical for us to consider. But also it's going to be a lot easier once we have our ducks in a row within Canada. Right. So once we have our own strategy and our understanding of what is the delta between what we can do in house, what is the delta, between what we can export, what is our access? That's going to make the conversation we're going to be coming to the conversation from a position of strength and position an advantage right? So I think that it's something that is top of mind, but it seems a little bit a little bit down the road from today. I mean, we already have integration with us, obviously But, in terms of that broader integration, it seems like the conversation is a little bit in the early stages.   Dan Seguin  50:07 Lastly, what's exciting you and giving you hope about the possibility of an integrated and zero emission electricity grid?   Moe Kibera  50:18 Yeah, I mean, it's really exciting that we are going to be able to really decarbonize a huge amount of our sectors under carbon on buildings, reputation, industrial agriculture. And really the idea of having a fully netzero grid. I mean, for Canada, as I mentioned, we're largely not emitting which has been great, but to get to net zero. And what I'm really optimistic about is seeing all of the different efforts that are happening when it comes to electricity generation when it comes to developing some kind of policy certainty for investors. So as I mentioned, this is sort of a trend that is an industrial economic trend. I'm excited to see that coupling that's happening where it's like, it's not either or it's really, this is where the world is headed. This is where the where the money that is where the economy is going at a global level, we need to get there and hey, guess what, as part of this, we get to also get into zero and help, you know, address climate change, but I think that's really what's exciting for me at this point in time is that we reached the stage where there is that integration between, you know, economics and climate.   Dan Seguin  51:36 Okay, sir, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready? For more? What are you reading right now?   51:48 I'm rereading a book called Electrification by Paul Griffith from Rewiring America.   Dan Seguin  51:56 Now, what would you name your boat? If you had one? Or maybe you do have one?   Moe Kibera  52:00 I don't. I guess Transatlantic.   Dan Seguin  52:03 Okay. Now, who is someone that you admire?   Moe Kibera  52:08 I really admire Bruce Laurie from the Foundation because I recently had an amazing conversation with him. And you know, the work that he's done, especially with the get Ontario off call,   Dan Seguin  52:17 this next one is always a challenging one. What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Moe Kibera  52:26 I guess, diving underwater.   Dan Seguin  52:29 Now,what is the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began,   Moe Kibera  52:35 I guess with live music went away. It was tough.   Dan Seguin  52:38 Okay, last one here. We've all been watching a lot more Netflix and TV lately. What's your favorite movie or show?   Moe Kibera  52:47 I really love Succession, an HBO show?   Dan Seguin  52:50 Okay, MO. Lastly, what is exciting about your industry right now.   Moe Kibera  52:55 What's really excited me is the growth. It's really seeing how fast we're growing. You know that it's not necessarily mainstream now. It is the future, we've hit that point of inevitability. And it's really exciting to be that.   Dan Seguin  53:12 Okay, so this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today, Moe. If our listeners want to learn more about you, or your organization, how can they connect?   Moe Kibera  53:26 Yeah, we're at transition accelerator.ca. And you can go there and find our contact info. Also on social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, happy to connect with folks. And, yeah, really appreciate that opportunity to be here today, Dan.   Dan Seguin  53:43 Cool. Okay. Thanks. Now, again, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.   Moe Kibera  53:50 Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.   Dan Seguin  53:52 Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. And don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests, or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com. I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Elias Makos kicks off Wednesday with Political analyst Karim Boulos and Paul Gott, Lead singer and guitarist for Montreal Punk Rock band the Ripcordz and a journalism professor at Concordia. Should she stay or should she go? Yesterday the CAQ, PLQ and PQ voted in favour of a motion to dismiss Justin Trudeau's new special advisor on Islamophobia Are you concerned about the independence of Hydro-Quebec as Pierre Fitzgibbon seems to be the one answering questions about Quebec's electric future right now? MPs have rejected Quebec's first two requested amendments on the official languages act

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/

The energy sector is evolving at lightning speed, and customer expectations are at an all-time high. As are concerns about electricity itself – how it's produced, how reliable it is, how much it costs, and how efficiently it's powering our lives. So, how are utilities planning to meet expectations and address these concerns? In episode 100 of the thinkenergy podcast, we sit down with Hydro Ottawa's Chief Customer Officer, Julie Lupinacci, to discuss what electricity customers want and the solutions we're delivering.  Related links   Julie Lupinacci, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliejlupinacci/   Julie Lupinacci, Twitter: https://twitter.com/juliejlupinacci  Power outage safety: https://www.hydroottawa.com/en/outages-safety/outage-centre/outage-safety  Energy saving resources: https://www.hydroottawa.com/en/save-energy 2021–2025 strategic direction: https://hydroottawa.com/en/about-us/our-company/our-reports    To subscribe using Apple Podcasts To subscribe using Spotify To subscribe on Libsyn --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: YouTube Check out our cool pics on Instagram     Transcript:   Think_Energy_Podcast_EP100_V2 What Electricity Customers Want SUMMARY KEYWORDS customers, ottawa, working, hydro, people, electricity, programs, julie, city, planning, energy, pandemic, talk, utilities, component, industry, happening, community, cases, helping SPEAKERS Dan Seguin, Julie Lupinacci   Dan Seguin  00:06 This is thinkenergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Today's show marks the 100th podcast episode. Woohoo. It's hard to believe that we've already reached this milestone. I want to thank everyone that has worked behind the scenes on the show, our incredible guests who graciously share their time and expertise. And of course, dear listener, thank you for tuning into our program. It's truly been an honor for me to share information about the energy sector and all of the amazing people that work in this industry. So with that, let's get on with today's 100th podcast episode. As we discussed over many interviews, the energy landscape is evolving at lightning speed. Those innovations and changes are coming fast and furious. And there's a lot for customers to absorb. It's clear that perhaps more than at any other time in history, customers are thinking about their electricity, how it's made, how reliable it is, how much it costs, and how they can be more in control of it to power their lives. What customers want and expect is changing the electricity sector. It's changing how utilities do business, how they communicate, and what service offerings they provide. customer expectations have never been higher, and utilities must evolve, innovate and provide exceptional expertise, programs and technology to give customers what they want and expect from a modern utility from smart home tech that can help customers manage their device and overall consumption to home generation technology like solar panels, batteries for energy storage, and incentives for installing goes renewables and even how to better prepare for a changing climate, more storms and an increase in frequent and prolonged power outages. So, here's today's big question. How are utilities planning to meet the expectations of today's customer and their needs? Today's guest is my boss, Julie Lupinacci. As the Chief Customer Officer at Hydro Ottawa, Julie is responsible for developing and implementing the customer strategy, transforming the total customer experience and guiding the direction of the business in terms of customer needs. She provides oversight for customer service marketing, product development, external communications, Public Affairs, corporate reputation, and the overall branding strategies. With more than 15 years in Customer Care, sales and marketing, Julie has a wide background in business including project management, customer and vendor relations, international partner program management, procurement, sales, marketing, and program development. Wow. Julie, thanks for joining us today. Now, you've been in the electricity industry approximately five years now, maybe a little more in comparison to your experience with customers in other industries? How are electricity customers different? How are their needs unique?   Julie Lupinacci  04:11 Yeah, so it's been interesting. And when I when I got this question, I was thinking back on the last five years and how much I've learned about the industry and learn about our customers in particular and I would say the basis of what's different is is the industry we're in right like Hydro Ottawa is a this is essentially provides an essential service to our customers, which didn't happen in my previous in my previous world. So the fact that the customers rely on us for a product that is so essential in so many aspects of their lives. For some customers, it's a matter of life and death, right? That in itself changes how we work with our customers and what their needs are, and what we need to support. So that reality is something that we have to hold in the forefront of everything that we do. The very nature of what customers need from us makes that different, right? The timelines of what they need are tighter. And the criticality of our communications to customers becomes even more heightened. Whether it be a storm, or an outage, or an outage at one person's house, like that doesn't matter, the customer is out of what we need to provide. And the criticality of getting that back in a very condensed time frame, in order for that customer to continue moving forward, becomes essential. So everything becomes a lot tighter and more critical. And I would say the other component of what we provide, it's not a, in some cases, customers don't have a choice right on whether they need electricity or not, like I guess in fundamentally, they could figure that out. But if you've come to rely on electricity for your daily needs, and to run your households, the fact that electricity is now part of your requirements, you don't get to have a choice necessarily do I? Do I want electricity today or tomorrow to put my lights on? Affordability becomes a big component. And it's one that we need to think about for our customers: the choices on how we develop the grid, how we evolve as an organization, we need to keep affordability, sustainability, and the fact that energy needs to be attainable for our customers that has to guide what we do. And that's not true for every of every industry, and definitely not true for the previous ones I've worked for.   Dan Seguin  06:53 Julie, what are the three biggest issues for electricity customers right now?   Julie Lupinacci  07:01 Yeah, I think right now, in the November 2022, or December 2022, as this airs, affordability is probably front of mind, for most customers, the share of wallet is just not going as far with the cost of inflation. I think that's probably the primary issue for electricity customers right now. But I would say that a close second is, what the reliability of this electricity is. So the climate adaptation that we are doing as an entire city, as we're looking at what you know, more extreme weather events that are coming, the reliability of what we provide is probably a close second, right? So they want to be able to afford the commodity that is coming into their house. But they also want to be able to rely on it. And as they're making choices for what their energy future is going to be, as they're making choices about what car they're going to be purchasing next, as they're going to make choices for how they're going to heat and cool their home and making choices about fuel sources. You want to make sure that you're choosing what's reliable and that you know, reliability is there. So I think affordability and reliability are close one and two. And that is sustainable, right? We've got a lot of people that are thinking about their future, their carbon footprint, their net zero. So I think people are looking at how I conserve my energy usage? How am I smart about what I'm doing? And how am I making sure that I'm choosing things that are going to be there for the long haul, right and looking for something that's sustainable, that's good for our planet, but it's going to be around and something that they can count on. Okay,   Dan Seguin  08:53 Now I have a follow up question. What are some of the ways that hydro Ottawa is addressing those customer issues?   Julie Lupinacci  08:59 Yeah, so we're doing a number of different things. So one, I think how we put together plans for the growth of the grid, how we put plans to maintain the grid and evolve the grid is definitely something that we look at with those three things in mind. But also from a customer perspective, we are looking at bringing programs to them to help them have more access and more readily access to that information. So get a hold of their data so they can start making decisions. We're working with the Ministry of Energy on different pricing programs that might make sense according to the different behaviors, not everybody has the same lifestyle. Not everybody operates only you know, in the evenings in their house and people in especially during the pandemic like we have with we've seen very different lifestyle, and workdays come to be. So we're really well Looking at all of those things that are happening here in Ottawa, and marrying programs that make sense both from a pricing perspective, as well as energy choice. So looking at different Evie programs that we are bringing forward, looking at different energy efficiency programs that might be there and getting information into the hands of customers. In particular, there's been a lot of conversation over the last couple years, I'd say maybe a little bit more about netzero. And with the announcements the federal government, provincial, government and even municipal government have made customers are thinking about how they play in that. And there's a lot of questions and hydro Ottawa is providing information to those customers to be able to help them to be informed of what's possible, and then help give programs to get them on pathways to get there for themselves.   Dan Seguin  10:52 We are all aware that Ottawa has had some major major weather events, these past five to six years. What would you say to customers that are worried about reliability, power outages, and restoration?   Julie Lupinacci  11:10 Yeah, weather events have been tough. They're tough fun. And I don't think Ottawa has seen something like this in a very long time, like probably since the 98' Ice Storm. And I'm not even sure that really measured up to the same impact right of what we saw and what customers dealt with. But what I would, what I would say is hydro Ottawa has put a lot of focus on what we need to do from a grid perspective to adapt to the changing climate that we're seeing here in Ottawa. And that includes those weather events. Like I don't want to pretend that I know more than our chief electricity distribution officer, like I think you interviewed him maybe a couple of weeks ago. And in that podcast, he talks about what we're doing to future proof, the grid against those extreme weather events. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to try to think that I have anything more impactful that he will say on that front. But I will say that, from a front office perspective, from a customer service, from a communications perspective, we are really looking at a lot of those tools, and further modernizing them. And what I mean by that is, is taking a look at some different technology that allows us to receive more phone calls into our system, triage those phone calls, using some cloud based technology, so that not everybody is forced to talk to an individual because even at the height of the storm, like you're not going to have 10,000 people answering phone calls within a couple of minutes of a storm hitting, but we can use technology to triage to allow our customers to know that we know if they are out of power and provide them with the information that we have at that time. So looking at updating some of the telephony software that we have in utilize some of the new technology there. So we are actively working on that. The other component to communications because I think communications really is that biggest avenue for our customers especially during these winter weather events is pushing information out. And we are looking through and working on an SMS text based technology system that allows us to push information out similar to what we're pushing out through our social media channels today. Now sending that information directly to customers either on their iPhone or potentially in their email box however they want to receive those inputs and alerts from hydro Ottawa. We also took some steps to help people become aware like the weather alert, the weather system and the weather alerts that are out there giving people a heads up on systems that are coming through. Like that's, that's one thing. But I think customers want to know, when we're looking at a weather event that's different, right? You'll you'll know when rains coming into Ottawa and you'll get those alerts about snow and all of those things, but not all weather impacts our grid and what we're looking at is to be able to provide an alert system again through through whether it's SMS or an email out directly into customers inboxes so to speak, giving them a heads up when we're watching it differently right and if we're watching it differently, you know, messages are going out make sure phones are charged make sure that you've got blankets make sure you know where your your flashlights and your your candles are. So really concentrate on getting people ready for what they need to do. So there's you know, there's a few steps and you can follow us on hydro ottawa.com to get better details on that. But that's what we're doing and making sure that we're putting that out there. Additionally, we've piloted -Sorry Dan, I got one more. Additionally, we've piloted a battery program. This was used to be able to support some of our capital work. But in the recent storm this year, we use that battery pilot to be able to help some of the most vulnerable customers in Ottawa, that are really relying on electricity to be able to breathe, right and working with the paramedics hand in hand to make sure that these batteries got to those households so that they, you know, had some additional time for us to get the power back on, either to their house or to the community.   Dan Seguin  15:32 Now telling me Julie, what are some of the things customers can do to be better prepared for emergencies? And outages?   Julie Lupinacci  15:42 Yeah, so I think there's a few things that we need to do . I think we need some major awareness about what that is, like, going back to our elementary school days, when we had to plot out the fire, you know, the fire escape plan for our house, right? And go back to thinking about if there's an emergency, do we have an emergency kit together? Right? Do we have bottled water in our systems in our house? Do we have working flashlights, right? Not just flashlights that don't have batteries? But what are those batteries? And they are up to date, right? Making sure that you have them not all over the place, but you know where these flashlights are right? If anybody's like my kids, they come in, they grab the flashlights, and all of a sudden they're in different locations around the house like they need to be, your emergency kit needs to be in one central place so that you know how to get to it, whether the lights are on or off. The other piece is I would, I would make sure that you're following us on our social channels, because we do put information out there. So make sure if you haven't connected with us that you do connect with us. And you can go to our website to find out what those are, I won't, I won't run them off here. But the other piece that I would really strongly suggest is that people go and update their contact information into our database, or into our database, which will become even more crucial as we start sending these alerts and messages directly to you. Right, no longer just through social media but directly to you in your household to be able to let you know what's going. And if I could say one other thing is that I think planning based on our reliability that we've always had, and the experience that you've always had to these dates, it's no longer enough, right? Like Hydro Ottawa is going to do everything that we can to get the power back on. But you need to plan for worst case scenario, you can't plan only for the best case. So having an alternative place to go speaking with family and saying if power is out here, we're going to come over and what do we need to bring? Having those plans in place in advance makes you better equipped to withstand any weather event that comes through that may have an outage associated with it?   Dan Seguin  17:49 Okay, moving on. Hydro Ottawa released its 2021- 2025 strategic direction. Why is that five year plan important? And what are the highlights from a customer perspective that customers should be aware of? Yeah,   Julie Lupinacci  18:08 I think any organization that's not looking five years out, so it's going to be really awakened as you start to figure out what capital planning looks like. Like it doesn't take. You can't build a substation overnight. You cannot bring additional capacity into a city without some plans. And our strategic direction really helps us do that. And it helps put some guideposts in place with regards to keeping us focused, right. There's a lot of new technology that makes shiny things that people want. But really having a strategic direction that allows us to go back to what that Northstar is, what those guiding points are, what is that end goal that we're trying to get to is really important, because cities aren't planned on a dime. And neither is the grid that supports those cities. So that five year plan really looks and works with the city to say, Where are you going? How is growth happening? And then how do we support that? And then, in in line with this strategic direction, we've also taken a very, very big leadership role in in setting ourselves up for net zero and not just us as as as hydro Ottawa, but as a partner with the city of Ottawa as a integral component of the Ontario electricity grid, an integral component of the Canadian grid. And I think that comes with a responsibility to make sure that we're looking forward and making the decisions that have to happen today for some of those assets that are going to be around for that 2050 goal that Canada has. So we're really focused on maintaining the reliability that we've been seeing over the last decade. We've had great reliability here in Ottawa despite some of the storms that have happened. Our reliability numbers continue to Be strong. So making sure that we're continuing to evolve in a smart way. And making sure that we maintain that reliability in line with the growth that's happening in the city, right, where we're seeing not only expansion into some of the other, you know, we're seeing suburbs butting up against each other now, right. And, you know, I'm not even sure if there's a true delineation between Canada and Stittsville. Sometimes, because it's like a bridge, you just go over one, one street, and now you're in the different suburbs. So, that blurring that's happening is fine. So that's the growth that's happening and expanding of the city. But we're also densifying some of the downtown core areas, so we're going upwards. And that requires a different type of planning on the infrastructure that already exists. We need to grow that infrastructure, we need to change how we're adopting those arrows potentially, and then look at planning for vehicle switching from gas to EVs. Right? So the electric, the electric vehicles, how do we support that growth? How do we support some of the growth with buildings that are converting from gas to electricity, or some of the new buildings that are looking at different technology and making sure that as they're building, the capacity is there. So all of those things are aligned within that, that we have an eight point strategy that's there. And, and the customer continues to be the center of that strategy? So as we're making decisions, we're thinking of it through that customer lens? And how is the customer going to be impacted? How is the customer going to work with us, and let's make sure that we're spending money and time and focus energy on ensuring that the electricity grid is there for the needs of the future. And then the last piece that I would put is, we're really looking at streamlining processes for our customers, right, there's a lot of steps that are in place. And in some of those, those process flows, that in some cases, technology allows us to leapfrog for our customers. Many customers don't want to talk to us directly anymore. So they want to use chat functionality, or they want to just be able to go and search a Frequently Asked Questions area, or get a how to documents sent to them so that they can do it, in some cases themselves. And we are hearing that from our customers. And we are taking the steps to make sure that we streamline those processes for that,   Dan Seguin  22:25 Julie, what role does Hydro Ottawa or utilities in general have when it comes to delivering solutions for customers to reduce their consumption and greenhouse gas emissions?   Julie Lupinacci  22:38 So, I think that we have a big responsibility there to keep people informed. I think awareness is pretty key when it comes to energy efficiency. And knowing where you're starting from, I think is a big component. So as utilities, I think we need to constantly ask ourselves, where is the customer in, in their knowledge of what we're trying to get them to do or what they're needing to do or what they're wanting to do. So I would hazard a guess that not many people have a true understanding of what their carbon footprint is, I would hazard a guess that we don't all know what our emission baseline is. So asking people to do something to reduce that. And they don't know what their baseline is, I think I think that's a misstep. So utilities, in general, I think have a responsibility to help customers understand how to do that calculation. And then identify pathways and programs that they can make choices that help enrich them towards what they're trying to do. So in some cases, it's painting the picture of what that future looks like, giving them choices of what the future can look like. And then once the customer chooses that, help them to make decisions to get them closer to that. So whether that be having a digital footprint with us, right reducing the need for us to mail a bill. So they're going off of paper and onto an email bill or coming to a website to get all of the details behind their bill. I think helping them understand what that impact is, is important. Making sure that we are doing sustainable business practices for our customers is important as well, right? Like we've made different choices in our building with regards to how we process waste, how we are moving around the city, what we do, when we have trucks that may not be Eevee. There may not be an Eevee model ready for the trucks that we need. But how are we planning for that to bring in those sustainable business practices? How are we leveraging tools to be able to take not necessarily like I'm unnecessary steps out of the process, whether it be a new material that a lot, that's a more sustainable material that doesn't have us cutting down trees or others. Like I think there's some things that we are looking at that to make choices about what that what that future is going to look like. And I think the other component that we have as utilities is we need to be leaders in the field, right, we need to look at what's happening, not just here in Canada, but there are other jurisdictions around this globe that have been doing conservation because they've needed to do conservation. And and so they've, they've, I don't want to say perfected it, but they've advanced it significantly. And in some cases, we can leapfrog what their program is to an even better program with potentially new technology or even a different focus. So we're looking at, we're looking into Europe, and what are they doing with regards to conservation? What are they doing with regards to energy efficiency? And how can we take what they're doing and adopt it here. And so I think utilities have a obligation to look outside of our own four walls, look outside of our province, even look inside of our country to see what are some of those things that are working elsewhere, that can be brought here for our customers.   Dan Seguin  26:21 Now, wondering if you could outline some initiatives that hydro Auto is doing to help its customers in that area?   Julie Lupinacci  26:30 Sure, there's a whole load of ones that we can talk to, and I would encourage you to follow our blog, because we talk about a lot of those pieces and share some of those details in greater detail. And some of the case studies that we do share, may have a direct impact on some other customers. And you would see how that translates into your business or interior household. But we work very closely with the City of Ottawa on their energy evolution file. And taking a look at everything from where public EV chargers need to be set up, talking to them about how to retrofit their own buildings and be future proofed from and have a smart energy component to that, talking about how we build better communities. So we're there talking with them at the planning stages of that. So those are things that we do with the city, we are looking at distributed energy resources in a very thoughtful and deliberate way, and seeing how we can leverage some of the distributed energy resources that exist in our city today, how we align it to the grid, and how we use these distributed energy resources to bridge the evolution that's needed to be able to get to that future where the capacity need is, is maybe even three times what we're seeing today. So how are we planning for that with traditional assets? But also how can we bridge and leverage distributed energy resources that exist and will exist in our service territory? So we're doing that tons of education says, as I talked about, whether you look at our blogs, the newsletters that go out, read them, there's some really cool things and ideas that are in there for you as residential customers, and even commercial customers. We had an amazing symposium where we just started some of the conversation about what these different projects and initiatives are that we're doing with customers and can do with customers. You look at the Zibi Community, right downtown, like right behind shudder right beside sheer falls and behind the parliament. And that community itself is built completely differently, right, looking at using renewable energy, looking at using the steam off of Kruger that's just across the river, and how that heats the building and heats the community. And then looking at, you know, from an environmental footprint, what we did at a shelter falls with the eel ladder and helping with the eel migratory patterns is one element. We have a new substation in barre haven where we were very deliberate and kept a parcel of that land for a pollinator meadow. And really looking at how we promote the pollinators to be in the area that helped that particular growth. And then a number of conservation programs that we're working with with either the ISO which is our Independent Electricity System, distributor, or off operator and working with them and the Ministry of Energy on here are some programs that we see that can help bridge a defer capital investments because the capacity is here and we're sharing the capacity a little bit different, and even encouraged people to conserve energy, you know, not leaving their lights on not leaving motors running, generators, running, and all kinds of different programs that we can look at from that perspective. So lots of pilots, lots of different programs that are in flight and pilots to come.   Dan Seguin  29:59 What new and innovative plans are you making for the short, mid and long term when it comes to customers? And what hydro Ottawa offers?   Julie Lupinacci  30:12 Yeah, so I think I mentioned our, our battery loan program, you know that that was a one that we had thought would be a one and done type of thing during, during the early days of the pandemic. And the results that we saw on that program just made it one that we don't see going away anymore. So looking at continuing to evolve that program and scale it up. So I think that would be, you know, a short term. One. Another short term one is some of the Eevee programs that we're working on, that are coming to market with regards to being able to not only see where the EVs are coming up, but predict where the next EVs are going to be coming in. And even having a bit of a different relationship with those Eevee owners. So some type of a demand response program, you'll see that too short to mid term. With regards to helping customers understand that if they defer or delay charging their car until the evening, there might be a cost benefit, but also some benefit to us overall. So I think you'll see a lot of those kinds of demand response pilots to really see how and what we need to do, and engage our community and help us get there, right? We can't do this as single, single folks, we need to do this as a full community looking towards that future. And long term, I think you'll see some of those continuing to innovate. With regards to just building smarter communities, renewables within communities, you'll look at a different way of doing some substation work, and bringing that power here into the city of Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  31:51 Now, in 2021, hydro Ottawa announced that it will achieve Net Zero operations by 2030. How will this help or improve the lives of Ottawa residents?   Julie Lupinacci  32:04 It's a very philosophical question in some cases, because I think there's still a lot of misconception or confusion around what net zero means, right? And people think that going to net zero means there's no emissions. And that's not true. Net Zero means that we are becoming carbon neutral or emission neutral. So we may emit some emissions on one side of the business. But we're, we're offsetting in another area. So I think, I think it's a few different things. I think it gets us off thinking in a very different way. It helps to stimulate a conversation that is much needed to be able to advance. And I think we have a corporate responsibility to move that forward here within the City of Ottawa, especially being the capital of Ottawa, when you have your Prime Ministers sit up there and say, we're going to be net zero by 2050. And nobody moves until 2049. It's not going to work great. So people need to move early. And I think hydro Ottawa has demonstrated a lot of those advancements towards this net zero operations even in advance of, of when we announced it, right, like a lot of some of what we were doing a lot of what we were doing sorry, was really in play before that we had a very different way of building our our generation downtown Ottawa and we took the environment into account, we took a very accountable, measured approach to how we were doing our development and you're gonna see that continue in what we do. As we build substations, how do we do that to make sure that we have the least impact on the environment, and that we leave the space that we're in as good or better is really what we're trying to do than that have been when we got there, I look at the the Cambrian substation and bar Haven, and it is better than when we put our plant there because we have a pollinator meadow that's very deliberate, and what we're doing, we're taking care of the lands that are that are there, and you're gonna see that happen throughout. And it's all in for that larger view. With regards to Ottawa residents, I think it's important for them to know that they have a utility provider that cares about that as much as they do. And that are putting very thoughtful approach to how we go about doing things and we're not just doing it for the sake of doing it it means something this last spring, although small, in its in its in its infancy and I see it growing you know, we we planted trees, as part of our employees as part of their volunteer day that they get with the company went out into community and planted trees in an area that was where they were much needed. So I think you'll see a lot of those types of initiatives all happening within the city and with our company.   Dan Seguin  35:04 Julie, is this what customers expect from a modern utility? What other ways is hydro Ottawa innovating?   Julie Lupinacci  35:14 Yeah, I think expectations on on utilities as well as most organizations is changing significantly, customers are wanting organizations, corporations to not just be good corporate citizens, but to be accountable for the decisions and the activities that they do to be transparent, and why we're making those decisions, and how we're making those decisions. So when we talk about bringing in renewables, when we talk about being ready for electric vehicles, when we talk about bringing an energy management expertise into the area, it's it's really meant to make sure that customers have the information that they're already asking for, and that they're having information from a somewhat neutral party, right. In some cases, we're not looking at pushing one way or another, but making sure that people are informed to make the best decisions, and know what the outcomes are. And I think we're uniquely positioned to do that. There's a lot of people that might sell renewables, and they help install solar panels. And we're not looking to replace any of those, those people like it takes all kinds to make these things, all kinds of components in the supply chain to make this come to reality. But I think there is a natural space for hydro Ottawa to be there to help inform customers on how to do this effectively, what this means to them, like adding solar panels to your rooftop has complications. And it also has implications for you as a homeowner. And I think it's important that people be informed as they're making those decisions to put two and two together so that they don't, later on, find out that, you know, use this example, they bought an Eevee. And they bring it home, and they have nowhere to plug it in. Because their condo Corporation isn't set up effectively. There's nowhere for them to do public charging systems, I think that we need to make sure that we're helping customers make those informed decisions, and how we can do that together. So things around, like you mentioned, cybersecurity, and energy management, one of our conversations, and we're getting in, we're playing a big role in that, like, I think if we would be naive to think that customers don't expect us to have some of the best cybersecurity programs in place we are, are the custodians of the network that makes sure that they have energy to run their lives and electricity to run their lives. And I mentioned at the beginning of this, that some people count on that to stay alive. So that is of utmost importance, and a certainty that we need to play a space in that. And then energy management, like who you turn to other than somebody is really accountable to make sure that energy comes to your house, to be able to provide that expertise and help you through that and guide you through that process.   Dan Seguin  38:19 Now, what are some community carbon reduction projects that hydro Ottawa has been involved in, that customers might not be aware of?   Julie Lupinacci  38:29 Yeah, so hydro Ottawa has been working with the city and a lot of customers around the Ottawa area to be able to help them bring some of the carbon reduction projects that they have to life and to reality. So one of the big ones that I think maybe will touch everybody in the city of Ottawa is streetlight conversions. So we converted them all the street lights to LEDs, so that provided a significant cost savings to the City of Ottawa with regards to their energy bill, but in most cases provided better lighting, to the city streets, and has an element of controls in those lights to be able to allow the city to turn them up or down depending right so there's some technology that's built into those city lights, and all done through cost savings to the to the city overall. So I think that that was a big one that folks may not know about. We have been working with the city on their electric buses and bringing that vision to fruition. Electric buses, although we're not in the bus business, we are in the business now to support getting electricity to those buses and to where they need it and planning where those bus resting stations are to recharge, making sure there's enough in electricity capacity going into the main headquarters where the buses park at night, do their maintenance, make sure that they get charged up for the routes and working to make sure that they have everything there at To add a Edie, affordable process for the city, right, making sure that we're looking at, at this model that we worked on with the city to make sure that hydro water was working and supporting everything up to that charger. And the city's buses are running the routes, but we're, you know, we're staying in our lanes with regards to core competency, but making sure that we're bringing that vision to reality. And we're doing that same thing with the airport. No, we're not in the flight business. But we are in the business of making sure that as airports, specifically the airport here in Ottawa, are looking at electrifying everything under the wing, making sure doing fuel switching even in their passenger terminals. So you know, look at lighting solutions all across, whether it's, you know, the parking garage or in the building, you know, working with the report on helping them get to their net zero commitments, and making sure that we have the expertise brought in. Sometimes it comes with, you know, understanding what different programs are out there and marrying those up. And we do that. And then the last one, I think we've been working with some customers like the airport, so the airport's not a standalone, customer story. We've got a number of those stories that we're working with customers to do. We're working with Ottawa police services to be able to help look at their fleets and how do you support moving, moving their fleets to electric vehicles and other other customers that are like that? And then looking and working with the City of Ottawa on public charging stations? Where would these be, you know, our new mayor, as part of his campaign talked about public charging stations talked about ebike charging stations, and we're working hand in hand with them to help bring those visions and those plans to reality that is not just to talk, but it is bringing those projects to life.   Dan Seguin  41:59 Okay, Julie, let's rewind and go back to the strategic plan. What are the key change drivers that are influencing hydro Ottawa is future planning.   Julie Lupinacci  42:10 So we've used a five-d framework in our strategic direction, because these are the drivers that are not just impacting our industry, but they're impacting everybody. And they're, they're things that are happening, and you'd have to understand what it is and then look at your own business and then how you support customers. So the customers need to be aware as well. So we're really looking at these five days. So the first one is decarbonisation. You know, I think we've had a lot of that conversation so far. It needs to be part of our programs, it needs to be part of our future design, it needs to be part of our discussions with customers. The second one is digitization. And this one has been around for a while, right, like people have been migrating to, to using electronics, like E bills, emails versus you know, getting your your bill in the mail, paying through through some type of paper pay service versus sending in a check, or coming in to drop off money at hydro. We haven't done that for a while. But those are pathways to this digitization. And I would say it's going further than that. We're looking at how to make sure that customers have access to their data through a digital output? How can they connect their systems to that to make some decisions for them? So digitization is a big one for us. Not just on the customer front? I would say how we're developing our systems as well. Decentralization is one of those third G's that people are looking at. And I always laugh because industries go through centralization, decentralization. It's kind of a little bit of a flux piece that happens. But we are in a decentralization component because they think the reality of an Ottawa is in the ecosystem that we have. It's a pretty vast city, like, you know, from a miles long miles wide component. It's vast. It's not as big as some of the service territories that you know, like Hydro Quebec takes care of the entire province. But it's vast enough that you would think why are we decentralizing? But there's the reality of things like the storm that bring it to light that you need some loops within the system that are centered around where people are living and making sure that we can have some redundancy in different areas. So we are looking at that. And what we do is diversification diversifying. Like we talked about overhead underground a lot this year, especially after the storms. That's one form of diversification. But there's also looking at how do you incorporate renewables? It's a different type of energy production. How do you incorporate solar in a different way in a very thoughtful way and I can be stressed enough because you can't just put solar across the entire city and think that that's going to work right, you need to be able to integrate those pieces, right? If you want that energy future, you have to integrate solar into the existing grid, and look at how we do this as a community based component. So diversification is definitely leading a lot of discussions here. And what we do, and the last one is demographics that the city is changing. You know, we used to be English, French only, we have different languages that are coming to be so that, you know, like, that's the basics of it. But also taking a look at the changing demographics of the workplace, the changing demographics of where people are working, and how people are working, like demographics is a little bit different. Right? There's, you know, there's a socio graphic component to that, or a psycho psychographic component that comes into that as well, that we're looking at how we speak to customers? How do we make sure that they have information? What are we making sure that we're doing when we plan work, right? Like we have to do maintenance on our system? How do we do that support, support our customers, so all five of those DS, really our part of how we evaluate the work of the projects that we get involved in?   Dan Seguin  46:18 What has been the impact of the pandemic on electricity customers, and how has that influenced your role, and also hydro Auto has relationship with its customers,   Julie Lupinacci  46:30 The pandemic has, I think, thrown a very different work life reality here. Ottawa, for the most part, did not see the unemployment rates as some of the other cities across Canada. So in some cases, we've been fortunate, but the impacts are still there. So for the utility, and I talked about it in the previous question a little bit, but for the utility, how we go about doing our work matters more. Now, I would say, you know, coming through the pandemic, it matters more, because when we used to plan work on our grid, we used to plan it during the day. So we would go into a community. And we would know that the bulk of the customers in that community were at work between nine and five, let's say or nine and three. And we could get a lot of work done without really impacting customers. And now, it's not like those homes have become daycares, not just during the pandemic, but as a, as a perpetual thing. Now, right, we've got hybrid work components, so you can't decide that this or you can't even hazard an educated guess that this community is going to be predominantly out between these hours on this day, like that just doesn't, that doesn't happen anymore. So working with customers and giving them more advanced notice, in some cases, more, making sure that they get this information in a timely manner so that they can plan around it the same way that we're planning is super critical. And I would say that, ultimately, the biggest change that we've seen with our customers is making sure that we can continue to do the work with the least impact to our customers. And I think that's why we talked about the battery loan program. That's why it's become such an important piece of the future that our customers will not be able to give it to everybody. But you know, at least it's a program that will kind of look at how we can evolve and be able to support our customers through those types.   Dan Seguin  48:41 Okay, Julie, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions, and we've got some for you. Are you ready?   Julie Lupinacci  48:50 I am. Okay, Julie,   Dan Seguin  48:52 What are you reading right now?   Julie Lupinacci  48:53 I'm actually reading two books right now. One is called Ed Mylett The Power of One More, which is a pretty inspirational story that was based on his father just doing one more thing. One more minute talking to a customer reaching out to one more customer. It's kind of a really cool dynamic when you pull it into a workspace, and the other one is Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart. I'm reading that as part of our we had a lot of conversations about crisis, communication and emotion and Atlas of the heart was one of those recommendations. So I have taken her up on that.   Dan Seguin  49:27 Now, what would you name your boat? If you had one?   Julie Lupinacci  49:32 Yeah, I don't know if I thought this one 100% through but I think I would say Unstoppable. Maybe Unsinkable Boat.   Dan Seguin  49:43 Okay, let's move on to the next one. Who is someone that you admire?   Julie Lupinacci  49:46 That so many people to choose from? But here I'd say my mom, she's a powerhouse. She's mastered the balance of staying calm, and keeping calm even in the craziness of the chaos. She has that ability to fight kind of to find a path forward for people and during insanely stressful situations, so she like, reaches down and likes to pick people up gently, sometimes sometimes not so gently, and gives you a good kick in the butt, you know, to get you into overdrive when needed. So if I could, if I could garner some of that into who I am, I think I think that would be amazing.   Dan Seguin  50:21 Okay, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Julie Lupinacci  50:27 Yeah, this is, this is a hard one for me to put into words. But let me see if I can take, again, the chaos of some of these weather events that we've seen, like I've witnessed our team go from full throttle heads down, like almost militant robotic work mode, trying to get the power back on. And they can stop in those tracks and become this completely empathetic supportive, human being to some of the most vulnerable people that they they encounter, whether it be somebody who they see is needing help to shovel their driveway because they're struggling or, you know, a child comes up to them with a with a bunch of cards to give to hydro auto, because they're their classmates made them in in class, and they want to give them to them. And they're right, coming up right to a workstation, like I see this switch happen on a dime. And in my opinion, it's so magical. So I guess in my opinion, that would be pure via pure magic moment.   Dan Seguin  51:28 Okay, next one here, what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Julie Lupinacci  51:35 Yeah, as a single parent, I think it's easy for me to say something like anytime the schools were doing virtual learning and trying to juggle, juggle all of you know, work. Being a teacher is the hardest job in the world. Especially in some of those, with with some of those kids that just can't sit still, which is, which is my son. But I would have to say the hardest part, for me, has been witnessing folks who are struggling, trying to get back on their feet, whether that be financially, but more so I would say struggling to get back on their feet mentally coming out of the pandemic. Okay,   Dan Seguin  52:13 moving on. We've all been watching a lot of Netflix and TV. What are your favorite movies or shows?   Julie Lupinacci  52:23 It's funny because I saw this. And I would say, yes, that's a true statement. But I haven't been watching a lot of Netflix and TV, but my family Friday Night Movie go twos, these last few weeks has been the Home Alone series. And I don't know why. Coming up to Christmas. I guess that's what it is. But home alone has been the movie. I think we're up to the third one or fourth one now at our Friday movie nights.   Dan Seguin  52:47 Lastly, what's exciting you about your industry, our industry right now?   Julie Lupinacci  52:53 Oh, geez, what's not exciting. We're I think we're in a pivotal moment and the energy industry, like a kind of table clearing moment when we're working across boundaries, like I'm talking about physical boundaries, cross fuel providers cross. The local distributor companies talking together across energy providers, you know, private, public energy providers have all kinds of different solutions out there. Everybody's at this table working to develop solutions. It's such an exciting time, because it's the egos in some cases get completely put outside and just really focused on the same goal on trying to get us to that smart, sustainable, affordable energy future. And to me, that is absolutely the most exciting part of our industry right now. Well, Julie,   Dan Seguin  53:41 we've reached the end of another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. If our listeners wanted to learn more about you and our organization, how could they connect?   Julie Lupinacci  53:54 So I am on LinkedIn. So you can find me Julie Lupinacci at LinkedIn, or you can connect right through our website. So if you send something through there, saying you want to talk to me, it'll find its way to me directly.   Dan Seguin  54:08 Again, Julie, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Julie Lupinacci  54:12 I did.   Dan Seguin  54:14 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 And I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

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

Elias Makos is joined live in studio by Meeker Guerrier, Weekend News Anchor at Noovo and a commentator at RDS and Egbert Gaye, founder and editor of Montreal Community Contact. What to do about China… The RCMP has arrested a Hydro-Quebec employee for spying New Liberals, same as the old Liberals? More chaos for Quebec's oldest political party Organisers have cancelled a concert by French rapper Freeze Corleone after complaints about anti-semetic lyrics

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.

The 2022 federal budget doubled down on Canada's commitment to make all light-duty vehicles and passenger truck sales fully electric by 2035, with a considerable amount of money allocated to getting Canadians behind the wheel of an EV. Daniel Breton, President and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada joins us to discuss whether the real concerns about a shift to EVs are being addressed. From pricing models to helping rural, northern First Nations and Inuit communities, there's still a lot to be done.    Related links LinkedIn, Daniel Breton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-breton-b8a3b1a4/ LinkedIn, Electric Mobility Canada: https://www.linkedin.com/company/electric-mobility-canada/ Electric Mobility Canada: https://emc-mec.ca/   --- To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   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 and my co host Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry.  Hey, everyone, welcome back. Are zero emission vehicles the answer to a stronger economy, cleaner air, a healthier environment and good jobs? The Government of Canada certainly thinks so. And they're not the only ones.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:50 EV enthusiast owners, experts and advocates have been mobilizing like never before. They're being driven on a renewed commitment and mandate by the Canadian government to make all light duty vehicle and passenger truck sales fully electric by 2035.   Dan Seguin  01:05 A look at the 2022 Federal Budget shows that considerable money has been earmarked to get more Canadians into the driver's seats of an electric vehicle. According to the government's projections, at least 20% of all new passenger vehicles sold in Canada will be zero emissions by 2026. To give some perspective, last year in 2021, the percentage of zero emission vehicles sold in Canada was 5.2%. That gives five years for the government to reach its targets-doable?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:48 Well, since there's a rising trend in the demand of electric vehicles, many companies have actually gone out of stock. Automobile makers are experiencing a shortage in their EVs, and thus putting customers on waiting lists because of this high demand. Some manufacturers aren't even taking new orders for the foreseeable future because they just can't keep up.   Dan Seguin  02:08 So here's today's big question. Despite the momentum, are the real needs, issues and concerns by EV enthusiasts, owners, experts and advocates being addressed and setting the stage for success?   Rebecca Schwartz  02:25 Our guest today is Daniel Breton, the President and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, one of the oldest associations dedicated to the electrification of transportation in the world.   Dan Seguin  02:37 Electric Mobility Canada members include vehicle manufacturers, electricity suppliers, universities, tech companies, environmental NGOs, and many more.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:50 Daniel's background includes serving as the ex-Minister of the Environment, Sustainable Development, Wildlife and Parks. He was also the first elected official to oversee a government strategy for the electrification of transportation in Canada in 2012.   Dan Seguin  03:06 Daniel, thank you for joining us on the program today for what's a very busy week for you. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about Electric Mobility Canada, its mandate, and what drove you to the organization?   Daniel Breton  03:25 Well, EMC's mandate, EMC being one of the oldest organizations in the world dedicated to electric mobility. Its mandate is basically to accelerate electric mobility of all sorts. So we're not just talking cars, but we're talking buses, we're talking trucks, we're talking off road, marine. So we have a growing diversified membership. So now we do have bolt makers and bus makers and truck makers and mining companies and research centers and tech companies. So So that's it. So our mission is really to accelerate electric mobility in all forms and shapes. I would say that electric mobility is growing really fast these days around the world. And we also want to make sure that while we want to accelerate electric mobility, to lower greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, we also want to make sure that we create jobs in the process. So to me, we want to make sure that we have an EV supply chain that's made in Canada, and that we don't just end up extracting critical minerals in Canada to send elsewhere in the world like we have done so many times in the past. We want to develop our own industry. And this is happening right now. And, obviously, we do a lot of networking but amongst members, and we have our conference, you know, happening from September 27 to 29th. And we talk a lot to federal government, provincial governments, cities, some of which are members. And you're a member being City of Toronto [Ottawa]. So yeah, so that's what I do on a full time basis. That's what I've been doing for decades, actually. And we have a growing team; growing membership. So we're, it's really exciting, actually.   Dan Seguin  05:33 What's been the most significant event, innovation or policy that you think has changed the future trajectory for mass EV adoption? For the better?   Daniel Breton  05:46 Well, I think there's not one thing in particular, you know, that may have made it possible, I would say that's a growing, or it's a number of things. So obviously, battery technology has evolved quickly, over the past 10, 15, 20 years. Just to give you an example, between 2008 and 2020- volume density of battery has grown eight fold. So when you look at batteries, today, you have, you can have a lot more capacity, and a battery now than you had five years ago, 10 years ago, and it's going to keep growing as time goes by a lot of people seem to think that if you have let's say, a 60 kilowatt hour battery, it's going to be four times the size than a 15 kilowatt hour battery from let's say, 2010. Actually, it's not the case at all. It's just that is has more capacity, and the smaller volume per kilowatt hour, meaning that actually weight has not increased as fast as capacity. So to me, that's very important. The other thing is that infrastructure, infrastructure deployment and infrastructure, evolution has made a big difference. Just to give you an example. 10 years ago, the average electric car had 120 kilometers of range. Now it's 450. So in 10 years, it's quadrupled. At the same time, 10 years ago, if you wanted to charge your electric car, there was hardly any fast chargers on the road. So for example, when I was working in Montreal that I had to go to the National Assembly, I could not buy an electric car, I had to buy a plug in hybrid electric car, because there was no fast charger petrol between Montreal and Quebec. That's 10 years ago. Now, if you go five years ago, a fast charger had a 50 kilowatt charger. So that meant that we went from charging 120 kilometers of range in about four or five hours to charge charging 120 120 kilometers of range in about half an hour. And now with new fast chargers, you know, weighing you know going from 50 kilowatt to 150 kilowatt, 250 kilowatt and even 350 kilowatt, you can charge 120 kilometers of range in 10 minutes. So so things have accelerated regarding the technology of infrastructures as well. Education is making a big difference because more and more people are interested in EVs. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. I'm often surprised to hear the same questions I was being asked 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago regarding battery life, for instance. But I still do get those questions on social media and even sometimes on regular media.   Rebecca Schwartz  08:55 On the other hand, what do you consider to be the most significant setback or barrier to the mass adoption of electric vehicles? Feel free to speak to Canada in general, and more specifically, right here in Ontario?   Daniel Breton  09:08 I would say it's education and training and supply. So that's the three the three things the three issues the roadblocks, first of all, supply. I mean, most EVs nowadays you have to wait between six months and three years to get your hands on one. So that's a real issue. We are supporting the federal government, and its will to adopt a federal ZEV (Zero-Emission Vehicle) mandate to make sure that we have more and more supply of electric cars across the country, but in Ontario in particular- I don't know if you remember this, but 11 years ago, the federal government and the Ontario government announced joint support for the assembly of the Toyota Rav4 EV. So both of them gave $70 million to assemble the Rav4 electric in Woodstock, Ontario, because there was no regulation no mandate in Ontario or in Canada for that matter, but because there was a mandat in California. And you have to keep in mind that back then there was a rebate of up to $8,500 in Ontario, even with the rebate 100% of these Toyota Rav4 EVs were sent to the US. So you could live two kilometers away from the plant, you could not buy one. So considering that now, the federal government and the Ontario government have invested billions of dollars into the assembly of either vehicles, or batteries, or cathodes or anodes across the country. We think that ZEV mandate is really, really super important for Ontario citizens. Because it would be a shame that we yet again, we would assemble electric vehicles and in Ontario, but because there are ZEV mandates, and 15 US states plus two Canadian provinces, while most if not all, of these electric vehicles assembled in Ontario would be sent elsewhere. So that's the first thing. The other thing is education, there's so much work that needs to be done. I mean, there's so there's so much disinformation or bad information, you know, going around in regular media, I mean, I read regular media on a daily basis about electric vehicles in English Canada, and I'm stunned to see how many bad articles written on electric vehicles. It's really bad. I mean, it used to be like that in Quebec, not so much anymore. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, and training, training for people to work in the auto industry. I did some training last year, for a car manufacturer, whose name I won't mention, but I was surprised to see how little they knew not only about the ecosystem, I mean, the chargers, the apps, the networks, but about their own product. I mean, I was teaching engineers at this manufacturer about their car. So to me, it shows how much work that there is still to do. Regarding the EV ecosystem- I often say when we're talking about electric vehicles, that when someone drives a gas car and wants to go to electric car, it's like saying, I've never owned a boat, I'm going to buy a boat. But there are a lot of different regulations when you are on the water because it's a different world. Well, it's a bit the same when you're talking about electric cars, because there are new things you need to learn about, in particular range, the way you use them on a daily basis. Winter driving, charging, obviously. So yeah, so education and training, I think is super important. And it's a roadblock right now.   Dan Seguin  13:12 Now, Daniel, what is your opinion of the adoption rates so far in Canada, which provinces or territories, or even companies are doing the best job at building an EV movement?   Daniel Breton  13:30 Well, I would say that provinces, obviously BC and Quebec are ahead of the curve. When you look at the Q1 EV sales number for Canada. While in Canada, we were at 7.7%. EV sales, according to Statscan. And BC, they were at 15.5%. So that's twice the national rate. And in Quebec, they were at 12.7%. At the meantime, Ontario was at 5.3%. So that shows that you need to have rebates. I think rebates are important, which you don't have anymore in Ontario, but you have to have mandates as well. Let me give you a perfect example of that. In BC, the rebate is up to $4,000 and Pei and New Brunswick it's $5,000. But because they have no mandate there, they have no supply so their their EV sales are below 5%. So I think it's very important to have both rebates and mandates regarding companies obviously Tesla is driving the charge. I mean, it's obvious. If you look at if if things keep rolling out like we are seeing today, the Tesla Model Y will be the best selling gas or electric vehicle in the world next year. I mean, this is no small feat. But so yeah, so Tesla is making a huge difference Tesla's a member of EMC, by the way, but we are seeing that some Korean manufacturers like Kia and Hyundai, are coming up with very interesting products. And I'm stunned to say this, but I think that the Japanese are being left in the dust, by even the Americans. And this is something I would have never predicted five or 10 years ago, we are seeing that there seems to be a lot of resistance on the part of Japanese manufacturers. And to me being old enough to remember, it looks to me a bit like what I saw in the 80s and the 90s, when the Japanese came really strong to the market, and they left the American manufacturers behind. So I think the Japanese manufacturers, not all of them, but most of them are going to have to wake up because right now they're really lagging behind.   Rebecca Schwartz  15:56 So we recently had Loren McDonald on the show, and he talked about how consumers need to shift the way that they think about EVs. He said that EVs are more like a smartphone that you charge every night and less like a traditional gas car that you head to the pumps for. Do you agree with that? And if you have a story or anecdote that you'd like to share, we'd love to hear it.   Daniel Breton  16:19 So well. I mean, obviously, EVs are becoming more and more like regular vehicles, because if you go back five or 10 years ago, as I mentioned, you know, a regular EV that was not $100,000, EVs had between 120 and 150 kilometers of range. So it was a very different story, then, my girlfriend still drives one of those EVs, I mean, she drives us a Smart Fourtwo electric, it has 100 kilometers of range, it doesn't even have fast charging. So so when she goes on the road, she she's aware of the way that this vehicle behaves, and the range that she can have winter or summer. But keep in mind that most Canadians, most families have more than one car nowadays. So I would say that the first EV, which would be like the family EV, which can be either a car or an SUV, or even a pickup truck is the one that you're going to use when you go traveling when you go on a trip when you go to see the family. And that one is the one that you drive every day because you use it every day. The second one, if you have a second car, it can be a smaller EV, or a plug in hybrid electric vehicle. And, and I always suggest to people not to buy two big cars with two big batteries. I think it's a waste from an economic point of view, and environmental point of view. So, so if you want to talk about anecdotes, I remember when my girlfriend first got her car. I mean, I remember the second or the third night we went to drive in movie. And the range were the range that she had left was about 25 kilometers. And you have to, to plug the vehicle you have to connect to the radio to hear the movie. And she was honestly she was freaking out because she said, I'm not gonna have enough range to go back. We can't watch all of the movie. So we did not we ended up going back home before the end of the movie. It took her was, say, a couple of weeks before she got used to the range of her vehicle. Keep in mind that it doesn't have a lot of range. Now that she knows how the car behaves, she's not stressed anymore. One thing that happens to all of us is at one point we forget to charge a car or to plug the car at night. You know, it happens to us once or twice, but most of the time, then you remember it's like your phone, you know one night you'll come back home, you're tired. You don't plug the phone the next morning say oh my god, I have no, I have no capacity. There's there's no range. So that's the type of thing that you learn from. It happens to you a couple of times and then you know, I would say. What do you think are the biggest social drivers for the recent uptick in EVs? Is it really the high price of gas? Or is it connected to something bigger? I think it's a few things I think first gas prices have made a huge difference. Because people are seeing that there's a really it's really interesting to buy an electric car with those gas prices. But more than that, the fact that there are more and more child choices of different models and shapes of EVs You know with the new F150 lightning coming to market, you know the Kia EV6, the Hyundai Ioniq 5. These are really appealing vehicles. So I think that choice and and price is making a big difference. I mean, I'm sure you saw that but a couple of weeks ago, GM announced that they were coming up with their new Equinox EV starting at $35,000. And I don't know if you know this, but I just saw the price for the base Honda CRV. It's $36,000. So now, if you look at small SUV, electric, small SUV gas. Without the rebate, the small SUV the CRV is even more expensive than the base version of the Equinox EV? So even though people say prices of EV keep going up and up and up. It's not necessarily true. It depends on the model. Yes, some people do want more expensive electric car. But let's be honest here. You know, many people who buy the base model of any vehicle, gas or electric, it doesn't happen. It just doesn't. So I would say that prices of vehicles have gone up way up actually gas or electric. But we are seeing at the same time. So I'm very competitive models in on the EV side, especially from GM and I have to salute them for that.   Dan Seguin  21:29 I've got a follow up question here for you. What are some of the overall benefits as a nation when we reach 100%, EV passenger sales by 2030 and all other vehicles by 2040?   Daniel Breton  21:44 Well, I would say that the first benefit is lower emissions is going to make a hell of a difference. Because you know, a lot of people say that GHG emissions from transportation represent 24% of Canada's total GHG emissions. But that's only downstream emissions. When you add upstream emissions, it's 30%, meaning that transportation is the number one source of GHG emissions in Canada. But that's GHG emissions, so lowering them by I would say 50 to 80%. Because you have to keep in mind that you have GHG emissions from electricity production, although it's getting much better. I mean, the last coal plant is going to close next year in Alberta. And and Nova Scotia intends to go I think it's 80% renewable by 2030. So as time goes by electric vehicles become cleaner and cleaner because the grid is becoming clearer and cleaner. So that's one thing. But the other thing, which is super important, and people seem to forget, is that according to Health Canada, they released a report on the impact of air pollution last year, the economic cost of air pollution is estimated at $120 billion, not millions, billions 120 billion from air pollution. And that's 15,300 premature deaths, which is eight times the death toll of car accidents. So if we bring more electric vehicles on the road, it's going to lower significantly air pollution, whether it's from light duty vehicles, or medium or heavy duty vehicles. So it's going to save billions of dollars to Canadians, help our healthcare system and save 1000s of lives. I mean, this is not insignificant. This is very important. And this is something I think that needs to be said. And last but not least- jobs. I've been talking about this, believe it or not, I've been coming to the House of Commons because from where I am, I can see the House of Commons right here because I'm in Gatineau this morning. I've been I started to talk about the EV industry about 15 or 16 years ago to the federal government saying that we need to transition our automotive sector from gas to electric because that's where the industry is going. So there was really not much of any interest for years. But now the federal government has really caught on I have to salute Minister Champagne for his leadership on this particular issue to make sure to attract EV assembly battery assembly battery manufacturing, critical minerals strategy. So we are seeing a real shift I mean you have to keep in mind that between 2000 and 2020 light duty vehicle production in Canada has been going down and down and down time and time again. We went from fourth biggest manufacturer in the world, to not even be the top 10 in 2020. Now, because the federal government, the Ontario government, the Quebec government and other Canadian governments are investing more and more on the EV supply chain in the EV industry, we are seeing a revival of the automotive sector in Ontario. And to me, this is significant. And if we hadn't done this, there will not be an automotive sector by 2030, or 2035. So this is huge.   Rebecca Schwartz  25:33 Electric Mobility Canada recently launched a 2030 EV action plan with the goal of highlighting how we get to an EV future by 2030. So what is this and what was involved in its creation?   Daniel Breton  25:48 Well, most members of EMC were involved with the creation of the 2030 EV action plan. So it meant, you know, manufacturers, it meant infrastructure providers, utilities, research centers. So I mean, we have a large pool of very qualified experienced people, or either staff or on our board, or our GR Committee on our MHD working group, or battery working group, our utilities working group, so all of these minds come together to say, this is what we recommend for the future of Canada regarding e-mobility. So so yeah, so it was a broad consultation amongst ourselves to see what kind of policies we could put in place to accelerate EV adoption. And I would say that the result has been significant, because we have seen a lot of interest from the federal government, amongst others. Regarding our recommendation, whether it was for- I'll give you an example, at the end of July, I was invited by a Minister Alghabra's Cabinet to be at his announcement for their new medium and heavy duty vehicle incentive program. Because we basically wrote the program, we sent it to them, we had some exchanges, and they said, this does make sense. And we learn from other programs elsewhere in the world or elsewhere in Canada. So I mean, it is significant. We're talking about more than half a billion dollars to accelerate EV adoption regarding any medium and heavy duty vehicles. Obviously, the infrastructure deployment program, almost a billion dollars is something that's going to make a big difference to accelerate EV adoption. This was also part of our recommendation and 2030 action plan. And but we're not stopping there to us that 2030 Action Plan was was an important, I would say, moment and EMCs history. But we are coming up with newer updated revised recommendations, new documents being published. So this is a, you know, this is a work in progress.   Dan Seguin  28:15 Okay, great. We're going to discuss the six pillars of the plan today, which I think covers a lot of the issues and concerns raised by many Canadians. Let's dig into pillar number one, light duty EV; consumer adoption. Some of the highlights under this pillar include price parity, with gas cars, some clever incentive proposal and removing caps for taxis, and ride sharing companies to move fully electric. Can you talk to some of these and what your ultimate goal with this pillar is?   Daniel Breton  28:58 Well, this pillar is to not only encourage EV adoption, but discourage gas guzzler adoption, because we have what we call, you know, the fee based system that we recommend. I've been talking about this for more than 10 years. Because, while people are buying more and more EVs at the same time they're buying more and more light trucks, gas light trucks. And this is an issue because we see that, you know, what most manufacturers offer now is more and more SUVs, pickup trucks and crossovers. So cars are less and less bought by Canadians because there are less and less manufacturers by OEMs. You know, if you go to a Toyota dealer, there's no honda fit anymore. There's no Yaris anymore, but there's more and more of those SUVs. So so for us a fee based system, I think is a recommendation that's important, but it's not an easy one to adopt. We have not seen anyone in North America I'd love the feedback system yet. We it has shown to be very effective in Europe. But it's it's an issue. And you know, in North America and Canada and Canada in particular when one thing that I'm really focusing on is the fact that for us, it doesn't make sense that, you know, car sharing companies, car hauling companies would have a cap of 10 vehicles that can get the federal rebate. Because not only do we want to encourage the transition to EVs, but especially in downtown areas, we want to make sure that if people don't know don't need to buy a car, and they can use a car sharing service, well, they should be encouraged to do so. And the car sharing services should be encouraged to electrify their fleet. So for us, this cap has to go. This is something I've been discussing with people in the federal government. And we are coming up with more data and information, you know, explaining why we need this. Other than that, no, you're we're talking about evey rebate for for used vehicles. This is actually in one of the mandate letters. And it has been in the mandate letters for a number of years now at the federal level, the program has still not been put together. So we are anxiously waiting to see what's going to happen with this. And last but not least, I don't know if you know about this. But in California, there is a particular rebate on top of the regular rebate for low income individuals and families who want to buy an electric car. So we think that this is something important for people who have, you know, we're not as affluent to be able to buy an electric car.   Rebecca Schwartz  31:52 So Daniel in pillar two you discuss medium heavy duty and off road fleet electrification and a number of rebates, tax credits, and offsetting costs for electrical infrastructure. What are some of the key takeaways? And what about the tools and restrictions for large polluters? Can you speak to that a little bit?   Daniel Breton  32:13 Well, I would say that what we are seeing because of this very important announcement from Minister Alghabra, this summer, what we are seeing now is that the main issue or the main challenge is infrastructure. Let's say you are a transit agency, and you want to buy a whole fleet of electric buses, you have to charge them. And the garages that we have in Canada have not been planned this way. So we have to really either adapt them or build new garages. But this is something that can be done. I mean, right now, there's less than 1000 electric buses in Canada, closer to 600. and China, they have more than 600,000 electric buses. And I was I was told a few years ago by someone from a trade transit agency whose name I won't mention that, because in this particular city that this person worked in population density made it harder for them to electrify buses. So I couldn't help but reply that, yes, because China, as we all know, does have a lot of people. So so to me, that was it was not an argument. I mean, if you want to plan this, you'll find a way. I mean, this, you know, there's the saying, you know, if if you want to do it, you find a way if you don't want to do it, you find an excuse. So to me, this is really a challenge regarding, you know, transit fleets, we're talking about trucks. Well, depo charging is going to be very important. But right now, this is not something that's been planned or budgeted in the federal government's programs. So we are looking to try and recommend to the government that we put together a particular program for medium and heavy duty vehicle infrastructure, this is something that we that needs to be done. And regarding off road vehicles, so off road vehicles is a different issue because a lot of people seem to think that if you buy a snowmobile, or Sea-Doo or a side by side, that it's just for fun, but a lot of people work with these snowmobiles and see those and side by side because they work in a park that they work at a ski station, work on a construction site. So keep in mind that our regulars, modern snowmobiles, it pollutes as much talking about air pollution here as 40 modern cars, gas cars. So from an air pollution point of view, it's a big win for people to adopt electric off road vehicles. So that's why we are pushing for that as well. Not to mention the fact that some of the companies making those side by sides and snowmobiles are Canadian companies. So it's not only good for the air pollution, but it's also good for job creation as well. And expertise. I mean, after all, I mean, where else then in Canada, should we have electric snowmobiles to start with I mean, it should be starting here. And it is starting here.   Dan Seguin  35:47 Okay, at least 1/3 of Canadians live in multi unit residential buildings today. Under pillar number three, you go into some details about the national EV infrastructure deployment plan. What are the targets and recommendations you believe are needed when it comes to public charging and making condos and apartments EV ready?   Daniel Breton  36:15 Well, there needs to be some regulation put together either by provinces or cities to accelerate EV adoption and merge, you know, multi unit residential buildings. Actually, I learned just a few days ago that the city of Laval, Quebec has put together an EV ready regulation that says something we are seeing in BC. And this is something we should see across the board across the country. Because it's not just about, you know, incentives for people to install EV chargers in condominiums, because some, some condo owners and all their their syndicate. They simply don't want that they don't allow for that to but to be able to, you know, for people to install them. So we think that there needs to be regulation so that, you know, there should be a right to charge. And this is something very important. We are asking the federal government but other governments as well, to make sure that at least we have at least a million chargers by 2030 across the country. We think it's very important because yes, public charging is key. But let's face it 80 to 90% of charging happens where? At home or at work. So if we have both public chargers and verb chargers and home chargers, this is the only way we're going to be able to reach our targets regarding EV options.   Dan Seguin  37:50 Okay, here's a follow up question for you, Daniel. Where do you see utilities playing a role in the 2030 EV action plan?   Daniel Breton  38:01 They will play a big role. I mean, they have so much to win from EV transition, that it's really surprising that some utilities don't see the interest. I wouldn't say that Canadian utilities don't see the interest, I would say that most of them do. Most utilities in Canada are members of EMC, we have a utilities working group, they are looking at ways to help this transition it both from a technological point of view from a planning point of view, and from a regulatory point of view. So they do play a big role. But I was part of a discussion last year with people in the Ontario government. Because a lot of people in government were saying how much is this infrastructure deployment going to cost? You know, people in Ontario and utilities. And I said, I asked this question to a person from the Federal from the Ontario government. I said them, you know how much it costs you to import oil to make diesel and gas in Ontario on a monthly basis? And that person said no. So I looked at how much Ontario cars and trucks consume on a monthly basis. And I made a calculation that's $60 a barrel, which was lower a year ago, you know, and back then it added up to $1.2 billion a month. So if you take that $1.2 billion a month that just flies out of Ontario because Ontario is not a province that produces oil, and you bring it back in and you put that money into infrastructure and jobs and electricity production from Ontario utilities. It's a lot more money that stays in Ontario $1.2 billion a month is a lot of money. So that means that we, Ontario does have the means to electrify its fleet and to update and yeah, to update its grid.   Rebecca Schwartz  40:10 Next, what are the benefits to the government launching a national 2030, EV strategy and regulation? And why is this so important?   Daniel Breton  40:19 Well, that's something that we are seeing already, you know, with the very important announcement that have been made by Prime Minister Trudeau, Minister Champagne, Minister Wilkinson, because keep in mind that when we're talking about create job creation, and and the EV sector, it's not just about car assembly or truck assembly or bus assembly, it's also about infrastructure, manufacturing, you know, whether we're talking about level two chargers, you know, the main sponsor of our e 2022. Conference is Grizzly, which is a company based in Ontario, and they make residential chargers, but they're going to start making public chargers, and they're doing it in a way that's very efficient. So that's show creation as well, where we're talking about construction jobs for those infrastructures, where we're talking about mining jobs, and processing jobs. So there was a report released by the International Energy Agency a few days ago, that said, that stated that right now, in Canada, we are right now about at 50/50 when we're talking about the percentages of job, and fossil fuel versus renewables, and electric mobility, and that's 2022. But we all know that between now and 2030, the number of jobs created, and renewables and green mobility is going to be much higher than in fossil fuels. So this is very important. We're talking job creation, you know, from the whole spectrum. We're going from mining to mobility.   Rebecca Schwartz  42:06 Okay, so a quick follow up for you, though, a couple of items under the fourth pillar that we found to be interesting was the Green SCRAP-IT program and your recommendation to help rural northern First Nations and Inuit communities? Can you briefly talk about those and the rationale?   Daniel Breton  42:26 Well, the Green SCRAP-IT program is inspired by stuff that we are seeing that we have seen in Quebec and BC, because of what we're seeing is that for people who drive older vehicles, whether it's for individual cars, or old buses, for instance, because some of those buses have been on a roll for a long time, and their pollution levels are through the roof. So we want to help either it's companies, individuals, or transit authorities, school boards, to transition to electric vehicles, whether it's, you know, cars, trucks, buses, school buses. But it's a way for us to make sure that we do accelerate the transition, but it regarding individual vehicles, what we are saying is that we should accelerate scrappage program. But what some people are saying in the industry is that should people should, you know, just get rid of the old car and be able to buy a new car, and it could be a gas car. So we don't agree with that. But not only that, when people let's say somebody gets rid of his or her Honda Civic, and decides to buy a brand new Honda CRV, well, air pollution is going to be lower, but GHG emissions is going to be higher because it's a bigger car. And GHG emissions are directly linked to fuel consumption. So it's not because you buy a new car that necessarily it's that good for the environment. So that's why we're saying our SCRAP-IT program should be linked either to the purchase of electric vehicle, but it can also be a transit pass. It can be an electric bike, it can be car sharing service, carpooling service, because, yes, electric mobility is a key ingredient in the solution to lower GHG emissions, or we're talking about transportation, but it's not the only one. So that's why because I've been working at this for decades. I know that we have to also encourage, you know, collective transportation, active transportation, car sharing, carpooling, commute work. All of this is part of solution when we're trying to find not only ways to lower GHG emissions but to lower traffic congestion as well. Regarding First Nations and remote communities, I live in the country. I don't live downtown Montreal for though because we hear that very often, you know, oh yeah, electric cars are only good for those who live in the city and try, you know, a commute around the city. While actually when you look at the Cape, the Quebec data 75% of EV owners in Quebec live outside of Quebec and Montreal, why? For a very simple reason, because they have either a garage or a driveway, it's a lot easier to plug your car, when you have garage or driveway, than when you live in a suburb. I'm sure you know this as well as I do. But for those who live further down, you know, let's say you live in northern Saskatchewan, or in northern Ontario. And you say, well, it's going to be really hard for me to be able to have access to electric car, or to drive the long distances that we need to drive we live in, we live far away? Well, first of all, there seems to be some misconception about the fact that Canada is a big country, and therefore we drive a lot. We do a lot of mileage. That's just not true. Okay? The average driving from Canadians on a daily basis to go to work and back 80% of Canadians drive 60 kilometers or less to go to work and back. So what that means is that, no, it's actually 80 kilometers and back 80 kilometers to go to work and back. So. But this is very important, because most Canadians don't drive that much. I mean, the average driving habits of Canadians from the latest data, which is not new by any means, because the latest data that we found from the federal government was 2009. Believe it or not, this is so outdated, I can't believe it. But anyway, we were at 17,000 kilometers approximately. So 17,000 kilometers, is not that much driving. I mean, I because I travel a lot for my work, I drive more than 50,000 kilometers a year. So having an electric car and driving a lot is no issue. What we need is to make sure that remote communities have access to chargers, fast chargers, in particular, when you get out of the 401, the 417, the 15 the trans Canadian when you go more up north, it is an issue for many regions in Canada, especially when you live in the prairies. I've heard some people, you know, look for chargers didn't know where they were because no one explained to them, where to plug the vehicle, there were only level two chargers. So infrastructure is a real issue. For those who really live, you know, outside are most of the grid, you know, when you live in Nunavut, or Nunavik are, you know, you count the Northwest Territories. There are more and more chargers being deployed, then very often people who live there buy SUVs or pickup trucks. So now that we're seeing more and more SUVs and pickup trucks coming to market, it's becoming less of a challenge, but they do need to get them delivered over there. That's the first thing. The second thing for those who would be, I would say, more anxious about the fact that when it's minus 30 minus 40. You know, you lose up to 50%. And rage, worse comes to worse, you can always buy a plug in hybrid electric vehicle. Mean, meaning that you know, you're going to have some range, especially in the summer. In the winter, not so much. So, but but the truth of the matter is that, you know, I've been driving EVs for I've been driving partial and full EVs for 23 years now. So I know that even at minus 20, I've been going to Saguenay they actually were organized an EV day, and Saguenay in January at minus 25 minus, minus 30. We're 20 of us from Avec. I was with Avec back then we drove all the way up there. And no one had an issue. You just need to have the infrastructure and that's an issue. Right now. In Northern Ontario. It is an issue. And we are seeing that in northern provinces. We're in BC and Quebec I would say.   Dan Seguin  49:07 When it comes to federal leadership with respect to EVs in your sixth and last pillar, what is the government doing right? And what are your recommendations for improvement?   Daniel Breton  49:21 Well, I would say that what the government is doing right for EV adoption at the federal level, is that they are helping more and more departments by EVs. So to me, this is this is key, but we need to install a lot more chargers in federal buildings and federal parking that we have right now. As I mentioned, you know, I'm right across the river from the House of Commons. And I think that I see like less than 10 chargers at the House of Commons. To me this is far from being enough. When I was in Norway in June, we went to a city called Arendal, about 300 kilometers away from Oslo. And it's a small city 40,000 people. And there was an underground parking over there that could accommodate about 150 cars. There were 70 chargers. So, so we have a lot of catching up to do. Let's put it that way. And on that topic, I have to mention this. When I was in government, in in my government plan for the government of Quebec, 10 years ago, we had a plan to electrify ferries. So when we lost our election, you know, the the electrification of ferry fell, you know, in the cracks. When I was in Norway in June, I learned that there's 825 ferries in Norway, eight wto five 825 ferries in Norway. 400 of those 400 of those ferries are already electric. And the largest electric ferry in Norway can accommodate 600 people and 200 cars. So I think that if the Canadian government wanted to electrify its ferry lines, it would be a great opportunity for the marine industry in Canada to develop a new skill and create all you industry actually.   Rebecca Schwartz  51:33 So something that I thought was fascinating in this pillar was the zero emission zone in downtown Ottawa. Can you tell us what that is and why you recommended it or called out Ottawa specifically?   Daniel Breton  51:45 Well, I think it's because it's the symbol. I mean, Ottawa is the capital of Canada. So if we have a zero emission zone in Ottawa, I think it will send a strong signal that people could not drive gas or diesel vehicles in that particular area.   Dan Seguin  52:01 Okay, Daniel, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. And we have a few for you. Are you ready?   Daniel Breton  52:11 Go ahead.   Dan Seguin  52:12 Okay. Here's number one. What are you reading right now?   Daniel Breton  52:17 Oh, my God. That's funny, because, you know, I used to read a lot of novels when I was younger. Now all I read is sports. I need that I read battery reports and I need books and I read everything related to electric mobility. The oil industry energy transition. So basically, most of the reading that I do is scientific or economic. That's That's my bedtime reading. Yeah.   Dan Seguin  52:48 Okay. What would you name your boat? If you had one?   Daniel Breton  52:54 I don't have one because I'm an old time windsurfer. So I live, I mean, my house is by the St. Lawrence River. So I windsurf in my backyard. So and I don't intend to have a boat. But I I keep windsurfing. Even though I turned 60 this year. I want to die windsurfing. Want to wind surf until I die. So yeah.   Dan Seguin  53:18 Moving on to the next one who is someone that you admire?   Daniel Breton  53:23 I admire a lot of people. It's hard to tell. Because I mean, so many people that I admire, I mean, believe it or not my I said my girlfriend but my wife because I got to wait three weeks ago. Thanks. She met with the Dalai Lama a few years ago, because she used to be a member of parliament and she was the only Buddhist Member of Parliament. So she met with the Dalai Lama. So that's a person that I really admire. Nelson Mandela, I really admire obviously, being from Quebec and native and you have to keep in mind that there and Ivanka has done a lot. For those who are in Ontario. You know, a lot of people think about independence, but when I think about going to the bank, I think about metal she knew when he was natural resources minister, and, and they held the referendum election of the nationalization of electricity 1962 And that helped propel Hydro Quebec from a small company to one of the biggest forces in the world regarding electricity production, and cleaning, electricity production for that matters. There's not a size and a need Ivanka are really important in my mind, I would say and even though he is controversial, I would say Elon Musk, you know, I mean, he's done so much. And he is such a leader and and you ways of doing things, but I don't always agree with him. But I have to say that when you work in electric mobility, it was what if it was not for him? We will not be there today.   Dan Seguin  55:10 What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Daniel Breton  55:15 That's a good question. Real closest thing to real magic, I would say is that it was the night that I saw an aurora borealis. It's very spectacular.   Dan Seguin  55:28 Okay, let's move on here. What has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Daniel Breton  55:36 To me personally, I mean, a lot of people close to me, I've got COVID, my mother's got COVID, she's been very sick. So many people close to me, either, were really sick. A friend of mine, you know, fell in a coma for almost 20 days. So I thought he was going to die. Another friend of mine, 52 years old, died from COVID. So so this is at, you know, this hit home really hard. For me as see point of view, keep in mind that I started at EMC on March 9 2020. And, and the first thing that I did as CEO of EMC, was to cancel a conference. So my first decision was to cancel a very important event for EMC for its members. And I remember, I cancelled it like March 15, like a week after I had come in. So people were really not sure about what I was doing, because it was this new guy canceling the conference. Is he nuts, but I was just, you know, in front of the curve. So it was complicated for us. Because since I would say that I was pretty much the only one to cancel an event of any big event or conference in 2020. I had a lot of issues with hotels and people that we paid for, because they said, not gonna happen. What you're saying doesn't make sense, these events will happen. We don't want to reimburse you. So we had to fight for months and months to get our money back. Because at one point, everybody came to the conclusion that there was no other way around this. But it was a couple of months that were really very hard. I can tell you that.   Dan Seguin  57:27 We've all been watching a lot of Netflix or TV lately. What's your favorite movie, or show?   Daniel Breton  57:37 Right now? I watched a series called the Casa de Pepe. It's a Spanish TV series. It's super weird, but it's very interesting. And, and the other one that I've been watching recently, because keep in mind that my wife is Vietnamese. So it's a short call, I think career plan or something like that about an Asian woman who was a lawyer. And it's it's served career and it's her path in life. And my girlfriend is a career woman, she has been very successful. So this is something that we watch together.   Rebecca Schwartz  58:17 Okay, lastly, what's exciting you about your industry right now?   Daniel Breton  58:21 Oh, my God. I would say that it's just this- listen, I've been talking about EV and EV adoption and EV industry for decades now. So for for many years, I felt like I was, you know, this nut case, you know, that walks around, you know, the cities, you know, repent. The end is near, you know, I felt like because I was talking about I was talking about, you know, climate change, because I studied and climate change. That's what I studied in when I was in university. So to me at one point around 2005 or so, I said, we have to talk, we have to stop talking only about depressing stuff and start talking about solutions. And that's when in 2005 I said I have to make it a goal of mine to find ways to accelerate EV adoption. That was 17 years ago, I created MCN 21 back then; wrote books on the subject. I've written many books on the subject. But still until five years ago, I mean, there were only a few of us. Now that we are seeing car manufacturers, truck manufacturers, plane manufacturers. You know, jumping and jumping on the bandwagon of electric mobility. It's very exciting. And I mean, I didn't even take a vacation this summer because there was so much job so many consultations, so many reports. So much stuff to do. So at one point I said that to federal employee I said you know oh, well, I mean, I would be nuts to complain, because I have too much work because I've been asking for this for many years. But I would say the most exciting thing is just the vibe. You know, it's just, it's just that. I mean, it's a hot topic nowadays. I mean, just two years ago, because I've been, I've been, I'm well known in Quebec, a lot of people know me, people. I know, people, people know me. I'm all over the media. But in the rest of Canada, it was not such a hot topic to talk about electric mobility until maybe a year ago, two years ago, the most. But now every week, you know, I'm not the only one. But a lot of people now do interviews about electric mobility, electric cars, and the chargers. And some of those articles, as I mentioned, are really bad. But I mean, we are talking more and more about this. So the old excitement, you know about this transition, I think is is is very encouraging. And I know that all of us will have worked for decades to come, because this is only the beginning.   Rebecca Schwartz  1:01:07 All right, Daniel. Well, that's it. We've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. But before we go, if our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect?   Daniel Breton  1:01:19 Well, they can go to our website you know and find a contact. We have a growing growing team now. So we have more and more people working at EMC so they can connect with us. They can send me an email info@emc-mec.ca. I'm always reachable.   Dan Seguin  1:01:39 Again, Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.   Daniel Breton  1:01:45 Oh, I did. I thanks a lot. Very, very interesting conversation. I really appreciated that.   Dan Seguin  1:01:53 Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. And don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.

ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens. Articles covered include: “ESG Investing: 7 Profitable Stock Picks for the Socially Responsible”; “Canada's Best 50 corporate citizens of 2022 continue to conquer the markets”; “This Renewable Energy Giant Sees Even More Powerful Growth Ahead”; “Looking for Passive Income? This Renewable Energy Company Is a Great Way to Go.” Plus Podcast: ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens. Transcript & Links, Episode 86, July 1, 2022 Hello, Ron Robins here. First of all, I want to wish my fellow Canadians a very happy Canada Day and my American friends a great Independence Day! Welcome to my podcast episode 86 published on July 1, 2022, titled “ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens” — and presented by Investing for the Soul. Investingforthesoul.com is your site for vital global ethical and sustainable investing mentoring, news, commentary, information, and resources. Remember that you can find a full transcript, and links to content – including stock symbols, quotes, and bonus material – at this episode's podcast page located at investingforthesoul.com/podcasts. Now if any terms are unfamiliar to you, simply Google them. Also, just a reminder. I do not evaluate any of the stocks or funds mentioned in these podcasts, nor do I receive any compensation from anyone covered in these podcasts. Furthermore, I will reveal to you any personal investments I have in the investments mentioned herein. ------------------------------------------------------------- 1. ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens Now my first article has this title: ESG Investing: 7 Profitable Stock Picks for the Socially Responsible by Tezcan Gecgil on InvestorPlace.com. Here are Ms. Gecgil's stock picks and brief comments that generally relate to the latest material developments of the company. “Best Buy (BBY): A newly launched home pick-up recycling program will make it easier for customers to recycle old electronics. Deere (DE): Announced a new joint venture that will improve productivity, growing more food using fewer resources. iShares ESG Aware MSCI EAFE ETF (ESGD): Tracks the best ESG stocks. Microsoft (MSFT): A new data center in Finland will provide carbonless surplus heating to the surrounding region. Novo Nordisk (NVO): Positive results for a once-weekly insulin treatment will improve the quality of life for diabetes patients. Procter & Gamble (PG): Developed a 3-in-1 product to clean, sanitize, and defend against 99.9% of bacteria and viruses for up to 24 hours. Xylem (XYL): Developed a new wastewater treatment solution that will help improve nutrient removal, save energy and reduce costs. To help investors choose ESG shares, MSCI (NYSE: MSCI), a leading supplier of investment decision support tools, provides the MSCI ESG Rating.” End quotes. ------------------------------------------------------------- 2. ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens This annual ranking, though they're Canadian companies, could be of interest to ethical and sustainable investors everywhere. The following descriptive article is titled Canada's Best 50 corporate citizens of 2022 continue to conquer the markets. It's by the renowned Corporate Knights group and found on their website with this commentary by Toby Heaps. Here are some quotes from Mr. Heaps. “Twenty years ago, Corporate Knights launched its quest for a more humane form of capitalism, placing people and planet ahead of profits, with the Best 50 Corporate Citizens sitting at the head of the roundtable to make business a force for good. A lot has changed for the better in that time and a lot hasn't. Thankfully, the glass ceilings in Canada's corporate boardrooms have been breached, with non-male members now making up almost a third of directors, double their one-sixth share in 2002… Racial diversity on large corporate boards has also improved: 9% of members are now non-white, double the 4% level in 2011, when we first started tracking this metric… While one workplace fatality is too many, it is encouraging that on a national level, a third less people died on the job in 2019 than was the case in 2002… Over the last two decades, corporate profits have doubled, workers have been left behind and emissions have stalled, but the Best 50 firms are leading the way with 50% more gender diversity and triple the investments aligned with the clean economy… The Best Corporate Citizens' stock market performance has outperformed its peers earning 499% gross return since it was first launched in June 2002, versus 366% for S&P/TSX Composite.” End quotes. Incidentally, the top three companies in the ranking are Hydro-Quebec, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. (INE.TO), and Brookfield Renewable Partners LP (NYSE: BEP). Go to this podcast's webpage for a great statistical table titled… The 2022 Best 50 Corporate Citizens vs. the rest* Indicator 2022 Best 50 Average Large Canadian Company (minus Best 50) CEO–Average Worker Pay Ratio 74:1 160:1 Board Gender Diversity 36.7% 23.3% Executive Gender Diversity 26.6% 13.1% Board Racial Diversity 8.8% 8.2% Executive Racial Diversity 12.0% 6.6% Cash Taxes Paid (% of EBITDA) 11.6% 8.9% **Clean Revenue (% Total Revenue) 36.8% 6.2% **Clean Investment (% Total Investment) 33.8% 12.7% Carbon Productivity ($ sales/tonnes GHGs) $1,517,909 $641,183 *Large Canadian companies (with more than $1b in annual revenue) excluding the Best 50 **Based on Corporate Knights' Clean Taxonomy ------------------------------------------------------------- 3. ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens It seems in every podcast I have an article and recommendation from Matthew DiLallo from fool.com! His latest article is titled This Renewable Energy Giant Sees Even More Powerful Growth Ahead. Here are quotes from Mr. DiLallo's article. “NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE) is already growing faster than most utilities, powered by its focus on clean energy… That high-powered growth could enable NextEra Energy to continue generating market-crushing total returns for investors… The company raised its 2022 and 2023 earnings ranges by $0.05 per share, while boosting 2024's forecast by $0.10 per share. Meanwhile, it sees 2025 earnings growing by 6% to 8% off 2024's higher base. This updated forecast would see the company expand its adjusted earnings per share at a 9.8% annual rate from 2021 to the high end of 2025's forecast range… Several factors are helping power that growth. The company plans to significantly increase its core wind, solar, and storage business, expand beyond the power sector, and grow its already large-scale transmission business to help support the decarbonization of the U.S. economy… In addition, the company expects to build a leading regulated water business… NextEra Energy also unveiled its Real Zero plan to eliminate all the carbon emissions across its businesses no later than 2045 without the help of carbon offset credits… NextEra Energy has proven that going green can generate some serious green for its investors… That makes it a great stock to buy and hold for the long haul because it can potentially deliver massive returns as it leads the way in decarbonizing the U.S. economy.” End quotes. ------------------------------------------------------------- 4. ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens Now income from investments is particularly important for those who need cash flow in their daily living. So, this next article will interest those investors. It's titled Looking for Passive Income? This Renewable Energy Company Is a Great Way to Go. It's by Rekha Khandelwal, also on fool.com. Here's some of what Ms. Khandelwal writes. “At current share prices, Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure (AY) offers a dividend yield of 5.6%... Utilities focused on renewable energy offer a great way to generate regular dividend income… Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure owns over 2 gigawatts of renewable electricity generation assets, roughly 72% of which are solar. Renewable power generation is expected to contribute around 70% of the company's cash available for distribution (CAFD) from 2022 to 2026. Atlantica also generates power using natural gas. The company expects its efficient natural gas and heat segment to contribute 15% of its cash available for distribution from 2022 to 2026. Transmission lines are expected to contribute 12%, and its water desalination assets are expected to contribute 3%.  The biggest positives for Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure as an investment are its stable and predictable long-term cash flows. At the end of 2021, the weighted average remaining term of agreements for the company's assets was 15 years. All of its revenue comes from contracted or regulated assets… Its assets are also geographically diversified, with 46% of its cash available for distribution coming from North America, 31% from Europe, and 15% from South America. Protection from inflation Rising interest rates are impacting the stock prices of companies in capital-intensive businesses. But the interest rates on 93% of Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure's project debt are either fixed or hedged… Similarly, the company has escalation factors included in its contracts to protect it from inflation… Management is targeting cash available for distribution per share growth of 5% to 8% through 2025… In short, Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure is a top renewables stock that can generate passive income for shareholders in the decades to come.” End quotes. ------------------------------------------------------------- 5. ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens This next article is by Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com, a well-known and highly respected figure in sustainable business. It's not a direct stock recommendation but rather is here as a stock that some of you might want to look at. The title of the article is In Brazil, Suzano harvests trees with deep roots in communities (BOVESPA: SUZB3). Here's some of what Mr. Makower writes. “What if the company had planted those trees years earlier, on degraded land that's now been revitalized? And if it then planted millions more trees where the cut ones used to be — all to be harvested years later and replaced by yet more trees? And it did this for multiple generations in partnership with local and Indigenous communities? Can that company be deemed sustainable? These are among the questions I pondered last week during my visit to São Paulo, Brazil. I was there as the guest of Suzano — a 98-year-old pulp and paper company, the largest in Latin America and one of the 10 largest in the world — to help host its annual ESG Call, an online event during which the company showcased its achievements and challenges to a global audience of investors, customers, activists and others. (I was paid for this work, but not for this article.)… Suzano, founded in 1924 by Ukrainian immigrant Leon Feffer, pioneered the production of pulp and paper from eucalyptus as an alternative to pine. It invested in research and development — in the 1980s, for example, it began to apply biotechnology, adopting micropropagation practices in its plantations — and in sustainability measures, including the creation in 1999 of the nonprofit Ecofuturo Institute (Portuguese), with a focus on ‘socio-environmental responsibility…' Social studies I was impressed by the environmental aspects of Suzano's operations, which have been informed by such global sustainability thinkers as John Elkington, Pavan Sukhdev and the late Tom Lovejoy… The company has a longstanding rural development program in which it teaches communities how to make the best use of their land by producing high-value crops and helping them transform those crops into finished goods that go into local and global markets. For example, it supports honey producers and beekeepers in placing their hives inside Suzano's eucalyptus plantations, which has the added benefit of reducing poaching by people afraid of bee stings. Among other things, there is a history of distrust to overcome. A few years ago, for example, activists in the northern state of Maranhao claimed Suzano had behaved badly, stealing land from traditional communities, displacing families and making livelihoods untenable. Suzano disputes these claims… Walter Schalka, the CEO, struck me as earnest as any business leader about the company's social — and environmental — commitments. ‘Not everything that we are doing is perfect,' he said. ‘But we are humble enough to bring the problems to the table and try to address how we are going to build the action plan to the future.'” End quotes. ------------------------------------------------------------- Other Honorable Mentions – not in any order, links on this podcast's webpage 1) Title Introducing the three largest ESG ETFs found on Trackinsight.com. By Eddie Barrak. 2) Title 2 Top Dividend Stocks You Can Buy and Hold Forever on fool.com. By Beth McKenna. 3) Title Top Seven Socially Responsible Funds on GoogleWebStory.com. By Teknika Raman. 4) Title Three Sharia-compliant growth companies on MoneyWeek.com. By Scott Klimo. Plus an article for Australian investors — again link on this podcast's webpage - Title 3 dividend-paying and ethical ASX shares to buy now: fund manager on monexsecurities.com.au. By Tony Yoo. ------------------------------------------------------------- Ending Comment Well, these are my top news stories with their stock and fund tips -- for this podcast: “ESG Picks. Great Corporate Citizens.” To get all the links, and stock symbols, or to read the transcript of this podcast -- and more -- go to investingforthesoul.com/podcasts and scroll down to this episode. Also, be sure to click the like and subscribe buttons in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you download or listen to this podcast. And please click the share buttons to share this podcast with your friends and family. Let's promote ethical and sustainable investing as a force for hope in these deeply troubled times! Contact me if you have any questions. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next on July 15. Bye for now. © 2022 Ron Robins, Investing for the Soul

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.